Joseph Stalin was one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks or communist party that took control of Russia on October 24, 1917. During the Russian Revolution, he was a general who fought in major battles in the Russian Civil War that followed the Revolution. The Premiere of the new country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, commonly referred to as the Soviet Union or USSR, was a man named Vladimir Lenin. When Lenin died on January 24, 1924, Stalin rose to power …show more content…
Stalin wanted to industrialize Russia in order to compete with growing industry in countries like America, France, and Great Britain. He wanted to make the Soviet Union better than capitalist countries and show to the world that communism was the superior form of government. Stalin used every resource at his disposal; he even used prisoners as slave labor and he did not care if they lived or died. To make sure people were always working smoothly, Stalin gave the orders that, “Strikers were shot, and wreckers (slow workers) could be executed or imprisoned.” (GCSE Bitesize.) One of the only ways that the Soviet Union was more advanced than countries like America, was that Stalin allowed or forced women to work on the same dangerous job that the men had. The jobs consisted of diggers, miners, and steel workers, but they could also work in safer jobs like a doctor or scientist. Regardless of the person or the job, thousands of individuals died from on-the-job accidents, weather conditions like the cold, and the famine that was killing millions in the Soviet Union. Even though most historians say that the first step of the Five-Year Plan was more successful than the second, the results were astounding. “Coal - from 36 million tonnes to 130 million tonnes, Iron - from 3 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes, Oil - from 2 million tonnes to 29 million …show more content…
We do not know how long this plan was supposed to last because of Nazi Germany’s declaration of war on the Soviet Union. Even after the war was over, Stalin attempted to keep his promise to make the Soviet Union the leading industrial power by 1960 by implementing additional Five- Year Plans. “By 1952, industrial production was nearly double the 1941 level:” (Verma.) Thus, even during and after the war Stalin worked his people to the bone in order to make the Soviet Union into an industrialized