Stalin: Economy versus People
"Stalin's economic achievements were remarkable form a purely material point of view... but occurred...with absolute disregard for the welfare and wishes of its subjects."During Stalin's command of the USSR, his economic achievements were nothing short of remarkable. Rapid industrialisation and restructuring of agricultural arrangements was the basis of his own economic revolution for the Soviet Union in which the formerly technologically backward and economically inefficient nation would become a world superpower. However, during the quarter of a century of Stalin's dictatorial rule (between 1928 and 1953), the hundreds of millions of people whose lives he dominated in the Soviet Union were forced to suffer the many dire consequences of this success: famine in the Ukraine; squalid living conditions accompanied overcrowded urban centres; and an effectively complete lack of freedom (in terms of migration and in terms of private ownership of land) was in place for almost all of the population.In 1928, following a turbulent decade of revolution, war and the instigation of a completely new political and economic system, Joseph Stalin came to power. He was forced to contemplate how to create a strong, self-reliant
" (Britannica: Soviet Planning) in an attempt to increase efficiency. source of cheap food and materials for the cities" (Britannica: Soviet Planning). asserting control over the politically recalcitrant peasantry. (led to a neglect of) the elementary needs of workers," (Lewin, quoted in Morcombe: 1998, 208). This shows the degree of control exerted by the government was not limited to the setting of wages, hours worked and positions held, but also specific locations of employment regardless of a worker's previously settled life, and regardless of a worker's wishes. The kulaks, the affluent peasants, had built up land holdings, due to Lenin's NEP, and farming methods to the point where they were able to dictate the prices paid to them for their produce by the government.
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