Plan
1. Industrialization of Ukraine.
2. Collectivization. The famine
3. Big terror
Industrialization of Ukraine.
In 1928 Ukraine received over 20% of the totalinvestments that meant that from 1500 new industrialenterprises, established in the USSR, 400 of themaccounted for Ukraine.
But such achievements required mobilization of allworkers’ forces.
Mass medias always called worker to execute the planand to work under the schedule.
In 1940 the industrial potential of Ukraine in eighttimes exceeded the level of 1913.
Ukraine turned to one of the leading industrialcountries in Europe.
The industrialisation bought about a dramaticeconomic and social transformation intraditionally agricultural Ukraine.
The massive influx of the rural population tothe industrial centres increased the urbanpopulation from 19 to 34 percent.
Collectivization.
Soviet industrial development plans were supposedthat government could buy cheap grain from thepeasants.
It could give it possibility to provide with the bread thegrowing labors in the cities and to sell it abroad,benefits from it used for financing theindustrialization.
But peasants considered that offered by thegovernment prices (often they accounted only oneeighth from the market) too low and refused to sellproducts. It’s why the government began masscollectivization.
Those who greatly withstood were shot or massremoved to the camps of forced labor to the North ofRussia or to Siberia.
The most widespread of its form became deportation.Hundred thousands of peasants were drove away fromtheir houses, sat to the product trains and went outthe thousand kilometers to the North of Russia, wherethey were leaved among the arctic desert, oftenwithout food and shelter.
About 850 thousands were deported to the North,where a lot of them especially children died. Suchway the great part of the most capable of working andproductive masters in Ukraine ceased to exist.
Goals
Modernize soviet agriculture by modernequipment using the latest scientificmethods.
Increase agricultural production.
Put agriculture under the control of thestate.
Industrialization Without Collectivization?
Industrialization could have been achievedwithout any collectivization
However:
•Would take much longer than Stalin'sultra-rapid version.
•Would leave the Soviet Union farbehind the West.
•Possibly result in a victory for Germanyin WWII.
Comparative Growth: Industrial Production AverageAnnual Growth (%)
The famine
The famine of 1932—1933 became for Ukrainians thesame as Golokhost for Jews and slaughter of 1915 forArmenians.
The most important in the tragedy of famine is that itwas possible to escape it.
The yield of 1932 was only 12% lower the averagemeasures of 1926-1930.
Ignoring calls and warnings of the Ukrainiancommunists, in 1932 Stalin raised the plan of grainpurchase by 44%.
The cruelty of the regime, doomed million of people todeath from starving, which could be called justartificial.
Series of means, performed in 1932, evidenced aboutindifference of the regime to people suffering.
Party activists received legal right to confiscate thegrain from collective farms, the shameful law,providing the death penalty for stealing of “socialproperty”, came into force.
For not allowing the peasants to leave collective farmsin search of food, it was implemented the system ofinternal passports.
In November Moscow issued the law, which prohibitedgiving peasants grain, until the execution of thegovernment storage plan.
The famine extending during 1932 gained the terribleforce at the beginning of 1933. Remaining without thebread, the countrymen eat cats, dogs, rest, barks, andleaves. The cases of cannibalism also took place.
Also it was considered that the famine was a mean ofweakness of Ukrainian nationalism for Stalin
Till the recent time the soviet opposition turned torefusal of the fact of famine.
Big terror
Industrialization and collectivization more and moreled to the bigger concentration of the power inMoscow.
Systematically eliminating almost all aspects ofautonomy, Stalin aspired to turn Ukraine into theadministrative unit of Soviet Union.
The regime planned to annihilate the whole groups ofpeople: priests, former participants of antibolshevikwars, those, who went abroad or had relatives there,immigrants from Galychina.
With regard to the lack of information it is difficult todetermine the general quantity of human losses,caused by Stalin’s terror
About 500 thousand persons were put to death andfrom 3 to 12 millions were sent to camps during 1937and 1939.
For that time the control for all areas of life wascompletely concentrated in Moscow
With centralization came russification
To the end of ten years after cleaning by the nationalcommunists, the majority of members of the highestparty’s government and the state of Ukraine wereRussians.
In literature political principle emphasized that alloutstanding Ukrainian poets and writers of the pasthad been developed under the wholesome effect ofRussia.
Time Magazine’s Man Of The Year
•Iosif Stalin (1879 – 1953)
•1939 - he switched thebalance of power in Europeby signing a "non-aggression pact" with Hitler.
•1942 - he helped to stopHitler and opened the doorof opportunity for alliedtroops.
References
3. Anna Reid. Borderland: A Journey Through theHistory of Ukraine. London, Orion Books; 4thimpression (1998, preface 2003).
4. Paul Robert Magocsi. A History of Ukraine. Toronto:University of Toronto Press (1996).