Stalin by Ian Grey

Author:Ian Grey [Grey, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography/Presidents and Heads of State
ISBN: 9781640190566
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2017-04-10T21:00:00+00:00

The First Five-year Plan was a program of production targets and slogans for Stalin’s assault on Russia’s backwardness. It came into operation in 1928 but was approved only in April 1929 by the Sixteenth Party Conference. It set ambitious goals for industry and envisaged a massive socialization of agriculture. But the overriding importance of the plan was that it provided a challenge to the Russian nation; it summoned the people to a life of heroic endeavor. At the same time, it gave cover for a brutal collectivization of agriculture. It was a bold assault on two fronts.

This First Five-year Plan was in scale and achievement probably the greatest planned economic venture in man’s history. Results fell short of targets but were nevertheless prodigious. This feat was, moreover, accomplished in four and a quarter years, for on December 31, 1932, the plan was declared to have been fulfilled. The wastage and the cost in human suffering and sacrifice were horrifying. But Stalin was convinced that the price must be paid. The party, transported by his demand for supreme effort, accepted the price. And with extraordinary endurance, the mass of Russians labored and served.

The programs of collectivization and industrialization were launched simultaneously. The collectivization campaign had made some progress in 1928. The number of kolkhozi, or collective farms, had grown in the year ended June 1, 1928, from 14,830 to 33,258 and their membership from 194,200 to 416,700 peasant households. But to Stalin, such a rate of increase was completely unacceptable. As the winter of 1928–29 approached, the threat of famine became serious. There were persistent shortfalls in grain deliveries. The peasants were ignoring and possibly actively challenging the Soviet government and its policies. He demanded urgent action.

During 1929, the campaign gathered impetus; it was soon to sweep across the country in a destructive wave, recalling the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century. On December 27, 1929, Stalin proclaimed that “we have recently passed from a policy of confining the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.” This amounted to a declaration of total war and even a sentence of death on an ill-defined section of the peasantry, some 10 million in number. It is estimated that 5 million were deported to Siberia and the Arctic region, and of them, at least a quarter perished on the journey. Thousands were killed in the villages while trying to defend their property.

On January 5, 1930, the Central Committee decreed that the target of collectivizing the vast majority of peasants within the plan period was entirely practicable. Further, it referred to the completion of the collectivizing of all grain-producing regions by autumn 1932. This raised the campaign to a climax of fury. In October 1929, 4.1 percent of peasant households had been collectivized; by March 1930, the figure was more than 50 percent; and by July 1, 1934, it was 71.4 percent of the farmlands and of the peasant households. The figures represented percentages of 100 million human beings.

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