Stalin - The Five-Year Plans and Collectivisation Advanced Topic Master

Summary:
The Advanced TopicMaster series provides students of AS/A-level History with detailed reviews of key topics on the exam board specifications in a challenging and stimulating way.
Written by experienced teachers, authors and examiners, Advanced TopicMasters take students beyond the basic textbooks. Each title explores the key questions and debates surrounding the topic, helping students to identify, analyse, interpret and evaluate the material presented.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
1 What are the standard views of historians on Stalin and collectivisation and the Five-Year Plans?
Stalin was a totalitarian dictator
Stalin was a ‘grey blur’
Stalin was evil
2 Why did Stalin industrialise the Soviet Union?
Stalin as leader
The Great Turn
Imposing control
3 Why collectivisation?
Taming the peasants
The party background 1921[n]29
Pragmatist or ideologue?
4 What did collectivisation mean in reality?
Socialism in one country
Class war in the countryside
5 What were the consequences of collectivisation?
Opposition
Famine
Subjugation
6 How did Stalin industrialise the Soviet Union?
Continuing a bloody tradition
Centralised plans
Decisions from the top
Eliminating dissent
7 Stalin’s Soviet Union: a nation transformed?
A new Communist society, or an experiment that failed?
Winners and losers
Looking at photographs and paintings from the Stalinist era
Grigory Shegal’s Leader, Teacher and Friend
Bolsheviks instructing peasants in the benefits of collectivisation
Bibliography
Glossary
Five-Year Plans: an overview
Timeline

About the Author(s):
David McGill gained a degree in Modern History at Oxford University, a PGCE at Cambridge Universtiy, and an MA in War Studies at King's College, London. He is a history teacher at Abingdon School.