Stalins Five-year plan essays

Stalin's Five-year plan essays Joseph Stalin, leader of Russia (1928-1953), created a Five-Year Plan that included methods and goals which were detrimental to Russian agriculture in 1928. Stalin wanted to transform individual farms into large collective farms because he saw that the government was losing money to private traders. This required that the majority of farmers would have to work and live together on large state-run farms. Through these farms Stalin hoped to increase agricultural productivity, to create grain reserves for Russia, and to free many peasants for industrial work in the cities. In order to begin collectivization Stalin had about 5 million wealthier peasants, or kulaks, deported and/or killed and their equipment and livestock sent to collective farms. Many of the remaining peasants were forced into collective farms to work where they faced disease, starvation, and death. The effects of Stalin's collectivization resulted in mass disruption of agricultural productivity and incalculable hu man losses. The decision to collectivize the farming sector had its origins in the grain crisis of 1928. Private traders offered better grain prices than the government did . "It was calculated that the prices of agricultural products in private trade, which in 1927-1928 exceeded the official prices by about 40 per cent, were almost double the official prices in the following year" . Due to the increase in private trade, the government began providing bread cards to workers only . Stalin realized a new system had to be devised in order to protect the governments' interests. One problem that was suppose to be solved through the Five-Year Plan was the methods of farming. Only two methods of farming were recognized in the Plan, the state farms and the co-operative farms. The state farm, also known as solkhozes, "contained the state-employed peasants, whose produce was directly destined for the State" . The co-operative farms, otherwise known as...