Note date – 1927 – before the Five Year Plans began in 1928
Note dates – 1932 and
1937 – end of the First and Second Five Year Plans
Production in the Soviet Russia (millions of tons) *(targets of First and Second Five Year Plans in brackets)
1927
Coal Oil
Steel Electricity
Do the figures suggest that the First and Second Five Year Plans were successful?
35 12 4
5 (m. Kw)
Look at the difference between the figures in 1927 and 1932. Was the First Plan successful?
1932
64 (75)* 21 (22) 6 (10)
1937
128 (152) 29 (47) 18 (17)
36 (m. Kw)
Look at the difference between the figures in 1932 and 1937. Was the Second Plan successful?
How did collectivisation affect people’s lives?
Stalin also changed farming. In the late 1920s, Russian farming was not producing enough food. All of the land was taken over by the government (state) to increase mechanisation (the use of more machinery) and food supply. ● Great collective farms were formed and local villages co-operated in working the farms, under the control of the state.
Many of the peasants, including the kulaks (middle-class peasants), resisted the changes. ● Millions were killed or sent to labour camps (gulags) as Stalin planned to eliminate (wipe out) the kulaks or others who resisted.
● Millions more died due to famine, especially in the Ukraine, caused by the conflict between the peasants and the government.
● Millions of people were forced out of the countryside to live in the cities where industrial workers were needed.
But the collectives remained inefficient, and the Soviet Union could not produce enough food for its people.