[ 2]It is difficult to say exactly how much the Soviet Union benefited overall from Stalin’s industrial and agricultural policies but it had two very different effects. A lthough there were many success of these policies but for these policies to be put into place Stalin used to strict measures to enforce them which resulted in the workers having to live tough and very difficult lives. T he main benefit the Soviet Union received from Stalin’s policies was that Russia, who had be a very backward country with regards to industry etc, became industrialized and very modern. A nd also Stalin managed achieve this very quickly, in a very short space of time.
T his rapid improvement to Russia as a whole was a much needed one as many people had been starving as Russia was undergoing a great struggle in feeding it over-populated population. U sing the policy, Stalin made sure that enough food was created by making sure that the farmers worked hard to produce enough crops to feed the population.
T he Soviet Union also benefited from the lack or almost non-existent unemployment. B y the late 1930s many Soviet workers had improved their conditions by acquiring well-paid skilled jobs and were given extra bonuses if they met their targets.
A lso as Stalin needed more workers the government, from around 1930, began employing woman as well as men to work in factories. S talin also created new crèches and day care centers so that mothers also could go to work. B
ecause of this drastic improvement to Russia the problem of employment was no longer a problem. H owever for Stalin to achieve the policies the workers were under immense stress and pressure. L ife was very strict under Stalin. I n the factories were the workers worked discipline was very strict and punishments were very severe. I
f the workers were late or absent there punishment would be that they were usually sacked which commonly resulted in them losing the home. T he workers were never given the opportunity to celebrate their success they had to labor on to the meet the very challenging and ambitious targets. T o make sure that the targets were met and to make sure that the targets were met, Stalin introduced a fine to any of the workers who did not meet their targets.
T his made sure that the workers worked extremely hard to attempt to meet the almost impossible targets. A s the conditions were so bad some of the workers attempted to move to other jobs but the secret police, NVKD, introduced internal passports which prevented the free movement. By the end of 1930's, Russia had become a major industrial power.
I n industry, capital output tripled between 1928 and 1940. T hese years saw a vast expansion of energy industries (coal, oil etc). N ew engineering industries were created (iron and steel making equipment, machine tool factories etc), many of which were established almost from scratch. A major part of new industry was concentrated in previously unexplored locations (e.g. industrial output in Urals and Trans-Urals regions increased from 11−12% of total in 1928 to 16% in 1940 [4, 3−5]).
I n the labor market, real wages may have fallen as much as 50% between 1928 and 1940. O n the other hand, unemployment was virtually eliminated. I ncreased labor force participation (e.g. by women) meant there were more wage earners per household.
T he forced labor camp system (~3 million prisoners in prewar years) also contributed to the labor market. I n the public goods sector, state expenditures on education and health sectors skyrocketed. S
ignificant investment was undertaken in the sector of public housing, though it was still unable to keep up with the growing populations of cities. O n the negative side of things, a famine in 1932;1933 led to millions of deaths. D avies estimates than personal consumption was 7% lower in 1940 than 1928. A nd as many as 739,000 were executed in 1927;1941 for «counter revolutionary and particularly dangerous state crimes». In spite of this, population on the whole increased by 19−20 million between 1928 and 1941.
S talin was an intelligent and sly dictator who knew how to manipulate people in order to get what he wanted. A fter studying his possible motivations for inflicting collectivization onto the Russian peoples, it can be concluded that he used an economic plan to accomplish his political goals. H is motivation for implementing agricultural collectivization was both economic and political. H
is intelligence and cunning enabled him to twist the economic situation around in order to accomplish stability for the nation and satisfy his personal vendetta. F or the first time in history, the government controlled all significant economic activity through a central planning apparatus. B oth industrialization and collectivization combined made Stalin’s hold on the economy absolute.
H is methods for obtaining this stability gave him political supremacy. B y killing two birds with one stone, he accomplished something no other dictator had: complete, absolute power over his people. To conclude, Stalin succeeded in mobilizing the Russian population to achieve great goals but at a fearful cost in terms of human life. T he obvious question is, did the achievement justify the means? E ven if, from a liberal, western point of view, the answer must be βNo!' it is hard to argue that any of the other rulers from 1855−1956 achieved more for Russia.
S ome were undoubtedly more humane, Alexander II for example. L enin too may have been more concerned about the condition of the citizens of the Empire but his shooting, illness and early death mean that one can only guess at the direction the USSR would have taken under him if he had survived.
F or leading the Bolsheviks to power and ensuring the survival of the new regime during the dark days of the Civil War, Lenin is probably Stalin’s closest rival in terms of achievement. T here is undoubtedly much to dislike about Stalin, whose success was paid for with the blood and tears of his own people, but Stalin was the most successful ruler of Russia in this period of the advanced workers and prepares a broad basis for the future upswing a golden age. LiteratureDobb, Maurice. S oviet Economic Development Since 1917.
I nternational Publishers, New York, 1966.H. Hunter and J.M. Szyrmer, Faulty Foundations: Soviet Economic Policies, 1928; 1940 (Princeton UP, 1992). J. S talin, The Stalin-Wells Talk (New Statesman, Dec. 1934). J. V. S
talin The Results of the First Five-Year Plan, 1933Kendall Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, (Princeton, N.J., 1978). L ars T. L
ih et al (eds.), Stalin’s Letters to Molotov (London, 1995). L eninism, Vol. I,
p. 395. M oshe Lewin. T
he Making of the Soviet System. E ssays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (Oxford, 1985), Part II. R. W. D avies et al (eds.), The Stalin-Kaganovich correspondence (Yale UP, 2003). R.W. D
avies, M. Harrison, S.G. Wheatcroft (eds.), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913;1945 (Cambridge, 1994).William Chase, Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918;1929 (Chicago, 1987)
