Russia In The 1930

′S Essay, Research Paper

By 1928, Stalin had ousted Trotsky and the rest of the Left opposition. In four years, Stalin had single handedly taken major steps away from Lenin.s collective leadership and free inter party debate and replaced them with his autocratic dictatorship. Stalin began to secure predominant power over the communist party and the state by destroying passive opposition from the peasantry and former Lenin supporters. He won growing support from the working class who were impressed with the initial five-year plan. As it promised increased industrialization, which would lead to socialism in one country within their lifetime.

** The First Five-Year Plan **

The first five-year plan, approved in 1929, proposed that state and collective farms provide 15 percent of agriculture output. The predominance of private farming seemed assured, as many farmers resisted collectivization. By late 1929, Stalin moved abruptly to break peasant resistance and secure the resources required for industrialization. He saw that voluntary collectivism had failed, and many .Soviet economists doubted that the first plan could even be implimented..1 Stalin may have viewed collectivization as a means to win support from younger party leaders, rather than from the peasants and Lenin.s men. .Privately he advocated, industrializing the country with the help of internal accumulation. 2 Once the peasantry had been split, Stalin believed that the rural proletarians would embrace collectivization . Before this idea had a chance to work, a grain shortage induced the Politburo to support Stalin.s sudden decision for immediate, massive collectivization.

Initially, the sudden change to collectivization was a success. The first year produced a bumper crop. Although this allowed the U.S.S.R. to increase exports twenty-three times that of 1929,3 due to the world wide depression of this time, the value of their exports only increased by ten times.4 Prices continued to fall into 1931, compulsory and wide spread collectivization were combined with rationing. . Millions of peasants starved to death as exports were forced on the world in the face of surplus elsewhere..5 The central committee affirmed that the peasants were willingly moving into collectives. In secret, Stalin had ordered local officials to force the peasants to collectivize or be executed or sent to labor camps. Entire villages had to deliver grain to the state at low prices. Kulaks, or former wealthy farmers, were deliberately over assessed for grain deliveries, and expropriated for failure to obey. The party did not have a specific outline of how to go about collectivization, so initial attempts were confusing, ill prepared, and met with severe resistance. Within seven weeks, about half the peasantry had been herded into collectives, but bringing in as little as possible. They slaughtered more than half their livestock in a protest. In March 1930, Russia was faced with a grain seed shortage. Stalin called for a temporary halt to the collectivization methods and blamed over zealous local officials for misunderstanding his initial request for collectivization.

After a brief pause, peasants were lured into collectives by persuasion and unfair taxation. This practice was however not such a success. Peasants became unmotivated, crops were left unharvested, and farm animals died of neglect. Large grain exports in 1930-1931 depleted reserves and increased quotas. .By 1932, amid widespread concealment of grain, collectivization hung by a thread, and was maintained by force..6 In the Ukraine and north Caucasus, the state seized nearly all the grain, creating for the first time in history a man made famine.

** The Great Famine**

Although this famine appears to have resulted in the death of approximately five million people,7 it is scarcely known today. The Soviet Union never admitted that the famine existed, and actually went to great lengths to conceal it. Why is this so. The answer seems to be that the famine of 1932-1934 was a man made disaster. It was almost a direct result of the social and economic policies of the Soviet government during the first five-year plan. To carry out the program of rapid industrialization, the government felt that its need to collectivize agriculture quickly far out weighed the individual human loss.

The famine began in the spring of 1932. Compared to what was to come, the famine at this time was relatively mild. In the beginning, the peasants still had live stock to slaughter and were allowed to travel outside their villages. The famine however reached full stride in the spring of 1933. There were no longer livestock to eat , every piece of grain was accounted for, and harvested by the Soviet government to be sold on the world market. The government doubled the price of bread in August, which did not matter anyway due to the fact that most of the peasants were not paid enough to buy bread at all. Also at this time, the Soviet government prohibited tours in the famine areas and the peasants were not allowed to leave their villages.

The famine was particularly severe in the rural areas. This is the opposite of the norm., but then again this was not the normal famine. Of those who died in the cities, were mostly refugees from the rural areas who in 1921,fled to town thinking things could only be better. They found however, no jobs, no supplies,