There was suspicion of grain hoarding, which was further proof of the need for terror. However, the resistance of the peasants forced the Bolsheviks to resort to grain requisitioning, which caused further disdain and eventually led to a nationwide famine. This, along with the Kronstadt rising were the push Lenin needed to issue a new policy, one that would meet some of the demands of the peasants and boost Russia's economy. After the introduction of the NEP, Russia saw a marked improvement in the economy and grain harvest increased vastly. Trade, Industrial and Agricultural productivity saw a statistic rise after the introduction of the NEP.
How far is it accurate to describe Stalin’s policy of Collectivisation as a failure? Collectivisation of the soviet union was the enforced process by which Russian agriculture was reformed under Stalin between 1928 and 1940. Stalin planned to merge all the small farms into large ‘collective’ farms. These new larger farms would pool the labour and resources and therefore operate more efficiently. Collectivisation can be seen as a failure as it had consequences on rural areas, industrialisation and urbanisation, and politically.
The Republic couldn’t pay back the loans, and the agriculture depression grew even worse, because it was already there before the Depression kicked off; it had not been solved at all. The farm couldn’t provide enough food, so it ended up sending the whole country again into inflation, starvation, and poverty. These economic and social problems became the last straw that broke the camel's back; they brought down the Weimar government. The coalition government couldn’t take decisive action on dealing with the Depression because of its frequent change of Chancellors and its multi-party system. This over-democratic PR system of the Weimar Constitution had made people favoured the old autocratic Kaiser system.
War Communism was radical and involved the militarisation of Labour which was disliked by the people and made people focus purely on the needs of the war. This contrasts greatly with the First World War (WW1) because the Tsar didn’t militarise Labour completely and so the demand for supplies in WW1 couldn’t be met by the factories. Starvation was nothing new in Russia and during WW1 the supplies couldn’t reach the troops on the front line and so many soldiers had little to eat. With War Communism the majority of the food would be taken from a household to feed an army and the result was that Russians starved, this time the household starved and there was little incentive to grow more. War Communism was introduced as the focus of Lenin was on the military and getting supplies to the soldiers of Russia quickly.
The war was basically concerning trading and naval rights in Korea and Manchuria, and Nicholas II finally decided to start a war against Japan, because he believed the victory would invert attention from growing internal problems and he underestimated Japanese troops. The war caused the great economic strains, disrupted transport and food shortages, making the problems even more severe. People were dissatisfied with the tsarist regime. The immediate cause of the revolution was the event called Bloody Sunday. In January 1905, there was a peaceful demonstration, numbering 200,000 people, marching to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the tsar.
Lenin’s New Economic Policy came about in March of 1921 as a result of a disagreeable Bolshevik policy known as Prodrazvyorstka that existed during a period known as War Communism. This policy called for the seizure of all agricultural surpluses from the peasantry, without any form of compensation for their toiling. Although a very far cry from the ‘for-the-people’ ideology pledged by the Bolshevik faction leaders to the masses, it was justified through the implementing of Lenin’s War Communism which was meant to give the Soviet government all the means necessary to win the Civil War, and in that sense it was a success. But the effects of wartime communism took a great toll on the population, not only within the rural peasantry, but also on the urban proletariat in the main city centers. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd found 75% of its population flooding into the countryside so as to be able to feed themselves better than if they were industrial labourers within the urban centers.
In addition, the takeover of railway lines of the army thwarted food, armours and weapons to reach the army quickly. In Moscow only, they have been receiving 2,000 railway wagons of grain per month in 1914 but until 1916, it had been cutting down to 300 wagons. This was not enough to feed people in the city per day. This resulted in the people of Russian become irritated and take part in the strike forcing the Tsar to abdicate. Secondly, the economy of Russia was awfully damaged.
To what extent was collectivisation a success? Collectivisation was a process which meant that small farms joined together to create larger farms in order to improve efficiency, another reason for it was to destroy the Kulaks(former peasants in Russia who owned medium-sized farms as a result of the reforms introduced by Peter Stolypin in 1906). Stalin wanted to gain control over the countryside, this give him the ability to fulfil this, finally collectivisation was used to increase the production of grain to sell to foreign countries. It has been argued whether collectivisation was a success or a failure, I am going to investigate this argument further. Stalin achieved most of his aims; Grain production rose to nearly 100 million tonnes in 1937, although the numbers of animals never recovered.
Account for the Rise to Power of Lenin In this essay, I will give an account for the rise to power of Lenin. This is very important as Lenin’s power later on lead to the death of millions for example in multiple famines, the great purge and during his dekulakisation. The provisional government had given Lenin the ability to rise to power as they made many mistakes and they thereby created a discontent Russian people. The people wanted change and Lenin could supposedly provide the: “Peace, land, bread” which they demanded. First of all, I will discuss the many mistakes the provisional government had made such as delaying the elections for a constituent assembly as long as possible, keeping the peasant seizure of land illegal and their continuation of the war with Germany.
Nicholas II put Prime Minister Stolypin’s land reforms into place. This was new legislation allowed peasants to own and lease land individually. The idea behind this was to encourage industrious peasants to produce more, develop farming techniques and sell any extra crops back to the government to feed the industrial workforce. Another issue the Tsarist regime tried to deal with was to stop the protesting people and the anger of the nation. The Tsar implemented the October Manifesto which made lots of promises to the people.