Industrialization in the Soviet Union

The project covered eight major economic regions (Northern, Central Industrial, Southern, Volga, Ural, West Siberian, Caucasian and Turkestan).

Proponents of the teleological approach (Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Valerian Kuybyshev, Stanislav Strumilin) believed that the plan should transform the economy and proceed from future structural changes, production opportunities and rigid discipline.

For his part, Bukharin accused Preobrazhensky and his "left opposition" who supported him in imposing "feudal military exploitation of the peasantry" and "internal colonialism".

Researcher Vadim Rogovin believes that the cause of Stalin's "left turn" was the grain harvest crisis of 1927; the peasantry, especially the well-to-do, massively refused to sell the bread, considering the purchase prices set by the state to be low.

In the same period, a raid on the Soviet embassy in Beijing (April 6) took place; British police searched the Soviet-British joint-stock company Arcos in London (May 12).

By January 1928, only two-thirds of the grain was harvested compared to last year's level, as the peasants massively held the bread, considering the purchase prices to be low.

The disruptions in the supply of cities and the army that had begun were aggravated by the exacerbation of the foreign policy situation, which even reached the point of trial mobilisation.

The main task of the introduced command economy was to build up the economic and military power of the state at the highest possible rates, accompanied with the near complete elimination of private industry that had allowed under the NEP.

In 1930, speaking at the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Stalin admitted that an industrial breakthrough was possible only when building "socialism in one country" and demanded a multiple increase in the tasks of the five-year plan, arguing be exceeded.

They operated in all leading sectors of the national economy—in engineering, metallurgy, construction, light and timber industries, on railways and motor vehicles, in agriculture and even in the navy.

[citation needed] In 1935, the "Stakhanovist movement" appeared, in honor of the mine worker Alexey Stakhanov, who, according to official information of that time, performed 14.5 norms for a shift on the night of August 30, 1935.

At the same time, the state shifted to the centralized distribution of the means of production and consumer goods belonging to it, the introduction of command-administrative methods of management and the nationalization of private property were carried out.

A political system emerged based on the leading role of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), state ownership of the means of production and a minimum of private initiative.

The firm of Albert Kahn played the role of coordinator between the Soviet customer and hundreds of Western companies that supplied equipment and advised the construction of individual objects.

The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, designed by Kahn in 1930, was originally built in the United States, and then was unmounted, transported to the Soviet Union and assembled under the supervision of American engineers.

American hydrobuilder Hugh Cooper became the chief consultant for the construction of the DneproGES, hydro turbines for which were purchased from General Electric and Newport News Shipbuilding.

A standard blast furnace for this and all other steel mills of the industrialization period was developed by the Chicago-based Freyn Engineering Co.[30] At the end of 1932, the successful and early implementation of the first five-year plan for four years and three months was announced.

Soviet economist and secretary of the party committee of the Leningrad University Nikolai Kolesov Dmitrievich believes that without the implementation of the industrialization policy, the political and economic independence of the country would not have been ensured.

Western and Russian researchers argue that despite the report on the successful implementation of the first five-year plan, the statistics were falsified,[38][44] and none of the goals were achieved even closely.

A grandiose and thoroughly politicised system emerged, the characteristic features of which were economic "gigantomania", chronic commodity hunger, organizational problems, wastefulness, and loss-making enterprises.

[51] This not only deprived the Soviet Union of their labor but reduced the pool of manpower for military service to counter Nazi German aggression only eight years later.

[52] British scientist Don Filzer believes that this was due to the fact that as a result of collectivisation and a sharp decline in the standard of living of the rural population, human labor was greatly devalued.

[53] Vadim Rogovin notes that the desire to fulfill the plan led to a situation of overstretching forces and a permanent search for reasons to justify the non-fulfillment of excessive tasks.

This is explained by the emergence in the economy of chronic commodity shortages, collectivization, mass hunger, a massive influx of untrained workforce from the countryside and an increase in their labor resources by enterprises.

[39] Trotsky also maintained that the disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in the 1930s such as the underdeveloped consumer base along with the priority focus on heavy industry were due to a number of avoidable problems.

This caused a hostile attitude towards the Stakhanovists from the "backward" workers, who reproached them with the fact that their records lead to higher standards and lower prices.

At the July plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of 1928, Stalin advanced the thesis that "as we move forward, the resistance of the capitalist elements will increase, the class struggle will escalate".

At first glance, this gives weight to the popular belief that the high rates of increasing industrial output of the Soviet Union were obliged to the authoritarian regime and planned economy.

Vitaly Lelchuk also draws attention to the fact that by the beginning of the winter of 1941 the territory was occupied, where before the war 42% of the population of the Soviet Union lived, 63% of coal were mined, 68% of pig iron smelted, etc.

The material and technical base of such giants built during the years of industrialization, such as Novokramatorsk and Makeevka metallurgical plants, DneproGES, etc., was at the disposal of the invaders.