Stalin's Goals for USSR

Stalin’s Goals for USSR
Stalin’s plan for the USSR consisted of making it into a completely communist state by industrialization and collectivization. He wanted to completely change the Soviet Union in a short amount of time and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to make that happen. Stalin spurred the development of many new industrial plants and he had goals for a 250 percent increase in overall industrial development and a 330 percent increase in heavy industry. He also consolidated individual farms into large collective farms controlled by the State. He believed that this would increase productivity and enough food to feed the new factory labor force. Stalin’s monumental plan for the Soviet Union had some successes and some failures. One success is that he got a tremendous amount of work done in a very short amount of time. His plan only called for collectivization of twenty percent of the farms but by 1940 almost ninety-seven percent of all private farms had been collectivized. Also he substantially increased the amount of industrialized cities and plants; he was able to industrialize the Soviet Union very quickly. However these successes didn't come without a price. Because people were so invested in industrializing, there were many shortages of consumer goods. The larger factory work force also needed to be fed which is what the collectivized farms were meant for but there was problems. People protested to collectivization and they didn't want to give up their private land. Since they were forced to collectivize, they had very little production which resulted in famine. The conditions of the collectivized farms were also terrible. People worked hard and got little in return. There was a lot of illness, hunger, and over unhealthiness. Although Stalin accomplished what he had intended to and industrialized the Soviet Union, it resulted in unhappiness and a bad quality of life for the people.