Great Turn
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The Great Turn or Great Break () was the radical change in the economic policy of the USSR from 1928 to 1929, primarily consisting of the process by which the
New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
(NEP) of 1921 was abandoned in favor of the acceleration of
collectivization Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
and
industrialization Industrialisation (British English, UK) American and British English spelling differences, or industrialization (American English, US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an i ...
and also a
cultural revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
. The term came from the title of
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's article "Year of the Great Turn" (, literally: "Year of the Great Break: Toward the 12th Anniversary of October") published on November 7, 1929, the 12th anniversary of the
October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
. David R. Marples argues that the era of the Great Break lasted until 1934.


Collectivization

Up to 1928, Stalin supported the New Economic Policy implemented by his predecessor
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
. The NEP had brought some market reforms to the Soviet economy, including allowing peasants to sell surplus grain on the domestic and international market. However, in 1928 Stalin changed his position and opposed continuation of the NEP. Part of the reason for his change was that the peasants in the years before 1928 started hoarding grain in response to low domestic and international prices for their produce. Stalin implemented agricultural collectivization, which would end private ownership of land. The state would take land from its previous owners and place it either under collective ownership of peasants (kolkhoz) or under state ownership (sovkhoz). The idea behind collectivization was that large estates tend to yield more agricultural output. Also, owners of a large farm tended to be better able to afford machinery such as tractors and threshers than owners of small plots of land, and these technological implements would increase worker productivity. A side effect would be freeing up peasants to move to the cities and construction sites to aid the industrialization process. Before collectivization, the owners of large farms tended to be wealthy peasants (
kulak Kulak ( ; rus, кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈɫak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over ...
s) but the Bolsheviks regarded the kulaks as capitalist exploiters, and wished to redistribute the surplus land to the poorer peasants. The only way to have large farms without kulak owners was to form collective farms. The Soviet state needed increased agricultural output to feed the workers in the cities and construction sites. The end of the NEP meant that peasants would no longer be able to sell grain to the state. Thus, the state would have to requisition surplus grain. Collectivization met with little success before 1934 in terms of agricultural output. The Soviet state was slow to provide the necessary tractors and other machinery to the collective farms and this delay caused a reduction in agricultural output. Peasants also resisted the collectivization process by slaughtering their livestock and hiding harvested grain in protest, reducing output even more. On top of these two conditions, the state was requisitioning more grain than the quantity produced. These three factors coupled with a severe drought and a slow response from the soviet administration led to a famine in parts of the countryside in 1932–33 including Kazakhstan, Ukraine and southern Russia. The famine and drought were so severe in the region that it also affected other countries such as Romania. In Ukraine, at least four million peasants died. In Kazakhstan, during the
Kazakh famine of 1930–1933 The Kazakh famine of 1930–1933, also known as the Asharshylyk, was a famine during which approximately 1.5 million people died in the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, then part of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic i ...
over estimated 1.5-2.3 million out of about 4 million Kazakh population died. In addition 660,000 to 1 million Kazakhs fled to China.


Industrialization

While collectivization did not meet with much success, industrialization during the Great Break did. Stalin announced his first Five-Year Plan for industrialization in 1928. The goals of his plan were unrealistic – for example, he wished to increase worker productivity by 110 percent. Yet even though the country was not able to meet these overambitious goals, it still did considerably increase the industrial output. Industrialization involved expanding the numbers of factories and construction projects such as dams, railways, and canals. Examples of well-publicized construction projects at the time are the completion in June 1930 of a huge tractor factory in
Stalingrad Volgograd,. geographical renaming, formerly Tsaritsyn. (1589–1925) and Stalingrad. (1925–1961), is the largest city and the administrative centre of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. The city lies on the western bank of the Volga, covering an area o ...
and the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station. The increased number of projects meant an increased demand for workers, and as a result the Soviet state did not experience any unemployment during the Great Break.


References

{{Reflist Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Stalinism Economic history of the Soviet Union Politics of the Soviet Union 1928 in the Soviet Union 1929 in the Soviet Union