I HOME I CHRONICLE I INTERACTIVE I SEARCH I---Themes: I Societies Main I South Africa I Russia I Japan I

Stalin pushed for the USSR to industrialise. Soon, the state planning agency drew up the Five Year Plan, which outlined production targets to be reached by 1933. New coal and iron complexes were opened throughout the USSR. To pay for these changes to industry, peasants were required to produce more grain for export as well as to feed the growing urban populations.

Stalin, who viewed land-owning peasants as a threat, introduced a radical policy called collectivisation to wipe out the land-owning class of peasants. From 1929, all agricultural land was merged into large government farms. By 1930, over 60 million people had been forced into these collective farms (kolkhoz). Those who resisted the change were arrested and there were soon shortages of livestock and farmers, leading to vast famines such as in Ukraine in 1932 when millions of people starved to death while grain exports were continued.

Lenin imprisoned moderates, conservative army officers and monarchists in prison camps called gulags where they were often executed. Intellectuals, writers and land-owning peasants overflowed the camps, even as more were built. Approximately 15 million deaths were estimated to have resulted from Stalin’s policies. Between 1934 and 1937, Stalin also purged the Communist Party, executing a third of all Soviet army officers in just two years.