Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 12 views

    Lecture 4 - The First Five-Year Plan and The Cultural Revolution

    Uploaded by

    estevesuarez3
    The First Five-Year Plan was implemented in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932 with the goals of rapidly industrializing and transforming the nation into a modern industrial power. It focused on developing heavy industry and infrastructure while de-emphasizing private businesses and consumer goods. Mass mobilization programs brought workers into the Communist party and higher education to further the cultural revolution. By 1932, many of the Plan's industrialization and employment goals had been achieved, though issues around labor productivity remained, and Stalin began emphasizing technical experts over mass worker participation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Lecture 4 - The First Five-Year Plan and The Cultural Revolution

    Uploaded by

    estevesuarez3
    12 views31 pages
    The First Five-Year Plan was implemented in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932 with the goals of rapidly industrializing and transforming the nation into a modern industrial power. It focused on developing heavy industry and infrastructure while de-emphasizing private businesses and consumer goods. Mass mobilization programs brought workers into the Communist party and higher education to further the cultural revolution. By 1932, many of the Plan's industrialization and employment goals had been achieved, though issues around labor productivity remained, and Stalin began emphasizing technical experts over mass worker participation.

    Original Title

    Lecture 4_The First Five-Year Plan and the Cultural Revolution

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The First Five-Year Plan was implemented in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932 with the goals of rapidly industrializing and transforming the nation into a modern industrial power. It focused on developing heavy industry and infrastructure while de-emphasizing private businesses and consumer goods. Mass mobilization programs brought workers into the Communist party and higher education to further the cultural revolution. By 1932, many of the Plan's industrialization and employment goals had been achieved, though issues around labor productivity remained, and Stalin began emphasizing technical experts over mass worker participation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    12 views31 pages

    Lecture 4 - The First Five-Year Plan and The Cultural Revolution

    Uploaded by

    estevesuarez3
    The First Five-Year Plan was implemented in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932 with the goals of rapidly industrializing and transforming the nation into a modern industrial power. It focused on developing heavy industry and infrastructure while de-emphasizing private businesses and consumer goods. Mass mobilization programs brought workers into the Communist party and higher education to further the cultural revolution. By 1932, many of the Plan's industrialization and employment goals had been achieved, though issues around labor productivity remained, and Stalin began emphasizing technical experts over mass worker participation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    You are on page 1of 31

    Revolution from Above:

    The First Five-Year Plan, 1928-1932

    Lecture 4
    Revisionist Histories of the First Five-Year Plan

    • Focuses on the
    Cultural Revolution
    • Cultural Revolution
    places focus on
    history from
    below
    • It was a period
    when Soviet
    workers rose up
    against bourgeois
    elites

    1974 1988
    The Soviet Worker
    In thousands 1928 1932 1937 1940
    Total 10,800 20,600 26,700 31,200
    employment
    (workers and
    employees)
    Workers only 6,800 14,500 17,200 20,000
    (total)
    Workers in 3,124 6,007 7,924 8,290
    industry
    Workers in 630 2,479 1,875 1,929
    construction
    Workers in 301 1,970 1,539 1,558
    sovkhozy and
    other state
    farms
    The population of the USSR was in 1927 147 million people. Numbers in thousands.
    M. Lewin, “Society, State, and Ideology during the First Five-Year Plan,” in Sheila
    Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana
    University Press, 1984), 60.
    Joseph Stalin
    General Secretary of
    the Communist Party
    of the Soviet Union
    from 1922-1953

    Consolidated power in
    1928
    The New Economic Policy, 1921-1928
    • The ‘commanding heights’ of the economy
    (large scale industry, banking, and foreign
    trade) were kept in the hands of the state
    during the NEP
    • Some private business were allowed to operate
    (particularly shops, restaurants and services)
    • Peasants were allowed to market their grain
    without central price controls
    Improving economy during the NEP
    Year State Investment in
    Industry
    1925/1926 1,003,000,000 rubles
    1926/1927 1,333,000,000 rubles
    1927/1928 1,679,000,000 rubles
    First Five-Year Plan
    launched October
    1928
    Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and
    Workers, 1928-1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
    1988), 12.
    The
    First Five-Year Plan
    October 1928 - September 1933.
    Ended early at the end of 1932.

    Called for 236% growth in


    gross industrial output and
    110% growth in labor productivity.
    The Soviet Approach to
    Industrialisation
    1. Economic self-sufficiency (that meant
    opening up new branches of the industrial
    economy)
    2. Focus on heavy industry rather than
    production of consumer goods
    3. Use of the latest technology and the
    construction of new, modern factories
    4. State planning and state ownership
    Magnitogorsk Steel Combine
    Dnepr Power Station

    Margaret Bourke-White, 1931


    Childhood in the Early Soviet Period

    In 1922 there were 6,603 children’s homes holding


    540,000 children. That year, there were an estimated
    7.5 million starving and dying children in Russia.
    The Cultural Revolution: From Class Conciliation to Class War

    Young Communist League (‘Komsomol’) members in 1930s in Asha.


    Working in timber industry.
    A shock worker in 1930.
    Policies of Cultural revolution, 1928-1931

    1) Repression of the old intelligentsia (‘bourgeois


    specialists’)
    2) Massive recruitment of workers and Communists
    to higher education (these promoted workers
    were called the ‘vydvizhentsy’)
    3) Universal, compulsory primary education
    introduced in 1930
    4) Establishment of proletarian hegemony in the
    cultural professions by groups of militant
    Communist intellectuals
    5) Enrolment of more workers into the Communist
    party
    1) The Shakhty Trial

    Defendants, prominent engineers, attacked as ‘bourgeois specialists’


    during the Shakhty Trial, 1928
    2) Affirmative Action program, 1928-1932

    • During the First Five-Year Plan period over 110,000


    Communists, equivalent to almost one in ten of all party
    members in 1928, entered higher educational institutions,
    and 40,000 former workers who were not communists did as
    well. Almost two thirds went to engineering schools.
    • About 150,000 so-called vydvizhentsy, or upwardly
    promoted workers, finished higher education degrees.
    • In 1931, 2/3 of all students were 23 years of age or older,
    and 16% were over 29.

    Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union,


    1921-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 187.
    A worker faculty (rabfak) in the 1920s.
    Total enrolments of students in higher education
    Year Number of students in Working class %
    Soviet Higher
    Education Institutes
    1927-1928 159,800 25.4%
    1928-1929 166,800 30.3%
    1929-1930 191,100 35.1%
    1930-1931 272,100 46.4%
    1931-1932 394,000 51.4%
    1932-1933 469,800 50.3%
    Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge
    University Press, 1979), 188.
    Numbers of Students Enrolled in Secondary Schools
    1926-1927 1931-1932 1933-1934 1938-1939
    Secondary 1, 059,078 2,813643 4,083,588 8,780,049
    school grades
    5-7

    Secondary 136,280 927 138,677 1,403,846


    schools grades
    8-10
    Total in 1,834,260 5,187,789 5,940,569 12,088,772
    secondary and
    tertiary
    education
    Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge
    University Press, 1979), 238
    3) 1930: Universal, compulsory primary
    education introduced
    • Between 1931 and 1933, 50,000 Komsomols were mobilized
    to teach in the schools, and by 1936, about a half of all
    primary teachers were Komsomol members.
    • Of 187,281 teachers in Russian primary schools in 1935,
    more than a third had only primary or incomplete secondary
    education..
    • Total numbers in grades 1-7 increased from 11 million in
    1927 to 21 million in 1932.
    • By 1931, 95% of 8-11 age group were in primary school.
    • Due to a lack of buildings, many schools had to transfer to a
    2 or 3 shift system
    Problems of Labor Productivity
    Shock Workers

    A shock worker in 1930.


    Joining the Party
    Year Party members
    1928 1,305,854
    1929 (Year of party purge – victory of Stalinist group) 1,535,362
    1930 (party purge continues) 1,677,910
    1931 2,212,225
    1932 3,117,250

    ‘The most important criterion of acceptance to the party is the


    worker’s active participation in the shock movement and
    socialist competition and his truly vanguard role in production’.

    Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932


    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 195; Rigby, Communist Party
    Membership in the USSR, 52.
    The End of Unemployment
    Year Number of Unemployed

    1929 1,741,000

    1930 1,316,000

    1931 236,000

    April 1931 18,000

    Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932


    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 201.
    1931: The Year of Stabilisation
    • End to wage levelling and introduction of
    piece rates
    • End of the continuous working week
    • The making of a working class, technical
    intelligentsia
    • Rehabilitation of bourgeois specialists
    • Cessation of massive promotion and
    mobilisation of workers into administration
    and university
    Production Achieved
    Product 1927/8 1937
    Pig iron 3.3 million tons 14.5 million tons
    Coal 35.4 metric tons 128 metric tons
    Electric power 5.1 billion kilowatt 36.2 billion
    house kilowatt hours

    Machine tools 2,098 units 36,120

    Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and


    Workers, 1928-1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
    1988), 287.
    Stalingrad tractor factory,
    1930.
    The Heroic Tractor Driver
    25,000 tractor
    drivers were
    trained in 1930.
    Stalin and famous
    collective farmers
    Angelina and
    Demchenko at the
    X Congress of the
    Young Communist
    League, 1936.
    The Soviet Worker
    In thousands 1928 1932 1937 1940
    Total 10,800 20,600 26,700 31,200
    employment
    (workers and
    employees)
    Workers only 6,800 14,500 17,200 20,000
    (total)
    Workers in 3,124 6,007 7,924 8,290
    industry
    Workers in 630 2,479 1,875 1,929
    construction
    Workers in 301 1,970 1,539 1,558
    sovkhozy and
    other state
    farms
    The population of the USSR was in 1927 147 million people.
    M. Lewin, “Society, State, and Ideology during the First Five-Year Plan,” in Sheila
    Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana
    University Press, 1984), 60.

    You might also like