First Five Year Plans in Russia

How successful were the five year plans in transforming Russian industry in the year to 1941? (30 marks)

Russia, three times the size of USA today needed industrialization to help improve Russia’s current economic state in the 18th century. The five year plans was one but he also made other changes to help the growth of the economy. One was collectivization in agriculture, another liquidating the kulaks. The five year plans was to help modernize Russia as it still remained solely on agriculture, 82% of Russians were peasants which made it harder to control the country. Stalin’s aims was to ensure that Russia was stable, modern and powerful, some historians may say that the five year plans were successful as they reached Stalin’s aims, but others may disagree as these aims all came as a cost of human life.

The first five year plan was installed in 1928 and lasted till 1933, the aim was to create an industrial base for further development, Stalin wanted to achieve rapid expansion of coal and steel production, electrical power and transport. Stalin had a huge benchmark for the peasants, which could be seen as Stalin’s main downfall in the plans. He called for at least 20% per annual increase and with his brutal force he was going to make sure that the increase would happen.

The first five year plan can be seen as not successful in numerous ways, one being that the peasants had little skill in the area that they were forced to do, working their whole life on the farm and then working on machinery proved to be tough and a huge culture shock. The amount of work was little during this time, and another non successful issue with the first five year plan was the building blocks for future development, this is unsuccessful as it meant that it had taken weeks for new deliveries to come to Russia, meaning production took a while to get started and left many peasants idled with.

Along with some unsuccessful parts to the plan, there was area of success, there was...