GOELRO

GOELRO (Russian: ГОЭЛРО) was the first of Soviet Russia's plans for national economic recovery and development.

Lenin's stated goal for it was "...the organization of industry on the basis of modern, advanced technology, on electrification which will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism.

"[6] In 1920, British writer Herbert George Wells visited Soviet Russia and met with Vladimir Lenin.

Can one imagine a more courageous project in a vast flat land of forests and illiterate peasants, with no water power, with no technical skill available, and with trade and industry at the last gasp?

Projects for such an electrification are in process of development in Holland and they have been discussed in England, and in those densely-populated and industrially highly-developed centres one can imagine them as successful, economical, and altogether beneficial.

[citation needed] In 1963, Che Guevara cited the GOELRO plan as a model for the development of revolutionary Cuba.