Joseph Stalin was a dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953. He was a totalitarian leader, which is a government, which takes total control over every side of a public and private life. He became ruler of a country 1/6 of the worlds population. He is known as one of the world's most reviled leaders. He made many changes in economic, social, and political government. Many methods were use to achieve these changes.
             Lenin started the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was a mixture of free enterprise and state control. Stalin wanted to modernize the state so he started the Industrial Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution. Stalin started the five-year plan in 1928, which would dramatically increase Soviet Unions economy in 5 years. It set high goals to increase productivity and output of materials. In Document 2, it says the target for electricity was 17.0 in 1933 compared to 5.05 in 1927-28. For coal, the target in 1933 was 68 and in 1927-28 it was 35.4 and so on. The method that was used for this was that under his regime the government controlled every aspect of a workers life. The police would imprison or execute any one that would not contribute to the economy. For the Agricultural Revolution, the government seized privately owned farms and combined them into government owned farms. They were called collective farms. Stalin used violence and fear to make the peasants work on the farms. The Kulaks, a wealthy class of peasants, resisted into following them. Satlin decided to eliminate the peasants. In Document 3 Stalin said in his speech, in 1929 "Break their resistance, to eliminate them as a class and substitute for their output, the output of collective farms and state farms". Kulaks were sent to work camps or sometimes even executed. Stalin changed the Soviet Union's economy as a long-term effect. The economy lagged behind other progressed countries for almost a whole century. Russia became very deve...