1. How far did the USSR change under Stalin’s rule?
Year 9 Topic 2
How far did the USSR change under Stalin’s rule?

2. Russia before 1905
Ruling Class - Tsar ruled by himself and was incredibly rich. Nobility were very wealthy and owned almost a quarter of the land in Russia, even though there were only a few of them. They lived in luxury. Upper Class - lesser nobles, church leaders, military officers, top civil servants. Very wealthy. Middle Class - Bankers, merchants, factory owners, shop-keepers. Becoming very wealthy with the help of government loans and contracts. Working class - Factory workers, street traders. Very poor indeed. Low wages, long hours, bad housing. Mainly lived in St Petersburg and Moscow. Not allowed to form trade unions - repressed. Peasants - 82% of population - country people making their living by farming. Very poor indeed. Many leaving to find work in cities.
- Vast country containing lots of groups of different ethnicities. Russification was forced upon the population to rid communities of perceived ‘non-Russian’ beliefs and behaviours.

3. Stalin’s reign of terror
During the 1930s, Stalin set about purging Russia of anyone who he considered a threat or disloyal. What was life like for ordinary people in Stalin's Russia?
Purges and praises
Political purges
In 1934, Kirov, the leader of the Leningrad Communist Party, was murdered, probably on Stalin's orders. Stalin used this episode to order massive purges by which anybody suspected of disloyalty was murdered, sent to prison camps, or put on public show trials at which they pleaded guilty to incredible crimes they could never have done.
The Communist leadership was purged - 93 of the 139 Central Committee members were put to death. The armed forces were purged of the 103 generals and admirals were executed. The Communist Party was purged - about a third of its 3 million members were killed. Photographs and history books were changed to eliminate even the memory of people who had been arrested.
Ordinary people
By the end of the 1930s, the Great Terror had spread to ordinary people - anybody who looked as though they had a will of their own. Some 20 million ordinary Russians were sent to the gulag - the system of labour camps mostly in Siberia - where perhaps half of them died. The Christian Church and the Muslim religion were forbidden. Ethnic groups were persecuted, and Russification - the acceptance of Russian language and customs - was enforced throughout the Soviet Union. People who had annoyed their neighbours were turned in to the NKVD (the secret police) and arrested, never to be seen again.
Praises
Everybody had to praise Stalin, all the time. Newspapers credited him with every success. Poets thanked him for bringing the harvest. People leapt to their feet to applaud every time his name was mentioned. His picture was everywhere parents taught their children to love Stalin more than themselves. They dared not do anything else.
Why did Stalin do it? He needed to create unity, and certainly strong control was needed to modernise Russia. He was also at least homicidally paranoid. However, by 1939, he had set up a personal totalitarian dictatorship where - on one word from him - the entire Soviet Union did exactly what he said.

4. The 5 Year Plans
Stalin realised that if Russia was to become a key player in the global market, the country needed to industrialise rapidly and increase production. To do this, Stalin introduced the Five-year Plans
Stalin's chief aim was to expand industrial production. For this, he developed three Five-year Plans between and Gosplan, the state planning agency, drew up targets for production for each factory. The first two plans concentrated on improving heavy industry - coal, oil, steel and electricity.
Some keen young Communists, called Pioneers, went into barren areas and set up new towns and industries from nothing. There were champion workers called Stakhanovites, named after a coal miner who broke the record for the amount of coal dug up in a single shift. Education schemes were introduced to train skilled, literate workers.
The Soviet Union also gave opportunities to women - crèches were set up so they could also work. Women became doctors and scientists, as well as canal diggers and steel workers.
At the same time, many of the workers were slave workers and kulaks from the gulag. Strikers were shot, and wreckers (slow workers) could be executed or imprisoned. Thousands died from accidents, starvation or cold. Housing and wages were terrible, and no consumer goods were produced for people.
But the improvements in production between 1928 and 1937 were phenomenal:
Coal - from 36 million tonnes to 130 million tonnes
Iron - from 3 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes
Oil - from 2 million tonnes to 29 million tonnes
Electricity - from 5,000 million to 36,000 million kilowatts

5. Collectivisation
Stalin's Five-year Plans dealt with industrial production, but something needed to be done about the food supply so Stalin introduced collectivisation. After years of resistance and famines Stalin eventually executed those who resisted, or sent them to labour camps.
Stalin advocated collective farms
By the end of the 1920s, it was clear that Russian agriculture was inadequate. Although the kulaks were relatively wealthy and successful, the thousands of tiny, backward peasant farms were not producing enough to feed the population.
In 1927, Stalin declared that the way forward was for people in each village to voluntarily unite their farms into one collective farm. This kolkhoz would be able to afford machinery, be more efficient, and be able to create a surplus to send to the towns.
The peasants burned their farms
After two years, when everyone had ignored his idea and there had been a famine, Stalin made collectivisation compulsory.
The peasants hated the idea, so they burned their crops and killed their animals rather than hand them over to the state. There was another famine in 1930.
Kulaks were sent to the gulag
Stalin relaxed the rules for a while, but in 1931 he again tried to enforce collectivisation.
Again there was the same resistance and another, worse famine.
Stalin blamed the kulaks, and declared war on them. They were executed or sent to the gulag.
By 1939, 99 per cent of land had been collectivised 90% of the peasants lived on one of the 250,000 kolkhoz. Farming was run by government officials. The government took 90 per cent of production and left the rest for the people to live on.

6. Websites
what extent did Stalin make the USSR a great economic power
Modern/Russia_and_the_USSR/USSR_under_Stalin.htm
(ActiveHistory login: chestertoncc password: walker)
1980/russia-1900-to-1939/life-in-ussr-under-stalin/