Chapter 12: The First Five Year Plan
Stalin's Rise to Power
Joseph Stalin, born Ioseb Jughashvili, rose to power in the Soviet Union following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. As the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Stalin formed strategic alliances and exploited his position to outmaneuver his rivals. Initially, Stalin aligned himself with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev against Leon Trotsky, forming a "troika" that controlled the party leadership after Lenin's death. This alliance allowed Stalin to consolidate power and isolate Trotsky, who was seen as his main rival.
Once Trotsky was marginalized, Stalin turned against his former allies, Kamenev and Zinoviev, and sided with Nikolai Bukharin, a prominent Bolshevik leader, to undermine their influence within the party. As General Secretary, Stalin had the power to appoint loyal supporters to key positions within the Communist Party, such as in the regional party committees, the Secretariat, and the Politburo. This allowed him to build a strong base of support and control the party's decision-making processes.
Stalin positioned himself as the true heir to Lenin's legacy, despite Lenin's concerns about Stalin's power and his recommendation to remove him from the position of General Secretary. Stalin used his influence to suppress Lenin's "Testament," which criticized him, and promoted his own image as a close associate and follower of Lenin. Through tactical maneuvering, Stalin presented himself as a moderate and built temporary alliances to isolate his opponents one by one. He used his position to control the agenda of party meetings, manipulate voting, and remove rivals from their positions of power.
By 1928, Stalin had successfully outmaneuvered his opponents and consolidated his control over the Communist Party, enabling him to become the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and implement his vision for the country's economic and political future.
The Economy in 1928
In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union's economy was primarily agrarian, with a large proportion of the population engaged in small-scale farming. The agricultural sector faced numerous challenges, including low productivity, outdated farming techniques, and limited access to modern equipment and infrastructure. The New Economic Policy (NEP), implemented by Lenin in 1921, had allowed for a mixed economy with some private enterprise coexisting alongside state-owned industries. However, the NEP was viewed by Stalin and his supporters as a temporary measure that failed to address the fundamental issues hindering the country's economic development.
One of the major challenges faced by the Soviet economy during this period was the Scissors Crisis, which emerged in the early 1920s. The crisis was characterized by a widening disparity between the prices of industrial goods and agricultural products, resembling the opening blades of a pair of scissors when plotted on a graph. This disparity was caused by factors such as the state's pricing policy favoring industrial goods, the inefficiency of state-owned industries leading to higher production costs, and low agricultural productivity. As a result, peasants found it increasingly difficult to purchase industrial goods with their agricultural income, leading to reduced incentives for selling their produce to the state.
In addition to the agricultural sector, the Soviet Union's industrial sector was relatively underdeveloped compared to Western nations. The country relied heavily on imports for machinery, equipment, and consumer goods, while its exports primarily consisted of raw materials and agricultural products. This trade imbalance, coupled with limited foreign currency reserves, hindered the acquisition of capital and technology necessary for industrialization. Moreover, foreign investors were hesitant to commit resources to the Soviet economy due to political instability, nationalization policies, and the uncertain legal framework for private property rights.
Cities experienced shortages of food and consumer goods, while rural areas suffered from a lack of investment in infrastructure and social services.
Stalin advocated for a radical transformation of the Soviet economy through central planning, state investment in heavy industries, and the collectivization of agriculture in order to cause rapid industrialization. This industrialization was necessary to modernize the economy, increase production, and establish a self-sufficient socialist system. Stalin viewed this transformation as essential for the Soviet Union to compete with capitalist countries and withstand external threats in order to lay the groundwork for a communist society. A such, no price was too great in the pursuit of his Five Year Plans for the economy (a concept he stole from Trotsky in 1926 after making fun of it).
Industrial Development
The First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) focused on the rapid development of heavy industry, with the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) setting ambitious production targets for key sectors such as metallurgy, machine-building, and energy production. Gosplan, established in 1921, was responsible for creating and implementing comprehensive economic plans that allocated resources, set prices, and determined production quotas for all sectors of the economy.
The Soviet government would engage in major projects such as the Dneprostroi hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River in Ukraine. Construction began in 1927 and was completed in 1932, making it the largest hydroelectric power station in Europe at the time. With a capacity of 558 MW, Dneprostroi provided electricity to the surrounding industrial areas and contributed to the Soviet Union's goal of electrification.
The Soviet government also invested heavily in the expansion of transportation infrastructure, particularly railways. The Turkestan-Siberian Railway, completed in 1930, connected Central Asia with Siberia, facilitating the transport of raw materials and manufactured goods between the regions. This 1,445 km railway was constructed using the labor of over 50,000 workers and was completed in just 18 months.
To support the rapid industrialization drive, the Soviet government put their weight towards ideas such as the Stakhanovite movement, which encouraged workers to exceed production quotas through socialist competition. The movement was named after Alexey Stakhanov, a coal miner who allegedly mined 102 tons of coal in a single shift, setting a new record. The government used Stakhanov's example to promote increased productivity and labor discipline across all industries.
However, the breakneck pace of industrialization led to significant challenges. The Soviet Union faced shortages of skilled labor and technical expertise, as the education system struggled to keep up with the demands of industrial growth. The focus on heavy industry led to imbalances in the economy, with the neglect of consumer goods and agriculture resulting in shortages and a decline in living standards. Workers faced harsh conditions, with long hours, insufficient safety measures, and inadequate housing.
While the Great Depression had negatively impacted industry in most of the world, the Soviet Union was faced with the prospect of huge gluts of foreign industrial experts it could hire to provide human capital. Built between 1929 and 1934 in the Urals, the Magnitogorsk steel complex was modeled off of Gary, Indiana using hundreds of foreign experts and the American consulting company Arthur McKee & Co.
The city was plagued with shoddy construction, extreme weather and mass deaths. A rushed dam was too low and another one had to be built. Blast furnace one needed rebuilding and roads remained unpaved for years. 10,000 people would die in the first 5 years of construction as food was scarce and workers faced -20 degree weather with harsh steppe winds.
The overcrowded, mostly dirt-floored tents and ramshackle barracks in which early residents lived were buffeted by blizzards in the winter and dust storms in the summer. Rats, bed bugs and lice tormented their occupants. Other newcomers reverted to rural ways, building mud huts dug deep into the ground.
- Alec Luhn, The Secret History of Magnitogorsk, Russia's Steel City
The foreign experts however would get a fairly lavish treatment. A separate town would be built for them with much of the amenities they were used to in America. After their departure, Soviet bureaucrats would take up residence in their quarters.
Magnitogorsk became a symbol of Soviet industrialization, producing steel, iron ore, and coal with 50,000 workers. By the end of the 1930s, Magnitogorsk produced 40% of the Soviet Union's total iron output.
Agricultural Collectivization
The collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership was a complex and brutal process that aimed to transform the country's agricultural system and rural society. The motivations behind collectivization were rooted in the challenges faced by the Soviet government in the late 1920s, including the grain procurement crisis, the need to support rapid industrialization, and the desire to eliminate the perceived threat of the kulaks, who were seen as capitalist elements in the countryside.
The grain procurement crisis emerged as a result of the New Economic Policy's (NEP) focus on small-scale private farming, which led to a decrease in the amount of grain the state could collect from peasants. This crisis threatened the government's ability to feed the growing urban population and generate revenue from agricultural exports to finance industrialization. Additionally, the Soviet leadership believed that the kulaks, the wealthier peasants who had benefited from the NEP, were hoarding grain and undermining the state's efforts to build socialism in the countryside.
To address these issues, the Soviet government initially pursued a policy of voluntary collectivization, using propaganda and incentives to encourage peasants to join collective farms (kolkhozy). However, by June 1929, only 4% of peasant households had been collectivized, prompting Stalin to abandon the voluntary approach in favor of forced collectivization.
The forced collectivization campaign, which began in late 1929, involved the expropriation of kulak land, livestock, and property. The dekulakization campaign targeted kulaks and their families, subjecting them to arrest, deportation to remote regions, or execution. This campaign aimed to eliminate the kulaks as a class and seize their assets for the benefit of the collective farms. The Soviet government also established state-owned farms (sovkhozy) alongside the kolkhozy to further centralize control over agriculture.
Forced collectivization met with significant resistance from peasants, who engaged in acts of defiance such as slaughtering their livestock and destroying their property to prevent it from being seized by the state. Despite this resistance, the Soviet government's coercive measures succeeded in collectivizing a large portion of the countryside. By 1933, over 60% of peasant households were collectivized, and 99% of agricultural land was under state control.
The consequences of collectivization were severe and far-reaching. In the short term, agricultural production declined sharply due to the disruption caused by the collectivization process, the loss of livestock, and the resistance of peasants.
Worsening matters was the Soviet need to import industrial machines for Stalin's five year plans. In order to maintain a sustainable balance of payments, grain exports would dramatically increase. Where 1928 and 1929 had a couple hundred thousand tons of grain exported, 1930 and 1931 exported around 5 million tons and even 1932 and 1933 hovered around 2 million tons of grain exported, primarily to the UK and Germany.
This decline in output, combined with the government's aggressive grain procurement policies, led to a devastating famine in 1932-1933, which was particularly severe in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Around 4 million people would die in Ukraine with millions more undergoing bouts of malnutrition and starvation.
To escape death by starvation, people in the villages ate anything that was edible: grass, acorns, even cats and dogs. Contemporary Soviet police archives contain descriptions of the immense suffering and despair of Ukrainian farmers, including instances of lawlessness, theft, lynching, and even cannibalism.
- The University of Minnesota's Holocaust and Genocide Studies Department
. If you have a take on the matter, I'm happy to hear it.