To What Extent Was Stalin’s Collectivization Successful?
Plan of investigation
This investigation seeks to evaluate the extend of the success of Stalin’s collectivization in Russia during 1928 and 1940.Collectivization was one of the most important economic policies introduced in Russia because it can be described and evaluated from different angles, economic growth on the one hand,and the social cost of the policy,on the other. The main body of this investigation outlines Stalin’s aims, when and how the policy was implemented and whether it was a successful policy or not. To achieve my aim, I am going to consult a series of sources and later analyse them by doing an overall evaluation. I will use primary and secondary sources. Two of the five sources used in this research, “Dr Kiselev’s memorandum” and “The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine” will later be evaluated in detail in terms of origin, limitations, value and purpose.
Summary of evidence:
Communists, including Marx, always argued that industrialization and urbanisation were dependent on the modernisation of agriculture so that the food production could increase, at the same time realising large numbers of peasants and landless agricultural workers for work in factories. For this reason, Stalin’s aim was to modernize the USSR. Russian farming methods were backward and primitive. There was no knowledge of advanced farming techniques and the majority of the peasants were no capable of running the small-holdings efficiently. As the farms were very small there was not an efficient use of tractors and fertilizers. What’s more, he wanted to eliminate the class of prosperous peasants called kulaks , which NEP had encouraged. Stalin claimed they were standing in the way of progress and he saw the kulaks as the enemy of communism . For the Five Year Plan, first economic policy implemented by Stalin, to be successful, food was needed for the workers in the
This investigation seeks to evaluate the extend of the success of Stalin’s collectivization in Russia during 1928 and 1940.Collectivization was one of the most important economic policies introduced in Russia because it can be described and evaluated from different angles, economic growth on the one hand,and the social cost of the policy,on the other. The main body of this investigation outlines Stalin’s aims, when and how the policy was implemented and whether it was a successful policy or not. To achieve my aim, I am going to consult a series of sources and later analyse them by doing an overall evaluation. I will use primary and secondary sources. Two of the five sources used in this research, “Dr Kiselev’s memorandum” and “The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine” will later be evaluated in detail in terms of origin, limitations, value and purpose.
Summary of evidence:
Communists, including Marx, always argued that industrialization and urbanisation were dependent on the modernisation of agriculture so that the food production could increase, at the same time realising large numbers of peasants and landless agricultural workers for work in factories. For this reason, Stalin’s aim was to modernize the USSR. Russian farming methods were backward and primitive. There was no knowledge of advanced farming techniques and the majority of the peasants were no capable of running the small-holdings efficiently. As the farms were very small there was not an efficient use of tractors and fertilizers. What’s more, he wanted to eliminate the class of prosperous peasants called kulaks , which NEP had encouraged. Stalin claimed they were standing in the way of progress and he saw the kulaks as the enemy of communism . For the Five Year Plan, first economic policy implemented by Stalin, to be successful, food was needed for the workers in the