Economic,+social+and+religious+policies+under+Stalin

Stalin’s primary economic aim was the modernization of the USSR into an industrial power equal to the major Western nations. Stalin began his economic reforms with the introduction of collectivization and the centrally-planned economy. In the late 1920’s, the previous New Economic Policy of Lenin’s was replaced by Stalin’s three Five-Year Plans. With these plans Stalin hoped to achieve massive rates of industrial growth. Worker wages in 1933 were one tenth of what they were in 1926. Display boards were put up in every factory to keep track of individual output, with severe punishment, ranging from public humiliation to execution, for those who failed to reach the required amount, thus putting great pressure on the workers to perform well. The second important aspect of Stalin’s economic reforms was collectivization. Collectivization consisted of grouping separate farms together into collectives so that the resources of the peasants would be directed to the benefit of the community and government, for industrial as well as communist motives. However this was met with fierce opposition from many of the peasants who chose to destroy their crops and killed their livestock rather than submit them to the collectivity. Most of the kulaks, the rich class of peasants, whom Stalin ordered to hand over their land and property to the government, also resisted the economic policies, and were consequently sent to labor camps or executed. During his rule Stalin repressed the Russian Orthodox Church. Throughout the 1930’s the Church received continuous persecution. Over 100,000 priests, monks, and nuns were killed, and many churches were leveled. Socially, Soviet citizens enjoyed a unique level of prosperity under Stalin’s rule. Girls received good, adequate educations, and women gained equal rights of employment. Advances in health care made possible the first generation free from the fear of typhus, cholera, and malaria. The women of the USSR under Stalin were also the first to be able to give birth in a hospital, with access to prenatal care. The mass literacy campaigns of the 1930’s also led to the first near-universally literate generation. Other ethnic groups however were not so fortunate. During 1941-1949, Stalin ordered a series of mass deportations, which sent nearly 3.3 million to Siberia and Central Asian Republics. Hundreds of thousands died either en route or of hunger and the bad conditions of the labor camps. Among the ethnic groups affected were Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Greeks, Bulgarians and Jews.
 * Economic Policies**
 * Religious Policies**
 * Social Services and Policies**

user:jeffzhao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin Thanks for this Jeff. Please include links (or citations) for your sources. I think visually, clearer subtitles would help. Could we split this page into Economic, Social and Religious policies and split the content up that way? user:jennpratt

Economic Policy: Collectivization
Stalin's regime moved to force [|collectivization] of agriculture. This was **intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient**. Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and [|alienation] from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry. In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and agricultural production by 50%, but these estimates were not met. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on [|kulaks] (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. (However, kulaks made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "kulaks" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence from the [|OGPU] and the Komsomol. These peasants were about 60% of the population). Those officially defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers," and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into [|Gulag] [|labor camps], or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge. Archival data indicates that 20,201 people were executed during 1930, the year of [|Dekulakization].

Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between five and ten million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths. Most modern scholars agree that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the [|Soviet Union] under [|Stalin], rather than by natural reasons. According to [|Alan Bullock], "the total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 … it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants." Stalin refused to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to export grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had hidden grain away, and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in response. Other historians hold it was largely the insufficient harvests of 1931 and 1932 caused by a variety of natural disasters that resulted in famine, with the successful harvest of 1933 ending the famine. Soviet and other historians have argued that the rapid collectivization of agriculture was necessary in order to achieve an equally rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union and ultimately win World War II. This is disputed by other historians; [|Alec Nove] claims that the Soviet Union industrialized in spite of, rather than because of, its collectivized agriculture. The USSR also experienced a major [|famine] in 1946–48 due to Soviet economic policy and the Soviet entitlement system that cost an estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives as well as secondary population losses due to reduced fertility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin user:LAURA92

This section has some useful historiography, Laura. Can you take the text apart and maybe comment more on what the historians disagree about? user:jennpratt