Soviet Union Under Stalin

1
Soviet Union Under Stalin

• Josiah, Anya, Travis, Nate, Amanda, John
• Block 4

2
Stalin's Five-Year Plan

• Stalin proposed the first of several "five-year
  plans" in 1928. 
• It was aimed at building heavy industry,
  improving transportation, and increasing farm
  output. 
• Government now controlled all economic activity.
• This led the Soviet Union into a command economy.

3
Command Economy

• The Soviet Union developed a command economy
  under Stalin.
•  
• In a command economy, government officials made
  all basic economic decisions.
•  
• The government owned all businesses and
  distributed all resources.
•  
•  

4
Collectivization in Agriculture

• Stalin also brought agriculture under
  governmental control.
• He wanted all peasants to farm on either state
  owned farms or on collectives.
• The government wanted farmers to produce more
  grain to feed workers in the city.
• This also helped to sell grain abroad to earn
  more money.

5
Collectives

• Stalin thought that small farms farmed by
  peasants were inefficient and a threat to state
  power. 
• Stalin wanted all peasants to farm on either
  state-owned farms or collectives. 
• Collectives are  large farms owned and operated
  by peasants as a group.
• Government provided tractors, fertilizers, and
  better seeds. Peasants learned modern farming
  methods and they were allowed to keep their
  houses and personal belongings.

6
Collectives

• All of the animals and implements were turned to
  a collective. 
• The state set all of the prices and controlled
  access to farm supplies. 
• All the peasants were upset because they didn't
  want to sell their crops at low prices. 
• They burned their crops, killed their animals and
  destroyed their tools.

7
                          Kulaks

• Stalin believed that kulaks, or wealthy farmers,
  were behind the resistance by burning their
  crops, killing their animals and destroying their
  tools. 
• In 1929, Stalin liquidated the kulaks as a class.
  He did this by confiscating their land, sending
  them to labor camps where thousands were killed
  or died from being overworked. 
•  This made the peasants angry, so they grew just
  enough crops for themselves.
• In response, the government seized all the grain
  to meet industrial goals leaving the peasants to
  starve.
• Between that policy and the poor harvest of 1932,
  there was a bad famine named "Terror Famine". In
  the Ukraine, five to eight million people died.

8
Gulags

• Stalin used terror as a weapon against his own
  people by violating their rights, opening private
  letters, planting listening devices, having no
  free press, and no safe way of protesting. 
• Grumblers or critics of Stalin were rounded up
  and sent to the 
• Gulag, a system of brutal labor camps where many
  died.

9
                  The Great Purge

•  
• 1937-1938 mostly directed against ukraniaus the
  secret     police rounded up millions of people
  and either sent them to  sikeriau Prisons or the
  executed them. The entire Central  Committee and
  Politburo of the Ukraine were killed. Stanlin  
  wanted to get rid of any potential enemies from
  within the Communist Party. 
• Trials within the Communist Party. "Trials" and
  executions were carried out by the NkVD (secret
  Police) who had pratically unlimited power over
  innocent people's life  and death.

10
Comintern

• Was to encourage world-wide revolution. The
  comitern's support of revolutionary groups
  outside the soviet union and its propaganda
  against capitalism made western powers highly
  suspicious of the soviet union.

11
                      Propaganda

• Propaganda is the spreading of ideas to promote a
  cause or to damage an oposing cause.
• Stalin used propaganda as a tool to build up a
  "Cult of Personality" around his self.
• Billboards and Posters were one of the ways used
  to spread propaganda.

12
                      Censorship

•  

• Censorship is the control access to ideas and
  info. 
•  The government controlled what music was heard,
  what art was displayed, and what books could be
  published.

13
                   Socialist Realism

• Stalin required artists and writers to create
  their works in a style. 
•  The goal was to show Soviet life in a positive
  way and to promote hope in the communist future.
• Socialist Realism was thought to of followed in
  footsteps of the Russian great Tolstoy and
  Chekhov.

14
Russification

• Russification is making a nationality's culture
  more Russian. In 1936 there had been in 11 soviet
  social republics made up in the U.S.S.R.
• The Uzbek and Ukraine in SSR's they had there own
  languges.
• Also they encouraged the anatomy of these
  different cultures.
•  
• In 1920's Stalin he turned on his policy and
  tried to make it more russian.

15
Atheism

• Atheism was the belief that there was no god. The
  people had tried to strengthen the policy by
  destroying it. Many said it was the policy. The
  main church was the Russian Oxford Church where
  many of the priests had supported the tsars.
• At the trial 15 of the preist got charged for
  teaching the faith to the young. 
• Ideology was Stalins new type of religion. But
  still in small millions continued to worship in
  private and public places.

16
BENEFITS/DRAWBACKS

•  
•  the party required all children to attend free
  communist built schools 
• the state also provided medical care and daycare
  for children
•  
• inexpensive housing and public recreation

17
WOMEN

• Under the communist women won equality under law
  they gained access to education and a wide rang
  of jobs.
• By the late 1930 many soviet women where working
  in medicine and engineering.
• They worked in factories in construction and on
  collectives with in the family their wages were
  needed because men and women earned the same low
  salaries.