Aims and results of policies: Stalin's domestic policies - economic policies Notes

Domestic Policies: Economic Policies

Core economic aims

1. Stalin's central economic objective was the rapid modernization of the Soviet Union by making the country an industrial powerhouse.
2. As outlined in the 1926 Party Congress resolution, the USSR needed to evolve from an agrarian society into an industrial economy.
3. Stalin rejected their view that socialism could emerge gradually within a proletarian society, instead insisting on centralized state control and coercive planning.
   1. This allowed Stalin to consolidate power by portraying his economic campaign as ideologically aligned with Lenin's revolutionary legacy-framing himself as the natural successor to Lenin.
4. The plan of Stalin’s modernization were collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization.
   1. Collectivization aimed to create a surplus grain supply by reorganizing peasant farms into large state-run collectives
   2. Industrialization, managed through ambitious Five-Year Plans, targeted heavy industry and infrastructure.
5. Gosplan, the central planning agency established under Lenin, now became the key tool of Stalin’s authoritarian economic strategy.

Collectivisation

1. Stalin viewed collectivisation as a vital economic policy to generate the capital necessary for his industrial ambitions.
2. The core idea was to consolidate individual peasant holdings into large-scale collective farms (kolkhozy) or state-run farms (sovkhozy), thereby extracting greater grain surpluses for sale abroad.
3. The resulting profits were intended to finance rapid industrial growth under the Five-Year Plans.
4. Collectivisation involved merging 50-100 peasant farms into unified agricultural entities controlled by the state.
5. Stalin’s vision was ideologically grounded in the Marxist goal of eradicating private ownership, but also functionally aimed at improving efficiency through mechanisation.
   1. The tractor-promoted as the symbol of Soviet progress-was key to this process, as tractors could only be operated in large plots of land.
6. State-run Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) provided equipment and helped enforce state control over rural areas.
   1. Sheila Fitzpatrick notes that while the collective farm was a centralised and hierarchical institution
   2. In reality, it suffered from poor planning, lack of machinery, and peasant resistance, making productivity gains elusive.
7. Stalin’s collectivisation campaign had two strategic aims beyond ideological purification:
   1. First, to create surplus grain to export for foreign exchange; second, to free rural labour for the rapidly expanding industrial sector.
   2. It was believed that large, mechanised farms would require fewer workers, allowing millions of peasants to be transferred to factory jobs.
8. As Stalin launched collectivisation in 1928, he declared it “voluntary,” but in practice it was enforced with violence and intimidation.
   1. Central to the campaign was the vilification of the kulaks, portrayed as exploitative rural capitalists who hoarded grain, exploited labor, and obstructed the progress of socialism.

Stalin’s Ideological Hostility to the Peasantry

1. Stalin’s disdain for the peasantry was rooted in Marxist-Leninist doctrine, which held that the revolutionary vanguard was the urban proletariat, not the rural peasantry.
   1. The peasantry, in Stalin’s view, was a politically unreliable and backward class that needed to be subordinated to the demands of industrialisation.
2. He argued that both surplus grain and surplus rural labour could be harnessed to fund and staff Soviet industrial development.
   1. This logic made peasants coerced into giving up private plots, and many were driven into urban centres as industrial labourers.
   2. As Sheila Fitzpatrick notes, the move was less about agricultural efficiency and more about creating a proletarian workforce.

Mass Resistance to Collectivisation

1. Despite official claims that collectivisation was voluntary, peasant resistance was widespread and fierce.
2. Between December 1929 and March 1930, nearly 50% of peasant farms were collectivised-triggering what amounted to civil war in the countryside.
   1. Soviet records document over 30,000 arson attacks and hundreds of organised revolts.
   2. Peasants slaughtered livestock, destroyed crops, and resisted grain requisitions.

Results of collectivisation

1. Despite massive resistance, de-kulakisation and collectivisation succeeded in forcibly restructuring Soviet agriculture.
   1. By the end of the 1930s, nearly all peasants were collectivised into kolkhozes (collective farms) or sovkhozes (state farms).
2. The consequences were catastrophic: widespread famine, millions displaced or killed, and the destruction of traditional peasant life.
   1. Yet for Stalin, collectivisation fulfilled its dual function-providing grain (through coercion) and freeing up rural labour for industrialisation.
3. The collectivisation campaign triggered catastrophic upheaval in the Soviet countryside.
   1. Peasants, bewildered by the sudden dismantling of traditional rural life, either resisted or passively failed to cooperate with the new system.
   2. Many consumed their seed grain and slaughtered livestock to avoid confiscation, leaving no food for future harvests.
4. State coercion-through arrests, deportations, and executions-only deepened the crisis.
   1. Attempts to remedy shortages by sending inexperienced urban Party members to work the land often worsened the situation.
5. Even as famine loomed, what little grain remained was exported to acquire industrial equipment.
   1. By 1932, agriculture was in freefall, a result not of natural disaster but of violent state policy.

Famine, Forced Migration, and Repression (1932–33)

1. By 1932-33, famine gripped the Soviet Union.
   1. Peasants, facing starvation and unable to adapt to collectivisation, either ceased production or fled en masse to urban centres.
2. Though population transfer was part of Stalin's strategy to boost industrialisation, the sheer scale of the exodus led to the introduction of internal passports to prevent uncontrolled migration.
   1. Deportations to remote regions-often by train, in inhumane conditions-were common.
3. Firsthand accounts describe mass deaths during these forced relocations: infants buried on roadsides, and entire communities reduced to desperate flight toward foreign borders.
4. Meanwhile, agricultural specialists who questioned collectivisation’s failures were scapegoated in public sabotage trials.
   1. Stalin’s regime sought to suppress dissent and shift blame, even as millions perished from starvation across one of the world’s largest agrarian empires.