Assess the success of Stalin in implementing his economic policies in the Soviet Union. Stalin had decided by 1928 that the Soviet Union could not survive unless it rapidly modernized its economy, so he completely reshaped Soviet agriculture and industry through two main economic policies: Collectivization and the Five Year Plans. These policies had economic, political, and social successes and failures. Stalin’s main economic success was industrialization, achieved by his Five-Year-Plans. The aim of this policy was to establish a war economy by increasing industrial production. Stalin and Gosplan set ambitious targets for each year, and people were rewarded if targets were met, punished if not. By enforcing harsh punishments upon the peasants, Stalin was sure people would work harder than they thought was physically possible just to achieve set targets. In the first Five Year Plan (1928-1932), there was a huge increase in the production of heavy industry: oil production rose from 11.7 to 21.4 tonnes, coal production 35.4 to 64.3 m tonnes, steel production increased by one-third. New towns and new tractor factories were built to meet the needs of mechanized agriculture. In the second Five Year Plan (1933-1937), oil production rose to 28.5m tonnes, coal production to 128m tonnes. By 1937, the USSR was essentially self-sufficient in machine-making and metal-working. Transport and communications grew rapidly. In the third Five Year Plan (1938-1941), production continued to grow: coal production reached 150m tonnes by 1940. The plan focused on war production and by 1941 the Soviet air force was the largest in the world. The Soviet Union’s share of world manufacturing rose to 17.6% from 5%, giving them the second largest share in the world. As shown, Stalin’s Five Year Plans were an economic success because they led to a growth in industrial production and