AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Explain how Stalin moved the Soviet Union from the NEP to a **command economy**
- Identify the aims and methods of the **Five-Year Plans** and **collectivization**
- Understand how economic change strengthened Stalin’s political control
- Assess the successes and failures of Stalin’s rapid industrialization
- Analyse the human costs of dekulakization, famine, and repression
- Use this topic in AP European History arguments about causation, comparison, and continuity and change over time

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand Stalin’s state-directed modernization in the interwar period, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that **Joseph Stalin** consolidated power after Lenin’s death and ended the **New Economic Policy**
- Identify **1928** as the start of the **First Five-Year Plan**
- Explain how **Gosplan** and centralized planning directed Soviet industrial growth
- Understand the difference between **industrialization** and **collectivization**
- Know why Stalin targeted the peasantry, especially so-called **kulaks**
- Identify the role of **kolkhozy**, **sovkhozy**, and grain requisitioning in rural transformation
- Understand the significance of the **Holodomor** and the wider famine of **1932–1933**
- Evaluate the extent to which Stalin’s modernization strengthened the USSR while creating massive human suffering

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why did Stalin end Lenin’s New Economic Policy and replace it with central planning?
2. What was the purpose of the **Five-Year Plans**, and which sectors did they prioritize?
3. How did **collectivization** help finance industrialization?
4. What was the difference between a **kolkhoz** and a **sovkhoz**?
5. To what extent did Stalin’s modernization strengthen the Soviet Union before World War II?

## Introduction

Stalin’s modernization of the Soviet Union is one of the clearest AP European History examples of how a **totalitarian** state could use economic planning, propaganda, and violence to reshape society at high speed. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Stalin tried to turn the USSR from a largely agrarian country into a major industrial and military power. He did this through centralized planning from above, not through market forces or voluntary reform.

This topic matters because it connects directly to several AP themes: **states and other institutions of power**, **poverty and prosperity**, and **national identity**. It also works well in essays on causation and evaluation, because Stalin’s policies achieved striking industrial results while producing famine, terror, and repression on a huge scale.

> **Key Term: command economy**
> An economic system in which the state directs production, investment, prices, and distribution rather than leaving decisions to market forces.

### From NEP to command economy

Lenin’s **New Economic Policy** allowed a limited return of private trade and small-scale private enterprise after the Civil War. It helped the Soviet economy recover. But Stalin and many other Bolsheviks saw it as only a temporary compromise. By the late 1920s, Stalin wanted tighter state control and much faster change.

Why did Stalin abandon the NEP? There were several linked reasons.

First, he believed the Soviet Union was vulnerable. Russia had been invaded in World War I, during the Civil War, and had fallen behind the more industrial economies of western Europe. Stalin concluded that unless the USSR industrialized very quickly, it could be defeated by capitalist enemies.

Second, the NEP left too much economic power outside the state. Peasants still controlled much grain production, and small traders still operated in the market. From Stalin’s point of view, this limited the regime’s ability to feed cities, support industrial workers, and direct national priorities.

Third, the NEP clashed with Stalin’s political aims. If the state controlled all major economic decisions, it could also control society more fully. That meant economic centralization was also political centralization.

> **Key Term: Gosplan**
> The Soviet State Planning Committee that translated party goals into national economic plans and production targets.

Gosplan became the machinery of this new system. It did not simply “advise” industry. It set targets. Factories were told what to produce, in what quantity, and with what inputs. This is a major distinction students often miss: the **Five-Year Plans** were the broad programs, while **Gosplan** was the state body that turned those goals into detailed quotas.

This was a major **change over time** from the NEP. Under Lenin, some market activity survived. Under Stalin, the state aimed to dominate industry, agriculture, labour, and distribution.

### Five-Year Plans and rapid industrialization

The first dramatic step came in **1928** with the **First Five-Year Plan**. Stalin’s goal was not balanced development. He wanted heavy industry above all else.

> **Key Term: Five-Year Plans**
> State economic programs beginning in 1928 that set production targets, especially for heavy industry, under centralized planning.

Heavy industry meant sectors such as coal, steel, iron, machinery, oil, and electricity. These industries mattered because they produced the tools needed for later production. A state that could make steel, machines, and power stations could also build railways, tanks, weapons, and factories.

Consumer goods were much less important to Stalin. That meant industrial growth often came with low living standards. Workers might help produce tractors or steel, yet still face shortages of decent clothing, housing, and food. This is why “modernization” under Stalin should not be described as an all-round improvement in daily life.

Industrial projects became symbols of the new USSR. **Magnitogorsk** represented rapid steel expansion. The **Dnieper Dam** represented electrification and state ambition. These were not just economic projects. They were propaganda statements: the regime claimed it was building a new socialist civilization.

How did Stalin force this process forward?

- The state set very high production targets
- Labour discipline became harsher
- Failure to meet quotas could bring punishment
- Resources were shifted away from consumer production and into heavy industry
- Urban workers were praised as heroes of socialism

Later, campaigns such as the **Stakhanovite movement** celebrated workers who exceeded quotas. The message was clear: productive labour was patriotic and political. Under totalitarian rule, work became part of ideology.

> **Test Tip:** In an LEQ, do not just say “Stalin industrialized the USSR.” Explain how: centralized targets, heavy-industry priorities, labour discipline, and resource extraction from agriculture.

The results were real. By the end of the 1930s, the Soviet Union had become a major industrial state. That is why this topic should not be written as a simple failure. Stalin did achieve one of his main aims. The problem is that the achievement came at appalling human cost.

A strong AP argument often uses this structure: Stalin’s modernization was economically effective in important ways, but socially catastrophic and politically repressive.

### Collectivization, famine, and control of the countryside

Industrialization required food for growing cities and money for new industry. Stalin looked to the countryside to provide both. That is why collectivization was central to modernization, not a separate side policy.

> **Key Term: collectivization**
> Stalin’s policy of forcing peasants off individual farms into collective farms or state farms under heavy state control.

Peasants were pressured or forced to join larger units that the state could monitor more easily. There were two main forms.

> **Key Term: kolkhoz**
> A collective farm in which peasants worked land together under strong state control.
>
> **Key Term: sovkhoz**
> A state-owned farm in which workers were state employees paid wages.

A common student mistake is to treat these as identical. They were both controlled by the state, but a **kolkhoz** was a collective farm, while a **sovkhoz** was directly state-owned.

Why did Stalin impose collectivization?

- To increase grain procurement
- To feed urban workers
- To export grain and help fund industrialization
- To destroy peasant independence
- To bring the countryside under tighter party control

This policy met fierce resistance. Peasants often slaughtered livestock or destroyed crops rather than surrender them. Stalin answered with coercion.

> **Key Term: dekulakization**
> The campaign to eliminate so-called kulaks as a class through confiscation, deportation, imprisonment, and violence.

The term **kulak** officially meant a wealthier peasant, but in practice it became a political label. Many who resisted collectivization could be called kulaks whether or not they were actually wealthy. That matters for AP analysis because it shows how class language became a tool of repression.

The regime also used **Machine Tractor Stations** to supply machinery. These were not only practical centres. They extended state supervision into the countryside. So even technology served political control.

The worst outcome was famine, especially in **Ukraine** in **1932–1933**.

> **Key Term: Holodomor**
> The devastating famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933, linked to collectivization and grain requisitioning, in which millions died.

The state kept taking grain even when people were starving. This was not simply a natural food shortage. It was bound up with state policy, coercive requisitioning, and the drive to prioritize industrial goals over human life. Ukraine suffered especially badly, and many historians argue that Soviet policy there was also shaped by fear of Ukrainian nationalism.

For AP purposes, be careful with wording. It is accurate to say the Holodomor was tied to collectivization, requisitioning, and repression. It is also accurate to note that historians debate intent, though many governments and scholars describe it as genocide.

> **Test Tip:** If a question asks about the human cost of Stalinism, do not mention only the purges. Use collectivization, dekulakization, and the famine of 1932–1933 as major evidence.

Collectivization therefore had a double purpose. Economically, it extracted grain for modernization. Politically, it crushed rural independence. This is exactly the sort of cause-and-effect chain AP examiners want to see.

### Why Stalin’s modernization matters in AP arguments

Stalin’s modernization is important not just as Soviet history, but as a model of 20th-century totalitarian rule. It shows how the modern state could use bureaucracy, targets, propaganda, and terror together.

The case for success is strong in one sense. Stalin did transform the Soviet Union into a major industrial power. He expanded heavy industry, increased urban labour, and built an industrial base that later mattered greatly in resisting Nazi Germany after **1941**. A largely agrarian Russia had become an industrial state within little more than a decade.

But the case against is equally strong. Industrial gains did not mean freedom or welfare. Consumer goods remained scarce. Labour conditions were harsh. The countryside was devastated. Millions died from famine, repression, deportation, and violence.

This makes Stalin very useful in AP comparison questions.

You can compare him with:

- **Lenin**: continuity in one-party rule, but change from NEP compromise to tighter command economy
- **Mussolini**: both used dictatorship and propaganda, but Stalin pursued much deeper economic transformation
- **Hitler**: both built highly coercive states, though their ideologies were different
- **Western democracies**: while capitalist states struggled in the Great Depression, the USSR appeared to some observers to be advancing through planning

That final comparison is especially important. During the 1930s, many capitalist economies were in crisis. The Soviet Union looked, from a distance, dynamic and forward-moving. This helped explain why some outside observers admired Soviet industrialization even when they did not see, or chose not to emphasize, the scale of coercion behind it.

For a strong LEQ or DBQ thesis, avoid one-sided claims. A better judgement is something like this: Stalin centralized rapid modernization through planning and collectivization, successfully industrializing the Soviet Union and strengthening state power, but only through famine, repression, and the destruction of peasant freedom.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- Stalin replaced Lenin’s NEP with a centralized **command economy**
- **Gosplan** turned party goals into production quotas and targets
- The **First Five-Year Plan** began in **1928**
- Stalin prioritized **heavy industry** over consumer goods
- Industrial projects such as **Magnitogorsk** and the **Dnieper Dam** symbolized modernization
- **Collectivization** forced peasants into state-controlled farming systems
- A **kolkhoz** was a collective farm, while a **sovkhoz** was a state-owned farm
- **Dekulakization** targeted so-called kulaks through dispossession, deportation, and violence
- Grain requisitioning and collectivization contributed to the famine of **1932–1933**
- The **Holodomor** was the devastating famine in Soviet Ukraine during that crisis
- Stalin’s modernization strengthened Soviet industrial capacity
- The human cost included famine, coercion, repression, and expanded totalitarian control

## Key Terms and Concepts

- command economy
- Gosplan
- Five-Year Plans
- collectivization
- kolkhoz
- sovkhoz
- dekulakization
- Holodomor


Fascism and Totalitarianism - Stalin centralized rapid modernization