Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

The five-year plans for the development of the national economy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: пятилетние планы развития народного хозяйства СССР, pyatiletniye plany razvitiya narodnogo khozyaystva SSSR) consisted of a series of nationwide centralized economic plans in the Soviet Union, beginning in the late 1920s.

The requisitioning of farm produce was replaced by a tax system (a fixed proportion of the crop), and the peasants were free to sell their surplus (at a state-regulated price) - although they were encouraged to join state farms (Sovkhozes, set up on land expropriated from nobles after the 1917 revolution), in which they worked for a fixed wage like workers in a factory.

The former group considered that the NEP provided sufficient state control of the economy and sufficiently rapid development, while the latter argued in favor of more rapid development and greater state control, taking the view, among other things, that profits should be shared among all people, and not just among a privileged few.

Some scholars have argued that the programme of mass industrialization advocated by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition was co-opted to serve as the basis of Stalin's first five-year plan.

[8] According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation.

Efforts were made, especially in the third plan, to move industry eastward to make it safer from attack during World War II.

[citation needed] Another issue was that quality was sacrificed in order to achieve quantity, and production results generated wildly varied items.

A popular military metaphor emerged from the economic success of the first five-year plan: "There are no fortresses Bolsheviks cannot storm."

[14] This social transformation along with the incredible economic boom occurred at the same time that the entire Soviet system developed its definitive form in the decade of 1930.

[13][page needed] Many scholars believe that a few other important factors, such as foreign policy and internal security, went into the execution of the five-year plan.

[13] While most of the figures were overstated, Stalin was able to announce truthfully that the plan had been achieved ahead of schedule; however, the many investments made to the west were excluded.

[15] Many of the peasants who were suffering from the famine began to sabotage the fulfillment of their obligations to the state and would, as often as they could, stash away stores of food.

The second five-year plan gave heavy industry top priority, putting the Soviet Union not far behind Germany as one of the major steel-producing countries of the world.

As was the case with the other five-year plans, the second was not as successful, failing to reach the recommended production levels in such areas as the coal and oil industries.

[16] Consistent with the Soviet doctrine of state atheism (gosateizm), this five-year plan from 1932 to 1937 also included the liquidation of houses of worship, with the goals of closing churches between 1932–1933 and the elimination of clergy by 1935–1936.

The third five-year plan ran for only 3½ years, up to June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

As war approached, more resources were put into developing armaments, tanks, and weapons, as well as constructing additional military factories east of the Ural mountains.

The Soviet Union mainly contributed resources to the development of weapons and constructed additional military factories as needed.

Reconstruction was impeded by a chronic labor shortage due to the enormous number of Soviet casualties in the war (between 20 and 30 million).

The USA and USSR were unable to agree on the terms of a US loan to aid reconstruction, and this was a contributing factor in the rapid escalation of the Cold War.

However, the USSR did gain reparations from Germany and made Eastern European countries make payments in return for the Soviets having "liberated" them from the Nazis.

One-third of the fourth plan's capital expenditure was spent on Ukraine, which was important agriculturally and industrially, and which had been one of the areas most devastated by war.

The sixth five-year plan was launched in 1956 during a period of dual leadership under Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin, but it was abandoned after two years due to over-optimistic targets.

The plan saw a slight shift away from heavy industry into chemicals, consumer goods, and natural resources.

The plan's focus was primarily on increasing the number of consumer goods in the economy so as to improve Soviet standards of living.

The last, 12th plan started with the slogan of uskoreniye (acceleration), the acceleration of economic development (quickly forgotten in favor of a vaguer motto perestroika) ended in a profound economic crisis in virtually all areas of the Soviet economy and a drop in production.

Although the Republic of Indonesia under Suharto is known for its anti-communist purge,[23] his government also adopted the same method of planning because of the policy of its socialist predecessor, Sukarno.

Bhutan, whilst not a socialist country, has also adopted five-year plans to support their economy and national development.

[27] IBM also did a good deal of business with the Soviet State in the 1930s, including supplying punch cards to the Stalin Automobile Plant.

[28][29] The minor planet 2122 Pyatiletka discovered in 1971 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova is named in honor of five-year plans of the USSR.