By 1928, Stalin had ousted Trotsky and the rest of the Left opposition. In four years, Stalin had single handedly taken major steps away from Lenins collective leadership and free inter party debate and replaced them with his autocratic dictatorship. Stalin began to secure predominant power over the communist party and the state by destroying passive opposition from the peasantry and former Lenin supporters. He won growing support from the working class who were impressed with the initial five-year plan. As it promised increased industrialization, which would lead to socialism in one country within their lifetime. ** The First Five-Year Plan ** The first five-year plan, approved in 1929, proposed that state and collective farms provide 15 percent of agriculture output. The predominance of private farming seemed assured, as many farmers resisted collectivization. By late 1929, Stalin moved abruptly to break peasant resistance and secure the resources required for industrialization. He saw that voluntary collectivism had failed, and many Soviet economists doubted that the first plan could even be implimented.1 Stalin may have viewed collectivization as a means to win support from younger party leaders, rather than from the peasants and Lenins men. Privately he advocated, industrializing the country with the help of internal accumulation 2 Once the peasantry had been split, Stalin believed that the rural proletarians would embrace collectivization . Before this idea had a chance to work, a grain shortage induced the Politburo to support Stalins sudden decision for immediate, massive collectivization. Initially, the sudden change to collectivization was a success. The first year produced a bumper crop. Although this allowed the U.S.S.R. to increase exports twenty-three times that of 1929,3 due to the world wide depression of this time, the value of their exports only incr...
