Socialism in Europe and the Russia

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1. During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalised.
2. They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialised. Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what collective work could be.
3. A process of centralised planning was introduced. Officials assessed how the economy could work and set targets for a five-year period.
4. On this basis, they made the Five Year Plans.
5. The government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two ‘Plans’(1927-1932 and 1933-1938).
6. Centralised planning led to economic growth.
7. Industrial production increased (between 1929 and 1933 by 100 percent in the case of oil, coal and steel).
8. New factory cities came into being.
9. However, rapid construction led to poor working conditions.
10. In the city of Magnitogorsk, the construction of a steel plant was achieved in three years.
11. Workers lived hard lives and the result was 550 stoppages of work in the first year alone.

1. During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks nationalised.
2. They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had been socialised. Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what collective work could be.
3. A process of centralised planning was introduced. Officials assessed how the economy could work and set targets for a five-year period.
4. On this basis, they made the Five Year Plans.
5. The government fixed all prices to promote industrial growth during the first two ‘Plans’(1927-1932 and 1933-1938).
6. Centralised planning led to economic growth.
7. Industrial production increased (between 1929 and 1933 by 100 percent in the case of oil, coal and steel).
8. New factory cities came into being.
9. However, rapid construction led to poor working conditions.
10. In the city of Magnitogorsk, the construction of a steel plant was achieved in three years.
11. Workers lived hard lives and the result was 550 stoppages of work in the first year alone.

1. The period of the early Planned Economy was linked to the disasters of the collectivisation of agriculture.
2. By 1927- 1928, the towns in Soviet Russia were facing an acute problem of grain supplies.
3. The government fixed prices at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to sell their grain to government buyers at these prices.
4. Stalin, who headed the party after the death of Lenin, introduced firm emergency measures.
5. He believed that rich peasants and traders in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices.
6. Speculation had to be stopped and supplies confiscated.
7. In 1928, Party members toured the grain-producing areas, supervising enforced grain collections, and raiding ‘kulaks’ – the name for well to- do peasants.
8. As shortages continued, the decision was taken to collectivise farms.
9. It was argued that grain shortages were partly due to the small size of holdings. After 1917, the land had been given over to peasants.
10. These small-sized peasant farms could not be modernised.

1. When the Bolsheviks ordered land redistribution.
2. The Russian army began to break up. Soldiers, peasants wished to go home for the redistribution and deserted.
3. Non-Bolshevik socialists, liberals and supporters of autocracy condemned the Bolshevik uprising.
4. Their leaders moved to south Russia and organised troops to fight the Bolsheviks (the ‘reds’).
5. During 1918 and 1919, the ‘greens’ (Socialist Revolutionaries) and ‘whites’ (pro-Tsarists) controlled most of the Russian empire.
6. They were backed by French, American, British and Japanese troops – all those forces who were worried at the growth of socialism in Russia.
7. These troops and the Bolsheviks fought a civil war, looting, banditry and famine became common.
8. Supporters of private property among ‘whites’ took harsh steps with peasants who had seized land.
9. Such actions led to the loss of popular support for the non-Bolsheviks. By January 1920, the Bolsheviks controlled most of the former Russian empire.
10. They succeeded due to cooperation with non-Russian nationalities and Muslim jadidists.
11. Cooperation did not work where Russian colonists themselves turned Bolshevik.
12. In Khiva, in Central Asia, Bolshevik colonists brutally massacred local nationalists in the name of defending socialism.
13. In this situation, many were confused about what the Bolshevik government represented.
14. Partly to remedy this, most non-Russian nationalities were given political autonomy in the Soviet Union (USSR) – the state the Bolsheviks created from the Russian empire in December 1922.