In Joseph Stalin’s Industrialization of the Country, 1928, the main argument of the article is to push forward the ideology of communism through the agrarian ways of the Soviet 1920s. It commonly sites the failures of capitalism to fairly protect the farmers, as well as the previous Tsarist government to modernize in technology and political rule over the 1920s and 1930s. In Stalin’s piece he goes over the failure of the new agricultural policy in an attempt to reform it within collectivization and the new Soviet style. Beyond that it continues to disregard and downplay capitalism as a failing technique and further builds our new historiographic world.
In his work one sentence I found most interesting was one on changing social classes’ and the economy.
“If that were the case, the capitalist encirclement could not be so serious a danger as it is now, the question of the economic independence of our country would naturally recede into the background, we could integrate ourselves into the system of more developed proletarian states, we could receive from them machines for making our industry and agriculture more productive, supplying them in turn with raw materials and foodstuffs, and we could, consequently, expand our industry at a slower rate.”
In this piece I see a respect for all industries but the capitalist groups even in Russia continually achieve and receive more wealth and time than the non capitalist groups. If natural integration between social groups were possible during the 1930s and 40s I believe that not only would the Cold War would have been less active, but also that the action between East and West forces would have been naturally more calm.
However after the destruction caused by the collectivization done by Stalin in this work is very telling about the worth of human life to Soviet leadership. The idea of backwardness of the economy takes a seat in order for the state to push for further self independence. I have to ask how true the actors of the time, specific to districts or towns would readily agree to these comments. As well as how at the same time how much they could agree that the local populace would be to them as well.
In reading your post, I began to wonder how much Stalin cared about how average citizens felt about collectivization and how the West and the Soviet elites perceived it. At worst he could always send the military to crush local revolts or offer incentives to acquiesce to the fantasy.
I think that some of them believed in his words and followed his orders. Others might have disagreed with him, but out of fear might have not opposed him. There were a lot of average people that were not happy with the collectivization, and even protested against it. However, they were punished for protesting and were sent to different camps or prisons in Russia.
Re-reading this I also see a Stalin discussing capitalism in a threatened nature. He writes about how if we fail to do this (collectivization) or what he sees as the next step in socialism then “in which case a return to capitalism may become inevitable”. That comment is contradicting much of his other attacks on capitalism failing and instead shows it in rebirth taking over socialism. Looking back I almost want to say that I’m incorrectly labeling Soviet leadership in my post above, failing to understand Stalin’s government and collectivization policy well enough.
Stalin did not care if citizens opposed his view of collectivization- if citizens opposed they were punished. Citizens followed his order out of fear. I think your additional comment above is well stated and goes along the basis of the article better.
I agree with the blogger’s comment. At this point Stalin was realizing his country was falling behind the others and although originally opposed to capitalism, he needed to evolve his form of socialism to improve Russia.