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VICModern HistoryQuick questions
Unit 1: Change and conflict (Ideologies and conflict 1918-1945)
Quick questions on The Soviet Union under Stalin 1924-1939 (VCE Modern History Unit 1)
8short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is first Five-Year Plan?Show answer
Targeted heavy industry: coal, steel, machinery, electricity. Officially achieved early. Centralised state planning (Gosplan) set output targets; managers and workers were under intense pressure to meet them.
What is second Five-Year Plan?Show answer
Continued heavy-industrial focus; some consumer goods. Stakhanovite movement (from 1935) celebrated record-setting workers (Alexei Stakhanov mined $102$ tonnes of coal in a $6$-hour shift, a publicity stunt that became a propaganda template).
What is third Five-Year Plan?Show answer
Shifted toward armaments as war approached. Interrupted by Operation Barbarossa (June 1941).
What is the Holodomor?Show answer
Grain quotas were maintained despite a poor harvest in Ukraine. Stalin's policies (the law on the "Five Stalks of Grain", the closing of borders to prevent peasants leaving, the requisitioning of seed grain) produced famine. Estimated $3.5$-$5$ million Ukrainians died.
What is three Moscow show trials?Show answer
- 1936: Kamenev, Zinoviev and others. Executed. - 1937: Pyatakov, Sokolnikov.
What is mass arrests beyond the leadership?Show answer
NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov (1936-1938) coordinated the Yezhovshchina. Quotas set for arrests in every region. Confessions extracted by torture.
What is military purges?Show answer
Marshal Tukhachevsky and most senior officers shot. Estimated half the senior officer corps eliminated. Crippled the Red Army's preparedness for war.
What is total Terror toll?Show answer
Approximately $700\,000$ executed; over $1.5$ million sent to Gulag camps where many died.