The implementation of Stalinist industrialisation, between 1928 and 1941, transformed the Soviet economy into a modern economic powerhouse, enabling victory over Nazi Germany[1] and contributed to the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower in the ensuant Cold War.[2] Notwithstanding, this paper argues that any objective industrial successes are marred, and therefore limited, by the malevolence and inefficacy of Stalin’s agricultural policy. In essence, the extent to which Stalin’s policy of industrialization can be considered a success is severely constrained by the failures of collectivisation and dekulakisation, and the subsequent famine of 1932-33.
Firstly, this paper will provide an economic assessment of Stalinist industrialisation [3], vis-a-vis its contextual motivations, to demonstrate the objective successes of industrialisation—that of transforming Soviet Russia from an agrarian to an industrial economy—through quantitative analysis of economic data. However, an evaluation of the human cost and inefficacy of Stalin’s agricultural policy will evidence the limitations to the extent to which Stalinist industrialisation can be considered a success. In doing so, the argument that any successes of Soviet industrialisation are inhibited by the impotence and malice of collectivisation and the resultant famine is evinced.
In 1928, Stalin broke away from Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) with the ‘Great Turn’, to both transform, modernise, and industrialise the Soviet economy, and to consolidate his power within the Politburo against that of Nikolai Bukharin and the ‘Right’ Bolsheviks.[4] Stalin viewed his industrialisation policy as a “decisive advance” in “leaving behind Russian [socioeconomic] backwardness”.[5] Pertinently, Stalin’s notion of ‘socialism in one country’ assumed the possibility of war within a capitalist world to be exponentially high (to the point of inevitability), and thus great emphasis was placed on the need to develop military industry in preparation for such conflict.[6] In essence, Soviet Russia was ill-equipped to defend itself so long as it operated an agrarian, ‘backwards’ economy.
The resolution of Stalin’s first five-year plan, approved by the 15th Congress of the Bolsheviks in 1927, best surmises this fundamental motivation of industrialisation:
“In view of a possible military attack by capitalist states against the proletarian state, the Five-Year Plan should devote maximum attention to the fastest possible development of those sectors of the economy...which play the main role in securing the country’s defence and in providing economic stability in war time”.[7]
A quantitative analysis of the Soviet economy between 1928 and 1941, vis-a-vis the economic objective of Stalinist industrialisation, is now requisite to demonstrate its overarching success. This paper holds the urbanisation of the Soviet population, the increase in non-agricultural employment, and the increase in industrial production and investment, to be key indicators of the successfulness of Stalinist industrialisation.
As argued by Wheatcroft et al., “the pace of Soviet industrialisation was strikingly reflected in the rate of urbanisation”.[8] The urban population in the Soviet Union increased from an estimated 26.3 million to 55.9 million between 1926 and 1939, according to demographer Frank Lorimer, an increase from 17.9 to 32.8 percent of the total population.[9]The effects of industrialisation and urbanisation can also be evidenced through Soviet employment rates between 1926 and 1939. In 1926, total non-agricultural employment was 11.6 million, 6.4 million of which was in industry, construction, and infrastructure.[10] By 1939, over 39.3 million were in non-agricultural employment, an increase of 239 percent in just thirteen years, with 23.7 million employed in industry, construction, and infrastructure.[11]
Simultaneously, agricultural employment rapidly decreased. In 1926, total Soviet agricultural employment stood at 71.7 million; by 1939, this figure had declined to 47.7 million.[12] On the surface, this alone does not demonstrate the transformation of Soviet Russia from an agrarian to an industrial society – by 1939, agriculture remained the most employed sector by some 8.4 million. However, the very essence of such agricultural employment had been dramatically centralised and industrialised through collectivisation. Wheatcroft et al. posit that “the nature of agricultural employment was transformed with the replacement of 20 million individual peasant family households by primarily collective employment on 4,000 [sovkhozes] and over 200,000 [kolkhozes]”. Collective farming benefited substantially from new farm machinery, such as tractors[13], consequential of the increased industrial investment and output enjoyed during Stalin’s initial five-year plans.[14]
The expeditious increase of the industrial labour force was assisted by an “astonishing expansion in industrial investment”[15], and thus output. Gross investment increased from 8.4 percent of gross national product (GNP) in 1928 to 21.1 percent in 1937.[16] Such an increase in industrial investment, as a proportion of GNP, was greater than that of the United States and other industrialised nations.[17] The increase in investment translated into impressive growth of capital stock. Western estimates in 1941 identified that the ”net fixed capital stock in [non-agricultural] sectors had reached 653 percent” of the 1928 level.[18] Rises in capital stock enabled fixed production capital to rise 411 percent between 1928 and 1935.[19]
Increased industrial investment, output, and capital stock resulted not only in pronounced real GNP growth but also facilitated a significant absorption of resources for military proliferation in preparation for war.[20] For example, armaments employment in 1930 had doubled compared to 1913[21]; by 1932, this figure was fourfold the 1913 level.[22] Investment in the armaments industry by 1931 was 113 percent higher than in 1930.[23] Most tellingly, national economy allocations to armaments increased from 76 million rubles in 1928 to 803 million rubles in 1933.[24] Such a drastic increase in available funds to allocate to armaments and defence preparation demonstrates the successfulness of industrialisation in fulfilling the need to develop those sectors which ”play the main role in securing the country’s defence”.[25]
Quantitatively, the objective success of industrialisation in dramatically increasing industrial investment, output, and the urbanisation of the Soviet labour force, to transform away from an agrarian economy and militarise, has been evidenced. However, as an analysis of Stalin’s agricultural policy between 1928 and 1941 will evince, the notion that Stalinist industrialisation was “an enormous achievement”[26] is marred by waste, inefficacy, and malicious repression.
Whilst industrial developments provided successes for Stalin, agriculture “was dominated by crisis and disaster”.[27] During industrialisation, total agricultural production declined significantly, as did the standard of living for the Soviet peasantry. The effects of collectivisation [28] and dekulakisation best evidence the limitations to the extent in which Stalinist industrialisation can be considered a success. Collectivisation commenced in 1929, following Stalin’s ‘Great Turn’ speech, and is argued to be “overwhelmingly...erratic”.[29] For Stalin, collectivisation was deemed essential to confiscate the “agricultural surplus to subsidise industrialisation” and urbanise the labour force.[30] The Soviet elite forced the peasantry, through ’price scissors‘, to sell its agricultural output to the state at below-market prices, so that the state was then able to sell the grain to industrial workers at higher prices and to export grain to fund imports of industrial capital.
However, such exacted state procurement of grain precipitated an “unmitigated economic disaster”[31], having the unintended consequence of destroying the agricultural surplus and declining agricultural output. Alec Nove argues that the policy of collectivisation 'demoralised the peasantry and rendered collective farming inefficient’.[32] Such an assessment is corroborated by the key factors that negatively affected agricultural production, identified by Cheremukhin et al.
Firstly, the ”state extraction of grain” impeded agricultural production twofold[33] – by demoralising the peasantry, collective farming engendered a dramatic fall in livestock due to a lack of grain fodder. Moshe Lewin identifies this demoralisation is, in part, attributable to the decreased living standards experienced by the peasants, who no longer possessed autonomy on their farms but rather inhabited zemlianki – makeshift huts dug into the ground.[34][i]Ultimately, the dekulakisation campaign of 1929-1933 saw over 5 million peasants exiled or executed,[35] in Stalin’s malevolent attempt to demoralise the peasantry to the point of being incapable of resisting collectivisation.
Demoralising the peasantry and requisitioning grain led to a significant decline in levels of technical ability, livestock levels, and agricultural output, for the kulaks represented the most successful and productive of the peasantry. For example, in 1931, agricultural production was 27 percent lower than the peak of 1928, and 18 percent below the prerevolutionary average.[36] Furthermore, much livestock was slaughtered by peasants upon joining the kolkhoz and decreased levels of grain due to requisitioning produced fodder shortages.[37] Thus, in 1933 there were 33 percent less sheep, 50 percent less horses, and 54 percent less cattle than in 1928.[38] As such, over a quarter of all Soviet agricultural capital was destroyed by ineffective agricultural policies.[39] This serves to evidence the inefficacy, futility, and ignorance of Stalinist agricultural policy.
The fundamental limitation to the success of Stalinist industrialisation is the famine of 1932-33[40] – a direct consequence of collectivisation and dekulakisation. The famine killed an estimated seven million people.[41]Historians have argued that Stalin ”was certainly more concerned with the fate of industrialisation than the lives of the peasantry” to the point of believing the famine was self-inflicted by the peasants.[42] The inverse is true. Forced collectivisation and dekulakisation severely disrupted agricultural productivity, as aforementioned, laying the foundations for the famine to emerge. However, the state’s subsequent grain requisition[43], coupled with grain exports to fund industrialisation, intentionally exacerbated the famine. Ellman argues that the 1.8 million tonnes of grain exported between 1932-33 would have been enough to sustain over 5 million people for one year.[44]
Moreover, Stalin’s dekulakisation waged war on the autonomous peasantry, who he held to be either ’class enemies’, ’idlers’, or ’thieves’.[45] In February 1933, Stalin, echoing Lenin, declared ”he who does not work, neither shall he eat”.[46] In essence, those peasants not farming collectively were anti-Soviet and, thus, needed eradicating.[47] Ellman holds this notion of ’starvation as policy’ to remove anti-Soviet elements, implicitly or otherwise, to be the official Soviet position during the famine.
There is historiographical consensus that when Stalin conceptualised collectivisation, the policy did not include an intent to exact a starvation policy on the peasantry to remove anti-Soviet elements.[48] Intentional or not, Stalin‘s exaction of a ’starvation policy’ during the famine to eliminate anti-Soviet elements and continue with the industrialisation drive, evinces his malevolence, greatly limiting the aforementioned successes of industrialisation.
Under dekulakisation, over 1.8 million peasants were deported between 1929-1933 to Kazakhstan and West Siberia.[49] The cost of such deportations was estimated to be 1.4 billion rubles.[50] Thus, starvation became the most attractive alternative to deportation. Stalin’s rejection of foreign support[51], coupled with the exacerbatory acts of requisitioning and exporting grain to lessen the impact of the famine, evinces his malevolent commitment to a ’starvation policy’ to enforce dekulakisation. As Ellman identified, the famine could have been mitigated and thus its existence constitutes a major failure of Stalinist industrialisation.[52]
In conclusion, Stalinist industrialisation has been demonstrated to be objectively successful in rapidly transitioning Soviet Russia into an industrial economy, enabling rearmament, as intended by the resolution of the 15th Bolshevik Congress in 1927. Through urbanisation and industrial investment, productivity and output rapidly increased throughout the Soviet Union, allowing for the reallocation of resources into the defence industry. However, the disastrous human impact of collectivisation and dekulakisation demonstrates the calculated malice of Stalin to repress the peasantry, at the expense of agricultural productivity, which served to exacerbate the famine of 1932-33. Therefore, the extent to which Stalin’s policy of industrialisation can be considered a success is limited.
Will Kingston-Cox is currently in his 3rd year of a BA in History and Politics at Warwick University.
Notes: [1] Anton Cheremukhin, Mihail Golosov, Sergei Guriev, and Aleh Tsyvinski, ‘Was Stalin Necessary for Russia’s Economic Development’, NBER Working Paper 19425, National Bureau of Economic Research (2013), p. 1 [2] S.G. Wheatcroft, R.W. Davies, and J.M. Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialization Reconsidered: Some Preliminary Conclusions about Economic Development between 1926 and 1941’, The Economic History Review, 39(2) (May 1986), p. 264 [3] 1928-1941; Stalin’s initial five-year plans (1. 1928-1932; 2. 1932-37; 3. 1938-41) [4] Cheremukhin, Golosov, Guriev, and Tsyvinski, ‘Was Stalin Necessary', p. 9 [5] Ibid., p. 26 [6] Michael Ellman, ‘Review: Soviet Industrialization: A Remarkable Success?”, [Review of: Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution by Robert C. Allen], Slavic Review, 63(4) (2004), p. 841 [7] Pyatnadtsatyi s’’ezd VKP(b): Stenograficheskii otchet vol. 2 Moscow: Gos. Izd-vo politicheskoi litry, (1962): 1442, in Michael Ellman, ‘Russia as a great power: From 1815 to the present day Part 1’, Journal of Institutional Economics (2022), p. 13 [8] S.G. Wheatcroft, R.W. Davies, and J.M. Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered: Some Preliminary Conclusions about Economic Development between 1926 and 1941’, The Economic History Review, 39(2) (May 1986), p. 273 [9] Lorimer, Frank, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects (Geneva, 1946), p. 147 cited in Wheatcroft, Davies and Cooper, 'Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 273 [10] Vsesoyuznaya perepis' naseleniya 1926 goda, vol. xxxiv (Moscow, 1930), pp. 120-42, and Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya SSSR 1959g., svodnyi tom (Moscow, 1962), p. 110, cited in Wheatcroft, Davies and Cooper, 'Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 273 [11] Vsesoyuznaya perepis' naseleniya 1926 goda, vol. xxxiv (Moscow, 1930), pp. 120- 42, and Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya SSSR 1959g., svodnyi tom (Moscow, 1962), p. 110, in Ibid. p. 273 [12] Vsesoyuznaya perepis' naseleniya 1926 goda, vol. xxxiv (Moscow, 1930), pp. 120- 42, and Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya SSSR 1959g., svodnyi tom (Moscow, 1962), p. 110, in Ibid. p. 273 [13] Alexander Vucinich, ’The Kolkhoz: Its Social Structure and Development’, The American Slavic and East European Review, 8(1), (1949), p. 11 [14] 1928-1941; Stalin’s initial five-year plans (1. 1928-1932; 2. 1932-37; 3. 1938-41) [15] Lewis Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, ’Making the Command Economy: Western Historians on Soviet Industrialization’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 43 (1993), p. 68 [16] Richard Moorsteen and Raymond Powell, The Soviet Capital Stock, 1928-1962 (Homewood: Illinois, 1966), p. 364 cited in Wheatcroft, Davies, and Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 274 [17] Moorsteen and Powell, The Soviet Capital Stock, p. 182 and pp. 339-340, in Wheatcroft, Davies, and Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 274 [18] Moorsteen and Powell, The Soviet Capital Stock, pp. 348-349, in Wheatcroft, Davies, and Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 276 [19] Estimated from Vsesoyuznaya perepis' naseleniya 1926 goda, vol. xxxiv (Moscow, 1930), pp. 120- 42, and Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya SSSR 1959g., svodnyi tom (Moscow, 1962), p. 110 cited in Wheatcroft, Davies, and Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 273 [20] Cheremukhin, Golosoy, Guriev and Tsyvinski, ‘Was Stalin Necessary’, p. 19 [21] R.W. Davies, ’Soviet Military Expenditure and the Armaments Industry, 1929-33: A Reconsideration’, Europe-Asia Studies, 45(4) (1993), p. 590 [22] Ibid. [23] Ibid., p. 584 [24] Ibid., p. 582 [25] See Footnote 10 [26] See doztizhenie in Lewis Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, ’Making the Command Economy: Western Historians on Soviet Industrialisation’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 43, (1993), p. 65 [27] Wheatcroft, Davies, and Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 280 [28] Here, the policy of ’price scissors’ best demonstrates the futility of collectivisation [29] Cheremukhin, Golosoy, Guriev and Tsyvinski, ‘Was Stalin Necessary’, p. 26 [30] Ibid., p. 9 [31] James R. Millar, ’Mass Collectivisation and the Contribution of Soviet Agriculture to the First Five-Year Plan: A Review Article, Slavic Review, 33(4), (1974), p. 764 [32] Alec Nove, An Economic History of USSR 1917-1991, 3rd Ed. (Penguin: New York, 1992), p. 176 in Cheremukhin, Golosoy, Guriev and Tsyvinski, ‘Was Stalin Necessary’, p. 27 [33] Cheremukhin, Golosoy, Guriev and Tsyvinski, ‘Was Stalin Necessary’, p. 26 [34] Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: New Press, 1985), p. 257 in Siegelbaum and Suny, ’Making the Command Economy', p. 68 [35] Nicolas Werth, ’Dekulakisation as mass violence’, Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network, (2011) https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/dekulakisation-mass-violence.html (last accessed 25th March 2023) [36] Wheatcroft, Davies, and Cooper, ‘Soviet Industrialisation Reconsidered', p. 284 [37] Ibid. [38] Ibid. [39] Ibid. [40] Whilst there is intense scholarly debate as to whether the famine of 1932-33 (Holodomor) constitutes a genocide on the Ukrainian people, this paper does not seek to pass judgement on this question – for the purposes of this paper, the human cost of the famine, consequential of Stalin’s policies, is assessed only [41] Andrei Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, and Nancy Qian, ’The Causes of Ukrainian Famine Mortality, 1932-33', NBER Working Paper 29089, (2021), p. 1 [42] R.W. Davies, and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ’Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33: A Reply to Ellman’, Europe-Asia Studies, 58(4), (2006), p. 628 cited in Michael Ellman, ’Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited’, Europe-Asia Studies, 59, (2007), p. 664. [43] R.W. Davies, and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 476. [44] Ellman, ’Stalin and the Soviet Famine', p. 679. [45] Hiroaki Kuromiya, ’The Soviet Famine of 1932-1933 Reconsidered’, Europe-Asia Studies, 60(4), (2008), p. 665. [46] Ellman, ’Stalin and the Soviet Famine', p. 665. [47] Ibid. [48] Ibid. [49] Werth, ’Dekulakisation as mass violence' [50] Ellman, ’Stalin and the Soviet Famine', p. 666 [51] Ibid., p. 673 [52] See footnote 44
[i] Albeit a minority of peasantry lived like this, the usage of zemlianki highlights a decrease in the peasantry's standard of living