Coursework: Help needed on stalin question.

hi guys,
This is my first post here, just found the website and amazed at how clever and successfull you guys are. Im currently taking A2 history with the OCR board and have a coursework assignment to write.

My title is: To what extent where stalins economic policies successful?

I have a rough plan of what im writing but could do with some help from you guys. Im planning on discussing the aims of stalins economic policies then addressing how successfull these were.
Ive been told by my teacher the structure of the essay needs to be constructed via quotes and arguments from historians.
Any help i can recieve on a more structured plan / historians quotes or advice i would be very grateful.
look forward to seeing you all around.
x

Reply 1

Bgriffin

Personally if i was writing this coursework i would probably discuss the aims whilst evalutating how successful they were in the same paragraph rather than doing it seperately.
If you plan to dedicate one paragraph to the aims of his economic policy not only this is basically direct narrative but its also not answering the question.

The other paragraph would then have to be his aims that were not successful and why they were not successful

Reply 2

lastsamurai

you should try and look for books and articles to read. some by orthodox historians, some by revisionists and others by post revisionists.

they will all have different takes on stalins economic policies.

and in AS i did coursework on stalin, so i have some notes as well as the coursework itself. it is AS youre gonna have to like do a lot more work, but it can be a starting point. if you want them, pm me!

gd luck

Reply 3

Stalin and Stalinism
*C. Ward, Stalin’s Russia (1993), pp. 1-108
* S. Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (2nd ed. 1994), pp. 120-172.
*D. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (1991)
*J. Arch Getty and R. Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (1993).
*R.W. Davies, M. Harrison and S.G. Wheatcroft, eds., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945 (1994).
R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (1990).
A. Applebaum, Gulag (2003)
J. Arch Getty, Origin of the Great Purges (1985).
J. Arch Getty et al, `Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Prewar Years',
American Historical Review (1993).
H. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas, chapter 6.
J. Haslam, "Political Opposition to Stalin and the Origins of the Terror
In Russia 1932-1936", Historical Journal, 29, 2 (1986) pp.395-418.
Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (1989
Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (1970-90, 3 vols.)
S. Davies, Public Opinion in Stalin’s Russia (1934-1941)
R. W. Tyhrston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia (1996)
Fitzpatrick, S., 'Stalin and the Making of a new Elite'. In Sheila Fitzpatrick, The
Cultural Front ( 1992)
Fitzpatrick, S., Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet
Russia in the 1930s (1999)
Fitzpatrick,S. (ed.), Stalinism: New directions (1999)
Garros, V. et al eds., Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s (1995)
Getty, J.A. & Naumov, O., The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the
Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 (1999)
R.W. Davies, `Economic and Social Policy in the USSR, 1917-1941', Cambridge
Economic History of Europe (1989), Vol. VIII.
Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR (1982)
Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow (1985)
M. Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (1985)
S. Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants (1994).
M. Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (1968)
R.W. Davies, The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture (1994)
S. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution
L. Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant
Resistance (1996)
W. Rosenberg and L. Siegelbaum, eds., Social Dimensions of Soviet
Industrialization (1993).
S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (1995).
H. Kuromiya, Stalin's Industrial Revolution (1988)
Viktor Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (1947)
D.R. Shearer, Industry, State and Society in Stalin’s Russia (1996)
G. Suny and T. Martin eds A State of Nations. Empire and Nation-Making in the
Age of Lenin and Stalin (2002)
D. Priestland, Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization (2004)
W.Z. Goldman, Women at the Gates. Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia
(2002)
D. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism (2002)
P.R. Gregory, The Political Economy of Stalinism. Evidence from the Soviet
Secret Archives (2003)

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That's pretty much the reading list we'd have to work from to do a similar thing. Pick 5 or 6 books on the economic side of things and read them. While you're reading them make notes on what the historian is saying, where they place emphasis and then use these quotes in your essay to produce arguments and counter-arguments.