Soviet Union Corecion

Question 1

Para 1 Point:

Answer 1

Coercion forced mobilisation but degraded human capital and welfare

Question 2

Para 1 Facts:

Answer 2

• Stalin’s first five year plan (1928-32) launched rapid industrialisation by forcibly collectivising agriculture and moving peasants into cities.
• 20 million peasants shifted from farm to factories
• this enabled the state to build mines, factories and infratsructure at a a pace.
• although there was a large human cost to this, millions died in famines, and working conditions in forced Labour camps were brutal.

Question 3

Para 1 Historians:

Answer 3

Gregory, calls this a “shadow labour army” arguing that coercion substituted for market incentives. Labour was controlled, deployed and disciplined through fear and imprisonment, allowing planners to meet targets without wages or bargaining. He also notes how the welfare losses were huge, and many of the mobilised workers lacked basic skills or health, limiting productivity.

Question 4

Para 1Evaluation:

Answer 4

Headline growth rates of the 1930s were deceptive, they restored the long run GDP trend that had been stalled since 1913. The USSR wasn’t leaping ahead it was catching up from a long period of stagnation and war.

Some also argue that corecion was the only way to rapidly industrialised compared to agrarian economies like India, the USSR transformed into an industrial giant in a single generation.

However, even countries like Hungary interwar period achieved greater structural change using non-coercive.

Question 5

Para 2 point:

Answer 5

Coercion enforced coordination, but led to dishonesty and planning failures.

Question 6

Para 2 Facts:

Answer 6

• in a planned economy, the state must coordinate all firms, factories and farms to deliver the right goods at the right time.
• without prices this required reliable information.
• under Stalin, this coordination was enforced through fear: the secret policy monitored target plans and failure could mean imprisonment or execution.
• the 1937 soviet census was suppressed because is showed the lower population figures. This demonstrates how fear suppressed not just bad performance, but honest information.

Question 7

Para 2 Historians:

Answer 7

Berliner, describes how factories “stormed” at the end of each month, rushing to meet quotas leading to massive waste, broken machines and poor quality goods.

Markevich, admits terror had limits. It may have improved output temporarily, but it did so by incentivising dishonesty, which in turn crippled the central planners ability to make informed decisions.

Question 8

Para 3 Point:

Answer 8

When coercion declined after 1953, deep incentive problems resurfaced

Question 9

Para 3 Facts:

Answer 9

• after Stalins death in 1953, de-stalinisation led to the release of Gulag prisoners, a decline in repression and an attempt to reform the economy.
• Executions dropped sharply.
• new reforms were attempted such as Kosygin reform in 1965 which added profit incentives to encourage efficiency
• but these reforms kept gross output quotes, so there was a conflict. Did a factory make goods cheap or make lots regardless of quality?

Question 10

Para 3 Historian:

Answer 10

Allen shows that by the 1960s TFP stagnated meaning it took more investment to produce the same output and the gains of the Stalin era were over.

Question 11

Para 3 Evaluation:

Answer 11

Some blame military burden as the USSR spent large amount of GDP on defence far above the west.

However, it’s not enough to explain the slowdown, countries like the UK spent around the same amount and still grew faster. The issue is that without coercion, the system had no reliable way to motivate or allocate.