The Tariff placed high taxes on imports leading to a decline in international trade. The United States held many loans with European countries that began to default. Reduction in international market spending in the US, coupled with the high tariffs placed on foreign countries led to unemployment abroad and foreign countries were forced to impose their own tariffs on other countries (Kelly, n.d.). The Great Depression was perhaps most devastating to the individual and family. The Depression was recorded to have decreased the marriage rate which helped lead to a decline in the birth rate.
Though collectivisation may have had short term boosts to the economy but the effects of collectivisation were disastrous. For that the harvest of 1933 was nine million tons less than that of 1926 and the number of pigs dropped by 65%. These are the results of the peasants rebelling against the soviets forced collectivization. These peasant rebellions were damaging to the economy as its effects emanates to the city
In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties. The barricade between the peasants and landlords strengthened in the years of the Red cockerel 1903-4 where peasants set fire to landlord barns. This peasant unrest was supplemented by the fact that the price of grain increased due to hyper during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 due and the wages of peasants failed to increase with it therefore many peasants were left to starve and were angered hence more likely to revolt. It was evident that introducing new policies which would avoid bad harvests thus preventing mass starvation would oppress opposition. Also, there was a need to lower the price of grain to make it affordable to impoverished peasants as they were most likely to revolt.
Collectivisation was introduced by Mao in 1958, in 1958 production rate of food was at 200 million tonnes, but by 1960 the production rate had fallen to 143.5 million. Within 2 years one of Mao’s own policies had caused a fall in production rate of 56.5 million. Despite the figures Mao insisted that many peasants were growing more food than necessary and keeping some for themselves, Mao accused the peasants of being ‘inherently capitalist’ and that they were against being a part of a communist state. The policy of collectivisation contributed hugely to the scale of the famine; the peasants resented the change as they didn’t have enough land to farm their crops, on top of this the authorities believed that they needed to be ‘strictly controlled and directed’. This attitude towards the peasants amplified the issues of collectivisation and caused scale of the famine to worsen.
The housing market also plummeted leading to negative equity, which the majority of the working class could not afford resulting in the repossession of their houses combined with the drastic increase in unemployment Britain was in a mess. However Major did have some success, he abolished poll tax, which was very popular among the public, he increased spending on the NHS and introduced transport subsides to keep travel fares low.
The most important result of collectivisation of agriculture can be perceived to be the communist control that was imposed on the countryside. Though arguably the most important result of collectivisation of agriculture was the 5 year plans that developed, it was the combination of this with the economic disaster, famine through the grain harvest downfalls and the spreading of revolution involving the Kulaks that provided the basis for resolve. These features were all results of collectivisation and each individually impacted agriculture but it is apparent that the most important result was the development of the 5 year plans. The 5 years plans had multiple successful sectors that had positive impacts in a variety of areas. The first five year plan was inducted between October 1928 and December 1932 and the emphasis was on heavy industries such as coal, oil, iron and steel.
The power of the central government weakened, which spawned a wave of corruption. Local landlords gained power as government supervision declined. This power was used to financially exploit the peasant class via crushing tax burdens. The Yellow Turbans, a Daoist revolutionary movement, attempted to seize back the politically corrupt government; however, as with all other attempts, it failed. To make matters worse, epidemics emerged which eradicated roughly half the population.
16% of the 1.8million who died at war were conscripted and all families were somehow impacted by the war, which consequently led to a decline in the popularity of the Royal Family. People famously said “what family is going to survive war with all six sons alive?” in reference to the Kaiser’s six sons as awareness was spreading that there was an inequality of sacrifice among classes. The divisions between classes which had previously existed were now even greater. Peasantry and rural producers felt alienated by government regulations and were now hampered by the lack of labour and there was also huge resentment towards the Junkers who maintained their tax privileges until 1916. The urban working class also suffered due to the rise of the black market, which was the source of
The Great Depression was the worst economic disaster in American history. A variety of factors led up to it, including a dangerous amount of stock market speculation and an excessive lending of credit. Other contributing factors were a weak farm economy, lack of government regulation of business, and high tariffs. Unemployment rose as high as twenty-five percent of the workforce and the U.S Gross National Product dropped from $104 billion to $56 billion. This huge depression eventually expanded across the globe, leading to a worldwide economic crisis.
Grain production levels had only reach the same levels as in the Tsarist times. With the growing population a famine was caused by this and millions died, with the most notably in Ukraine. This shows that collectivisation had improved, but the growth was not very significant. This shows that for the production rate collectivisation didn’t improve agriculture. One of the aims of collectivation was to Dekulakisation.