Soviet Union Under Stalin

Josiah, Anya, Travis, Nate, Amanda, John

Block 4

Stalin's Five-Year Plan

• Stalin proposed the first of several "five-year plans" in 1928. 

• It was aimed at building heavy industry, improving transportation, and increasing farm output. 

• Government now controlled all economic activity.

• This led the Soviet Union into a command economy.

Command Economy

• The Soviet Union developed a command economy under Stalin.

 • In a command economy, government officials made

all basic economic decisions. • The government owned all businesses and

distributed all resources.   

Collectivization in Agriculture

• Stalin also brought agriculture under governmental control.

• He wanted all peasants to farm on either state owned farms or on collectives.

• The government wanted farmers to produce more grain to feed workers in the city.

• This also helped to sell grain abroad to earn more money.

Collectives

• Stalin thought that small farms farmed by peasants were inefficient and a threat to state power. 

• Stalin wanted all peasants to farm on either state-owned farms or collectives. 

• Collectives are  large farms owned and operated by peasants as a group.

• Government provided tractors, fertilizers, and better seeds. Peasants learned modern farming methods and they were allowed to keep their houses and personal belongings.

Collectives

• All of the animals and implements were turned to a collective. 

• The state set all of the prices and controlled access to farm supplies. 

• All the peasants were upset because they didn't want to sell their crops at low prices. 

• They burned their crops, killed their animals and destroyed their tools.

                          Kulaks

• Stalin believed that kulaks, or wealthy farmers, were behind the resistance by burning their crops, killing their animals and destroying their tools. 

• In 1929, Stalin liquidated the kulaks as a class. He did this by confiscating their land, sending them to labor camps where thousands were killed or died from being overworked. 

•  This made the peasants angry, so they grew just enough crops for themselves.

• In response, the government seized all the grain to meet industrial goals leaving the peasants to starve.

• Between that policy and the poor harvest of 1932, there was a bad famine named "Terror Famine". In the Ukraine, five to eight million people died.

Gulags

• Stalin used terror as a weapon against his own people by violating their rights, opening private letters, planting listening devices, having no free press, and no safe way of protesting. 

• Grumblers or critics of Stalin were rounded up and sent to the 

• Gulag, a system of brutal labor camps where many died.

                  The Great Purge

 • 1937-1938 mostly directed against ukraniaus the

secret     police rounded up millions of people and either sent them to  sikeriau Prisons or the executed them. The entire Central  Committee and Politburo of the Ukraine were killed. Stanlin   wanted to get rid of any potential enemies from within the Communist Party. 

• Trials within the Communist Party. "Trials" and executions were carried out by the NkVD (secret Police) who had pratically unlimited power over innocent people's life  and death.

Comintern

• Was to encourage world-wide revolution. The comitern's support of revolutionary groups outside the soviet union and its propaganda against capitalism made western powers highly suspicious of the soviet union.

                      Propaganda• Propaganda is the spreading of ideas to

promote a cause or to damage an oposing cause.

• Stalin used propaganda as a tool to build up a "Cult of Personality" around his self.

• Billboards and Posters were one of the ways used to spread propaganda.

                      Censorship

• Censorship is the control access to ideas and info. 

•  The government controlled what music was heard, what art was displayed, and what books could be published.

 

                   Socialist Realism

• Stalin required artists and writers to create their works in a style. 

•  The goal was to show Soviet life in a positive way and to promote hope in the communist future.

• Socialist Realism was thought to of followed in footsteps of the Russian great Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Russification

• Russification is making a nationality's culture more Russian. In 1936 there had been in 11 soviet social republics made up in the U.S.S.R.

• The Uzbek and Ukraine in SSR's they had there own languges.

• Also they encouraged the anatomy of these different cultures.

 • In 1920's Stalin he turned on his policy and tried to

make it more russian.

Atheism

• Atheism was the belief that there was no god. The people had tried to strengthen the policy by destroying it. Many said it was the policy. The main church was the Russian Oxford Church where many of the priests had supported the tsars.

• At the trial 15 of the preist got charged for teaching the faith to the young. 

• Ideology was Stalins new type of religion. But still in small millions continued to worship in private and public places.

BENEFITS/DRAWBACKS

   the party required all children to attend free communist built schools the state also provided medical care and daycare for children  inexpensive housing and public recreation

WOMEN

Under the communist women won equality under law they gained access to education and a wide rang of jobs.

By the late 1930 many soviet women where working in medicine and engineering.

They worked in factories in construction and on collectives with in the family their wages were needed because men and women earned the same low salaries.