Stalin's Policies 1928-1941 (1 Viewer)

[Rory]

I'm doing an essay on the 'reasons' for Stalin's policies in 1928 to 1941 but the notes I've been given are a bit hazy on what they consider his 'policies' within that time frame to be.

With research on the net etc, the only policies I can think up are:

Industrialisation
Collectivisation
The first 5-year plan
The second 5-year plan
and
The third 5-year plan

Are these the only ones? If you can point out some of his policies that I might've missed, it would be muchly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[clerisy]

It's pretty vague, "policies", isn't it??? I can understand your trouble... the economic policies you've mentioned would be the most straightforward and clear. Otherwise, I suppose you could also talk about his social and cultural policies eg towards religion and art and maybe foreign policy, concerning his relations with the capitalist powers and more significantly, Hitler pre-GPW.

Just on the side, though, what are the "reasons" you're using for the economic policies??? I don't know if I could churn out an entire essay myself on only the motives....

 

[Ziff]

Think about it as:
"Why did Stalin want to modernise the USSR?"

One of the HSC questions in previous years was about how Stalin's policies from 1928 onwards provided the USSR with victory during The Great Patriotic War. That should also provide bit of a hint at it.

The purges of the late 1930s were also part of his policies.

 

[Rory]

Clerisy - It is a bit of a bitch to write, especially when it has to be four pages worth *hits head on desk*. I think I'll throw in a bit of info about his policies with religion and education though..I think overall a lot of his efforts were to strengthen the USSR against future threats (eg. Hitler) which is why he pushed for the weaponry development a bit further..the education ended up being helpful when in future the soldiers understood all the mechanics better.

The only other reason I can really pinpoint for the whole reasoning behind *anything* Stalin did, was for power. He wanted the USSR to be all big and mighty powerful against other countries and he wanted to be recognised as the leader.

 

[Ziff]

I haven't started much on Stalin yet but does it also have anything to do with "socialism in one country"?

 

[Rory]

^ Yep I mentioned that in the essay draft already, pretty much just said that another reason for Stalin's pursuit of economic change in Russia was to support his ideology of socialism in one country as it was believed by Marxist theory that socialism can only be fully introduced in countries with large scaled industries since the proletariat were main supporters of socialism, so the bigger the industry, the more proletariat, so more supporters for Stalin and it's another step towards acheiving socialism..if that makes sense lol.

 

[clerisy]

Glorious! Thankyou!

I'm horrible at the entire Stalinist era...