All,
Many thanks for all your hard work – please find below Tom’s detailed feedback. You should spend some time reflecting on his analysis. There are points here to consider for next week’s essay.
The bad news is that this does mean that Luke and the boys won. Pot plants to follow…
Abul:
The industrialisation line for the Tsarist period is too high. In particular, the level of industrialisation during the Great Spurt was not really comparable to that which would later occur under Stalin, but the lines are at similar levels. Industrialisation between the end of the war and Stalin’s first Five Year Plan was not linear either – War Communism didn’t little for industrialisation and while things did improve under the NEP, arguably this mainly benefited agriculture and was in place for too short a time to have a large impact on industry. I disagree that the level of industrialisation fell after the first Five Year Plan. While subsequent plans were not necessarily as successful, industrialisation remained at a high rate until the Second World War.
The suffering line suggests a decrease in suffering after 1918, but the policy of War Communism was actually very repressive. Conditions improve under the NEP (for example, the creation of NEPmen), and suffering only starts to increase relative to War Communism from around 1928. At this point it remains increasing and high until the end of the war, and decreases as you say.
Girls:
Similarly, I think the industrialisation line is too high for the pre-1917 period. The drop in industrialisation after the end of the war does not recover until the late 1920s, hence the line is much too high and steep between 1918 a 1928. The relative increase in industrialisation between 1928 and 1941 should be the biggest on the entire graph, but here is shown to actually decrease.
Suffering was no where near as high at the start of the period as on the graph and should be much lower, for example, than Vyshnegradsky’s man-made famine. As mentioned above, suffering should not be shown to decrease immediately after 1918, and remained high until at least 1922, when it did drop until 1928. Suffering between 1928 and 1932 is shown to decrease, when actually this period is when it really began to increase, in particular due to the famine of the early 1930s. It then should remain consistently high until reaching a peak in 1945.
Boys:
The industrialisation line is more accurate up until the Great Spurt, but I don’t think the drop off after it should be as marked as it is. The real decline came during the war, not really before. Activity was low in the immediate aftermath, although perhaps not quite as bad as at the start of the period. Like with the girls, the industrialisation line increases too rapidly in the 1920s, it should not begin to shoot up until 1928. The post-war decline was not so bad as to take them back to 1928 levels, and I would argue the line should be steeper in the post-war era as industrialisation focused to more socially useful goods such as consumer goods.
The suffering line I think is the most accurate, as it shows that suffering did increase after the war under War Communism, and also that the big increase came in the 1930s, before decreasing after the war. The gradually increasing suffering throughout the Tsarist period, with a jump under Vyshnegrasky I think is accurate.
I think that overall the Boys graph is the best, as it shows suffering most accurately. Of the comments here, Luke D’s is the best as he makes the point that despite some progress under Tsarism, the Great Spurt should not be shown as that high on the graph as not that much progress was made, and similarly that the relative level of suffering in the Tsarist period was much less than it would later be under Stalin.
A couple of general points:
-suffering is shown to decrease immediately after 1945, but arguably this only started to happen from 1953 at the end of Stalinism
-The major period of industrialisation was from 1928 until the outbreak of war. All of the graphs show industrialisation almost reaching a peak before 1928, but Russia didn’t recover to pre-war levels until almost that late. The biggest jump should come between 1928 and 1941.
-Similarly, owing to the Great Terror of 1936-8, suffering should be shown to jump during the mid 1930s (not decrease as the girls said!), although this is not directly related to industrialisation, it was arguably the biggest cause of suffering in the entire period.
