Explain how Stalin's control of the economy through the five-year plans and collectivization affected the Soviet Union

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Stalin had been opposed to NEP in the early 1920s and had publicly argued with Trotsky over the speed with which the USSR had to achieve industrialization. However, after seizing control of the party and ousting Trotsky, Stalin reversed his position on slow industrialization and promoted the five-year plans to rapidly rebuild industrialization, particularly focusing on heavy industry and militarization, arguing that Russia had suffered badly from mismanagement and the effects of World War I because it had not been prepared. He demanded that industrial production double within ten years, and initially, this seemed to work well because he saw a 100 percent increase in the first five-year plans; however, because this was accomplished at all costs and with quotas that were both unreasonable and unsustainable, he was not able to successfully continue the kind of industrial growth he had planned. However, he did produce some outstanding results, showing a growth of over 100 percent in steel, electricity, and machinery production. By the end of the third five-year plan, in 1939, the Soviet Union was outproducing Britain and France, both still mired in the depression and was, after the United States and Germany, the third largest industrial power in the world. In agriculture, he tried to deal with the ever-present scissors crisis by enforcing a policy of collectivization, turning away from the policies of NEP that had temporarily promoted capitalist agriculture to recover from the effects of World War I. This was met with considerable resistance, and he ruthlessly enforced the collection of quotas in agriculture, even if it meant the death of many farmers from starvation; he needed the agriculture to promote industrialization, which was his main goal. In the early 1930s, with high quotas imposed on agriculture, a significant harvest failure led to the deaths of 5 to 7 million Ukrainian peasants.