Aims and Results of the Five-Year Plans:
1st Five Year Plan: (1928-32)
Aims: Develop heavy industry, boost electricity production, double the output from light industry e.g. chemicals
Successes: Electricity production – tripled, coal & iron output doubled, steel production increased by 1/3
Limitations: None of extreme ambitious targets were met, improvements in chemical industry lagged behind, consumer industries were badly neglected
Second Five Year Plan: (1933-37)
Aims: Continue growth of heavy industry, boost light industry: chemicals, electricals, consumer goods, develop communications and foster engineering
Successes: some large-scale communication projects, rapid growth in electricity in production and chemicals, new materials, mined for the 1st time, steel output trebled, coal production doubled, USSR, self-sufficient – metal – goods & machine told by 1937.
Limitations: Oil production failed to meet its targets, consumers were still very short of some products, while overall quantity increased, quality still tended to be very low
Third Five Year Plan: (1938-420):
Aims: renewed emphasis on heavy industry, promoted rapid rearmament, complete the transition to communism
Successes: Some strong growth in machinery & engineering, defence industries developed exceptional models, spending on rearmament doubled between 1938-40
Limitations: Other areas stagnated after defence was prioritised
Oil production failed to meet
Second Five Year Plan (1933-37)
- Best one
- Better planned – more moderate targets
- Tried to redress balance of consumer goods – priority = still heavy industry
- BUT Stakhanovites wrecked machines, re-armament due to Nazis, purges, Depression
Third Five Year Plan (1938-1941)
- Military focus
- Less emphasis on force
- Voznesenski – new Gosplan – focused on finishing old projects
- BUT labour laws still harsh
OVERALL
- Industrial base improved
- Coal – 1927 – 35.4, 1940 -165 million tons
- More industries – around 6,000 new industries
- New cities developed
- BUT textiles and consumer goods decreased
- Opposition to FYPs – led to terror (1936-1939)
- Cost of living standards and lives
- Little training
- Safety neglected
- Poor diets
- Harsh labour laws – 1932 – passports
- 1939 – absenteeism = criminal offence
- Targets not always met – too high
- Attempts to overfulfill targets = machines breaking, ambushing trains of goods, bribery, corruption
How were the plans carried out?
- Planning – Vesenkha (Comm), Gosplan (1921-)
- Targets set here, sent to Commissariats
- Money – Cash crops – collectivisation, investment e.g. Metro-Vickers (GB) – made electrics
- Work – ex-peasants, women, gulag inmates, Komsomol (shock brigades)
- Labour intensive jobs – covers lack of skill
- 2 million inmates
- Enthusiasts = go into unproductive factories and work there, machines broke
- Workers encouragement = propaganda, Stakhanovites
- Stakhanov – beat target by 14x – 1935
- 102 tonnes of coal in 5hrs
- In American Time Magazine
- Statue and city names after him
- BUT Stakhanov had a team of people
- Sacrifice – labour discipline – lateness x3 = to gulag (never acted upon)
- No focus on living standards – long hours, no holidays, few consumer goods
Urals-Siberian method:
- Policy suggested by Ural region of Communist party
- Siberian group added fines to those who did not give enough grain
- Each member assigned individual quota, kulaks had more
- Failure to meet quota = punishment (fine, forced labour, confiscation of property, internal exile)
- Method increased unrest of peasants, more repression
- 1929 – increased mass disturbances and kulak terror
- Nov 1929 – 12,000 arrests on counter-rev charges
- Bulk of arrests in major grain regions e.g. Ukraine