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Industry and the 5-Year Plans

  

Summary

Stalin modernised industry by means of the 5-Year Plans. 

He achieved fantastic successes, but at the most appalling human cost, and while industrial output soared, the production of consumer goods remained static. 

 

    

 

Source A

If we are backward and weak, we may be beaten and enslaved.  But if we are powerful, people must beware of us. 

We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries of the West.  We must make up this gap in 10 years.  Either we do this or they crush us. 

from a speech made by Stalin to the First Conference of Workers in 1931.

 

 

There were two Five Year Plans – 1928–33 and 1932–1937.  This webpage deals with the reasons for the Five-Year Plans and how they were achieved, and also with how successful they were.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Old Bitesize - on the WaybackMachine

New Russian Primer - Soviet children's book from 1930: wonderful!

Photos of Magnitogorsk

Building the Moscow Metro  - BBC Witness History

   

Old textbook accounts of the 5-Year Plans

Reed Brett, European History (1967)

Norman Lowe (1982)

  

 

Why did Stalin do it? 

[Modernise And Catch Up]

  

1.  Many regions of the USSR were backward

Stalin said that to be backward was to be defeated and enslaved.  ‘But if you are powerful, people must beware of you’.

2.  Armed forces

He believed (correctly) that Germany would invade.  In 1931, he prophesied: ‘We make good the difference in 10 years or they crush us’.

3.  Compete with the Western World

Stalin believed (with Lenin) that the USSR should ‘overtake and outstrip the capitalist countries’.  He believed in ‘Socialism in one country’ – the USSR would become strong enough to survive, then would take over the rest of the world.

4.  Useful propaganda

The 5-year plans were very useful propaganda – for Communism and for Stalin.

 

  

How the 5-Year Targets were achieved

  1. Plans were drawn up by GOSPLAN (the state planning organisation).

  2. Targets were set for every industry, each region, each mine and factory, each foreman and even every worker.

  3. Foreign experts & engineers were called in.

  4. Workers were bombarded with propaganda, posters, slogans and radio broadcasts.

  5. Workers were fined if they did not meet their targets.

  6. Alexei Stakhanov (who cut an amazing 102 tons of coal in one shift) was held up as an example.  Good workers could become ‘Stakhanovites' and win a medal.

  7. (After the First 5-year plan revealed a shortage of workers) women were attracted by new crèches and day-care centres so that mothers could work.

  8. For big engineering projects such as dams or canals, slave labour (such as political opponents, kulaks or Jews) was used.

  9. There was a concentration on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods or good housing.

  10. Stalin persecuted the Muslim faith because he thought it was holding back industrialisation. 

 

Source B

A poster from 1931: "A network of creches, kindergartens, canteens, laundries to ensure participation of women in socialistconstruction". 
Explain the imagery and messages

  

Source C

A poster of 1934: "Peasants can live like a Human Being". 
Study the poster - how it is promising people: enough to eat, nice clothing, the latest consumer goods, electricity, education, and happiness.

  

Source D

Stalin at the hydro-electric dam at Ryon in the Caucasus (1935). 
Explain the messages and imagery in the painting, paricularly the use of white.  How is this 'useful for Communsim and for Stalin'?

  

Successes... 

  

  1. The USSR was turned into a modern state (which was able to defeat Hitler's 1941 invasion).

  2. There was genuine Communist enthusiasm among the young ‘Pioneers’.

  3. Production leves rose dramatically (see Source E) .

  4. There were huge achievements in the following areas:

    • new cities

    • dams/ hydroelectric power

    • transport & communications

    • the Moscow Underground

    • farm machinery

    • electricity

    • coal

    • steel

    • fertilizers

    • plastic

    • no unemployment

    • doctors & medicine

    • education.

 

...  and Failures

  

  1. Poorly organised – inefficiency, duplication of effort and waste.

  2. Appalling human cost (see Source F).

    • discipline (sacked if late)

    • secret police

    • slave labour labour camps (for those who made mistakes)

    • accidents and deaths (100,000 workers died building the Belomor Canal)

    • few consumer goods

    • poor housing

    • wages FELL

    • no human rights

  3. Some historians claim the tsars had done the ‘spadework’, setting up the basis for industrialisation, and that Stalin’s effort had very little effect on a process that would have happened anyway.

 

Source E

Soviet industrial production figures, 1921–40

This chart is based on official Soviet statistics

  

1927

1933

1937

Electricity ('000 million kw)

5

13

36

Coal (million tons)

35

64

128

Oil (million tons)

12

21

47

Steel (million tons)

4

6

18

From official government figures.  Note that historians have found that Stalin's statisticians overstated the increases by about a third - they dared not do anything else!  It was the official line that Stalin had achieved a remarkable improvement, and a statistician who found otherwise would have been sent to Siberia. 

   

Consider:

1.  Why did Stalin want to modernise Soviet industry?  Explain your answer using Source A and your own knowledge'.

2.  How useful are Sources B and C to an historian studying Stalin's policy of industrialisation?  Explain your answer using Sources B and C and your own knowledge.

3.  How useful is Source D as evidence about the results of the Five-Year Plans on Russian industrial production?  Explain your answer using Source D and your own knowledge. 

4.  Study Sources E and F.  Which is more useful to an historian studying Stalin's policy of industrialisation?  Explain your answer using Sources E and F and your own knowledge.

5.  Does Source E give an accurate interpretation of the industrialisation of Russia in the period 1928–40?  Explain your answer using Source E and your own knowledge. 

6.  "Stalin's policy of industrialisation was a success in the period 1928 to 1941." Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation?  Explain your answer using the Sources and your own knowledge. 

7.  "The Five Year Plans brought glory to Stalin and misery to his people".  Is this a fair interpretation of Stalin's achievement?

 

Source F

Working conditions in the city of Magnitogorsk in the early 1930s

In early April it was still bitterly cold, everything was frozen.  By May the city was swimming in mud.  Plague had broken out not far away.  People were in poor health because of lack of food and overwork.  Sanitary conditions were appalling.  By the middle of May the heat had become intolerable.

from Behind the Urals (1942) by John Scott.
John Scott was an American engineer who voluntarily went to Russia in the 1930s to help in the building of the country

 

Source G

The Soviet people and industrialisation

The Soviet people achieved so much in such a short time.  This happened because all the country's wealth belongs to the working people who create this wealth.  The Stakhanovite movement spread all over the country.  Thousands of workers produced more that their quota.  Miracles were created by the enthusiastic work of the Soviet people.

from a Soviet school textbook published in 1976.

 

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