eriod. As a result, it enabled 25 million small holdings to convert into a quarter of a million collective farms freeing up millions of peasant workers that were relocated the cities for factory work. Hence, it can be argued that the methods of collectivisation can be justified by the achievements since the key objective was achieved. The mass movement of the population into kolkhozes was successful to the point of freeing up workers to enable the industrial growth that was needed to advance USSR and give the country a strong footing to kept up with the West and especially its German counterparts. Peter Gattrell acknowledges that Stalin was coercive in his methods but stressed that the outcome was an economy strong enough by 1941 to sustain the USSR through four years of the most demanding of modern wars. He suggests that although it is difficult for many Western liberals to accept, it may be that Russia could not have been modernised by any other methods. There is overwhelming support for Gattrell’s argument when considering that the objective of collectivisation was to free a large proportion of the agrarian labour force to move into the cities for the purpose of increasing production of industrial goods. From this aspect the methods of collectivisation resulted in significant achievement. By 1941 98% of farms had been collectivised. As a result, by the end of the First Year’ Plan half the urban labour force had been made up of peasants. Therefore, Stalin’s policy may have been the only viable option to achieve his objectives despite how horrendous they have been considered. His methods were brutal and resulted in the breakdown of traditional living in the countryside but in doing so they overcame a far greater problem; the backwards system of agriculture which tied so many to the land yet yielded so low since the rule of the Tsar. The upheaval of the peasants forced them to migrate into the cities and take up positions in factories. However, this ultimately enabled one of the largest growths in heavy industrial output; levels of growth not seen since the years of the western industrial revolution. This enabled the achievement of Stalin’s remaining objectives; the development of an arms industry that prepared the USSR for war, and to economically catch up with the western imperialist powers. Therefore, the achievement of collectivisation cannot be understated since it enabled the Five-Year Plans to become a success necessitating the strong war effort of the USSR and these achiev>