STALIN’S FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1928–1932

The first Five-Year Plan was a heroic effort to industrialize the Soviet Union. The plan, which emphasized heavy industry and centralized economic planning, was intended to create the economic basis for socialism. Stalin also wanted to prepare the Soviet Union for the possibility of war.

Originally, the first plan, officially dated from the latter part of 1928, called for difficult but not impossible goals. Stalin, however, insisted on raising already high targets. He emphasized large-scale projects and speed. Magnitogorsk, a new metallurgical complex near the southern end of the Ural Mountains, was a good example of the Stalinist approach to industrialization in that goals for the complex were raised repeatedly.

Another characteristic feature of the Five-Year Plans was the Stakhanovite movement. Aleksei Stakhanov devised a way to mine more coal in one shift than miners ordinarily could produce. Stakhanovite workers appeared in many industries, with the result that workers were expected to be far more productive than in the past.

The Soviet Union became a major industrial power in the course of the 1930s. The labor force more than doubled, from about 11.5 million to nearly 23 million. Consumer goods were scarce and housing crowded, but many Soviet citizens took great pride in building the new Soviet Union.

Collectivization, which began in 1928, was seen as a vital part of the Five-Year Plan. It resulted by early 1930 in approximately 50 percent of peasant families joining collective farms (where peasants owned the land but pooled their resources and labor and marketed the harvest cooperatively). Many, however, had been forced to join. The level of rebellion was so high that Stalin had to retreat. His March 1930 article, “Dizzy with Success,” blamed problems on overzealous subordinates and reassured peasants they would not be forced to join. Many left at that point, but continuous pressure resulted by 1933 in over 90 percent of peasant families joining either collective farms or state farms. One feature of collectivization was the hunt for kulaks, the so-called rich peasants. Often these were simply the most independent peasants in a village. They were sometimes shot on the spot; at best, they might be given an hour to pack and then sent out to some desolate spot to begin again. Collectivization was a failure as an economic policy. In 1932 there was a massive famine in the Ukraine and the northern Caucasus region. Perhaps as many as 7 million peasants died. Collectivization, intended to mechanize agriculture and to increase productivity, became the Achilles’ heel of the Five-Year Plan. Soviet agriculture never fully recovered from the experience.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Compare the First Five-Year Plan with the Second Five-Year Plan in terms of goals and achievements.
2. Investigate the construction of Magnitogorsk and describe the hardships endured by ordinary workers there.
3. How accurately did Stalin’s report to the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934 present the accomplishments of the Five-Year Plans?
4. What was life like for peasants before the collectivization of agriculture?
5. What was life like for peasants on the new collective farms?
6. Read about the circumstances of the death of Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, in 1932. Some believe she committed suicide as a protest against the harshness of the Five-Year Plan. Review the evidence and state your reasons for accepting or rejecting this interpretation of the event.
Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entry for “The New Economic Policy (NEP) in Russia, 1921–1928” (#14). Search under Gosplan (state planning agency), Lazar Kaganovich, Sergei Kirov, Kolkhoz (collective farm), and MTS (machine-tractor stations).

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Garros, V. N. Korenevskaya, and T. Lahusen, eds. Intimacy and Terror. New York: New Press, 1995. A collection of diaries from the 1930s.

Hindus, Maurice. Red Bread. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. A reissue of an eyewitness account of collectivization.

Scott, John. Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. First published in 1942. An account of life in Magnitogorsk in the 1930s by an American engineer.

Stalin, Joseph. The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905–1952. Edited by H. Bruce Franklin. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. A selection of Stalin’s writings, including reports to the 1934 and 1939 party congresses.

Secondary Sources

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. A careful study of the famine of 1932 and collectivization policies.

Davies, R. W. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980–1991. A standard history of industrialization in the 1930s in the tradition of E. H. Carr’s multivolume series on the Soviet Union.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. A fascinating discussion of the social history from the bottom up.

———. Stalin’s Peasants. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. An examination of peasant response to collectivization based on new archival material.

Hunter, Holland. “The Overambitious First Five-Year Plan.” Slavic Review 32 (1973): 237–57. An influential discussion of the problems brought about by inflating the goals of the Five-Year Plan.

Kotkin, S. Magnetic Mountain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. An important study of Magnitogorsk, one of the show projects of the First Five-Year Plan.

Siegelbaum, L. H. Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. A very interesting study of the Stakhanovite movement in particular and labor relations more generally.

Tucker, Robert C. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. The second volume of a major biography of Stalin.

Viola, Lynne. The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. A fine study of efforts by urban communists to carry out the collectivization policy in the countryside.

———. Peasant Rebels under Stalin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. A very useful study of peasant resistance to collectivization.

Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Stalin. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. An excellent biography based on an unrivaled access to the archival sources.