[citation needed] The duration of service was 2 years. Library of Congress.Sputnik, 1957. Notably, after the German attack, the officer responsible for maps, Lieutenant General M. K. Kudryavtsev, was not punished by Stalin, who was known for extreme punishments after failures to obey his orders. Comrade Stalin's Three Plans -Mark Solonin's article on his personal website, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, PolishSoviet War, Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, Aggravation of class struggle under socialism, Backwardness brings on beatings by others, 1906 Bolshevik raid on the Tsarevich Giorgi, National delimitation in the Soviet Union, Demolition of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, List of awards and honours bestowed upon Joseph Stalin, Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, GermanSoviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy&oldid=1165216256, Military history of the Soviet Union during World War II, Articles containing Russian-language text, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2010, Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from July 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, 22nd, 20th, 21st, 19th, 16th, 24th, 28th Armies, 77 / 5 / 2, The Soviet Union was intrinsically unstable. .320, Source: International Affairs, Vol. Glasnost eliminated remaining traces of Stalinist repression, such as the banning of books (like Boris Pasternaks Nobel Prize-winning Dr. The Soviet offensive plans controversy was a debate among historians in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as to whether Joseph Stalin had planned to launch an attack against Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941. It depicted the Soviet Bloc's vision of a seven-day nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. The plan was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932. The state began renting tabulating equipment later on. By the end of 1989, the USSR had come apart at the seams. All of them are said to be unsuitable for defensive operations. Five-Year Plans | Definition, Economics, Soviet Union, & Facts Protesters began gathering around the White House, the Russian parliament building, and started erecting barricades. [59] A large portion of the Soviet Union's urbanization was due to the deportation of peasants from villages. [2][4][3], A Soviet nuclear counter-strike would be launched against West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and North-East Italy. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes. Such a strike was estimated to cause 2 million immediate Polish deaths near the, This page was last edited on 17 June 2023, at 18:54. Most other communist states, including the People's Republic of China, adopted a similar method of planning. 1993. Millions more were deported, or imprisoned in forced labor camps known as Gulags. [60] From 1929 through 1931, 3.5million Kulaks were dispossessed by the Soviet Union and left with no choice but relocation to cities. The action started only when the Soviets ("Easterners") attacked westward from their border and, in the second game ("South Variant"), even from positions deep inside the enemy's land. Pearson Longman, 2008. Five-year Plan | Encyclopedia.com 4, Seventieth Anniversary Issue (October 1990), p. 812, Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography, Macmillan, 2004. [11], There are many high-value targets in Britain (like RAF Fylingdales, RAF Mildenhall, and RAF Lakenheath) that would then have to be struck in a conventional manner in this plan, though a nuclear strike would be far more effective (and, as the plans show, a preferable option for the Soviet leadership as shown by their strikes in Western Europe). [9], The first five-year plan was not just about economics. [32] Behind the Urals,[33] a book by John Scott posed the question of the paranoia felt by the workers in these factories during the first five-year plan. The discussion resulted in dozens of serious studies at least partially supporting Suvorov's thesis, which were usually better documented than Suvorov's. [37] In turn, this disruption would eventually lead to famines for the many years following the first five-year plan, with 67million dying from starvation in 1933.[39]. At the end of 1929 the Soviets asserted themselves to forming collectivized peasant agriculture, but the "kulaks" had to be "liquidated as a class," because of their resistance to fixed agricultural prices. In the 1920s, there was a great debate between Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov on the one hand, and Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev on the other. Between 1929 and 1936 the Soviet Union shifted from producing solely silent films to solely sound films. Agricultural production was so disrupted that famine broke out in several districts. Soviet planners declared a need for "constant struggle, struggle, and struggle" to achieve a Communist society. In Turkmenistan, for example, the Soviet policy of collectivization shifted their production from cotton to food products; Russian settlers were given the best land, and Kazakh and Kyrgyz nomads were forced to settle down on soil without agricultural potential. Suvorov's main points include the following: In some countries, particularly in Russia, Germany, and Israel, Suvorov's thesis has jumped the bonds of academic discourse and captured the imagination of the public. Roberts, Cynthia. [4][1] It has been strongly rejected by most historians[5][6][7] and Icebreaker is generally considered to be an "anti-Soviet tract" in Western countries. Five-Year Plans, method of planning economic growth over limited periods, through the use of quotas, used first in the Soviet Union and later in other socialist states. Between 1928 and 1940, Stalin enforced the collectivization of the agricultural sector. The majority of historians believe Stalin sought to avoid war in 1941 because he believed his military was not prepared to fight German forces, though historians disagree on why Stalin persisted with his appeasement strategy of Nazi Germany despite mounting evidence of an impending German invasion. The last version was to be completed by 1 May 1941. NEP was based more on capitalism and not socialism, which is the direction the government wanted to head toward. [1], According to professor Alexander Hill, it is currently believed that whereas the war against "capitalist powers" was seen as potentially inevitable by Soviet leadership, the Soviet Union was making some preparations for war, and the Soviet pursuit for a collective security system in Europe ("Litvinov's line") was sincere in the late 1930s, the event that triggered active Soviet war preparations was the rapid collapse of the Anglo-French alliance in 1940.[10]. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Although France was not officially part of NATO's command structure, there was an understanding, formalised by regular joint exercises in West Germany, that France would go to the aid of NATO, should the Warsaw Pact attack. 1995. The sixth five-year plan was launched in 1956 during a period of dual leadership under Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin, but it was abandoned after two years due to over-optimistic targets. Other Russian historians, Iu. Another consequence of this is that peasants resisted by killing their farm animals rather than turning them over to the State when their farms were collectivized. Tools. [41] Stalin's second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva, committed suicide due to the atrocities of collectivization, particularly the famine. Invasion of the United States - Wikipedia .. Bobylev. During this period, the first purges were initiated targeting many people working for Gosplan. [5], Stuttgart, Munich, and Nuremberg in West Germany were to be destroyed by nuclear weapons and then captured by the Czechoslovaks and Hungarians. [21][need quotation to verify] All these tensions had the potential to destroy the young Soviet Union and forced Joseph Stalin to introduce rapid industrialization of heavy industry so that the Soviet Union could address external and internal threats if needed. This famine led many Russians to relocate to find food, jobs, and shelter outside of their small villages which caused many towns to become overpopulated. As of 2021 most of these have not been translated into English. The famine peaked during the winter of '32'33 claiming the lives of an estimated 3.3 to 7 million people, while millions more were permanently disabled. Absolute War. A 1922 treaty between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasia (modern Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It had to expand to survive. By 1937 the tolkachi emerged occupying a key position mediating between the enterprises and the commissariat. [41], Suvorov's most controversial thesis was that the Red Army had made extensive preparations for an offensive war in Europe but was totally unprepared for defensive operations on its own territory. [44] This legislation led to many dangerous prisoners being released from prison into labor camps. [5], In Denmark, the first nuclear targets were Roskilde and Esbjerg. This stockpiling of grain by the peasantry left millions of people in the city hungry, leading Lenin to establish his New Economic Policy to keep the economy from crashing. [20], American historian Sean McMeekin claims that while Suvorov thesis was largely ignored in the West, based on the authority of notable critics like Glantz and Gorodetsky, it was nevertheless treated serious in the Eastern European countries, which were directly involved in German-Soviet struggle. 69, no. Peasants were mainly concerned for their own well being and felt that the state had nothing of necessity to offer for the grain. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata. These five-year plans outlined programs for huge increases in the output of industrial goods. [25] Soviet officials also believed that collectivization would increase crop yields and help fund other programs. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. The kulaks did not support mass collectivization, as their land was being taken from them as well as their animals. The idea was floated in Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on Wednesday. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. [citation needed] Still, a reported 12% to 13% rate of annual industrial growth was attained in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Soviet Union - Countries, Cold War & Collapse | HISTORY By 1928, with the rapid industrialization, and mass urbanization that followed, consumption was to increase rapidly as well. Boris Yeltsin and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This dissatisfaction arose from the famine of the early 1920s, as well as from increasing mistreatment of the peasants. [45], Early in the plan, however, the Communist leaders realized the necessity and the benefit of prisoner labor to complete the five-year plan. Cabinet of Ministers met later that morning, and most of the ministers supported the coup. 80% of the total investment of the first five-year plan, was focused heavily on the industrial sector. Stalin and Stalinism. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war. After a period of relative economic liberalism Stalin decided that a wholesale restructuring of the economy was needed . The Soviets were unable to organize defenses. During the eleventh five-year plan, the country imported some 42million tons of grain annually, almost twice as much as during the tenth five-year plan and three times as much as during the ninth five-year plan (19711975). Officially, the first five-year plan for the industry was fulfilled to the extent of 93.7% in just four years and three months. In a period known as the Red Terror, Bolshevik secret policeknown as Chekacarried out a campaign of mass executions against supporters of the czarist regime and against Russias upper classes. The troops were provided with maps that covered territories outside the Soviet Union".[64]. [19] Hoffmann argues that the actual Soviet troop concentrations, fuel depots and airfields were near the German-Soviet border in what was Poland. This view had also been advanced by former German generals, Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War, GermanySoviet Union relations before 1941, Stalin's alleged speech of 19 August 1939, "Did Stalin Plan to Attack Hitler in 1941? [41][42] Farmers of Kazakhstan rejected collectivization, and protested, while Stalin raised quotas, meaning peasants would not be able to eat and would psychologically break them. They were each allowed a small plot of land for their own use, this led to a recovery in agricultural production as the peasants produced fruit, vegatables, meat and milk on their own plots. Other users included the Central Statistical Bureau, the Soviet Commissariat of Finance, Soviet Commissariat of Inspection, Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Trade, the Grain Trust, Soviet Railways, Russian Ford, Russian Buick, the Karkov tractor factory, and the Tula Armament Works. The book is also based on open-source, unclassified literature, and recently declassified materials. where he argued, based on his analysis of historical documents and data, that Stalin used Nazi Germany as a proxy to attack Europe. Taylor and Francis Publishers. [40] The historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical and claims that Suvorov's writings have "virtually no evidentiary base". [9], While most of the figures were overstated, Stalin was able to announce truthfully that the plan had been achieved ahead of schedule; however, the many investments made to the west were excluded. [2] This view had also been advanced by former German generals following the war. Suvorov's critics say that the Soviet paratroopers were not well trained or armed. [6] Hungary was to capture Vienna. Quotas expecting to reach 235.9 percent output and labor to increase by 110 percent were unrealistic in the time frame they allotted for. At this time the Soviet leaders attempted to orchestrate an increase in prison population. [8][9], In 1929, Stalin edited the plan to include the creation of "kolkhoz" collective farming systems that stretched over thousands of acres of land and had hundreds of thousands of peasants working on them. Government authorities in Russia assert that the plan will be substantially fulfilled by the end of the fourth yearSeptember 30, 1932. At least 23million Soviet peasants moved into cities, with Moscow's population rising by nearly 60 percent. [9] The posters and flyers used to promote and advertise the plan were also reminiscent of wartime propaganda. The forces mobilized in the Soviet Union were not positioned for defensive, but for offensive aims". The rise of Yeltsin and the foundation of post-Soviet Russia, Independence movements and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, https://www.britannica.com/event/the-collapse-of-the-Soviet-Union, History Ireland - The collapse of the Soviet Union, Center for European Studies - The Fall of the Soviet Union, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 192291. The Soviet State had nationalized the Odhner arithmometer factory in Saint Petersburg after the revolution. 66, No. Radical leftist revolutionaries overthrew Russias Czar Nicholas II, ending centuries of Romanov rule. According to McMeekin, the new studies show that the traditional view of surprise German attack against the Soviet Union can be no longer held. [10] The famine was the direct result of the industrialization and collectivization implemented by the first Five-Year-Plan. What Were Stalin's Five Year Plans? | History Hit Five-year plans of the Soviet Union - Wikipedia [24][25], The minor planet 2122 Pyatiletka discovered in 1971 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova is named in honor of five-year plans of the USSR. During this period 19281932, massive industrial centers emerged in areas that were highly isolated before. Mark Solonin notes that several variants of a war plan against Germany had existed at least since August 1940. Yes, defense with attack. The expected assault on the White House did not materialize, however, and it became clear that the coup leaders orders were not being obeyed. [31] During this time the industrial workforce rose from 3.12million in 1928 to 6.01million at the end of the plan in 1932. Koch, H.W. .: , , 2007, pp. HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. Gorbachev and his family were placed under house arrest by Gen. Igor Maltsev, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Defense Troops. Molotov's . The U.S.S.R. Corrections? The Communists believed that consolidating individually owned farms into a series of large state-run collective farms would increase agricultural productivity. [63], This article is about the first five-year plan in the Soviet Union. Both researchers came to the conclusion that Zhukov's plan of May 15, 1941 reflected Stalin's alleged speech of 19 August 1939 heralding the birth of the new offensive Red Army. [48] In addition, despite the difficulties that agriculture underwent throughout the plan, the Soviets recruited more than 70,000 volunteers from the cities to help collectivize and work on farms in the rural areas. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Newspapers could criticize the government, and parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections. Agricultural collectivization, within Russia, had its origins under Lenin during the New Economic Policy. These policies were called glasnost and perestroika. [16], One of Suvorov's arguments was that certain types of weapons were mostly suited for offensive warfare and that the Red Army had large numbers of such weapons. [60] Members of Agitprop brigands attempted to use the push towards industrialization to isolate peasants from religion and away from the formerly influential Kulak population with performances in which they would deem that issues faced by peasant populations were the faults of the Kulaks. Suvorov offers as another piece of evidence the extensive effort Stalin took to conceal general mobilization by manipulating the laws setting the conscription age. The middle and lower class supported collectivization, because it took private land from individual kulaks, and distributed it among the serednyak and bednyak's villages. The bulk of this grain was sold by the West; in 1985, for example, 94% of Soviet grain imports were from the non-socialist world, with the United States selling 14.1 million tons. Millions died during the Great Famine of 1932-1933. [38] In the years following the agricultural collectivization, the reforms would disrupt the Soviet food supply. [17][need quotation to verify] A war scare arose in 1927[18] when multiple Western states, like Great Britain, began cutting off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Called treacherous, deluded, out-of-touch, insane, Lenin might have been a minor historical footnote but for the Russian Revolution, which catapulted him into the headlines of the 20th century. The controversy started with Viktor Suvorov with his 1980s book Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War? The peasants led an all-out attack to protect individual farming; however, Stalin rightly did not see the peasants as a threat. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. The first five-year plan also began to prepare the Soviet Union to win in the Second World War. Soviet offensive plans controversy - Wikipedia Moscow mulls plan to display destroyed Western hardware outside - RT [9], Propaganda used before, during, and after the first five-year plan compared the industry to battle. The president was very tired and was being treated in the south, Yanayev explained. (International Humanitarian Law). In response to NATO, the Soviet Union in 1955 consolidated power among Eastern bloc countries under a rival alliance called the Warsaw Pact, setting off the Cold War. Those who did not give up their grain were considered breaking Soviet law, which caused the famine. [9] However, there is some speculation regarding the legitimacy of these numbers as the nature of Soviet statistics is notoriously misleading or exaggerated[citation needed]. The first plan saw unrealistic quotas set for industrialization that, in reality, would not be met for decades to come. Educate them in the spirit of attack". At its peak, the USSR would grow to contain 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. Providing additional support for this thesis is that no significant defense plans have been found. [57] In his argument, Meltyukhov covers five different versions of the assault plan ("Considerations on the Strategical Deployment of Soviet Troops in Case of War with Germany and its Allies" (Russian original)), the first version of which was developed soon after the outbreak of World War II. Planning Based on a system of state ownership, the Soviet economy was managed through Gosplan (the State Planning Commission), Gosbank (the State Bank) and the Gossnab (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply). [47], Although many of the goals set by the plan were not fully met, there were several economic sectors that still saw large increases in their output. An unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard-liners in August 1991 sealed the Soviet Unions fate by diminishing Gorbachevs power and propelling democratic forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, to the forefront of Russian politics. .12(1). That night fighting broke out between troops and demonstrators near the White House, and three protesters were killed. Members of Gorbachevs personal bodyguard remained loyal throughout the episode, and they were able to fashion a simple receiver so that the imperiled president could learn what was happening beyond the walls of the dacha. [46] This was an attempt by the Soviet Union to acquire free labor for the rapid industrialization; however, it led to the incarceration of many innocent people in the Soviet Union. N. Lyashchenko, 'O vystuplenii I. V. Stalina v Kremle, 5 maya 1941', Volkogonov Papers, reel no.8, p.1. They were accompanied by KGB Gen. Yury Plekhanov, chief of security for party and state personnel. Public machine and tractor stations were set up throughout the USSR, and peasants were allowed to rent these public tractors to farm the land, with the intention to increase the food output per peasant. Operation Barbarossa, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The first five-year plan, accepted in 1928 for the period from 1929 to 1933, finished one year early. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times Soviet Russia in the 1930s. [10], There was, however, strong resistance to this at first. Soviet Union timeline - BBC News In all, there were thirteen Soviet Five-Year Plans. Boris Yeltsin, a key leader of the opposition, later became the first president of the new Russian Federation. The Polish government declassified some material in this period. [43], David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941 and states that the Red Army was in a state of only partial mobilization in July 1941 from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay. [9], This plan met industrial targets in less time than originally predicted. [16] The first war threat emerged from the East in 1924. The success of Sputnik made Americans fear that the U.S. was falling behind its Cold War rival in technology.
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