The Weight of History

Modernising the USSR

4 min read

1921-1991 🇷🇺 Communist Russia

Modernising the USSR

Stalin's modernisation drive

  • 1928: Stalin decided that the USSR couldn’t survive without modernising its economy
  • industrialisation: attempt to establish a war economy (iron, steel, oil)
    • successfully producing the above would guarantee Russia strength to face any nation, including its capitalist enemies
  • collectivisation: setting up of ==collective farms in order to squeeze out all capitalist elements== from the land
    • collective farms: cooperatives where peasants shared labour and work

Stalin’s reasons for modernisation (ranked)

  1. security
    • political
    • economic
    • social
    • military – Germany had the best military in the world at the time; for Russia to be able to defend its sovereignty and self-territory → contributed to the USSR and by extension, Stalin’s glory
    • helps him achieve power & control
  2. power & control
  3. socialism in one state
    • closely intertwined with ideology
  4. ideology
    • socialism and ideology are closely intertwined
  5. personal reputation
    • Stalin wants to leave a name for himself behind

Socialism in one state

’Socialism in one country’

Socialism in one country

  • nationalism
  • patriotism → “We Can Do It!”
  • develop & grow the state & socialist ideology

Socialism

Socialism is a utopia where workers run society.

  • “a political and economic theory of social organisation which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”
  • the Communist Party needed to decide on an overarching policy for the future
    • the USSR was the only communist state in the world – a template, of sorts
    • Russia has no friends 😢
      • they want communist friends, NOT capitalist
      • they had to promote communism so other countries would also turn communist and they would all be BFFs forever
  • Stalin argued against Trotsky’s policy as defeatist, showing he didn’t believe in Russia, its people, and its mission
    • he framed it as a disastrous state – permanent revolution (doom 😱😱), or Stalin’s policy of Socialism in One Country.
    • he argued that Trotsky sought permanent revolution, where the working class continually staged revolutions until a Communist Revolution worldwide has been realised
    • Russia was vulnerable, with too little resources and allies, and needed to rely on other countries
      • focusing on permanent revolutions and constantly funding other revolutionary causes would put great strain on Russia
      • permanent revolution would also come at great cost to many – Russians as they struggle to support themselves, and other countries as they fight for revolution
        • Thought: is everyone willing to die for an ideology? what if you aren’t?
  • Stalin’s suggestion was an opportunity to show world leaders what socialism means ++ make Russia a pioneer
    • they would solve their own problems
    • they would create a workers’ state far superior to the capitalist West
      • cultivates a sense of pride and nationalism within the party and country – they’re proud to be Russian
Link to original

Five-Year Plans

1921-1991 🇷🇺 Communist Russia

Five-Year Plans

Five-Year Plans

  • Five-Year Plans were highly ambitious targets drawn up by Gosplan (state planning committee)
    • First FYP: Oct 1928 - Dec 1932
    • Second FYP: Jan 1933 - Dec 1937
    • Third FYP: Jan 1938 - Jun 1941
      • a war plan; disrupted by WWII
    • Fourth FYP: Jan 1946 - Dec 1950
    • Fifth FYP: Jan 1951 - Dec 1955
  • posters and political cartoons put up to promote FYPs
    • often showed a giant ‘5’ crushing a Jew (hooked nose) wearing a top hat (capitalism/Uncle Sam) on top of a battleship (the FYP will crush the West)
      • message: Jews perpetuate capitalism and were seen as the capitalist class because they owned many businesses, even in Nazi Germany

First FYP (1928 - 1932)

  • focused on major industries – coal, iron, oil, electricity
  • extremely ambitious and unattainable targets → targets were often not met
    • officials often fudged figures to exaggerate actual output
    • workers were under so much stress that work absenteeism increased
  • production increased regardless → laid foundation for next FYP

Achievements

  • coal, iron, generation of electricity 📈📈 in huge proportions

    Textbook

    📕 Textbook Page 227, Figure 9.

  • huge steel mills appeared in Magnitogorsk
  • new dams and hydroelectric power fed the industry’s energy requirements
  • Russian experts flooded Muslim republics of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan) → created industry in previously-underdeveloped areas

Second FYP (1933 - 1937)

  • built on the first FYP’s achievements
  • heavy industry remained a priority + other areas developed too
    • mining for tin, lead, zinc, etc. 📈
    • production of tractors + other farm machinery 📈
    • transport and communications boosted → new railways and canals built (e.g. Moscow underground railways)

Third FYP (1938 - 1941)

  • focused on switching factories to consumer goods
    • they forgot about consumer goods for the first two 💀 → Russians lived with deprivation and did not have access to consumables for the first ten years
      • housewives would queue for 4-5 hours every day to get 1-2 loaves of bread to last them the entire week
  • disrupted by the onset of WWI

Source Analysis

Source 13.13 (p.229 of handout)

Source 13.13

[The purge] swept away… managers, technicians, statisticians, planners, even foremen. Everywhere there were said to be spies, wreckers, diversionists. There was a grave shortage of qualified personnel, so the deportation of many thousands of engineers and technologists to distance concentration camps represented a severe loss. But perhaps equally serious was the psychological effect of this terror on the survivors. With any error or accident likely to be attributable to treasonable activities, the simplest thing to do was to avoid responsibility, to seek approval from one’s superiors for any act, to obey mechanically any order received, regardless of local conditions.

  • “managers, technicians, statisticians, planners, even foremen” → no one spared
    • scope of purges
    • ruthlessness of purges
  • speed and efficiency of purges
  • pervasiveness of opposition, or “traitors”
  • negative impact of purges
  • psychological trauma & terror
  • how people responded to the purges
    • people became obedient
      • positive: control over population
      • negative: loss of population’s voice → doesn’t help to improve conditions
    • negative:
      • PTSD
      • psychological trauma
      • dogmatism ruled, rather than pragmatism
        • ideology & groupthink > individual thought
    • overall: negative & regressive; people became more cautious, suspicious and inward-looking
Link to original

Stalin’s industrial record

The Good 📈📈👍🏻👍🏻

  • 1937: USSR was a Modern, Industrial state (aka a Material Girl)
  • coal, steel, oil, electricity provided basis for the war economy
    • the war economy enabled the USSR to survive four years of German occupation and claim victory over Germany in May 1945
  • impressive achievements include:
    • building of large projects – factories, bridges, refineries, canals
      • including the really pretty Moscow Underground stations

The Bad 📉📉👎🏻👎🏻

  • progress was inefficient – the FYP wasn’t coordinated among ministries
    • some projects were duplicated among committees → double effort, wastage of resources
    • ministries sometimes fought among themselves to outshine one another and win Stalin's favour
  • high human cost
    • built with slave labour, largely Stalin's political enemies (whether wrongfully or correctly sentenced)
  • led to an unbalanced economy
    • little attention was accorded to light engineering – i.e. skilled specialised activities like precision tool-making → Russia fell even further behind advanced nations already doing this
  • “Grand Projects of Communism” were meant to be quality goods to be profitably sold abroad
  • failed to raise Soviet workers' living standards

Impact on the Russian people

  • targets, hard work, propaganda
  • slave labour
    • guilty by accusation
  • wages and living conditions
    • some workers weren’t paid → exploitation
  • control
  • repression
  • punishment and blame
  • training
  • female workers

TB Sources

Source 5

“Throughout history Russia has been beaten again and again because she was backward… All have beaten her because of her military, industrial and agricultural backwardness. She was beaten because people have been able to get away with it. If you are backward and weak, then you are in the wrong and may be beaten and enslaved. But if you are powerful, people must beware of you.
“It is sometimes asked whether it is not possible to slow down industrialisation a bit. No, comrades, it is not possible… To slacken would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten… That is why Lenin said during the October Revolution: ‘Either perish, or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries.’ We are 50 to 100 years behidn the advanced countries. Either we make good the difference in ten years or they crush us.”
-speech by Joseph Stalin, reported in Pravda, February 1931

  • Pravda: Communist Russia’s state newspaper

Key Ideas

  • Progress
  • Guard against being overtaken by foes
  • Power
  • Catch up and overtake Western nations

Why does Russia want to modernise/industrialise urgently?

  • Western powers beat, invaded and bullied them
  • for the survival of ==the nation and socialism==
    • the race for survival is on and the game is afoot 🦶🏻
    • 1922: Establishment of the USSR
    • 1934: (finally) accepted into the League of Nations
      • the communist state was truly alone; Western countries feared them and none would sponsor/support their membership bid

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