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How Successful Was Stalin’s Economic Policy? Stalin’s economic policy primarily consisted of two factors, collectivisation and the five year plans. The aim of collectivisation was to destroy private ownership that had been allowed whilst the NEP was in effect. The reason for this is that private ownership was a capitalist idea and therefore it went against Marx’s theory of communism. Another aim of collectivisation was to make the state a proletariate; this was needed because in order to reach the communism stage and make a Utopia in society the state should have been led by a proletariate government during the socialist stage.
In addition to this collectivisation was introduced because the state needed to acquire grain so it could be exported and used in the growing cities as food. Collectivisation was successful in a number of ways, one of which is that the targets that the government had set- so that there would be enough food to sell to other countries and to feed the people within the USSR- were met. It was essential that the state had money because Stalin felt that the state had to industrialise and be armed so that it could protect itself if any other countries attacked.
Another reason why collectivisation was a success, on an ideological basis, is that it gave the state control of the grain and therefore this meant that everyone could be given an amount of food that would be equal to everyone else, due to this everyone would be seen as equals and as a result of this the USSR would be moving towards its ultimate goal of communism. Finally collectivisation was a success as it got rid of a majority of the private ownerships in the countryside.
Instead collective farms were used; this meant that the peasants that had once owned the farms instead worked on them as the government took control of them. However, there were also ways in which collectivisation was not successful. One example of this is that it resulted in a ‘man made’ famine. This famine was referred to as being man made because it was caused by the upheaval that was cause by the introduction of collectivisation- for example the purging of the peasants and the poor organisation of the collective farms.
This was compounded by government policy which continued to take excessive amounts of grain from the worst hit areas of the famine. It is because of this that some historians believe that the famine was caused by Stalin as a punishment to the workers that had resisted the introduction of the collective farms. This leads onto another reason why collectivisation can be deemed as being unsuccessful, which is the inhumane punishments that the workers were exposed to.
A prime example of this is that families that where believed to be kulaks were physically attacked, arrested and deported, this was all because they did not agree with the state putting collectivisation into effect. Another way that collectivisation was not a success is Stalin had to allow private plots in 1935; this therefore went against what the aims collectivisation as it was supposed to get rid of the private plots. However, Stalin had to allow the plots because