Stalin's First Five-Year Plan Extended View
Five-Year Plan (1928): Stalin launched the First Five-Year Plan to accelerate industrialization and collectivize agriculture. Central economic planning became a defining feature of Soviet economics.
Delayed Planning: Despite seizing power a decade earlier, the Bolsheviks had not initially implemented a comprehensive economic plan, partly due to the general lack of practical guidance from Marxist theory on post-revolutionary society.
Marxist Influence: Marxism primarily analyzed bourgeois society and class struggle, but it provided limited details on running a modern industrial society. Marx and Engels envisioned a society with no exploitation or unemployment but didn’t elaborate on practical implementation.
Engels' Centralized Economy Idea: Engels observed that within private enterprises, there was order and coordination, but competition between enterprises was chaotic. He noted that capitalist mergers reduced competition and expanded rational planning, which socialists saw as a model for a centrally planned economy.
Influence of Wartime Planning: World War I demonstrated that centralized control of the economy could be successful, as governments imposed such measures to ensure victory. This wartime experience inspired the Soviet approach to planning under Stalin’s rule.
Development of Soviet Planning: The idea of a planned economy in the USSR evolved from socialist doctrine (especially Engels' ideas), wartime economic practices, and the pressure to solve Russia's ongoing economic issues, such as raising production levels.
First Five-Year Plan (1928): The USSR began its First Five-Year Plan in 1928 to boost the country's industrial and military self-sufficiency, enrich the nation, and overcome its reputation for backwardness. Stalin famously declared the USSR would become a “country of metal, automobiles, and tractors.”
Goals of the Five-Year Plans: The First Five-Year Plan, like its successors, outlined specific economic goals, administered by the Gosplan (State Planning Committee). It controlled how much of each product the country should produce, how resources should be allocated, wages, and pricing.
Command Economy: The plan was a command economy, meaning decisions were made centrally rather than through market forces like supply, demand, or prices.
Complex System of Coordination: Factories submitted estimates for resources, which moved up to the Gosplan for final approval and allocation. The system was extremely complex, requiring coordination of raw materials, workers, machinery, transportation, etc., all of which had to be aligned.
Bureaucratic Structure: A vast bureaucracy emerged to handle the enormous paperwork and coordination required to make the plan function. The system was intricate, with constant reports, checkups, and amendments to address overproduction or shortages.
Mixed Success: The plan achieved some goals, exceeded others, and failed in some areas, with success often measured in quantitative terms.
Notes on Stalin's First Five-Year Plan and Collectivization of Agriculture
Primary Goal of the First Five-Year Plan:
Focused on heavy industry and building capital wealth without using foreign loans.
Russia, still largely agricultural in 1928, faced the challenge of industrializing without external financial assistance.
The First Five-Year Plan aimed to transition from agriculture to industry, drawing on internal resources, similar to Britain’s transition during the Industrial Revolution.
Agricultural Revolution in Russia:
Modeled after England's shift, which increased food production and freed the rural workforce for industry.
Unlike England, where landlords benefitted, Russia's agricultural revolution was state-driven under Stalin’s leadership.
Collectivization of Agriculture:
Initially planned to collectivize only 20% of the farm population.
Stalin expanded collectivization to most of the peasantry by the winter of 1929.
Collective farms (few thousand acres each) were considered the peasants' collective property, with some state-operated farms serving as models.
Kulaks (Prosperous Peasants) Resistance:
Kulaks resisted collectivization, refusing to pool their privately owned fields and livestock.
Stalin’s regime responded with violence, class warfare, and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.
Many kulaks were killed, while others were sent to labor camps in remote areas.
A Reversal of Stolypin’s Policies:
Under Stolypin, efforts were made to build a class of property-owning peasants.
This trend was reversed with collectivization, converting peasants into a class resembling the proletariat, with no private ownership or employment of labor, aligning with Marxist theory.
Human Costs of Collectivization:
Class warfare led to the loss of many of the most capable farmers.
A mass slaughter of livestock occurred as farmers killed their animals rather than surrender them to collective farms, causing severe agricultural damage.
This led to a famine, especially in southeastern Russia, exacerbating the human toll of collectivization.
Limited Foreign Loans:
The Bolsheviks had repudiated Tsarist debts, resulting in poor credit with capitalist countries.
As a result, the Soviet Union was unable to borrow substantial amounts of capital from abroad, reinforcing the need for internal resource mobilization.
Notes on Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and Collectivization (Continued)
Creation of Collective Farms:
One of the most radical and resented economic actions under Stalin.
Mass destruction of farm animals by peasants as resistance led to severe agricultural losses.
Millions of people died due to repression and famine, particularly in Ukraine in 1932.
Despite the famine, Stalin refused to cut food exports because the revenue was crucial for industrial imports.
Mechanization and Agricultural Modernization:
Collectivization allowed for the application of capital to agriculture by replacing small individual plots with large-scale farms.
Previously, most peasants were too poor to afford tractors, and their small, scattered fields made mechanization impractical.
Collectivization facilitated the use of modern machinery, which was otherwise only available to a few prosperous kulaks.
Machine Tractor Stations (MTS):
Hundreds of Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) were established across the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan.
Each station housed tractors, combines, and agronomists who could be dispatched to collective farms for assistance.
The goal was to increase agricultural output per peasant through mechanization.
Administrative Control of Surplus:
Large collective farms made it easier for the central government to control and manage the agricultural surplus, which was crucial for feeding the urban population and financing industrial growth through exports.
Notes on Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and the Purges (Continued)
Collectivization and Quotas:
Each collective farm was assigned a production quota, which was essential for government planning.
Farmers could sell surplus beyond the quota in a free market, but the government relied on the predicted agricultural output to feed cities and regions and for export purposes.
By 1939, almost all peasantry was collectivized, but it failed to boost agricultural output.
Collectivization discouraged peasant incentives, preventing personal land improvements and inheritance.
Agriculture remained a troubled sector, but it supported industrialization by freeing up labor: 20 million people moved to cities between 1926 and 1939.
Industrial Growth:
Rapid industrialization occurred alongside agricultural reforms.
Initially, the Soviet Union relied on western engineers and machinery imports.
However, the global depression and hostile relations with Japan and Germany in the 1930s reduced imports, pushing for self-sufficiency in heavy industry, especially war-related production.
Soviet Industrial Growth (1928–1938):
The growth rate was unprecedented:
Iron and steel production quadrupled.
Coal output tripled.
By 1938, the U.S.S.R. was the world's largest producer of farm tractors and railway locomotives.
Four-fifths of industrial output in 1938 came from plants built in the previous decade.
Major industrial cities like Magnitogorsk and Stalinsk became industrial powerhouses.
Industrial Expansion in Asia:
The Five-Year Plans led to the modernization of inner Asia, with new industrial cities and resource development.
Significant developments occurred in:
Copper and lead mines in the Urals, Lake Balkhash, and Altai Mountains.
New grain-producing regions in Siberia and the Kazakh S.S.R.
Formerly remote cities like Tashkent became industrial and urban centers, housing half a million people.
Notes on Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and the Purges (Continued)
Expansion of Industrial Areas:
Significant industrial development occurred in inner Asia and the Urals.
The newly built Turksib Railway connected agriculture, copper mining, and electrical industries in the south to the northern regions.
Kuznetsk Basin was discovered to have high-grade coal, complementary to the Ural iron ores, though separated by 1,000 miles.
These developments demanded a transportation revolution; by 1938, railroads carried five times as much freight as in 1913.
Impact of Modernization:
The industrialization of inner Asia significantly increased the economic strength of the U.S.S.R.
Though the U.S.S.R. conducted less foreign trade than the Russian Empire, it built stronger connections with Asian neighbors.
By 1941, Russia had become a different, more industrialized antagonist in its conflict with Germany compared to 1914.
Industrial development in Asia and the Urals allowed the U.S.S.R. to survive the German occupation during WWII, with Allied assistance.
Industrial and Military Growth:
Increased industrial output supported the modernization of the Red Army, which became a significant factor in Russia’s ability to fight back during WWII.
Despite rapid growth, qualitative standards were lower compared to the West.
Many of the new factories were shoddily built and suffered from rapid depreciation.
In terms of efficiency and output per worker, the U.S.S.R. continued to lag behind the West.
Production Comparison (1937):
Per capita production of essential goods like coal, electricity, textiles, and iron was lower in the U.S.S.R. compared to the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and Japan.
A notable indicator of lagging modernization was paper production, which was critical for many "civilized" activities. The U.S.S.R. produced only 11 pounds of paper per person, compared to 103 pounds in the U.S. and 92 pounds in Germany and Britain.
Social Costs and Effects:
The industrialization program demanded immense sacrifices from the people.
Millions, including kulaks, were killed or sent to labor camps.
Citizens were required to endure austerity and self-denial, forgoing better food, housing, and consumer goods to focus on building capital wealth and heavy industry.
One-third of the national income was reinvested in industry each year, which was twice as much as in England in 1914, though likely comparable to England in the early Industrial Revolution.
The plan enforced hard work and low wages, with promises of better living conditions once the industrial foundation was complete.
Propaganda played a key role in maintaining morale, with party members explaining the reasons for the sacrifices.