Stalin+4

__**Joseph Stalin**__

__**Political Enviroment(Josh McIntyre)**__-The political enviroment in Russia was set by Lenin in his emotion stirring Communist speeches but when he died it was a free for all to run the country and our winner Joseph Stalin started out low because of his protege Kirov who was more popular than him. Then conviently Kirov was assassinated and Stalin took this time to exploit the situation and blamed it on his enemies and sent his secret police to the streets to quiet them. Any who opposed him were sent to the gulags (work camps with poor conditions) to work to send russia up in world and punish them for "treason". Once he had accomplished this and had truly become Russia's dictator he had 8 top military commanders executed (his secret police). [|Stalin Man of Steel]

__**Economy (Joey Wolf) -**__ Stalin aimed to ressurect the economy through his five year plans. Throughout his rule he constructed many of these plans and overall they helped out the economy. Each Five year plan put manufacturing under a state controlled board who decided what needed produced, where it would be produced, and how much of it would be produced. Those board members set goals for the businesses to meet. Everyone of these goals was simply impossible to reach, but the businesses tried to reach them, and in the mean time made vast improvements on their manufacturing process. Meeting these extreme goals would require a larger work force, therefore creating more jobs. This also helped the economy. During the first five year plan, emphasis was put on producing heavy industries, such as coal, iron, oil, steel, and electricity. The second five year plan aimed to produce more of the heavy industries, but looked to start producing chemical industries and railroads. The third five year plan was focused wholly on weapons production. Stalin also looked to increase food output, so he clumped all of the smaller farms together in order for them to work together, afford machinery, and increase crop yieldage.

There was unfortunately a downside to the five year plans also. Those high goals required an over - usage of the machines which led for them to break down, and many machines sat idle for weeks before the could be prepared. Besides over use, many machines also broke down due to unskilled workers operating the machines wrongly. With all of the businesses trying to manufacture as much as they could, quality often lacked, causing defections in materials made. If this happened, punishment was severe. Managers would often be executed as "enemies of the people" and workers would be shipped to prison camps in Siberia.