Stalin three main policies were: 1) Socialism in One Country 2) Collectivisation of Agriculture 3) Five Year Plans for industry.
1) Socialism in one country wa an ideological retreat from Marxist orthodoxy, which stressed that the revolution would fail unless more industrialised countrie (particularly Germany) had their own Communist revolution. It was designed to consolidate the gain of the October Revolution.
2) Collectivisation of agriculture was designed to prevent peasant farmer from turning into a rural bourgeoisie - by employing labour. It aggregated all the farms in an area, putting a manager in charge and treating the farms almost like a rural industrial concern. It wa passionately opposed by many farmer, especially in Ukraine.
3) The first FYPs were an ideological response to the previous policy of NEP. NEP allowed small businesse to operate and was creating a middle clas. The Communist were never happy with this policy a Marx stated that communism could only happen when the workers owned the mean of production. The FYP, a the state was a "worker state" saw the workers - i.e. the state own all the means of production. This changed the country from having private enterprise (albeit at a small level) as the main economic driving force, to having the state - and its planning arm - Gosplan a the main driving force.
Positives: Transformed the country - much of the country was electrified, huge civil engineering work and massive new factorie brought change in the way that people worked. Agriculture wa transformed from an inefficient peasant based and labour intensive activity to an inefficient, worker (collective farm worker received wage) based and more mechanised activity. It also solidified the gains of the revolution - the revolutionary elite can, after the first FYP really be called the political class. Thi mean they can start to act like a political elite - not like an underground movement. But the greatest legacy of Stalins policies was that they put in place the industrial muscle needed to defeat the Nazi.
Negative: The kulaks - richer peasants - were deported to Siberia and the Kazakh steppe. This ideological decision rooted out the most efficient, often the most educated and the most entrepreneurial farmer and destroyed them. The civil engineering works were completed with little regard to quality - the Belomor canal, dug at huge cost in human life (prisoners, both criminal and political were used to dig it) but it wa not deep enough for the ocean going ship it was designed for.
Stalin used the political turmoil following Lenin death and the to isolate, eliminate and to, on occasion, to execute hi rivals. The political elite lived live of fear - fear that a misplaced word or an ill-conceived look could lead to a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
See: http://www.spartacu.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSfive.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/russia/stalinfiveyearplansrev1.shtml
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