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Why Did Joseph Stalin Want To Industrialize Russia

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“We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries… we must make good this distance in 10 years… Either we do so, or we shall go under,” ("Joseph Stalin: National Hero or a Cold-Blooded Murderer?"). Russia had been behind all of the advanced countries for many years, using primitive farming practices, machinery, factories, and building. As a result, Stalin decided to enforce the Five Year Plan which would catch Russia up with everyone else in the world and dramatically increase industrialization. He believed that if he did not industrialize, Russia would have been taken over by other nearby Nationalist countries ("Joseph Stalin: National Hero or a Cold-Blooded Murderer?"). However, to do so in ten years, he had to enforce strict laws and …show more content…

Stalin slowly became more and more paranoid as the years went on while he was in office, so he plotted these massive purges that would kill off anyone who was “an enemy of the people.” Therefore, Stalin first started with his government, thousands of his file members were expelled by sending them to prison camps or exiling them ("Bill of Rights in Action"). After all of the government was cleaned and replaced with more young and loyal men, the economy started to fail, making the citizens angry and critical towards Stalin. As a result, Stalin created a Secret Police that would execute and arrest anyone against Stalin’s views ("Bill of Rights in Action"). Then Stalin started to make prison camps to put anyone who has betrayed him or go against any of his views and since Stalin was so fearful, everyone in Russia was in danger. The economic failure then caused a food production shortage which caused another famine and Stalin ‘offered’ collectivism to the peasants, but they refused (“Joseph Stalin Biography”). Consequently, this resulted in Stalin taking the food away from the poor and giving it to the wealthier classes, causing about 5 million peasant deaths from either starvation or forced labor ("Bill of Rights in Action"). The citizens of Russia became extremely angry with Stalin because of how unfair he was and that it was violating the Constitution, so he produced three ‘Show Trials’. During the years of 1936-1938, Stalin made three scripted Show Trials in front of fifty communist leaders to prove that the Russians were being trialed fairly ("Bill of Rights in Action"). The last of the three and most famous was in March of 1938 where Nikolai Krestinsky would not plead guilty and the script almost completely fell apart, but in the end, Stalin got his way ("Bill of Rights in Action"). To make the prisoners in the camps to

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