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Third Period
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==Impact on the USSR== In December 1927, the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|All-Union Communist Party]] held its Fifteenth [[Party Congress]]; prior to this Congress, the faction of the Party led by Stalin had supported the continuation of the [[New Economic Policy]] (NEP). However, in the cities, industry had become undercapitalized, and prices were rising. In the countryside, moreover, the NEP had resulted in an enrichment of certain privileged sections of the [[Russia]]n and [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] [[peasant]]ry (the [[Kulaks]]) because of [[deregulation]] of prices for grain. These events were leading to growing economic and political instability. The towns were being threatened with a "chronic danger of famine" in 1928-1929.<ref>Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p. 322, Penguin, (1966)</ref> The [[Left Opposition]] had opposed the continued marketization of agriculture through the NEP, and, since 1924, had repeatedly called for investment in industry, some [[collectivization]] in agriculture and democratisation of the Party. Threatened by the growing power and revolt from the countryside led by the Kulaks and the strengthening bourgeoisie, the Fifteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party passed resolutions that supported some of the planks of the Opposition's platform, and on paper, the Congress' views appeared very left, politically.<ref>Stalin's proposals were set out in [http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1928/07_13.htm "Questions of Socialist Construction in the U.S.S.R"], 1928. [[Leon Trotsky]]'s version is set out in [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch02.htm#ch02-2 "A Sharp Turn: "The Five Year Plan in Four Years" and "Complete Collectivization""] in ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm The Revolution Betrayed]'' 1936</ref> However, the Left Opposition was expelled. The new policies of industrialisation and [[Collectivisation in the USSR|collectivisation]] now adopted were given the slogan "[[socialist accumulation]]". The Communist party had publicly proposed collectivisation to be voluntary; however, official policy was almost always ignored in practice; threats and false promises were used to motivate peasants into joining the communes. Eventually, in what [[Issac Deutscher]] calls "the great change",<ref>Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', pp. 296ff, Penguin, (1966)</ref> the policies of industrialisation and collectivisation were carried out in a ruthless and brutal way, via the use of the security and military forces, without the direct involvement of the working class and peasantry itself and without seeming regard for the social consequences. According to figures given by Deutscher, the peasants opposed forced collectivisation by slaughtering 18 million horses, 30 million cattle, about 45 per cent of the total, and 100 million sheep and goats, about two thirds of the total. Those who engaged in these behaviours, deemed Kulaks, were dealt with harshly; in December 1929, Stalin issued a call to "liquidate the Kulaks as a class". A distinction was made between [[Classicide|the elimination of the Kulaks ''as a class'']] and the killing of the individuals themselves;<ref>Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p324, Penguin, (1966)</ref> nevertheless, at least 530,000 to 600,000 deaths resulted from [[dekulakization]] from 1929 to 1933,<ref>Hildermeier, ''Die Sowjetunion'', p. 38 f.</ref> and [[Robert Conquest]] has estimated that there could have been as many as five million deaths.<ref>Robert Conquest (1986) ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine''. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-505180-7}}.</ref> Kulaks could be shot or imprisoned by the [[State Political Directorate|GPU]], have their property confiscated before being sent into internal exile (in [[Siberia]], [[Northern Russia|the North]], the [[Urals]], or [[Kazakhstan]]), or be evicted from their houses and sent to work in labour colonies in their own district. There is debate amongst historians as to whether the actions of the Kulaks and their supporters helped lead to famine, or whether the policy of collectivisation itself was responsible. (See [[Collectivisation in the USSR]], [[Holodomor]].)
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