1. “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries
“We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make up this gap in ten years. Either we do it or they will crush us.”
Stalin at the First Conference of Workers in 1931
How do you think Stalin intended to ‘make up this gap’?
20min BBC doc

2. Why did Stalin industrialise the USSR?
Choose what you think are the 3 most important reasons for the rapid industrialisation led by Stalin.
Explain why you think each reason was important.
You can choose from this list or you can think of your
own reasons:
To become very strong in order to defend the USSR against capitalist countries
To make products to sell to other countries
To gain personal glory for Stalin
To give all Russians a higher standard of living
To build socialism in Russia.
To help Russia defend herself successfully against capitalist nations in the event of war.
To control those in the USSR who were against Stalin
To make the USSR less reliant on imports of manufactured goods from other countries
Introduction

3. Why did Stalin industrialise the USSR?
Now Read Bunce p46 -7 to discover if you were right
Choose what you think are the 3 most important reasons for the rapid industrialisation led by Stalin.
Explain why you think each reason was important.
You can choose from this list or you can think of your
own reasons:
To become very strong in order to defend the USSR against capitalist countries
To make products to sell to other countries
To gain personal glory for Stalin
To give all Russians a higher standard of living
To build socialism in Russia.
To help Russia defend herself successfully against capitalist nations in the event of war.
To control those in the USSR who were against Stalin
To make the USSR less reliant on imports of manufactured goods from other countries
Introduction

4. What was the First Five-Year Plan and why did Stalin introduce it in 1928?
Lesson outcomes:
To identify why the First Five-Year Plan was introduced
To determine the key features of the First Five-Year Plan
To evaluate how successful the First Five-Year Plan was in achieving its aims

5. Why did Stalin introduce the first Five Year Plan?
Read Bunce P46 – 47 and make notes under the following headings:
Ideological causes
Political causes
Economic causes

6. What do you think the five year plans involved
What do you think the five year plans involved? Talk to the person next to you and be prepared to feed back to the rest of the class.

7. Features of the Plans
The plans in the 1930s were dominated by an emphasis of heavy industry. Stalin wanted most investment to go into coal, iron, steel and other heavy industries.
These would provide the power, capital equipment and machine tools that could be used to manufacture other products.
The USSR would then be less dependent on the West for these goods and could move towards self-sufficiency.

8. Features of the Plans
This decision meant that producing consumer goods, like clothes and shoes, would be downgraded. Soviet citizens were asked to sacrifice their standard of living for longer-term objectives.
There were two reasons for this:
It seemed to Stalinists that Western industrial revolutions had been underpinned by development of coal, iron and steel.
They were driven by the need to develop the sort of industries that could protect the USSR from attack.

9. What were the Five-Year Plans?
The Five-Year plans put central planning at the forefront of the Soviet economy. The state decided what was produced, where it was produced and when it was produced.
The key features of the plans was the setting of production and output targets which industrial enterprises had to achieve.
The targets were backed by law, so failure to meet targets could be treated as a criminal offence. Bonuses were paid to enterprises that exceeded their targets.

10. Gosplan
Gosplan (the State Planning Commission) employed ½ million bureaucrats who set targets for every factory, mine and workshop in Russia.
It was originally set up in 1921 as a forecasting agency, and was given the job of working out the figures – the inputs each industry would need and the output each had to produce – to meet overall targets for the plan.

11. Would you sign this? Seven day week Day off will be taken on a rota
You will be given a 10 minute break during the day which can be taken off you at any time
If you are ill you will lose your job
If you fail to meet your targets you will be taken to the police
Sign here _____________

12. Living and working under the first FYP
Consumer goods virtually disappeared.
Queuing became a feature of Russian life.
7 day working week was introduced.
Lateness was criminalised, strikes were outlawed and workers who broke machinery were exiled to forced labour camps.

13. Foreign Participation
One aspect of industrialisation in the 1930s was foreign involvement. A large number of Western companies sent specialists, engineers and skilled workers to help erect new factories.
Henry Ford helped develop a car industry. Colonel Hugh Cooper was in charge of the Dnieprostroi Dam project.
Some came for ideological reasons – they were communist – but others because of unemployment in the West. The Great Depression convinced many that Capitalism was dying.
20min BBC doc. British visitor to Magnitogorsk

14. Other features
Plan were always declared complete a year ahead of schedule. This was to prove to the world the Soviet planning was better than Western capitalism. Also a psychological device to encourage workers.
Huge new industrial centres were constructed from nothing, usually east of the Ural mountains, safe from attack from the West. I.e. Magnitogorsk.
Spectacular new projects. See following slides

15. What can you see. What do you think this is
What can you see? What do you think this is? What do you think it is used for?

16. Moscow metro system, built in the 1930s, was a showpiece of Soviet construction

17. Moscow Metro

18. Magnitokorsk Steel Works

19. Dnieprostroi Dam

20. Read Bunce p47 - 48 and make notes under the following headings:
How the plan was organised? (Nature of the 5YP)
What the FYP was designed to achieved? (Priorities of the first FYP)

21. FYP – Nature of the first FYP
Series of targets drawn up by government officials working for an organisation known as Gosplan.
Targets set for every factory, workshop, mill and mine
Plan continually revised
Ambitious targets set for coal, iron and steel
Command economy rather than a planned economy.
Priorities of first FYP
Focus was heavy industry – iron, coal and steel and oil over consumer goods such as textiles and food.
Stalin believed that if Russia was to industrialise then he had to start with these heavy industries.
Majority of Russia’s workforce was unskilled and not suited to the production of consumer goods. Stalin believed that working in heavy industry would allow workers to acquire the skills necessary to work in more sophisticated industries.

22. How successful was the first FYP?
Read Bunce p49 – 50 and complete the table on the first FYP.
Listen to 5 min audio revision rocks to add further detail:
Extension:
Then underline where it succeeded or failed to reach it’s economic aims; ideological aims and political aims. Use 3 colours.

23. The First Five-Year Plan - Successes
Successes included: trebling electricity production, doubling coal and iron production and steel by over one third.
Engineering industry was developed and huge new industrial complex’s were built like the city of Magnitokorsk.
Over 1500 enterprises were developed across the USSR however there were many failures.

24. The First Five-Year Plan - Failures
Many resources were diverted to heavy industry, meaning that consumer industries like clothing suffered from a lack of development.
Many targets were not met – mainly due to targets being too optimistic but there was a lack of skilled workers, competition for sparse resources, waste and transport issues.
A lot of resources also had to be diverted to collectivisation – ‘bourgeois specialists’ were blamed and arrested.

25. GIGANTOMANIA!
Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick used this word to describe the first FYP
Read Bunce p51 to find out what she meant.
Extra – See Magnitogorsk article

26. Why did the USSR Industrialise?
Western countries had already undergone various industrial revolutions, Russia was still largely backward and still using agricultural production as its main form of production and income.
Stalin also needed to rebuild Russia after the 1st World War, factories, towns, roads and railways were destroyed and needed to be rebuilt to carry on with Stalin’s plans of industrialization.
Stalin also needed to create a working class to legitimize the Industrial Revolution ideologically for Party Members and the Russian populous. Pravada, the official paper of the Soviet Communist Party stated that “They [bourgeiousie] say ‘First give us gold, then take back all your generals, then overthrow your government, and finally, let us rule you.”
Russia was the only communist country and therefore needed to become self-reliant to become fully communist.
Industrialisation, if carried out successfully, would also strengthen Stalin’s place as leader of Russia and his legitimize his power to the Russian population.
Industrial output and the push for industrialisation would decrease the reliance on agriculture and agricultural workers, and decreasing the threat of uprisings in agricultural areas and famines.

27. The First Five Year Plan
20min BBC doc

28. Starter: Exam Focus: The Plans
Additional factors
Social issues: urbanisation and its problems in the 1930s: education – shifting emphasis :
government policies regarding women and the family.
Interaction of factors eg how was collectivisation seen as integral to Industrial
Possible Essay Questions:
Why did the second five-year plan differ so markedly from the first consequence
What social problems were caused by the five-year plans?
The First Five Year Plan
Achievements and failures.
The Second Five Year Plan :
How did it differ from the first and why?
How was it amended under the pressure of the growing German threat?
The Third Five Year Plan:
Focus on rearmament.

29. Task
By using your textbooks (pp ), you are going to create a poster
They must be detailed and not just be full of pictures
They must either focus on the strengths or weaknesses of the First Five Year Plan
OR you can create a propaganda poster from the Communist perspective but make sure that you look at how Stalin could explain away the failures as well as looking at the strengths

30. Plenary
Stand in a line across the classroom depending on how successful you thought the first five year plan was
Make sure that you can justify your position

31. How successful were the Five-Year Plans in transforming Russian Industry in the Years to 1941?
Introduction
Successes – However
The Weaknesses – However
The People – However
Overall Judgement

32. Homework
Write a paragraph ‘To what extent was the first five year plan successful’ In your paragraph you will need to make a decision, either it was a success or a failure.

33. Alexei Stakhanov – Pin-Up Boy