Stalin And The 5 Years Plan
Confuzor
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2412Awaiting Authorization
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2412Awaiting Authorization
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">Was it justified?</div> Taking History 12 right now, and we're getting into something a little nifty. <s>Basically, I'm trying to get you guys to do my homework for me.</s>.
What’s happening is that we’re having a mock trial and putting Stalin on the stand. The issue at hand is whether he was justified for his implementation of the Five Year Plan and the collectivization that damned a hell load of kulaks and Ukrainians. The justification for Stalin’s actions was that while he never reached the degree of industrialization he wanted, it reached a level sufficient enough that provided Russia the ability to defeat Germany in WWII. Had Stalin simply stuck with Lenin’s New Economic Plan, Russia would have been completely sodomized by Germany, thus leading to the very probable victory of the Axis side.
In the trial, I play as a witness who served in the politburo, who saw a lot of my comrades get purged, so naturally I’ll be against Stalin. Instead of attacking the issues presented up top, I’m intending to present issues that don’t exactly relate to the Five Year Plan, (it’s up the lawyer to recognize that I’m dodging the main issue at hand, <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->)
Things I intend to present for consideration (please recognize that these are meant to be exaggerated):
The military purges: “If you ask me, Stalin was the reason why we lost more men then we needed to. With the purging of one out of every five of our finest officers, he deprived us of our greatest resource: skilled men! It was a miracle we survived the war in spite of Stalin! Industrialization? INDUSTRIALIZATION? Have you not seen <i>Enemy at the Gates</i>? Thank God Vasili was not killed in his first assault, when your industrialization FAILED TO EQUIP HIM WITH A RIFLE! Not to mention that the quality of our war material were pitiful compared to weapons of the Nazis!”
If they let me go crazy enough, I might be able to use this argument:
“Stalin was the welcoming mat for WWII! Were it not for his treacherous ways, good Trotsky would have been successor to Lenin. Now THERE was a man who understood true communism! Stalin was a fool concentrating communism only to the motherland. Trotsky recognized the need for world-wide revolution, and could of easily tipped the power away from the Nazi pig-dogs! Had the beauty of communism of been allowed to blossom in Germany as Trotsky had envisioned, the abomination known as Hitler would of never come to power! No one is a traitor but YOU, Stalin!”
<i>/grabs pen and lunges forth at student acting as Stalin; shortly restrained by fellow classmates and teacher</i>
Once again the topic is whether Stalin’s actions were justified, (mainly centred around the Five Year Plan), in preventing the fall of Russia during WWII.
Discuss.
What’s happening is that we’re having a mock trial and putting Stalin on the stand. The issue at hand is whether he was justified for his implementation of the Five Year Plan and the collectivization that damned a hell load of kulaks and Ukrainians. The justification for Stalin’s actions was that while he never reached the degree of industrialization he wanted, it reached a level sufficient enough that provided Russia the ability to defeat Germany in WWII. Had Stalin simply stuck with Lenin’s New Economic Plan, Russia would have been completely sodomized by Germany, thus leading to the very probable victory of the Axis side.
In the trial, I play as a witness who served in the politburo, who saw a lot of my comrades get purged, so naturally I’ll be against Stalin. Instead of attacking the issues presented up top, I’m intending to present issues that don’t exactly relate to the Five Year Plan, (it’s up the lawyer to recognize that I’m dodging the main issue at hand, <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->)
Things I intend to present for consideration (please recognize that these are meant to be exaggerated):
The military purges: “If you ask me, Stalin was the reason why we lost more men then we needed to. With the purging of one out of every five of our finest officers, he deprived us of our greatest resource: skilled men! It was a miracle we survived the war in spite of Stalin! Industrialization? INDUSTRIALIZATION? Have you not seen <i>Enemy at the Gates</i>? Thank God Vasili was not killed in his first assault, when your industrialization FAILED TO EQUIP HIM WITH A RIFLE! Not to mention that the quality of our war material were pitiful compared to weapons of the Nazis!”
If they let me go crazy enough, I might be able to use this argument:
“Stalin was the welcoming mat for WWII! Were it not for his treacherous ways, good Trotsky would have been successor to Lenin. Now THERE was a man who understood true communism! Stalin was a fool concentrating communism only to the motherland. Trotsky recognized the need for world-wide revolution, and could of easily tipped the power away from the Nazi pig-dogs! Had the beauty of communism of been allowed to blossom in Germany as Trotsky had envisioned, the abomination known as Hitler would of never come to power! No one is a traitor but YOU, Stalin!”
<i>/grabs pen and lunges forth at student acting as Stalin; shortly restrained by fellow classmates and teacher</i>
Once again the topic is whether Stalin’s actions were justified, (mainly centred around the Five Year Plan), in preventing the fall of Russia during WWII.
Discuss.
Comments
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Incorrect. The Soviet T-34 tank was the best medium tank of WWII; not until the final months of the war did the Germans have models that could match them. The invasion in 1941 was undertaken mainly by old Mark II and Mark III German tanks, neither of which in a one-on-one fight could stand up to a T-34. By 1943 the massive Stalin class tanks were appearing, prompting desperate German atempts to develop weaponry that would actually penetrate the armour of these beasts. The Katylusha rocket artillery was also a superb weapon, and in the skies the Red Air Force, though poorly equipped at the start of the war, soon rose to the challange quite well.
What suffered from the purges were tactics. Soviet military thinking had previously been directed much towards the en masse tactics of the German panzer armies, but the purges eliminated that. Tanks were relagated to infantry support roles and as such inferiour German tanks were able to defeat superiour Russian models simply because the Germans had proper tactics.
To be fair, many would say that without Stalin's iron leadership, the country never would have held together in the face of the Nazi invasion. A more relaxed ruler could well have been unable to mobilise the country behind him, or make the difficult and quite often harsh decisions that determined whether the war would be won or not. Take Stalingrad for example; Stalin forbid the citizens of the city to evacuate after the battle began. His logic was that if the soldiers saw the people there, they would fight harder. Plus, the country was hard-pressed getting men into Stalingrad in the first place; wasteing time and equipment getting civilians out wasn't possible. Nor was it worthwhile to spend countless lives and equipment trying to liberate Leningrad from it's 3 year seige before the country was ready. Or diverting food from people not involved with the war effort to soldiers and factory workers. Very harsh decisions, but they had to be made.
The 5 year plans did help the country gain a lot of industrial power. Stalin's biggest failing though was in the agricultural sector. The kulaks didn't need to be purged, and collectivisation was an abysmal failure. It made the party a lot of enemies amongst the Ukranians and rural peasentry, which was evident when the Germans invaded, as many Russians welcomed the Germans as liberators. If the Germans hadn't been following Hitler's insane Ubermenshen policies the Nazis could have found some excellent allies. As it was the oppressed Russians turned back to Stalin as the lesser of two evils.
Does the means justify the end? When the end is the defeat of Nazi Germany and the salvation of millions of Russian lives then yes. However, it must be noted that much of what Stalin did was counter-productive, both to the growth of socialism and the defense of the country. The purges of the officer classes and the kulaks stripped Russia of much needed expertise and agricultural supplies. One can say it was the price Russia paid for the leadership that Stalin was able to give when the Germans did attack. And despite Stalin's attrocities, what he did manage to do was defeat the most powerful military force in the world and mobilise an enormous nation, filled with differant cultures and ethnicities, directly behind the war effort. That was no small feat.
1. killed aproximately 20 million people.( partially as a part of the five year plans)
2. was allowing the germans to test weapons on soviet territory prior to the start of the war and in violation of teh versailles treaty.
3. poland 1939-41 split with hitler.lithiania estona latvia too
4. after the invasion stalin spends a long period of time in total seclusion. it has been theorized that he suffered a mental break down.
5. the destruction of the ukraine as "the bread basket of russia". this includes starving 5 million to death while requsitioning grain which was left to rot in open fields surronded by armed guards. this is the winter of 1932. teh number five million is given by rober conquest many have disagreed with it. read: the harvest of sorrow
6. open latest chapter in chechen russian problems by deporting the entire population of checnya folowing tehir "support" of teh invading nazis ion this deportation 1/2 of all ethnic chechens are killed.
7. crushing political dissent in all forms. read: gulag archipleagao
otehr suiggested readinfg the first socialist society
i could go on but im writing a paper about the civil war
It's true, which is saying alot considering the T-34 was a horrible tank <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
It was very cramped, not all even had communications gear, and the armor was soft. It was kinda like the sherman was with a lower profile and sloped armor on the sides as well as the front. The quality of materials wasn't as good as the sherman, but it was better in other respects too. They were just able to mass produce a good design and it worked. The BEST medium tank would probably be the panther, but as you mentioned, it was jtoo little too late.
While the 5 year plan may or may not have saved russia , the fact of the matter is, in the long run Stalin was an evil paranoid leader who did more harm than good.
That's exactly contradictory to what I have in my history textbooks.
Trotsky's plan was to try to get the support of the labourers in Europe, but his plan was ill-conceived; there wasn't enough worker support for this to become a reality at that point in time. I'd quote the book directly, but I left it at school...
The "arguement" I had wasn't meant to be taken too seriously anyways, but since this class mock trial is going to involve acting, I was planning to use whatever far-fetched theory to make myself look crazy, but with flair. Kind of like Hitler, not that I think about it...
I ended up getting a different role in class though; I'm still a witness, but I didn't serve in the Politburo. What I'll be focusing on exclusively is the Ukrainian famine.
But yeah... this discussion should still be useful for me. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
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Incorrect. The Soviet T-34 tank was the best medium tank of WWII; not until the final months of the war did the Germans have models that could match them. The invasion in 1941 was undertaken mainly by old Mark II and Mark III German tanks, neither of which in a one-on-one fight could stand up to a T-34. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree that T-34 was a great tank and it was especially good against german tanks in russian winter, due to its wide treads. German tanks got stuck in the snow. However T-34 had some weakness too; iirc it had only 3 men operating the tank, where as in german tanks there were driver, loader, shooter and commander.
It was very cramped, not all even had communications gear, and the armor was soft. It was kinda like the sherman was with a lower profile and sloped armor on the sides as well as the front. The quality of materials wasn't as good as the sherman, but it was better in other respects too. They were just able to mass produce a good design and it worked. The BEST medium tank would probably be the panther, but as you mentioned, it was jtoo little too late.
While the 5 year plan may or may not have saved russia , the fact of the matter is, in the long run Stalin was an evil paranoid leader who did more harm than good.
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The Germans certainly didn't think it was a horrible tank. The T-34 gave them hell from the very start of the invasion. True, the materials weren't brilliant, and the lack of communications gear really hurt Russian tank formations, but the design of the tank was excellent. Sloping armour to deflect tank shells was a superb feature, and as for soft armour the Germans experianced considerable trouble with penetrating T-34s right through the war. The Panther was a superiour tank, that's true, but at a time when the Germans could produce 100 Panthers, the Soviets were churning out 1000 T-34s. The Sherman was an average vehicle at best, but the Japanese counter-parts were pretty sub-par anyway, and in Europe the Americans were facing the dregs of the German army who didn't have the manpower or equipment to give the Shermans a real run for their money.
Stalin was a bad guy, no-one's gonna say otherwise. He was unbelieveably paranoid as well. Yet perhaps such things were needed in the leader of a place like Soviet Russia. As I have said, lesser or more kinder men may have crumbled in the face of the initial German invasion, or let sections of the country rise in rebellion and break away. Stalin held the country together and mobilized the nation against the Germans. And we can all be very thankful that Stalin did exactly that, because if he hadn't and Moscow had fallen in 1941 Europe would all be speaking German and the insane Nazi philosophies would be common practice.
Hard times call for hard leaders. That's brutal and cruel, but that's Russia. The country has always been a patch-work of differant nationalities and ethnicities, all held together by a strong centralised government. The country had a real chance of falling apart in 1941, but Stalin held it together, shifting heavy industry east and concentrating the whole nation towards the goal of defeating Germany. Did Stalin do more harm than good? Consider this. If Hitler had conquored Russia, he would have killed far more than the 6 million people who died in the concentration camps. He would have ethnically cleansed the whole region, forcing the survivors to be little more than slaves. Stalin's slaughter of 20 million people was a tragedy, but compared to the horror that Hitler would have unleashed, it pales in comparison.
This is true, but the design meant that it was harder than it looked. Shells would often bounce off it, and it's relatively heavy gun usually meant it would come out the winner against everything except a Panther III/IV or a Tiger.
For design to design however, considering everything as a whole I'd say the T-34 was actually one of the best tanks of the war.
So USA handed soviets their new tank designs? <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Just to end the tank discussion and get ontopic(make new tank topic if you want to talk about it):
Sherman was a bad tank, german tanks were generally very 'hi-tech' and advanced at the time, however T-34 was much better in russians cold winter. Even though it had some serious fails strategy-wise(radio communication, lack of room for crew), it was superior stat-wise: huge arse cannon, wide treads, low profile, sloping thick armor.
They WERE allies during WWII, no? Plus, the Yanks gave tons of jeeps and trucks to them Ruskis too.
The Sherman was an icky tank but it could be built REALLY fast and was REALLY cost effective, compared to the German tanks. Plus, 2 Shermans could be place on a LST whereas only 1 heavy tank would fit. Shermans were also more reliable than German tanks. Plus, towards 44' 45', extra armour piled onto them shermans allowed them to survive even direct 88 hits.
But yeah.. them T34 was some tank.
We had THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of 90mm anti aircraft guns sitting in the continental united states becuase the president was worried about air attack (which, of course never happened)
Yet our shermans were going into combat with 75mm low velocity guns. It was horrible- They should have designed and produced a turret that fits the standard sherman with the 90mm anti aircraft guns.
No, we didn't give russia the T-34 design as far as I know.
We are getting way off topic though people. As has been said, if we want to have a big discussion on the best tanks of WWII, start a new topic.
After the Left Oppositionists were expelled from the CPSU, Stalin picked up the plan himself.
Also, you should not just call this "Good Trotsky" and "Bad Stalin." What politburo member, who would have to be well-versed in dialectical materialism, would waste time with moral crap about good and evil?
I don't have time for a big post so I am just giving you some quick things to consider here.
What the hell is this **** about "Stalin slaughtering 20 million people." Why the **** would a leader kill 1/5 the population. Its ridiculous. Especially since the only ppl they killed were political opponents.. <i>mostly other Communists</i>. Unlike Ayn Rand's tomes of ****, the pro-capitalist movement in Russia was infinitesimal, and if it did exist in organized form in Stalin's time, it was probably completely run by the western nations. There were no 20 million people who wanted a return to "free" capitalism and were slaughtered for it.
Do you want to know where the likes of Conquest got their figures on the millions of people Stalin managed to kill?
The Nazis had a propaganda campaign with the exact same figures in the 30's... talkin about how Stalin was causing "man-made famine" in the Ukraine, and slaughtering people left and right for breathing out of line. They said they were going to march in and liberate the Ukraine, isn't that silly.
Also I really think Solzhenitsyn is full of ****. I don't deny he went through it. I'm not trying to defend Stalin, just saying how ridiculous these claims are. Solzhenitsyn said Stalin got 100 million people killed. How he managed to do this without open revolt in a nation of 125 million is beyond me.
oh and if you're going to diss Stalin for starving 5 million people, well well well, in India they had famines where 10 million people would starve to death.. so should you put all the British officials on trial?
Should you then, also, put all the western governments on trial for causing a Russian famine of 7 million deaths when they invaded the USSR in 1918-1921?
Imperialism has done a lot worse.
But yeah; in order to make the case interesting, I'm going to need to provide ammunition for both sides, and I've already nothed down a lot of criticism against Stalin that seems unfounded.
Thanks for the info!