What Was the Short-Term Significance of Stalin's Economic Policies for the People of Russia in the Years to 1941 ?
What was the short-term significance of Stalin's economic policies for the people of Russia in the years to 1941 ?
The nature of Stalin's economic policies and their impact on the people of Russia is a widely debated topic. It's also a difficult topic on which to focus an enquiry, complicated as it is by the reluctance of the Soviets to release all relevant documents, and the political views of those interpreting to documents, driven as many were by their own agendas. However, the documents that have been selected for this enquiry have been chosen for the light they shed on the problem and in the expectation that they will enable a conclusion, however provisional, to be drawn.
Stalin himself justified his policy of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation at the 1926 Party Congress as one that sought to achieve ' the transformation of our country from an agrarian to an industrial one, capable by its own efforts of producing the necessary means of production.' This socialist notion of economic autarky, although admirable and unifying in its intentions, would indeed inevitably bring about damaging effects for the people of Russia. But how intensive and extensive was this damage - and was damage the only significant effect for the Russian people?
In order to contextualise the contemporary sources used in this enquiry, it has been necessary to consult secondary sources in order to provide the appropriate background. Here, the historian Michael Lynch maintains categorically that Stalin's economic policies did little to improve the life of the Russian people, giving them 'few benefits'. Taken from a book published after Gorbachev's 1985 Glasnost, a period of openness when the Soviet archives were opened up, Lynch would have been privy to vast amounts of evidence and statistics. Thus statements such as 'there is little evidence that they [Stalin's economic policies] provided the Soviet Union with the necessary capital growth' and 'there was never genuine
The nature of Stalin's economic policies and their impact on the people of Russia is a widely debated topic. It's also a difficult topic on which to focus an enquiry, complicated as it is by the reluctance of the Soviets to release all relevant documents, and the political views of those interpreting to documents, driven as many were by their own agendas. However, the documents that have been selected for this enquiry have been chosen for the light they shed on the problem and in the expectation that they will enable a conclusion, however provisional, to be drawn.
Stalin himself justified his policy of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation at the 1926 Party Congress as one that sought to achieve ' the transformation of our country from an agrarian to an industrial one, capable by its own efforts of producing the necessary means of production.' This socialist notion of economic autarky, although admirable and unifying in its intentions, would indeed inevitably bring about damaging effects for the people of Russia. But how intensive and extensive was this damage - and was damage the only significant effect for the Russian people?
In order to contextualise the contemporary sources used in this enquiry, it has been necessary to consult secondary sources in order to provide the appropriate background. Here, the historian Michael Lynch maintains categorically that Stalin's economic policies did little to improve the life of the Russian people, giving them 'few benefits'. Taken from a book published after Gorbachev's 1985 Glasnost, a period of openness when the Soviet archives were opened up, Lynch would have been privy to vast amounts of evidence and statistics. Thus statements such as 'there is little evidence that they [Stalin's economic policies] provided the Soviet Union with the necessary capital growth' and 'there was never genuine