Stalin’s Five Year Plan

Summary:

Stalin modernised industry by means of the 5-Year Plans.   He achieved fantastic successes, but at the most appalling human cost, and while industrial output soared, the production of consumer goods remained static.

Lesson Worksheet Snapshot:

There were two Five Year Plans:

• 1928–33
• 1932–1937

Reasons for the Five Year Plan
1. Many regions of the USSR were backward. Stalin said that to be backward was to be defeated and enslaved. ‘But if you are powerful, people must beware of you’
2. Stalin believed that the USSR should ‘overtake and outstrip the capitalist countries’. He believed that if the USSR could become strong enough to survive, then it would take over the rest of the world.
3. He believed Germany would invade. In 1931, he prophesied: ‘We make good the difference in 10 years or they crush us’.
4. The 5-year plans were very useful propaganda – for Communism and for Stalin.

How was the Five Year Plan Achieved
1. Plans were drawn up by GOSPLAN (the state planning organisation).
2. Targets were set for every industry, each region, each mine and factory, each foreman and even every worker.
3. Foreign experts & engineers were called in
4. Workers were bombarded with propaganda, posters, slogans and radio broadcasts.
5. Workers were fined if they did not meet their targets.
6. Alexei Stakhanov (who cut an amazing 102 tons of coal in one shift) was held up as an example. Good workers could become ‘Stakhanovites’ and win a medal.
7. After the First 5-year plan revealed a shortage of workers women were attracted by new crèches and day-care centres so that mothers could work.
8. For big engineering projects such as dams or canals, slave labour (such as political opponents, kulaks or Jews) was used.
9. There was a concentration on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods or good housing.
10. Stalin attacked the Muslim faith because he thought it was holding back industrialisation.

Worksheet Lesson Plan:

• Aimed at Students studying across UK Year 7,8 & 9 or equivalent
• Premium resource
• Use as you wish in the classroom or home environment
• Lesson plan on how Stalin modernised industry by means of the 5-Year Plans.
• Contains questions throughout the study worksheet.