The true history of the USSR 1925 - 1940.
Editorial Preface
We bring to your attention a really useful extract from the first TSB, which is a short course in the history of the USSR from 1925 to 1940, replete with facts and truly scientific assessments.
In 1926 the country entered a new period of development. Having defeated capitalism politically, it was necessary to “unfold the construction of a new, socialist economy throughout the country and thereby finish off capitalism also economically” [History of the CPSU (b). Short course].
11/XII 1925 XIV Congress of the CPSU(b), according to the report of I. V. Stalin, set a course for the industrialization of the country.
“To transform our country from an agrarian into an industrial one, capable of producing the necessary equipment on its own — that is the essence, the basis of our general line,” Stalin pointed out.
Against the line of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state for the deployment of the socialist. construction, all the enemies of the socialist state, external and internal, took up arms. The imperialist governments and their agents in the country—Trotskyite-Zinoviev traitors—tried to turn the Soviet Republic into an agrarian appendage to industrial Europe. But they failed. The Bolshevik Party firmly embarked on the path of industrialization of the country. In April 1926, I. V. Stalin pointed out:
"The center of gravity has now shifted towards industry."
Funds were needed to industrialize the country. The capitalist countries refused to give loans to the Soviet state. To embark on the path of enslaving concession deals with the capitalist states meant making them the masters of industry. It was impossible to go for an increase in the taxation of the peasantry and an increase in prices for manufactured goods, since this would lead to a break in the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, to a delay in the development of agriculture - the raw material base of industry.
The new path of the country's industrial development - without external credits, without foreign capital, indicated by I. V. Stalin, lay in the use of internal socialist accumulation in the country. Profit from state industry, trade, banks was supposed to provide the necessary funds for industrialization. This required the strictest economy in everything, raising labor productivity, drawing new millions of workers into the construction of industrial enterprises, into work in factories and plants. The Party and the Soviet state, overcoming all difficulties, embarked on this path.
By the autumn of 1926 the industry had exceeded the pre-war level. The recovery process has ended. The period of restructuring the national economy on the basis of new, higher technology began. In July 1926, the first tractor plant in the USSR was founded in Stalingrad. At the same time, the construction of Turksib began. Lenin's plan for the electrification of the country was successfully carried out. In the autumn of 1926, a new stage of the Shterovskaya power plant in the Donbass was put into operation. In December 1926, the Volkhov hydroelectric power station was put into operation, the construction of which had begun during the years of the civil war on Lenin's orders; Shaturskaya and other power plants came into operation. The power of all electrical installations in 1927 was 2.5 times greater than pre-war.
The planning of the national economy has become of great importance. The annual control figures for the national economy, first drawn up in 1925-26, became insufficient for planning the enormous growth of construction. Summing up the successes achieved, the 4th All-Union Congress of Soviets (April 1927) instructed the government to work out a five-year plan for the development of the national economy, emphasizing the enormous importance of the planning principle in a socialist economy. The congress approved the government's measures for the industrialization of the country and the development of agriculture and called for the further development of industry in the national republics.
In a number of other issues at the congress, there was a report by the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, K. E. Voroshilov, on the state of the Red Army and the country's defense. Voroshilov stressed the need to equip the Red Army and Navy with military equipment and the enormous importance in this connection of the socialist industrialization of the country.
The 4th Congress of Soviets of the USSR adopted a decision on the further development of agriculture and outlined the implementation of a number of measures to increase productivity. But the implementation of the planned measures rested on the nature of the peasant economy, which was small, fragmented. The solution of the question of agriculture could only be found in the enlargement of the peasant economy, in large-scale collective farming. The 4th Congress of Soviets of the USSR decided to help and encourage the development of collective farms in every possible way.
The industrialization of the country aggravated the class struggle. All anti-Soviet elements united against the policy of industrialization—kulaks, NEPmen, and the bourgeois-technical intelligentsia. The most serious hostile force was the fist, the most numerous exploiting class. Relying on his strong economic position in the countryside, he tried to lead the middle peasants, penetrate the Soviet apparatus, and interfere with the activities of Soviet power.
The Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government, relying firmly on the poor and strengthening the alliance with the middle peasants, waged a struggle against the kulaks. The class struggle became especially aggravated after the decision of the XV Congress of the CPSU(b) on the collectivization of agriculture and the need to move to a further, more systematic and persistent restriction of the kulak and the private owner.
By the end of 1927, the socialist industrialization of the country had made further serious progress. The pace of development of the national economy grew rapidly. In the field of industry, the question of "who-whom" was a foregone conclusion in favor of socialism. The industrialization of the country, the growth of cities increased the demand for marketable bread. However, despite the fact that the gross output of the grain economy exceeded the pre-war level, marketable grain was produced half as much as before the First World War. This was primarily due to the backwardness of technology and the dispersal of small individual peasant farms (by 1928 there were 24–25 million of them). By 1928, collective farms and state farms produced only slightly more than 2% of agricultural production. products and 7% marketable bread. Speaking at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b), Stalin pointed out,
The 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, following a report by Stalin, decided on a course towards the collectivization of agriculture. The class struggle in the countryside intensified throughout the country. The kulaks declared a grain strike - they stopped handing over grain to the state, they began to use terror against Party and Soviet workers and advanced collective farmers, set fire to collective farms and state sump points. It was, as Stalin said in April 1928,
"The first, under the conditions of the NEP, a serious action by the capitalist elements of the countryside against the Soviet regime."
The Soviet state applied "extraordinary measures" against the kulaks—confiscation of grain from speculators, individual taxation of kulak farms, and an increase in agricultural production. tax on kulaks while simultaneously exempting 35% of small-scale farms from the tax, etc.
The aggravation of the class struggle was also reflected in the acts of sabotage in industry, the organizers of which were the old bourgeois specialists, who acted on the instructions of the imperialist states and the former owners of enterprises. In 1928, the Shakhty case was uncovered. The counter-revolutionary organization of bourgeois specialists in the Shakhtinsky coal region, in an effort to destroy the coal industry, arranged collapses and flooding of mines, explosions, disabled mechanisms, etc. industry. They were associated with foreign capitalists who, until 1917, had capital in the industry of the Donbass. It was an economic intervention whose task was to prepare the conditions for a new military intervention against the USSR and the restoration of capitalism. Shakhtintsy were defeated. The facts of the influence of the class enemy on some part of the Soviet apparatus were revealed. At the beginning of 1929, the Soviet apparatus was purged of decayed pests, saboteurs, and enemies of Soviet power who had penetrated the Soviet apparatus. JV Stalin, in connection with the lessons of the Shakhty case, put forward the task of training a new, Soviet technical intelligentsia from the people of the working class.
The 16th Conference of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (April 1929) adopted the Stalinist program for the first five-year plan of socialist construction. The 16th Party Conference, in an address to all the workers and laborers and peasants of the Soviet Union, called for socialist emulation for the speedy fulfillment of the five-year plan.
“The Five-Year Plan is a plan for the struggle of the working class to overcome capitalist elements, a plan for the socialist re-education of the masses, a plan for laying the foundation for a socialist society,” the appeal said. five years are inextricably linked.
The implementation of the Stalinist plan for the offensive of socialism against the capitalist elements in the city and countryside met with resistance from the right-wing opportunist Bukharin-Rykov group, which at this stage became the main danger. This kulak agency in the party demanded the rejection of collectivization and the attack on the kulak, opposing the pace of the country's socialist industrialization, it put forward the theory of "fading the class struggle", "peaceful growing of the kulak into socialism." In June 1928, the Right opportunists negotiated with the Trotskyites and Zinovievists for a joint struggle against the Party.
In May 1929, the 5th All-Union Congress of Soviets approved a five-year plan for the development of the national economy. The main task of the first five-year plan was to reconstruct the entire national economy, to transform the USSR from an agrarian country into an industrial country, to create in the USSR an industry capable of re-equipping the entire national economy on the basis of socialism; to transfer the small fragmented peasant economy to the rails of a large-scale collective economy; to create in the country all the necessary technical and economic prerequisites for the economic independence of the USSR, for the maximum strengthening of its defense capability. The five-year plan outlined a significant industrial and cultural development of the national republics. On the initiative of I. V. Stalin, a second coal and metallurgical base was created in the east. In the first year of the five-year plan, the construction of such giants as the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk metallurgical plants began. Uralmashstroy, Berezniki and Solikamsk chemical plants were built in the Urals. In the Donbass, the construction of the Kramatorsk and Gorlovsky plants began, the reconstruction of the Lugansk locomotive plant, and the construction of the Dneproges began. In Moscow, Gorky, the construction of large automobile plants began. Giant tractor factories and harvester factories were built in the country. A huge tractor plant was built in Stalingrad in 11 months. A giant agricultural plant was being built in Rostov-on-Don. machines. Socialist emulation and shock work grew and expanded, and labor productivity rose significantly.
The country exerted every effort to fulfill Stalin's instructions and, in a relatively short historical period, "catch up and overtake the advanced capitalist countries in technical and economic terms." In the article “The Year of the Great Turning Point” (7/XI 1929), Stalin wrote: “We are advancing at full steam along the path of industrialization — towards socialism, leaving behind our age-old ‘Russian’ backwardness.”
The rapid pace of the country's socialist industrialization brought about profound changes in the balance of class forces within the country. The size of the working class grew and its leading role in relation to the poor and middle peasants intensified. Under the conditions of equality of nationalities and fraternal cooperation of the peoples of the USSR, their economic and cultural development proceeded rapidly.
The capitalist countries saw the strengthening of the socialist economy of the USSR as a threat to the existence of the capitalist system. Despite the contradictions between the individual imperialist countries, they all united in their hatred of the Soviet state.
The anti-Soviet campaign intensified again, the machine for preparing war and intervention against the USSR was in full swing. Pope Pius XI called for a "crusade" against the USSR. The main inspirer and organizer of the anti-Soviet policy was British imperialism. The Conservatives were at the head of the English government. Their leaders - Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill - led the line of breaking the established diplomatic relations and preparing for a new intervention. The reactionary French bourgeoisie acted in alliance with the British imperialists, trying to encircle the Soviet country with a ring of hostile countries. Romania, Poland, the Baltic countries, Finland were being prepared as springboards for an attack on the USSR. Germany was also drawn into the anti-Soviet bloc through the Locari Treaty, concluded in October 1925.
The Western imperialists continued their internal subversive work, using the remnants of the hostile class elements in the USSR. They sought primarily to thwart socialist construction. The Trotskyists, Zinovievites, and the rightists worked on assignments from foreign intelligence agencies, created underground anti-Soviet organizations, provoked counter-revolutionary actions against the Soviet government, acted as organizers of sabotage in agriculture and industry, and prepared the conditions for a new intervention against the USSR. Former members of the defeated parties hostile to Soviet power (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, etc.), having penetrated into Soviet bodies, harmed, created counter-revolutionary organizations, finding support abroad from the imperialist rulers in their anti-Soviet activities.
At the head of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, under the guise of agricultural specialists, defending the interests of the kulaks, the enemies of the people were operating. In industry, a counter-revolutionary organization has made its nest, calling itself the "Industrial Party" (Industrial Party). The Industrial Party united the top of the old engineers. It was led by the Trade and Industrial Union (Torgprom), located in Paris and uniting the former capitalists of Russia. Ryabushinsky, Lianozov, Nobel, Konovalov and other capitalists were at the head of Torgprom. The Industrial Party received funds from abroad, had contact with the leaders of the French government and the French General Staff, and planned a counter-revolutionary coup to overthrow Soviet power. Not pinning hopes on internal forces, the Industrial Party relied on a new military intervention of foreign powers. In their practical activities in Soviet bodies and in industry, the members of the Industrial Party tried to frustrate the fulfillment of the five-year plan. They were engaged in sabotage in the main industries.
The Mensheviks also revived their activities, setting the task of restoring capitalism in the USSR. Their "Union Bureau of the RSDLP" established contact with other counter-revolutionary groups. They were actively engaged in wrecking, acting mainly in the State Planning Commission, Tsentrosoyuz, Narkomfin.
These wreckers and counter-revolutionaries were closely aligned with the "right" and Trotskyists, who united in the struggle against the industrialization of the country for the restoration of capitalism and took the path of espionage, sabotage and terror. Trotskyists and Bukharinites became paid agents of foreign intelligence services.
At the same time, the USSR continued its struggle for peace in the international arena, signing non-aggression and neutrality pacts with a number of countries in the period 1925-27. The USSR in December 1927 began to take part in the preparatory commission for disarmament at the League of Nations. The Soviet delegates proposed a plan for complete and general disarmament. When this plan was rejected, they submitted a partial disarmament project, which was also rejected. However, the Soviet delegates continued to fight for disarmament. The Soviet government acceded to the Kellogg Pact and, without waiting for its general ratification, set about putting it into practice. In February 1929 in Moscow, the USSR, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Romania signed the so-called. Moscow Protocol on the Immediate Entry into Force of the Pact on the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy. Later this protocol was signed by Turkey,
In 1929, the imperialists tried with a bayonet to test the defense capability of the USSR on the Far Eastern border. In the summer of 1929, a conflict began on the CER. As it turned out at the trial of the Industrial Party (November - December 1930), the conflict on the CER was an attempt by the French and British general staffs to reveal the state of the Red Army, the attitude of the general population to a possible war, and the degree of strength of Soviet power. In order to protect the legitimate rights of the peoples of the USSR to the CER and Soviet citizens and employees on the road from violence, the Soviet government took decisive measures. The created Special Far Eastern Army defeated the troops of the White Chinese invaders. On 3/XII in Nikolsk-Ussuriysky and on 22/XII 1929 in Khabarovsk, protocols were signed according to which the situation on the CER was restored to the position that existed before the capture of the road by the White Chinese military.
The plan of the first five-year plan was carried out in excess. The face of the country was changing. The Turkestan-Siberian railway was being built, which was supposed to connect Siberia, rich in grain and forests, with Central Asia. An unprecedented labor boom was observed in the country; a powerful movement of socialist emulation and shock work unfolded. Industrialization of the country, emergence of tractors, page - x. machines in the countryside, the policy of abolishing the kulaks, the growth of agricultural cooperatives, the growth of collective farms and state farms, which in practice proved the advantage of the collective use of new technology, convinced the peasant masses of the correctness of collectivization.
On this basis, “that mass collective-farm movement of millions of poor and middle peasants arose, which began in the second half of 1929 and which ushered in a period of great turning point in the life of our country” (Stalin).
Relying on the successes of industrialization, the Soviet government embarked on a socialist reorganization of agriculture - complete collectivization and, on its basis, the elimination of the kulaks as a class and the creation of state farms - large state agricultural enterprises. For the most expedient use of advanced technology in the collective farms, the state began to create machine and tractor stations (MTS). The first MTS arose in 1927 in the Shevchenkovsky district of the Odessa region. In 1930 there were already 159 MTSs. In 1929 about 40,000 tractors were working in the country's fields.
Under the leadership of the advanced workers of the country, sent to the countryside, the collective-farm movement was strengthened. The kulaks met with hostility the turn of the countryside onto the path of collectivization. With shots from around the corner, the kulaks killed communists, workers of village councils, and activists from the poor. The enemy hand set fire to houses and warehouses, spoiled tractors, s.-x. cars. For work in the countryside, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks mobilized 25,000 advanced workers, who were instructed by the party to carry out collectivization. The 25,000ers played a major role in the struggle for the socialist transformation of the countryside. They brought to the countryside Bolshevik organization, discipline, and perseverance in achieving the task set by the Party and the Soviet government.
On the basis of complete collectivization, the country moved from a policy of restricting and ousting the kulaks to eliminating the kulaks as a class. Land lease laws and labor hiring laws were abolished. The kulaks were expropriated. The means of production that belonged to the kulaks passed into the hands of the collective farms.
“It was a profound revolutionary upheaval, a leap from the old qualitative state of society to a new qualitative state, equivalent in its consequences to the revolutionary upheaval in October 1917” [History of the CPSU (b). Short course].
The agents of the kulaks in the Party—the Right opportunists—were dealt a crushing blow. The November plenum of the Central Committee (1929) recognized the propaganda of the views of the right opportunists as incompatible with being in the party.
The collective-farm movement grew, sweeping the kulaks out of the way. On January 5, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction." This resolution, taking into account the peculiarities of various regions of the USSR, established different terms for collectivization in the countryside. But on the ground, this most important decision was violated, local conditions and the degree of readiness of the peasantry to join the collective farms were ignored. In a number of areas the principle of voluntariness was violated. For provocative purposes, class enemies immediately tried to organize communes instead of the s.-x. artels, socialize residential buildings, small livestock, poultry. The kulaks and their agents called for the slaughter of cattle before joining the collective farms. In some places, the kulaks managed to incite the peasants to anti-Soviet demonstrations. On 2/III1930, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, JV Stalin's article "Dizziness from Success" was published; 3/IV JV Stalin published "An Answer to Comrade Collective Farmers". These articles, together with the decision of the Central Committee of the Party of March 15, 1930, "On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective-farm movement," played a decisive role in the Bolshevik correction of mistakes made locally during collectivization. The collective-farm movement began to grow successfully again. The peasantry became the real and lasting support of Soviet power. The collective-farm movement began to grow successfully again. The peasantry became the real and lasting support of Soviet power. The collective-farm movement began to grow successfully again. The peasantry became the real and lasting support of Soviet power.
In the summer of 1930 (June-July), the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks convened—“a congress of the full-scale offensive of socialism along the entire front, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class and the implementation of complete collectivization” (Stalin). By this time, the first-born of the first five-year plan had come into operation. On 26/IV 1930, through traffic was opened along Turksib. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, whose productive capacity was 40,000 tractors per year, and the Rostov Agricultural Plant were launched. machines. The construction of the Ural-Kuznetsk plant in the east was started. The socialist restructuring of the countryside proceeded successfully. The rapidly growing socialist sector of agriculture, collective farms and state farms, which became the basis in agriculture, expanded the area under crops. The offensive of socialism developed along the entire front, despite the fierce resistance of hostile elements - the kulaks, bourgeois intelligentsia, bureaucratic elements among state employees. device.
The country's successes in the field of socialist industrialization have set a new task—the socialist reconstruction of the entire national economy on the basis of new modern technology. The next step was a difficult task - to master the new technology.
“The Bolsheviks must master technology,” Stalin taught. "It's time for the Bolsheviks to become specialists themselves."
In June 1931, JV Stalin delivered a speech at a conference of business executives entitled "The New Situation—New Tasks in Economic Construction." In this speech, he put forward 6 conditions, the fulfillment of which was to lead to the restructuring of all economic activity in connection with the new situation and to overcome the backlog of individual industries:
“1) To recruit labor in an organized manner in the manner of agreements with collective farms, to mechanize labor.
2) Eliminate the turnover of the labor force, abolish leveling, properly organize wages, improve the living conditions of workers.
3) Eliminate depersonalization, improve the organization of labor, and correctly place forces in the enterprise.
4) Ensure that the working class of the USSR has its own industrial and technical intelligentsia.
5) Change the attitude towards the engineering and technical forces of the old school, show them more attention and care, more boldly involve them in work.
6) To introduce and strengthen self-financing, to raise intra-industrial accumulation.”
- The six conditions of I. V. Stalin became a program of struggle for the fulfillment of the plan of the first five-year plan.
Under the leadership of the party, a new, Soviet production and technical intelligentsia emerged from the ranks of the working class and the peasantry.
In order to consolidate the victory of the collective-farm system in the countryside and put an end to kulak sabotage on the collective farms, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in January 1933 decided to organize political departments at machine and tractor stations. 17,000 party workers were sent to the countryside to help the collective farms. The political departments coped in the Bolshevik way with the task of organizational and economic strengthening of the collective farms, after which they were transformed into ordinary party bodies.
In February 1933, the First All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers was held, at which JV Stalin spoke. The congress was of great importance in raising the activity of the collective-farm masses and strengthening the collective farms.
The first five-year plan was completed in 4 years and 3 months. In a report at the January (1933) plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Party, JV Stalin summed up the results of the first five-year plan. As a result of the implementation of the five-year plan, industry has taken a leading place in the national economy of the country. By the end of the five-year plan, the USSR took 2nd place in the world in general engineering. In coal mining, the USSR stepped over from 6th place in 1928 to 4th; for oil - from 3rd to 2nd, for pig iron - from 6th to 5th, etc. During the years of the five-year plan, 16 new blast furnaces were blown out. In 1928, instead of 3.2 million tons of pig iron, ferrous metallurgy produced 6.2 million tons in 1932. Electricity generation increased by 2.5 times compared to 1928.
During the years of the first five-year plan, plans for the collectivization of agriculture were blocked. During the five-year plan, 210 thousand collective farms were created, 61.5% of farms were collectivized. By the end of the five-year plan, 84.2% of all marketable output was provided by collective farms and state farms. All these achievements in agriculture became possible only thanks to mechanization. Instead of one MTS, by the beginning of the five-year plan, by the end of it, there were 2,446 MTS.
The first five-year plan destroyed private trade. The five-year plan changed the social composition of the population of the USSR. It played an enormous role in the development of the national republics, in which a local national working class grew up. The number of workers and employees employed in industry increased throughout the USSR from 3.5 million to 6.8 million people. The bulk of the peasants became collective farmers.
Capitalist elements were expelled from the national economy. Cities and urban populations grew rapidly. The implementation of the five-year plan was of great importance for strengthening the country's defense capability. The industrialization of the country made it possible to equip the Red Army with the most advanced weapons and in sufficient quantities. Soviet aircraft and tank building began to develop.
The fulfillment of the first five-year plan radically improved the material situation of the working people, and unemployment disappeared. Universal compulsory primary education was introduced. The network of preschool institutions has grown. Illiteracy was eliminated among the adult population of the country. The network of cultural and educational institutions has doubled in the country - clubs, libraries, museums, cinema, radio, etc.
Soviet science achieved major successes during the years of the first five-year plan. The network of scientific-research institutions has grown, the number of scientific employees has sharply increased. The Academy of Sciences turned its face to the tasks of socialist construction. Soviet literature, headed by M. Gorky, Soviet art experienced a period of upsurge and flourishing. Millions of people, previously deprived of all the benefits of culture, reached out to art and literature.
The national culture developed. With the help and under the guidance of the most advanced culture of the Russian people, the working people of the formerly backward nationalities built their own culture, national in form and socialist in content.
The 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (January 1934), based on the reports of V. M. Molotov and V. V. Kuibyshev, adopted a decision on the plan for the second five-year plan (1933–37). It was even grander than the first. By the end of the second five-year plan, the output of large-scale industry had increased 8 times compared to the pre-war level, and the technical reconstruction of the main branches of industry and the mechanization of agriculture were basically being completed. By the end of 1934, the collective farms united 75% of the peasant farms and about 90% of all sown area. 276.4 thousand tractors and 32 thousand combines worked on the fields of the USSR. Collective farms have become a strong, invincible force.
The successes of socialist construction provoked the last major attempt by the internal counter-revolution, led by the enemies of the people, traitors to the motherland and the working class, the Trotskyist-Bukharin gang, to intensify their criminal activities.
On 1/XII 1934, they villainously murdered S. M. Kirov, secretary of the Central Committee of the party and the Leningrad party organization, a loyal ally of Lenin and Stalin. In 1935-36, the villainous murders of V. R. Menzhinsky, V. V. Kuibyshev, and M. Gorky were committed. The trials (1935-1938) revealed the role of these conspiratorial groups of assassins, terrorists, spies and saboteurs, who, on the instructions of foreign intelligence services, were preparing an intervention against the USSR, the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. By decision of the court of the Soviet people, these political murderous bandits suffered a well-deserved punishment; most were sentenced to capital punishment.
While the industry and agriculture of the Soviet Union were steadily developing and growing, the capitalist countries were going through a severe economic crisis. The 24 million unemployed in the cities and tens of millions of peasants ruined by the agrarian crisis were doomed in the capitalist countries to starvation, poverty and slow extinction. The crisis has further sharpened the contradictions of imperialism. Imperialism sought a way out of the crisis in a new redivision of the world, in suppressing the working class by establishing an open terrorist dictatorship, and in preparing for war against the USSR.
On the initiative of the French Foreign Minister Briand, in 1930 a project was put forward to create a European federal union. A European committee was set up to work on this issue. In fact, it was an attempt to create a united front against the USSR. War danger hung over the world. The hotbeds of a new imperialist war were being formed.
The first focus of the new imperialist war was in the Far East. In 1931, the Japanese imperialists captured Manchuria, then began the capture of the North. China. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, began to arm heavily. On the Far Eastern borders there were continuous provocations organized by the Japanese imperialists.
The second hotbed of war was created in the center of Europe. In 1933, with the help of German capitalists, the fascist party (“National Socialists”), headed by Hitler, seized power in Germany. Having dispersed the workers' organizations, the Nazis banned the Communist Party, arrested and destroyed its leaders. Other democratic parties and organizations were also crushed. Fascist Germany began furiously preparing for a war to conquer the whole world, to turn all peoples into its slaves. Plans were developed for the conquest and capture of small states in Europe and war against large states like England and France. The main blow was being prepared against the Soviet Union - the stronghold of the world and the most significant Slavic state.
The European imperialists began to prepare a new imperialist war for the redivision of the world. The Soviet state with its peace-loving policy tried to prevent a new world war. Pursuing a consistent policy of peace, the Soviet government in 1932-33 concluded non-aggression pacts with a number of countries. In 1932, non-aggression pacts were concluded with Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. After the Herriot government came to power in France in 1932, a non-aggression pact was concluded with France. In the same year, a non-aggression pact was concluded with Poland, and in 1933 with Italy. Diplomatic relations were established with Spain, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. In 1933, the new US President F. Roosevelt began negotiations with the Soviet government, which resulted in the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States.
The actions of the Soviet Union on the world stage in the struggle for disarmament and for peace, its consistent peace policy attracted the sympathy of all those who yearn for peace. In September 1934, at the invitation of 34 states, the USSR, in order to strengthen the cause of peace, joined the League of Nations and tried to use it in the struggle against the fascist aggressors.
At the same time, the aggravation of the international situation forced the Soviet Union to pay great attention to strengthening the country's defense capability and protecting its borders in the east and west.
While the bourgeois countries again entered an economic crisis in 1937, the USSR steadily advanced the development of industry and agriculture, and raised the culture and well-being of the country's masses. The Stalinist slogan of mastering new technology became the leading one in the second five-year plan. Socialist emulation rose to a higher level—the Stakhanovite movement unfolded, which overturned the norms of output that had existed up to that time and was the beginning of an unprecedented cultural and technical upsurge of the working class, preparations for the transition from socialism to communism. In his historic speech at the 1st All-Union Conference of the Stakhanovites (November 1935), Stalin revealed the significance of the Stakhanov movement for the USSR, to carry out a gradual transition from socialism to communism and to abolish the opposition between mental and physical labor. As a result of the successes of the Stakhanovite movement and the tremendous upsurge in production among the working class, the second five-year plan for industry was completed ahead of schedule (by April 1, 1937, i.e., in 4 years and 3 months).
Of great importance for the rise and flourishing of the collective farms was the Charter of the Agricultural Artel, developed under the direct supervision of Stalin and adopted by the 2nd Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers (February 1935).
The Second Five-Year Plan completed the socialist reconstruction of industry and agriculture. In terms of gross industrial output, the Soviet Union ranked first in Europe and second in the world. The Soviet country has overtaken all countries of the world in the production of combines; It ranked first in Europe and second in the world in terms of the number of tractors and ore mining; in the production of electricity, the USSR took 2nd place in Europe, 3rd in the world.
The success of the industrialization of the country has completely changed agriculture. By the end of the second five-year plan, over 243,000 collective farms had united 28.5 million small peasant farms. 350 thousand tractors and 100 thousand combines worked on the fields of the Soviet country. People of new professions appeared in the village - hundreds of thousands of tractor drivers, combine operators, mechanics. The production of grain increased significantly: instead of 4-5 billion poods a year, by the end of the first five-year plan, grain production reached 7 billion poods.
A real cultural revolution took place in the country. Illiteracy among the adult population was completely eliminated, and universal primary compulsory education was implemented. The total number of students in schools increased to 28 million, the number of students in higher educational institutions reached 542,000. Millions of women who had previously been only housewives were attracted to work in production and social activities. In 1936, 8.5 million women worked in industry, in transport, and in Soviet institutions (except collective farms), which accounted for 34% of all workers.
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Was it a war between Russians and Germans?
