The USSR, 1918–1939 (II): the 1930s
From 1928 the USSR began state-directed industrialisation under five-year plans: heavy industry, new factories and towns were built, and by the mid-1930s the country ranked among the world’s leaders in industrial output. In agriculture, from 1929 peasants were forced into collective farms (collectivisation), and peasants regarded as wealthy (“kulaks”) were dispossessed and deported; together with the famine of 1932–1933 this caused millions of deaths in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Volga region and elsewhere. From the mid-1930s, especially in 1937–1938 during the “Great Terror”, hundreds of thousands of people were executed and millions were sent to camps or exile; the cult of Stalin grew, and in Uzbekistan too intellectuals and officials were repressed. In culture illiteracy fell and compulsory primary education was introduced, but science and the arts were under party control. In foreign policy the USSR joined the League of Nations in 1934 and on 23 August 1939 signed a non-aggression pact with Germany (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact); its secret protocol divided spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.
Working with sources: the teacher provides a short official 1930s poster text and a short modern historian’s assessment; students tabulate which facts each shows and what each leaves out.