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Unlock This CourseThe USSR won the war, but at a terrible cost. About 27 million Soviet people had died. Around 1,700 towns and 70,000 villages lay in ruins, and about 25 million people had no home. The Germans had wrecked some 32,000 factories as they retreated. Stalin's answer was the method he had used before the war: a Five-Year Plan.
Key terms:
The plan aimed to bring industry back to its pre-war level and then pass it. Heavy industry and defence came first. The strict labour laws of 1940 stayed in force, so workers still could not change jobs freely. Much of the labour was forced: gulag prisoners and about 2 million German prisoners of war cleared rubble and rebuilt mines and factories. The USSR also took reparations. Whole factories in eastern Germany were taken apart and sent east by train.
Industry recovered fast. Steel had dropped from about 18 million tonnes in 1940 to about 12 million in 1945. By 1950 it was about 27 million. Coal went from about 149 million tonnes in 1945 to about 261 million in 1950. The Dnieper Dam, blown up in the war, was making electricity again in 1947. Bread rationing ended in December 1947. On 29 August 1949 the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, so it could now match the USA.
Farming came last. After a drought in 1946 the state still took its grain quotas and even sold grain abroad. In the famine of 1946-47 between 1 and 1.5 million people died, mostly in Ukraine and Moldavia. The grain harvest was still below the 1940 level when Stalin died. Consumer goods such as clothes and shoes stayed scarce. Housing was rebuilt slowly, and years after the war many families still lived in ruins and cellars. When rationing ended in 1947, old banknotes were swapped at ten for one new one, which wiped out many people's cash savings.
So the plan worked best for the state and worst for the people. By 1950 the USSR was the world's second industrial power. But the people who had won the war were still tired, hungry and badly housed. Many had hoped that victory would bring an easier life. Instead, in September 1946 the state took back land that peasants had added to their private plots during the war.
Stalin had never been more popular than in 1945. There were three main reasons.
Stalin got the credit for winning the war. In June 1945 he became Generalissimo. At the Victory Parade in Red Square on 24 June 1945, captured German flags were thrown down in front of him at Lenin's Mausoleum.
Propaganda made the most of this. Films such as The Fall of Berlin (1950) showed Stalin planning every victory by himself. For his seventieth birthday in December 1949 a giant portrait of him, lit by searchlights, hung in the sky over Moscow.
People were proud of what their country had become. The USSR had beaten Germany, controlled eastern Europe and, from 1949, had the atomic bomb. Stalin was the face of that strength.
How real was this popularity? Much of it was real: when Stalin died in March 1953, huge crowds wept in the streets. But nobody was free to say anything else, and Stalin made sure there were no rival heroes. In 1946 Marshal Zhukov, the best-known general of the war, was removed from his post and sent to a minor command in Odessa.
Victory did not make Stalin less suspicious. He feared that the war had loosened his control. Millions of soldiers had seen that life in the West was richer than they had been told. The Cold War with the USA was beginning, so contact with foreigners looked like spying. And as he grew older he trusted the men around him less and less.
These purges were smaller and more secret than the Great Terror. There were no great public show trials in Moscow. But the fear was the same, and the gulags held about 2.5 million prisoners in the early 1950s, more than ever before.
Don't say that the Fourth Five-Year Plan failed: for heavy industry it was a clear success. Equally, don't say that life got better quickly, because farming, housing and consumer goods lagged far behind. Don't write that the Doctors' Plot was a real plot, or that the doctors were executed.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
The Fourth Five-Year Plan was an astonishing achievement. A country that had lost some 27 million people and seen 1,700 of its towns laid waste rebuilt its industry in barely five years. Flooded mines were pumped dry, the mighty Dnieper Dam was producing power again by 1947, and by 1950 steel and coal output had soared far above pre-war levels. Few war-torn nations have ever recovered so quickly, and the Soviet people did it largely with their own hands.
(a) What impression does the author give about the Fourth Five-Year Plan? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the Fourth Five-Year Plan was a remarkable success. This is shown by the admiring language. The plan is called 'an astonishing achievement', the dam is 'mighty' and output 'soared', words that make the recovery sound heroic. The author also stresses the size of the task, with '27 million' dead and towns 'laid waste', so that rebuilding in 'barely five years' seems even more impressive. The impression also comes from what the author has chosen to include. Every example is from heavy industry: mines, the dam, steel and coal. Nothing is said about the famine of 1946-47, the shortage of housing or the use of forced labour. By leaving out the failures and praising the Soviet people's 'own hands', the author makes the plan look like a complete triumph.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations, and explains how the author's choice of words and of what to include and leave out creates it.
In an impression question, hunt for what is missing as well as what is there. Here the extract talks only about industry, so say that the author ignores farming, housing and forced labour. Keep quotations short and never just copy out the extract.