Aims And NEP Failings

By the late 1920s Stalin wanted an economic transformation. His aims were political as well as economic. He wanted the USSR to become powerful enough to defend itself, industrial enough to compete with capitalist states, and socialist enough to bring the economy under state control. In Stalin's view, a country that remained mainly peasant and agricultural would stay weak.

The New Economic Policy, or NEP, had helped the Soviet economy recover after civil war, but it also left space for small private trade and private farming. That created two problems for Stalin.

First, NEP relied on peasants choosing to sell grain to the state and to the towns. If peasants disliked state prices, they could hold grain back, sell less, or keep more for themselves. The grain procurement crisis of 1927-28 made this seem dangerous to Stalin because towns, workers and future industrial projects all depended on reliable food supplies.

Second, NEP looked ideologically suspicious to many Communists. It seemed to allow "capitalist" elements such as private traders and richer peasants to survive. Stalin and his supporters increasingly presented these groups as obstacles to socialism, especially when the state struggled to get enough grain.

Stalin's reasons for industrialisation therefore linked together:

A useful misconception check: NEP was not simply a failure. It had helped recovery. The point for this lesson is that Stalin judged it too slow, too market-based and too difficult for the state to control.

Gosplan And The Plans

Industrialisation was organised through central planning. The state planning body, Gosplan, helped set targets for production, investment and resources. Instead of factories deciding mainly through market demand, the state decided what should be made, where investment should go, and which sectors mattered most.

The system was meant to concentrate resources on heavy industry: coal, steel, oil, electricity, machinery, railways and major construction. These were the foundations of military strength and further industrial growth. Consumer goods, housing and comfort mattered less to the planners.

The first three Five-year Plans had different emphases, but all show the same pattern: central targets, pressure from above, and a priority for state power over living standards.

Targets were not just technical instructions. They were political commands. A factory manager who missed a target could be accused of incompetence or sabotage; a worker who exceeded a target could be celebrated as a model Soviet citizen.

That is where the Stakhanovite movement fits. In 1935, the coal miner Alexei Stakhanov was publicised as a worker who massively exceeded his quota. "Stakhanovites" became model workers used in propaganda to show that socialist labour could smash targets. Some workers gained rewards and prestige, but the movement also increased pressure on everyone else because managers could raise expectations.

Think of the plans as a chain of causation:

Stalin's aims -> Gosplan targets -> priority for heavy industry -> pressure on managers and workers -> increased output in some sectors -> shortages, waste and coercion elsewhere.

Industrialisation: Successes And Failures

The Five-year Plans did achieve major industrial change. New industrial centres and huge construction projects symbolised the shift, and production of coal, steel, oil, electricity and machinery rose substantially from the low base of the 1920s. The urban workforce grew as people moved from countryside to town. The USSR became far more capable of producing the machines, transport and armaments that a modern state needed.

This matters for Edexcel judgement questions because industrialisation was not imaginary propaganda. Stalin's USSR really did become more industrial. A weak answer says only "it succeeded" or only "it failed". A stronger answer asks: successful by whose criteria, and at what cost?

Industrialisation was successful in several ways:

• It shifted the USSR away from being overwhelmingly agricultural.
• It expanded heavy industry faster than would probably have happened under a slower market-led approach.
• It strengthened Stalin's control because managers, workers and planners depended on state targets.
• It helped build the industrial base that later Soviet defence would rely on.

But the failures were also serious:

• Many targets were unrealistic, revised upward or missed.
• Quantity often mattered more than quality, so waste and poor workmanship were common.
• Consumer goods were neglected, so ordinary people faced shortages.
• Workers faced intense pressure, long hours and strict discipline.
• Agriculture was disrupted because collectivisation was used to feed and fund the industrial push.

The key link is that industrialisation and collectivisation cannot be separated. The state wanted grain to feed workers, export for machinery, and control the countryside. That meant the drive for factories helped cause the drive against private farming.

A model explanation might read:

"One success of industrialisation was that it rapidly expanded heavy industry. This mattered because Stalin wanted the USSR to become less dependent on foreign powers and better able to defend itself. However, this success was limited because the targets encouraged speed over quality and put huge pressure on workers, so industrial growth came with serious human and economic costs."

Collectivisation And Kolkhozy

Collectivisation was Stalin's attempt to reorganise agriculture under state direction. From 1928, and especially from 1929, the state pushed peasants away from individual farming and into collective farms.

The main collective farm was the kolkhoz. In theory, a kolkhoz was a cooperative farm where peasants pooled land, tools and animals and worked together. In practice, the state controlled the system. The land was state-owned, targets were set from above, and grain had to be delivered to the state before peasants could benefit from what remained.

Collectivisation had several reasons:

Motor Tractor Stations, usually shortened to MTS, were central to this plan. They were state-owned centres that supplied tractors, combines, mechanics and technical help to nearby kolkhozy. They were not just practical machine depots. Because the state controlled the machinery, it also gained leverage over the farms. MTS staff and political departments helped monitor the countryside and support grain procurement.

So collectivisation had a double nature. It was presented as modernisation: bigger farms, machinery, scientific planning. It also worked as control: grain quotas, party supervision, and the destruction of private farming as an independent force.

Kulaks And Resistance

Kulaks were usually described as richer or more prosperous peasants. Under NEP, some peasants had done better than others, owning more animals, equipment or land use rights. Stalin presented kulaks as class enemies who hoarded grain, exploited poorer peasants and stood in the way of socialism.

The problem is that the label "kulak" became elastic. It could mean a genuinely better-off peasant, but it could also be used against people who resisted collectivisation, criticised officials, owned a few more animals than neighbours, or were simply useful targets. That matters because "removal of kulaks" was not a neat policy aimed only at a clearly defined rich class. It became a campaign of coercion across the countryside.

From the end of 1929, Stalin's regime moved toward "liquidating the kulaks as a class". In practice this meant confiscation of property, eviction from villages, arrest, deportation and sometimes death. Removing kulaks also removed local leadership and frightened other peasants into joining collectives.

Peasant opposition took several forms:

• refusing to join kolkhozy;
• hiding grain or reducing production;
• slaughtering livestock rather than handing animals to collective farms;
• attacking officials or taking part in local disturbances;
• leaving villages where possible.

The slaughter of livestock was especially damaging. Peasants did not want their animals taken into the collective system, so many killed them. This reduced the number of horses, cattle and sheep available for farming and made agricultural recovery harder.

In 1930 Stalin briefly blamed local officials for excessive speed and pressure, allowing some peasants to leave collectives. But this was not a real abandonment of collectivisation. The drive resumed, and by the mid-1930s most Soviet agriculture had been collectivised.

The causation is important:

state pressure -> peasant resistance -> harsher coercion -> disruption of farming -> lower output and worse shortages -> still more pressure to fulfil grain quotas.

Famine And Judgement

The Great Famine of 1932-33 was the most devastating failure of collectivisation. It affected major grain-growing areas of the USSR, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus and the Lower Volga. The famine in Soviet Ukraine is often called the Holodomor. Pearson's row uses the broader phrase "Great Famine", so the key exam point is to connect famine to collectivisation across the Soviet system while recognising that Ukraine was especially severely affected.

Several causes came together:

• collectivisation disrupted farming routines and incentives;
• livestock losses reduced agricultural capacity;
• experienced or better-off peasants were removed, deported or intimidated;
• state targets and grain requisitioning continued even when harvests were poor;
• officials often treated failure to deliver grain as opposition rather than evidence of shortage.

The result was catastrophic. Grain was taken from villages to meet state demands, leaving many peasants without enough to survive. Millions died across the USSR. The famine also showed how Stalin's system could turn an economic problem into a political assault: if the state decided that peasants were hiding grain or resisting socialism, it used coercion rather than relief.

Was collectivisation a success or a failure? The answer depends on the criteria.

For Paper 1, a strong answer should keep industrialisation and collectivisation linked. Industrialisation can be judged partly successful because heavy industry expanded and the USSR became more powerful. Collectivisation can be judged successful only from Stalin's narrow viewpoint of control and extraction. In human, agricultural and moral terms, it was a disaster, above all because of the famine of 1932-33.