Thirties in the USSR were marked by industrialization. Its priority direction was the development of heavy industry and building up of defense potential. Necessary for forced industrialization funds were obtained during collectivization, carried out using violent methods and accompanied by dispossession.

Changes that took place in the country were consolidated by the Constitution of the USSR adopted by the VIII Extraordinary Congress of Soviets on December 5, 1936, which was in force until 1977.

Because of the first five-year plans implementation, the USSR achieved economic independence and took second place in world industrial production. New industries were created — tractor building and machine tool construction, aviation, automobile and chemical, and over 9 thousand enterprises were built. In the agrarian sector, tractors replaced draft power, and the level of mechanization increased.

However, along with heroic breakthroughs and grandiose successes, the history of the USSR also has tragic pages. The 1930s were the peak of mass repressions — coercive measures against large groups of the population used by the Soviet leadership in solving economic and political problems, non-economic coercion to work.

New ideals of the social life were being established, the formation of “new” person, brought up in the spirit of communist ideology, was going on. Pilots, polar explorers, border guards, eminent workers and collective farmers were the heroes of the new society. In 1939, at the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), “the victory of socialism in general” and the transition to “the extensive construction of communism” were announced.