Stalin’s five year plan was launched and approved by the Communist party in 1928. Visualizing a “revolution from above”, Stalin’s goal was the swift industrialization and collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union. Stalin believed that the Soviet domestic policy should stop being driven by capitalism and the New Economic Policy as soon as possible. In return, the Soviet Union would be transformed into an industrialized socialist state regardless of the cost involved in the process.
The five year plan called for swift industrialization of the economy, with an emphasis on heavy industry. Stalin wanted to achieve a 250 percent increase in total industrial development and a 330 percent expansion in heavy industry. To that end, he had ordered for the development of new industrial centres especially in the Ural Mountains, and for thousands of new plants to be built throughout the Soviet Union. However, these goals were unrealistic. In the Communist regimes, production and distribution were determined by specific state orders, specific quantities of raw materials and services, and specific distribution channels for the final outputs. Moreover, the work force was fully employed, wages were arbitrarily predetermined, and industry and services were state-owned. With his insistence on his unrealistic production targets, Stalin created serious problems. With the maximum share of investment put into heavy industry, huge surpluses of undistributed goods and huge shortages of products occurred.
The five year plan also called for collectivization of the Soviet agriculture under the conviction that collectivization would progress agricultural productivity and would produce sufficient grain reserves to feed the increasing urban labor force. The Communist regime invested heavily in the transformation of individual farms into a system of large collective farms aiming to cover industrialization expense with the expected surplus produced. Moreover, collectivization was believed to free small farmers and tenants for industrial work in the urban areas enabling the Communist regime to enlarge its political dominance over the remaining peasantry.
All these radical transformations caused the hostile reactions of the wealthier peasants, or kulaks. To anticipate their opposition, Stalin ordered the deportation of approximately five million people, while the rest were forced into collectivization. However, in 1932-33, the turbulent conditions led to the catastrophic disruption of agricultural productivity which consequently resulted in a catastrophic famine.
By 1940, the five year plan had collectivized almost ninety-seven percent of all peasant households, although the initial objective was the collectivization of twenty percent of small farmers and tenants households. In the aftermath, forced collectivization assisted Stalin’s vision of swift industrialization, but the human costs were immeasurable.
