Five-Year Plans and Collectivisation » Why Stalin Wanted Rapid Industrialisation

Stalin's economic aims

By 1928 Stalin was winning the struggle to lead the USSR. He now set out to change the whole economy in a few years. This lesson explains what he wanted and why. How it was done comes in the next lessons.

In 1928 the USSR was still a land of peasants. About four out of every five people lived in the countryside, and many farmed small strips of land with wooden ploughs. Stalin's aims were to:

• turn the USSR from a farming country into a modern industrial power, and catch up with the West as fast as possible (in 1931 he said it must be done in ten years)
• put heavy industry first, because coal, steel, oil and electricity are what every other industry needs
• make the USSR self-sufficient, so that it did not depend on unfriendly countries for machines or weapons
• put the state in control of the whole economy, with central planning in place of private trade
• modernise farming, so that fewer peasants could feed many more factory workers

Key terms:

• Industrialisation: changing a country from one based mainly on farming to one based mainly on factories, mines and power stations.
• Heavy industry: the industries that produce coal, iron, steel, oil and electricity, and the machinery made from them.
• Self-sufficient: able to make everything the country needs without buying it from abroad.
• NEPmen: the private traders who made money under the NEP by buying and selling goods.
• Capitalist: describes a country or system where businesses are privately owned and run for profit, such as Britain or the USA.

Reason one: the failings of the NEP

Remember, the NEP let peasants sell their spare grain and allowed small private businesses. It had helped the country to recover from years of war. By about 1926-27, industry was back to roughly the level of 1913, the last year of peace before the First World War. But by 1928 many Communists, Stalin now among them, believed that the NEP could take the USSR no further.

• Growth was too slow. Getting back to 1913 mostly meant repairing old factories and starting them up again. Further growth needed new factories, mines and power stations, and the NEP did not provide the huge sums these would cost. The USSR still produced far less coal and steel than the USA, Britain or Germany.
• It could not guarantee food for the towns. Under the NEP the state had to buy grain from millions of peasants, who could choose to hold it back. In the winter of 1927-28 they did exactly that. Stalin decided that the workers in the towns could not be left to depend on the peasants.
• It looked like capitalism. NEPmen and richer peasants made profits while more than a million people in the towns had no job. Many party members asked what the revolution had been for.
• It could not pay for industry. New industry needed foreign machinery. The main way to pay for this was to sell grain abroad, and the small farms of the NEP produced too little to spare.

Reason two: fear of invasion

The Communists believed that the capitalist countries wanted to destroy the world's only communist state. They had some evidence. During the Russian Civil War (1918-20), Britain, France, the USA and Japan had all sent troops to help the Communists' enemies.

In 1927 there was a war scare. In April, Chinese Communists were massacred by their former allies in Shanghai. In May, Britain broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR. In June, the Soviet ambassador to Poland was shot dead in Warsaw. No attack came, but many Soviet leaders were convinced that war was only a matter of time.

A modern war is won with tanks, aircraft, guns and shells, and these need steel, oil and engineering factories. A farming country could not make enough of them. This is why Stalin wanted speed. He summed up his thinking in a speech to factory managers in February 1931:

'We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under.'

Reasons three and four: socialism and Stalin's power

These reasons were linked. A strong industrial base was needed for defence, for socialism and for Stalin's own position all at once. That is why he was ready to push for it at almost any cost. His very name fitted the plan: 'Stalin' was a name he had chosen for himself, and it means 'man of steel'.

Exam-style question

Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)

By 1928 the Soviet Union was a giant with feet of clay. Its factories were worn out and its peasants still scratched at the soil with wooden ploughs. Britain, France and Germany each made far more steel, and none of them was a friend of communism. The NEP offered only a crawl towards modern industry, which would take decades the country did not have. Stalin saw that a backward country surrounded by enemies was simply waiting to be crushed. Rapid industrialisation was a matter of survival.

(a) What impression does the author give about Stalin's reasons for rapid industrialisation?

You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]