Stalin: Five Year Plans

Features of the plans

1) Investment would go into coal, iron, steel, and other heavy industries.

2) Consumer industries producing clothes, shoes and similar products would be downgraded as Soviet citizens were asked to sacrifice standard of living for longer-term objectives.

3) Seemed to Stalinists that Western industrial revolutions had been underpinned by initial development in coal, iron, and steel.

4) Need of development of industries for defense of Russia against the West.

5) Plans complete a year ahead of schedule - superiority of Soviet planning over Western capitalist economies going through the Great Depression.

6) Huge new industrial centers were constructed virtually from nothing.

7) Spectacular projects were conceived to demonstrate the might of the new Soviet industrial machine.

First Five-Year Plan

Huge targets placed enormous strain on economy as materials of all shorts were in short supply and there was intense competition to get hold of them. At higher levels, powerful people in industrial commissariats pulled strings to make sure that their pet projects got the resources they needed for completion.

Materials and workers were rushed into the job. There was also underproduction and overproduction.

Stalin found the need to use class enemies propaganda to cover up mistakes and to blame somebody.

Bourgeois specialists were identified as saboteurs and were uncovered and imprisoned.

The Second and Third Five-Year Plans

There were severe shortages, disruptions in transport, lack of skilled workers and slower growth rates for certain industries.

The Second plan put more emphasis on consolidation.

Investment on railway system meant there was more stuff to be carried.

There were new training schemes that encouraged workers to learn skills and master techniques to tacke problem of skills shortages.

There also came industrial growth and the USSR began to be self-sufficient.

However, areas such as iron and steel stopped growing and there was a fuel crisis.

Ale Nove places blame on Great Purges as it deprived economy of valuable personnel.

Workers' reaction

The plans were met with enthusiasm and workers believed they would be better off. Real wages did rise a little, but unemployment was still high.

Women dominated some professions, but still had little literacy rate and little education.

Quicksand society

There were a lot of peasants working. But they were also moving everywhere to find jobs as they found working in a factory boring because it was a different environment.

There was a shortage of skills and many untrained, clumsy workers were doing an astonishing amount of damage to expensive imported machinery and were tuning out poor-quality goods.

Government response

Rewards began to be given to workers who stayed. Managers were paid bonuses and perks.

Payment according to the pieces of work completed became common across industry.

Many of the training programs were poor and trainees were rushed through by poor instructors. In the Second Five Year Plan though, there were fewer but better training schemes available.

Dismissal, eviction, and loss of benefits began to be imposed for those skipping work.

Results

Workers suffered badly while Stalin announced, with his propaganda, in 1935 that 'life has become better, comrades, life has become more joyous.'

Centralized distribution system was poor and often lacked basic commodities.

There was substantial growth in heavy industry - impressive achievements.

However, there were major weaknesses as unrealistic targets were set, bribery was used, corruption existed, and crooked deals were made to achieve targets.

Major shortages and products of dubious quality.