Stalin's Five-Year Plans, 1928-1941 (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Timeline & Summary

• This note will examine the Five-Year Plans under Stalin

• The Five-Year Plans transformed the USSR into a major industrial power

  • Each plan prioritised heavy industry

• However, their methods often relied on propaganda, targets, and forced labour

• The Stakhanovite movement promoted productivity but also placed intense pressure on workers

• Historians debate whether the Plans were a triumph of modernisation or a deeply flawed and destructive experiment

Reasons for the Five-Year Plans

• The Five-Year Plans aimed to rapidly industrialise the USSR

  • Stalin introduced the concept in 1928

    • There were many motivations behind the Five-Year Plans

How did the Five-Year Plans work?

Gosplan

• Gosplan stood for 'State Committee for Planning'

• It set targets for:

  • Each region

  • Each factory

  • Each manager

  • Each worker

• Targets were ambitious and usually unachievable

• Gosplan also did not provide factories with:

  • Adequate supplies

  • Customers to buy the goods they produced

Foreign aid

• Britain and the USA supplied the Soviet Union with:

  • Money to invest in industry

  • Experts

• Western countries offered to help the USSR because of:

  • The Great Depression

    • The USSR was less affected by the Depression, leading to job opportunities

  • Agreements, such as the Treaty of Rapallo

  • Loan and trade deals

Propaganda

• The government started a massive propaganda campaign on the Five Year Plans

• Themes of the propaganda included:

  • Expressing how important its aims were

  • Celebrating the successes of the Plans

  • Describing the modern, utopian future the Plans would create

The First Plan, 1928–1932

Magnitogorsk

Creation

• A new industrial city built in the Urals

• Construction began in 1929

  • By 1932, the first blast furnace was in operation

• Foreign engineers from the USA and Germany were brought in to advise on planning and building

Achievements

• Became one of the largest steel-producing centres in the USSR

• Magnitogorsk became a propaganda symbol of socialism’s triumph over backwardness

Problems

• Living conditions were extremely harsh

  • Many workers lived in tents or makeshift huts with poor sanitation

• Harsh winters and poor planning meant shortages of food, clean water, and housing

• Working conditions were dangerous

  • Accidents were frequent due to lack of safety equipment

The Second Plan, 1933-1937

The Stakhanovite movement

• Began in 1935 during the Second Five-Year Plan

• Its name came from Aleksei Stakhanov

  • Stakhanov reportedly mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours (14 times his quota) on 31 August 1935

  • He is an example of a 'shock worker'

• The government celebrated Stakhanov's achievements

  • He travelled the country as a national celebrity

    • He even appeared on the front cover of Time Magazine

  • The government gave Stakhanov a new apartment, extra pay, a telephone and more holidays

• The publicity attracted people to follow Stakhanov's example

  • 'Stakhanovites' were located in multiple industries in towns and the countryside

• However, if Stakhanov did achieve this record, he did so through

  • The help of assistants

  • The latest technology that many workers did not have

The Third Plan, 1938-1941

How successful were the Five-Year Plans?

• Historians debate whether the Five-Year Plans were a remarkable achievement or an inefficient, brutal system.

A triumph of modernisation

• Some historians believe that the Plans rapidly built heavy industry, transport, and armaments, turning the USSR into a great power able to defeat Nazi Germany

  • They acknowledge that the methods were severe but instrumental in meeting urgent security needs

Key historians

"Statistically, through the Five Year Plans the Soviet Union achieved impressive rates of economic growth during the 1930s - a decade of depression in the capitalist states... There were impressive gains in heavy industries, mining and construction. The Soviet Union became the world's leading producer of oil, coal, iron ore, and cement, and it became a major world producer of manganese, gold, natural gas and other minerals. These gains enabled the USSR to develop the defence industries it needed to fight Hitler's armies during World War Two." - Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy (1996)

"The Five-Year Plans had a dramatic effect on the Soviet Union, making it the second largest industrial power in the world. Huge new steel plants, hydro-electric power stations, railways and canals were built. Vast numbers of factories in hundreds of new towns poured out manufactured goods. A major symbol of this growth was the new city of Magnitogorsk. Between 1928 and 1932 Magnitogorsk was transformed from a tiny, isolated village to a thriving industrial city, with more than a quarter of a million citizens." - Nigel Kelly, Russia and the USSR 1905–1956 (1996)

An economic disaster

• Other historians argue that the Five Year Plans failed in its aims

  • The Plans often relied on unrealistic targets, harsh punishments, and exaggerated statistics

  • Everyday needs like clothing, housing, and food were neglected because heavy industry always came first

  • Millions of ordinary people suffered

Key historians

"Far from being the period of plenty and merriment projected by the State's propaganda machine, the Plan years were a period of chronic shortages of every conceivable item. The well-documented famine of 1933 was simply the most notorious example. These shortages meant that a black economy quickly developed to allow ordinary citizens to survive. One popular proverb from the time observed that 'he who does not steal, robs his family'. Rationing ended in 1934 but supply problems persisted. For the Soviet population, queuing became a way of life. Those with time to spare joined any queues that they encountered, in order to procure whatever was on offer and then to be able to trade it for something else." - Julian Reed-Purvis, Stalin' s Workers, (2003)

"Indeed state violence was already being applied widely under the First and Second Five-Year Plans. 'Kulaks', railwaymen-'wreckers', 'nationalists', and managerial 'saboteurs' were being arrested in large numbers. Nearly a million Soviet citizens languished in the forced labour camps and colonies of the OGPU by 1933, and further millions were in prisons, deportation camps, and compulsory resettlement areas." - Robert Service, A History of Modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin (2005)