Critically discuss how did stalinism and collectivization affect te soviet union and the world
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During the 1920s, in the years that followed Lenin's illness and death, Stalin masterfully exploited rivalries and disagreements among the party's top leaders, playing off one faction against another while quietly cultivating his own cadre of loyalist. By the end of the decade he could count on a voting majority in the party Politburo. Utilizing this support, in 19208 and 1929 he engineered the wholesale reversal of Soviet Union's economic course. The broadly popular "New Economic Policy" (NEP) was abandoned, probably much earlier than Lenin would have liked, and the first in a series of five year plans established the basis of centrally planned economy (CPE) in the Soviet Union. These measures constituted the building blocks of the Soviet model of socialism, which represented another deviation of classical Marxism. Marx, whose descriptions of socialism was inscrutably vague, had left no clear blueprint for building a socialist economy other than to imply that it would not be run by a powerful state. The brand of socialism that Stalin and the Communist Party now forced upon the population was a command economy controlled by the leadership of an all intrusive party state dictatorship.
Stalin applied his policy with a vengeance. The first Five-Year Plan, introduced in 1928, had set a series of ambitious growth targets to be achieved in various sectors of the economy. In 1929 Stalin suddenly raised these targets astronomically, especially in such critical industrial areas as coal, iron and steel, and electricity production. Although Stalin's plan targets were unrealistic to be achieved, by the end of the first five-year period the Soviets had nevertheless accomplished one of the most rapid bursts of industrial development inhuman history. From its inception, however, this forced-pace industrialization policy was guided by a political motivation: to impose stringent controls over the economy for the purpose of retaining the Communist Party's control over Russia's political and social life.
And even more severe policy accompanied the accelerated industrialization drive was collectivization of agriculture.
By 1929 there were 25 million private farm households in Russia. In an operation conducted with unparalleled brutality, the Stalinist regime liquidated all privately owned farms and corralled the rural population into newly created collective farms. Farm produce was confiscated by government agents, often at gunpoint, for distribution to the cities; animals were also taken from their owners and attached to the collectives. Land, equipment, animals, crops and people all belonged to the same collective farm. Collective farms would be organized around "Machine Tractor Stations" which would distribute modern equipment and house the political agitators. Collectivization would allow the state to control the agricultural output and thus feed its workers, keep their support and to export to foreign countries to win hard currency for the investment in industry.
Anyone resisting these measures or even suspected of potential resistance, might be executed on the spot or rounded up for deportation to the work camps (gulags) that now proliferated in the empty vastness of Russia, forming a great chain that later became known as the "gulag archipelago" Violence in Ukraine was especially widespread. Lacking the means to resist many peasants killed their horses, cows and other livestock rather than surrender them. Starvation stalked the countryside as food production plummeted. Stalin's own wife killed herself after speaking out the horrors gripping the nation. Stalin justified his actions with cynical distortions of Marxist ideology.
By 1934, when the job was done as many as 14,5 million Soviet peasants had perished in the collectivization campaign (although estimates vary and no precise figure can be authenticated) Stalin himself told Churchill that collectivization had cost 10 million lives and was more arduous than confronting the German invasion of World War II.
Stalin applied his policy with a vengeance. The first Five-Year Plan, introduced in 1928, had set a series of ambitious growth targets to be achieved in various sectors of the economy. In 1929 Stalin suddenly raised these targets astronomically, especially in such critical industrial areas as coal, iron and steel, and electricity production. Although Stalin's plan targets were unrealistic to be achieved, by the end of the first five-year period the Soviets had nevertheless accomplished one of the most rapid bursts of industrial development inhuman history. From its inception, however, this forced-pace industrialization policy was guided by a political motivation: to impose stringent controls over the economy for the purpose of retaining the Communist Party's control over Russia's political and social life.
And even more severe policy accompanied the accelerated industrialization drive was collectivization of agriculture.
By 1929 there were 25 million private farm households in Russia. In an operation conducted with unparalleled brutality, the Stalinist regime liquidated all privately owned farms and corralled the rural population into newly created collective farms. Farm produce was confiscated by government agents, often at gunpoint, for distribution to the cities; animals were also taken from their owners and attached to the collectives. Land, equipment, animals, crops and people all belonged to the same collective farm. Collective farms would be organized around "Machine Tractor Stations" which would distribute modern equipment and house the political agitators. Collectivization would allow the state to control the agricultural output and thus feed its workers, keep their support and to export to foreign countries to win hard currency for the investment in industry.
Anyone resisting these measures or even suspected of potential resistance, might be executed on the spot or rounded up for deportation to the work camps (gulags) that now proliferated in the empty vastness of Russia, forming a great chain that later became known as the "gulag archipelago" Violence in Ukraine was especially widespread. Lacking the means to resist many peasants killed their horses, cows and other livestock rather than surrender them. Starvation stalked the countryside as food production plummeted. Stalin's own wife killed herself after speaking out the horrors gripping the nation. Stalin justified his actions with cynical distortions of Marxist ideology.
By 1934, when the job was done as many as 14,5 million Soviet peasants had perished in the collectivization campaign (although estimates vary and no precise figure can be authenticated) Stalin himself told Churchill that collectivization had cost 10 million lives and was more arduous than confronting the German invasion of World War II.
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