How successful were Stalin's economic policies?

From 1929 to 1941 Stalin deployed a number of economic policies to transform Russia from a backward nation into a European superpower. A motive that is clear from his own dialogue in the late 1920's, "we are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed”. Stalin's aim with his pre-war economic policies was to achieve rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union, in order to protect it against the threat of war, something that was heightened by his characteristically high level of paranoia. The policies had, in most cases, a disastrous effect upon the nations population and were so badly managed under Soviet government that any growth was fairly small in regards to the targets set out. Subsequently Stalin's economic policies must be considered to have been a disastrous period of Soviet economic policy.
//The Five- Year plans had a devastating impact upon the livelihoods of the workers of the Soviet Union and most notably the ex- peasants, who were forced into industrial urban life through Stalin's economic policies. One of the most notable policies was the construction of large scale infrastructure products, such as Magnitogorsk. Workers at Magnitogorsk, from ‘slaves’ to young urban workers, were subjected to terrible conditions, living in mud hits, working seven days and week, with death rates amongst the highest in Europe in the absence of any health and safety. One key example that highlights the primitive environment in which Stalin's economic policies produced was when a shortage of boots at Magnitogorsk meant that most of the workers wore birch bark sandals throughout the whole year, including the brutal Russian winter. Projects such as these also often lacked the machinery to aid the construction and so out dated laborious techniques were used to construct Magnitogorsk, with fifty foot trenches having to be dug by hand through a series of levels. Not only was Russia’s economy backward as is evident from the previous two examples, but their treatment of workers and their rights or lack of them really show the true nature of Stalin's economic policies.
//The introduction of the Five-Year plans can also be considered a failure due to the targets that were set by Gosplan. Firstly, these targets were often ridiculously ambitious and so produced a wave of corruption on all levels of production. The government made it law that the failure of managers to reach these targets would be considered by a ‘court of law’ that it was a criminal offence. The sentence for a manager failing to meet their targets was often the death penalty or hard labour in a gulag, where around 10 million peasants were killed between 1929 and 1950. To escape the chance of persecution from the state by not meeting targets, managers on all levels of production lied and tampered with production figures from a wide range of industries. Therefore, production statistics that were published are most likely to be far from the true values of production. This is highlighted by targets and actual production levels from coal in 1932, the target was set at 8 million tons by Gosplan, but actual production levels were at 6.2 million tons. A stark difference between the target and true production, indicating the failure of the Five-Year plans to fulfil expectations. Altogether, the iron fist style of Stalin's leadership filtered down to the economic policies that he implemented and led to corruption and the falsifying of figures, that ultimately rendered a large proportion of Soviet economic production as false and deceiving.To conclude, Stalin's economic policies were exploitative, costly and shrouded in deceit. Soviet workers suffered unimaginable conditions whilst Soviet culture meant failures and shortcomings were never addressed and so growth was limited. Considering the human and actual impact of Stalin's economic policies, it is clear these were a period of Soviet economic history that must be considered a failure.