How To Answer A Question Focused On The Impact Of Stalin`s Economic`s Policies

If you’re asked about the success or failure of economic policies of Stalin or any other leader, it’s important to be able to argue that economic progress, particularly just economic growth, can be very deceptive. For example, one of the core problems that the Soviet economy suffered from was a lack of products that people could actually buy i.e. consumerism. From sufficient food, to life’s little luxuries: clothes, jewellery, soap. Superficially the economic progress of the fourth five year plan was impressive (recall: in 1950 the economy was 60% larger than 1940) but simply making the economy larger is of little help to people if the money they do have can’t be used to buy anything they actually want because the shops didn’t stock it. ;

With resources directed by the government towards the manufacture of heavy industry products: pipes, cranes, chemicals, bombs, bullets, tanks, bridges etc there was insufficient resources allocated to the production of what people really wanted. So an extremely nuanced answer would refer to economic progress under Stalin being notionally impressive but as the command economy that he controlled didn’t produce enough of what people needed (food) or what they would quite like (luxuries) then it is perfectly legitimate to argue that the ‘success’ of Stalin’s various 5 year plans was superficial at best. Should the question also encompass Khrushchev then the same argument could be made but you might then legitimately argue that whilst Khrushchev may not have grown the economy any faster than Stalin ; did (it was roughly the same), he did a better job of redirecting the economy towards the production of what people actually needed and wanted.