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Lenin'ss new economic policy had brought economic stability to a Russia [Hand stabilizes tower of rocks]

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desperately in need of little unimportant things you know like food

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and money but Stalin didn't care about that once he'd sent Trotsky off into the

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sunset he was ready to put his own economic plan into action [Trotsky walks into sunset and Stalin appears]

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never mind that anyone with half a brain took one look at Stalin's first

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five-year plan and knew that it was going to end very very badly the problem

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was that Stalin wanted the USSR to be equal to Western Europe like yesterday

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he also wanted to show his people that he was a top-notch leader on par with [Stalin saluting]

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Lenin so his five-year plan was all about building it big and building it

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fast he envisioned a Soviet state that could produce its own weapons acquire

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lots of natural resources, build big infrastructure projects and eradicate

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urban unemployment all sounds great right? There was only one problem his [Lenin thinking of his five year plan]

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vision was delusional a big problem with the implementation of Stalin's five-year

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plan was that for each project the state decided what should be produced and when

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every person on the project also had specific quotas they had to meet but

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these quotas didn't make a lick of sense seriously [Worker approaches a sign of today's goal]

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they weren't grounded in reality at all this meant that in order to keep their

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bodies above-ground Soviet workers lied.. a lot.. Furthermore people got hired and

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fired and rehired all the time which meant no one had a chance to actually

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learn anything while on the job.. Soviet Russia also didn't have many skilled

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workers since industrialization was still a pretty new concept for the

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country which meant nobody knew how to build anything [Man attempting to build something]

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finally while Stalin's big idea meant lots of job opportunities many of these

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jobs required hard labor and the state wasn't above exploiting its employees so [Employees working in hard labor]

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while many Soviets worked their hardest to actually produce something like a dam

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or a railroad most of the time the project was never actually finished all [Unfinished dam]

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that work down the John.. By 1933 Stalin's first five-year plan had reached its end

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the USSR had upped its production of iron and electricity it had built the

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Baltic Sea canal and the Siberian Railway and it also had started a famine [People suffering in famine]

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so you know yeah you win some you lose some

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see under Lenin's new economic policy peasants had control of the agricultural

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products they grew and could sell their goods at a profit this was good for both

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the worker and the state.. Stalin however wanted to control everything including

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Soviet agriculture which meant he got to set the price for farming yields in 1932 [Stalin eats a potato]

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there was a grain shortage in the USSR and a famine the first five-year plan

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was such a smashing success that Stalin decided the USSR should have another one

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from 1933 to 1937 the Soviets focused on producing weapons because why would [A rifle gun]

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consumers need things like toilet paper and forks... well from 1938 to 1941 the

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Soviets focused on weapons again and the five-year plan got downgraded to a

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three-year plan while because of those rotten Nazis from 1945 to 1950 Stalin's

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five-year plan focused on reconstruction because Soviet Russia had been [Building rubble in Soviet Russia]

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practically annihilated by the German armed forces, while Stalin died in 1953

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but that didn't stop the Soviets from coming up with a new five-year plan

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every five years maybe they were afraid their fearless leader would come back

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from the dead if they didn't keep up with his you know beloved state planning

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