After taking control, Stalin aimed to transform the Soviet Union by implementing five-year plans focused on collectivization and rapid industrialization, which included merging individual farms into state-owned kolkhozes. This push faced resistance from wealthy farmers, leading to a significant decline in grain production and resulting in a great famine from 1932-1933. Despite the immediate negative impact on agriculture, industrialization led to the establishment of new factories and an increased workforce for urban industrial jobs.

3.  What did Stalin do after he took control?
 What was Stalin’s Soviet Union like?

5.  Lack of food
 Lack of industry (i.e. backward farming country)
 Isolated by the rest of the world because of its
Communist government

6. An extract from an official Soviet document in the
1920s
The revolution’s goal is to make men brothers. The
revolution wants to build big houses where the kitchen,
dining room, laundry and nursery would be built
according to the latest scientific methods and serve
all the residents of the house-commune, who would
live in comfortable, clean rooms with running water
and electricity.

8.  Five Year Plans
 Nationwide policy to rapidly develop the USSR
 Set ambitious targets

9. Collectivisation
&
Rapid industrialisation

10.  Collectivisation

11.  Collectivisation
 Merger of small farms owned by individuals
INTO
 A single large farm owned by the state (called a
kolkhoz)
 Collectivised farms owned by the State
 State provided machinery (e.g. tractors) for farming
 State set high targets for crops produced
 Working hours & wages were also fixed by the state
 Harsh punishments were given out to those who were
absent or could not meet targets

12. Impact?
 Wealthy farmers (called kulaks) strongly opposed
collectivisation
 Many of them preferred to burn their crops and kill
their animals rather than hand them over
 Grain harvest fell significantly  Great Famine
(1932-3) where millions of peasants died
however…
 Increased manpower for industrialisation as
peasants moved to the cities

13.  Rapid industrialisation

14. Rapid industrialisation
 Create factories and jobs in the cities
 Wanted to mechanise farming
 Production of farming equipment like tractors
 Hoped that fewer people would be needed to farm
 More people would be available to work in factories

15. Rapid industrialisation
 Hundreds of new factories built
 Increase in workforce
 Emphasised the development of factories that produced
 Coal
 Iron
 Steel
 Electricity