Transcript Stalin in Power - Cloudfront.net

Stalin in Power
Industrialization
Five Year Plans
Total of five under Stalin, each with a slightly different
focus
1st – 1928 -1932
2nd – 1933-1937
3rd – 1938-1941 cut short by German invasion
4th – 1946-1950
5th – 1951-1955
• Involved total state / govt. control of industry – no
more private ownership, no more worker run factories
– end of NEP liberalization / privatization / small scale
capitalism
• Introduction of Command or Centralized or Planned
Economy
• Industrialization would be Rapid / Hugely Accelerated
(Economic Policy of the Left)
Goals
• 1. ECONOMIC: Main aim – modernize, industrially and
militarily. Bring USSR out of middle ages, make it a great
nation. This could only be done through state control and state
planning.
• 2. POLITICAL: Survival – Fear of war with opponents of
Communism / West (and China): more real after Locarno Treaty
(Germany and France became allies): seen by Stalin as an
attempt by the West to keep Germany from developing closer
ties with the USSR.
• Stalin felt USSR could not survive unless its industrial capacity
was improved: to deter aggression and repel it if deterrence
failed.
• In 1931, Stalin wrote “Do you want our socialist fatherland to be
beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this you
must put an end to its backwardness…that is what Lenin said
during the Oct Rev: ‘either perish, or overtake and outstrip the
advanced capitalist countries.’ We are 50 or 100 years behind the
advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years.
Either we do it, or they crush us.”
• His program of industrialization is best understood as an attempt to
establish a war economy, but without the war – he declared he was
promoting a great leap forward, as a war on the failings of Russia’s
past, as a war against the class enemies within, and as a preparation
for war against the nation’s capitalist enemies abroad, FYP’s were
presented as a defense of the USSR against the Capitalist world,
and international hostility.
• 3. POLITICAL: Fulfill the ideals of Communism –
more factories meant more jobs for workers, a worker
based / centered country was necessary for
Communism to survive and prosper. Redress the
balance between worker and reactionary peasants;
urbanize the USSR
• Industrialization would be a means to inspire and
excite the workers about their role in the Rev and in
modernizing the USSR. Stalin skillfully manipulated
workers in this way, building them up, emphasizing
their importance for the future of the USSR and
Communism
• 4. POLITICAL: Part of his strategy to defeat his
opponents on the Right; he adopted the ideas of Left,
hoping to capture the imagination of the workers and
discredit the Right who opposed rapid industrialization
and modernization.
• 5. POLITICAL: Justify to Western world that
Communist ideology was superior to capitalism: in the
20s most capitalist countries were suffering from the
Depression – Stalin wanted to show that Communist
ideology was superior to self destructive capitalism /
capable of generating real growth and increased
prosperity.. The USSR would prove that in a planned
economy serious depression like this did not happen
• 6. PERSONAL: By achieving the industrialization
and modernization of the USSR, Stalin’s importance
would also be comparable to that of Lenin, Peter the
Great etc. if not a greater achievement than theirs
• Irony – he dismissed the Capitalist system of the West
but yet he arranged for the assistance of Western
Capitalist countries in helping with Industrialization
• Soviet engineers were sent abroad to learn about
foreign technology
• hundreds of foreign engineers and thousands of
foreign skilled workers were brought to Russia on
contract.
• USA, Britain, France, Canada, Spain …. sold
machines, equipment to the USSR (bought Soviet
grain)
First FYP (1928-1932)
• Its target was to dramatically expand heavy industry:
• Infrastructure, transportation: roads, bridges, railroads
• Fuel and energy supplies: coal, oil, iron, electricity
• Factories producing machinery, equipment, materials
(tractors, steel, rubber) tools
• There was a huge cutback in production of consumer /
domestic items / light ind. goods
• The organization of the FYP’s was overseen by the
State Planning Commission, Gosplan
• Gosplan would Command the economy / set the
targets or productivity goals which were to be met by
each industry over the 5 years.
Problems with First Five Year Plan
• 1. Gosplan: staffed by bureaucrats, many of whom had
no idea of what factories or businesses were capable of
producing: as a result the targets were arbitrarily set,
without any consultation with the factory managers on
the ground. Many were often unrealistic: this led to
desperate and confused strategies / chaos at the factory
level
• Alec Nove: this was hardly a planned economy. Plan
was the wrong word – more a set of objectives – real
planning was missing. Provided detailed production
figures but no details about how they were to be
achieved.
• Norman Stone comments on how Stalin liked to be
referred to as the “master-planner” – but in this case
Stalin’s policies did not involve a far-sighted strategy.
Stalin, the master-planner, in fact engaged in very little
planning (usually just approved of Gosplan quotas)
• Stone agrees with Nove: Such planning as there was
occurred not at national but at local level. It was the
regional and site managers who, struggling desperately
to make sense of the instructions they were given from
on high, formulated the actual schemes to meet their
given production quotas.
• When things went wrong, Stalin blamed his
bureaucracy, as he had done in 1930 when
Collectivization had to be temporarily modified.
• Stone: Stalin may not have been concerned about the
details at first: it may have been the overall design not
the details that mattered – essentially the plan was a
huge propaganda project which aimed at convincing the
Soviet people that they were engaged in a vast enterprise
to re-make society, and prevent invasion and the defeat
of the Revolution
• At first workers were co-operative, idealistic and
enthusiastic: fell for Stalin’s propaganda, and believed
that eventually industrialization and modernization
would lead to a better life for them
• Other Complications / Problems besides arbitrary
quotas or targets handed down by Gosplan
• 2. The scale and speed with which factories were built
led to huge confusion; factories with no machines,
machines no one could operate, no replacement parts if
machines broke down
• 3. At first a shortage of workers for all the projects and
factories – eventually solved by the forced migrations
of peasants after collectivization
• 4. Workers and peasants often lacked the literacy and
skills to read directions / instructions and operate
complicated machinery: lacked the technical knowledge
or skills: machines were often damaged or broken as a
result: there were frequent industrial accidents
• 5. A further complication was the different versions of
the first FYP appeared – original plan, revised plan, a
base plan and an optimal plan: targets were frequently
raised higher and higher, sometimes by 100%.
• As usual, the new targets were unrealistic and
unreachable: this was done mostly for political effect.
• As the Plan proceeded Stalin indicated that he hoped to
achieve the goals and targets in “four years not five” –
(‘Five in Four” became the Party slogan)
• 6. An obsession with quantity over quality caused many
products to be shoddy and unreliable
• 7. Need to use force after the early wave of workers
enthusiasm abated. Workers became frustrated with the
decline in salaries, living conditions, standard of living
• Lived in dorm or barrack style accommodation, govt.
decided on occupation, lower salaries, unaffordable
domestic products, long hours, high income and sales
taxes, govt. controlled unions, food and clothes rationing,
total obedience expected, internal ID cards / passports.
• life was worse than under the Czars, yet Stalin called for
yet more and more sacrifices
• OGPU / NKVD / KGB (secret police) spied on
workers and factory managers and reported on their
performance, attitude, comments…
• Poor attitudes, criticism, absence from work, failure to
meet quotas, damaging tools, miscounting items were
all punishable by pay cuts, dismissal, imprisonment,
exile, gulags, execution.
• Forced Labor became the basis of industrialization, as
it was of collectivization.
• Resistance was branded as “sabotage.” A series of
public trials of industrial workers was used to impress
the Party and the masses of the futility of protesting
against the industrial program
• The most famous “industrial” trial was of mining
engineers accused of sabotage (a German inspired antiSoviet plot) in the Shakhty mines in the Donbass region.
• 53 engineers were put on trial (including 3 German
citizens), most confessed to acts of sabotage and to be
part of a German conspiracy: 11 sentenced to death, of
whom 5 were executed (the Germans were released to
avoid confrontation with Germany)
• Historians suggest that Stalin invented the sabotage
charges, had their confessions forced under torture: that
the whole episode was an elaborate theatrical public
show trial was intended to intimidate the industrial
workforce.
• 8. In the atmosphere of fear and recrimination, factory
managers and local party officials doctored official
returns and falsified or inflated output figures
• Soviet statistics for industrial growth during the Plans
is unreliable: these falsified figures made it possible
for Stalin to claim that the Plan was ahead of schedule,
that Five could be achieved in Four: often, to Stalin,
appearances were everything
• Success
• The first FYP was deemed to have achieved its goals by
1933: Even taking into account the falsification of
figures, the Plan still remains an extraordinary
achievement.
• The overall total output of heavy industry doubled.
• Some notable individual industrial growth: Steel
production increased 5 times, coal 5 times, electricity 9
times.
• This transformed the USSR into a modern
industrialized nation in a short space of time – ranks
among the astonishing achievements of the 20th
Century.
• Built the USSR, at breakneck speed, into what would
become after WWII, the second largest economy in the
world.
• It erected the heavy industry that fended off Hitler’s
1941 attack on the USSR and that eventually outproduced the Nazi war machine.
• Industrialization / modernization would not have
succeeded without Stalin. Only Stalin possessed the
ruthless determination to force such changes through
in spite of the resistance of millions of workers.
Without him there would not have been a second
revolution (Thompson pg. 270)
• Stalin never stopped to consider the great human
costs of such rapid and extensive industrialization and
modernization
The Second and Third FYP, 1933-1941
• The second FYP set more realistic targets, at least at
first.
• Foundation had already been laid by new plants,
factories, mines of the first FYP.
• Again the focus was on heavy industry
• Had promised more focus on domestic goods but
changed his mind after increased threat from Nazi
Germany and from Japan
• Big focus on production of military equipment and
weapons
• Increase in military spending: % of budget / national
income spent on military and defense
–
–
–
–
1933
1937
1940
1944
4%
17%
33%
50%
• 2nd FYP: more poor, uncoordinated central planning:
Overproduction of some parts, machines:
underproduction of other parts, machines
• The struggle to obtain an adequate supply of materials
often led to fierce competition between regions and
sectors of industry, all of them anxious to escape the
charge of failing to achieve the goals laid down from
above.
• In consequence, there was much unproductive hoarding
of resources and a lack of the co-operation necessary
for integrated industrial growth.
• No one dared complain too loudly about the lack of
planning, or the poor quality of goods
• The reluctance to expose weaknesses in the Plan
hindered genuine industrial growth.
• Since no one was willing to admit that an error in
planning or production had taken place, faults went
unchecked – if objective or constructive criticism had
been welcomed, the whole situation could have
improved
• The Party’s control of the media (press, radio, movies)
meant that only a favorable view of the plans and their
achievements was ever presented.
• It was during the 2nd and 3rd FYP’s that Stalin’s
political purges reached their peak: mangers operated
under constant fear, which affected production.
• Too many important workers were victims of the
Purges: The deportation of thousands of engineers and
technicians to the Gulags was a severe loss to
industries
• Workers saw living and working conditions decline
even further during these Plans – had no recourse:
Unions were not independent, were controlled by the
govt.
• demands for better pay, conditions were regarded as
selfish and inappropriate during time of crisis
• Stalin demanded maximum effort and output in spite
of lower salaries and decline in working and living
standards
• Take home wages did increase during the 2nd FYP,
but this was offset by inflation: high cost of food and
consumer goods because of low supply; real income
continued to declined by approx 20% to 40% during
the period 1928-1933.
• Huge disparity in wages: skilled workers made four
times more than unskilled: technicians and engineers
up to eight times more, and managers and
administrators from twelve to thirty times
• Party intelligencia formed a special elite; special
privileges: housing, cars, vacations, stores with
imported goods, health care
• Wage disparity is not consistent with Marxism, with
the concept of pay according to needs, not skills
• Many workers were paid a fixed wage for the
minimum amount of output and then increasingly
higher wages for additional units produced per hour or
day above the minimum: incentives (Capitalistic
principles).
• Stakhanovite movement, started in Sept. 1935: named
after a miner from the Donbass coalfield: on one shift
he dug 14 times the amount of coal expected
(supposedly)
• Again, Propaganda value: His output was assisted by
helpers and equipment – the whole thing was stage
managed - but his achievement became nationally
famous and was used to encourage and motivate others
• Led to creation of Shock Brigades: travelled to mines
and factories showing what could be achieved
• Very productive workers could also qualify for the
privileges of the intelligencia: health care, special
shopping privileges, and vacation opportunities.
• Workers were still severely punishment for being
tardy, absent from work - loss of housing,
imprisonment, Gulags
• System of internal passports was expanded under 2nd
and 3rd plans
• Success of 2nd and 3rd FYP’s: In 1941, when
Germany invaded, the USSR was in a position to
engage in a successful military struggle of
unprecedented intensity.
• In Soviet propaganda, this was what mattered, not
minor questions of living standards or wages.
• The USSR’s triumph over Nazism was according to
Stalin the ultimate proof of the wisdom of his
enforced program of industrialization
• The Economy in Wartime, 1941-1945
• German invasion destroyed any possibility of
measured planning.
• Much improvisation after 1941: Survival was the key
• Overall production declined during War years (19411944)
• Within 6 months of German invasion, Germans
controlled 50% of the Soviet population, 33% of
industrial plants were under German occupation
• 60% of iron and steel production, 40% of the railway
system, 60% of livestock, and 40% of grain stocks
had been lost.
• whole sectors of industry were transferred to the
relative safety of the eastern USSR
• Some Scorched Earth: destruction of industries,
mines before Germans arrived
• Production took place in the East, behind the Urals:
this, and assistance from the USA (Lend Lease)
helped the USSR to recover and survive
• Whatever the reality of central planning had been, the
principle of centralized authority was of considerable
value when it came to organizing the war effort.
• The harshness of the conditions under which the
Soviet people had labored in the 1930s had prepared
them for the fearful hardships of war.
• Soviet workers and peasants withstood the conditions of
war, because they had lived and worked in such
horrible conditions for years before this
• Huge deprivation during the war: chronic food shortage
was transformed into a famine by German occupation
of most fertile lands, and the breakdown of the food
distribution system
• Over a quarter of the 25-30m deaths during war years
were due to starvation.
• Yet Stalin claimed that “we have survived the most
cruel and hardest of all wars ever experienced in the
history of our Motherland…the Soviet social system
has proved to be more capable of life and more stable
than a non-Soviet system.”
• Post War Reconstruction: 4th and 5th FYP’s
• Triumph in war did not lessen the suffering of the
Soviet people or make them freer - sad thing was that
for all their suffering the Soviet people gained
nothing, no gratitude, rewards.
• After the war Stalin gave no thought to rewarding
Soviet citizens for their efforts.
• He was more suspicious of the outside world than
before, he called on the nation to redouble its efforts:
rebuilding was crucial: a Cold War was starting:
always a new danger, threat
• Stalin hoped to rebuild and repair the Soviet Union
through taking advantage of Soviet control of Eastern
Europe and of Eastern Germany – demanded
reparations of $20b dollars at Yalta.
• The Fourth FYP – 1946-50 – was aimed at restoring
production to the levels of 1941.
• Soviet economy remained unbalanced – no domestic
goods or light industry: focus on Heavy Industry
• Stalin favored large scale construction projects –
bridges, dams, refineries, generating plants –
showpieces – invited world leaders to come and see
the successes.
• Stalin’s “Grand Projects of Communism,” had more
to do with propaganda than economic planning.
• Again, little thought given to overall economic
strategy – much waste of financial and material
resources.
• Fourth and fifth plans - reached goals with regard to
growth of heavy industry – the output of iron and
steel, oil, electric power, was doubled from 1941
levels
• Food shortages, poor living conditions, strict labor
code, low wages, harsher life for workers in 1953
when S died than any time since 1917. So much for
dictatorship of the proletariat.
• Yet, workers did receive some benefits in terms of
old age pensions, free medical services, free
education, and daycare centers for children. And there
was no Unemployment
Compare and Contrast with Castro
• Transition to Command Economy
– Castro slower…involved taking possessions of foreigners
– Stalin rapid
• Flexibility, backtracking
– Castro moves back to “market socialism” more than once
– Stalin only once / Collectivization in just 1930
• Use of Force / Terror / Purges
– Both use terror
– Stalin uses more terror / Purges:
• Success Level
– Stalin more successful – more resources, population – resists
Nazis….one of two superpowers by Cold War……