Stalinist economy: collectivisation and Five Year Plans
Why Did Stalin Collectivise Agriculture?
In 1928 the Soviet Union was still largely a peasant country. Most farming was done on small private plots by millions of individual families. Stalin believed this was economically inefficient and politically dangerous: independent farmers — especially the better-off peasants known as kulaks — could hoard grain, resist state price controls and undermine the revolution. To industrialise rapidly, the state needed to control food production and extract a surplus to feed urban workers and pay for imported machinery.
The answer was collectivisation: forcing peasants to merge their private land and livestock into large collective farms, called kolkhozy, run by the state. Stalin launched this policy in 1929, initially pushing for “voluntary” collectivisation but quickly turning to compulsion when peasants resisted.
Collectivisation began in earnest in 1929. By 1936 over 90 per cent of Soviet farmland had been collectivised. The policy aimed to make agriculture more efficient, give the state control over food supplies and free up labour for industrial cities.
Dekulakisation
Alongside collectivisation, Stalin launched dekulakisation — the deliberate destruction of the kulak class. Hundreds of thousands of kulak families were deported to remote regions of Siberia and Central Asia. Historians estimate that around 1.8 million people were deported in 1930–31 alone, though totals across the whole campaign were far higher. Many did not survive.
In practice, “kulak” became an elastic label applied to anyone who resisted collectivisation, hid grain or spoke against the policy. Poor peasants denounced better-off neighbours to settle old scores. The result was the destruction of the most productive section of the peasant farming community — people with the most experience and capital — at the very moment when agriculture needed their skills.
The most catastrophic consequence of collectivisation was the famine of 1932–33. Grain requisition quotas were maintained even as harvests collapsed; peasants who hid food or failed to meet quotas faced imprisonment. Ukraine, one of the Soviet Union's most fertile regions, was particularly hard hit. Historians estimate that between 3.5 and 7 million people died in Ukraine alone during this famine — known in Ukrainian as the Holodomor (literally “death by starvation”).
The Soviet government denied the famine was happening and prevented outside journalists from reporting on it. Whether the famine was a deliberate act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation or the catastrophic result of reckless policy is still debated by historians. Ukraine and many international bodies now recognise it as genocide; other historians argue the famine affected many Soviet peoples, not only Ukrainians.
The Five Year Plans
While collectivisation transformed the countryside, the Five Year Plans were transforming Soviet industry. The First Five Year Plan (1928–32) set enormous targets for coal, steel, electricity and oil production. The Second Five Year Plan (1933–37) continued industrial expansion while also developing railways and communications.
The results were remarkable by any measure. Steel production rose from around 4 million tonnes in 1928 to around 18 million tonnes by 1940. The USSR built entirely new industrial cities. The most famous was Magnitogorsk in the southern Urals — built from nothing by tens of thousands of workers, many of them deported kulaks or gulag prisoners, to become one of the world's largest steel plants. American engineers who visited in the early 1930s described it as extraordinary.
The Five Year Plans turned the USSR from a predominantly agricultural country into a major industrial power within a decade. Steel, coal, electricity and oil production all increased dramatically. This industrial base proved crucial in the war against Germany after 1941.
To motivate workers to exceed their targets, the state created the Stakhanovite movement, named after Alexei Stakhanov, a miner who reportedly cut 102 tonnes of coal in a single shift in August 1935 — many times the normal quota. Stakhanovites were held up as heroes and rewarded with better pay, apartments and medals. The movement created competitive pressure across workplaces but also resentment, as ordinary workers found their quotas raised to match the record-breakers.
Working conditions in Soviet industry were often dangerous and poorly paid. Managers who failed to meet targets faced accusations of sabotage — a serious charge that could lead to arrest. Workers who were persistently late or absent were dismissed and could lose their right to food rations. The combination of incentive and coercion characterised Soviet workplace culture throughout the Stalin era.
Women in Soviet Society
One notable feature of the Stalinist economy was the large-scale entry of women into industrial work. By the late 1930s, women made up roughly 40 per cent of the Soviet industrial workforce — far higher than in most Western countries at the time. Women worked in factories, on construction sites, as engineers and doctors. The Soviet state presented this as evidence of communist gender equality.
In reality, women also continued to bear the main burden of domestic work and childcare. The state provided nurseries and canteens in industrial cities, but provision was often inadequate. Women's entry into the workforce was driven less by ideological commitment to equality and more by the desperate need for labour in a rapidly industrialising economy.