Stalin's economic policy had one essential aim, the modernization of the Soviet economy. This was to be achieved by two essential methods, collectivization and industrialization. So socially disruptive was this programme, involving as it did the greatest land transfer in Russian history and the redirection of people's lives, that it could be achieved only by Stalin's government taking complete control of the Soviet people.
Revolution from above
From 1928 onwards, the Soviet state took over the running of the nation's economy. In theory, 1917 had been a revolution from below. The Bolshevik-led proletariat had begun the construction of a state in which the workers ruled. Bukharin and the Right had used this notion to argue that, since the USSR was now a proletarian society, the economy should be left to develop at its own pace, without interference from the government. Stalin's economic programme ended such thinking. The state would now command the economy from above. Stalin called this momentous decision 'the second revolution' to indicate that it was as important a stage in Soviet history as the original 1917 Revolution. This comparison was obviously intended to enhance his own status as a revolutionary leader following in the footsteps of Lenin.
Stalin believed that the survival of the Soviet Union depended on the nation's ability to turn itself into a modern industrial society within the shortest possible time. He expressed this with particular force in 1931 (see Source E).
SOURCE E
According to Source E, what must the Soviet Union do to avoid being crushed?
Excerpt from a speech by Stalin, February 1931, reported in Pravda, quoted in Stalin: A Biography by Robert Service, published by Macmillan, UK, 2004, pp. 272-73.
It is sometimes asked whether it is not possible to slow down the tempo somewhat, to put a check on the movement. No, comrades, it is not possible! The tempo must not be reduced! To slacken the tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten. But we do not want to be beaten. We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed. This is what our obligations to the workers and peasants of the USSR dictate to us.
This passionate appeal to Russian history subordinated everything to the driving need for national survival. Stalin used this appeal as the pretext for the severity that accompanied collectivization and industrialization.
World History
