Andrew rothstein

This was shown during the period of the first Five Year Plan (1929-32), which now embraced some fifty branches of industry—in itself marking how much progress had been made in the technique of planning since 1920. The aim of the Plan, now that the pre-war level of production had been reached and in many cases exceeded, was to increase productivity of labour in such a way as would guarantee the systematic supremacy of the Socialist sector of national economy over the capitalist sector... and will thus guarantee that the capitalist forms of economy will be overcome and eliminated”.⁴ This was a daring attempt, involving great efforts and great difficulties; and abroad it was ridiculed as a gamble and Utopian even before it started. Nevertheless, it was successful in the main. Stalin reported on this subject to the leadership of the Communist Party in January, 1933:

^“We did not have an iron and steel industry, the foundation for the industrialisation of the country. Now we have this industry.

“We did not have a tractor industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have an automobile industry. Now we have one.-

“We did not have a machine-tool industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have a big and up-to-date chemical industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have a real and big industry for the production of modern agricultural machinery. Now we have one.

“We did not have an aircraft industry. Now we have one.

“In output of electric power we were last on the list. Now we rank among the first.

“In output of oil products and coal we were last on the list. Now we rank among the first.

“We had only one coal and metallurgical base—in the Ukraine—which we barely managed to keep going. We have not only succeeded in improving this base, but have created a new coal and metallurgical base—in the East—which is the pride of our country.

“We had only one centre of the textile industry—in the north of our country. As a result of our efforts, we will have in the very near future two new centres of the textile industry—in Central Asia and Western Siberia.

“And we have not only created these new great industries, but have created them on a scale and in dimensions that eclipse the scale and dimensions of European industry.

“And as a result of all this, the capitalist elements have been completely and irrevocably eliminated from industry, and Socialist industry has become the sole form of industry in the U.S.S.R.

“And as a result of all this, our country has been converted from an agrarian into an industrial country: for the proportion of industrial output, as compared with agricultural output, has risen from 48% of the total in the beginning of the Five Year Plan period (1928) to 70% at the end of the fourth year of the Five Year Plan period (1932).

“And as a result of all this, we have succeeded by the end of the fourth year of the Five Year Plan period in fulfilling the programme of general industrial output, which was drawn up for five years, to the extent of 93.7%, and in increasing the volume of industrial output more than threefold as compared with the pre-war output, and more than twofold as compared with that of 1928.”¹

What made these achievements particularly remarkable in the eyes of the Soviet people, as innumerable resolutions at meetings of factory workers, peasants, clerical workers and intellectuals showed, was that they were secured in spite of very adverse external conditions. Stalin himself had remarked on one big reason for this, at the meeting mentioned earlier. He said:

“It is true that we are 6% short of fulfilling the general programme of the Five Year Plan. But this is due to the fact that, in order to improve the defences of the country in view of the refusal of neighbouring countries to sign pacts of non-aggression with us, and in view of the complications that arose in the Far East, we were obliged hastily to switch a number of factories to the production of modern weapons of defence. And since this involved the necessity of going through a certain period of preparation, these factories had to suspend production for four months, which could not but affect the fulfilment of the general programme of output provided for in the Five Year Plan during 1932. As a result of this operation, we have completely closed the breach in the defences of the country. But it could not but affect the fulfilment of the programme of output provided for in the Five Year Plan.”²

Furthermore, the world economic crisis which broke out at the end of 1929 lasted for practically the entire period of the Five Year Plan. There was, consequently, a heavy fall in the prices of those very raw materials on the export of which the U.S.S.R. was relying to accumulate the foreign currency wherewith to buy equipment for its growing industries and tractors for its agriculture. This cost the U.S.S.R. “additional hundreds and hundreds of millions of roubles in gold”, said Molotov at the same meeting in January, 1933. But what made matters still more complicated was that, as he put it, “if the war danger came near to us more than once during these years, the economic war against the U.S.S.R. on various sectors of the external market has been carried on, and is being carried on, without a breathing space.”³

The details of this economic war have begun to be forgotten. In 1930 they had included a campaign in Great Britain and elsewhere against alleged religious persecution in the U.S.S.R. and, later in the year, against alleged “dumping” of Soviet wheat and timber: both with the declared object of inducing business interests not to trade with the Soviet Government. Some success outside this country was won by these campaigns. In October, 1930, France instituted an economic blockade of Soviet goods, and early in 1931 Canada followed suit. The existence of the Labour Government in Britain, which signed a trade agreement with the U.S.S.R. in April, 1930, for a time interfered with the campaign in this country; but in February, 1931, leading politicians and business men formed a “Trade Defence Union” for the express purpose of combating trade with the U.S.S.R., and in November of the same year the British National Government already cut the duration of export credits on Soviet imports from two years to one. Throughout 1931-2 the Bureau of Research on Russian Economic Conditions of Birmingham University published weighty memoranda proving the failure and collapse of Soviet economic efforts; and in 1932 a new campaign against Soviet goods was started in Great Britain, on the grounds that they were allegedly produced by “forccd labour”. When the campaign had been worked up to a considerable height, the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of 1930 was denounced by the British Government.¹

Thus once again the Soviet Union had tangible evidence —if it had needed it—of the relative advantages and disadvantages of normal relations with non-Socialist countries.

3. Planning in the Hitler Period, 1933-41

The aims of the second Five Year Plan, adopted by the XVII Congress of the C.P.S.U. in 1934, were still more far-reaching than those of the first Plan, the achievements of which they could take as a basis. They were (i) “the completion of the reconstruction of the whole of national economy”; (ii) the final elimination of capitalist elements in Soviet society, and of classes in general, with the economic causes which gave rise to them; (iii) a considerable growth of real wages, with a two to threefold rise in the level of consumption; (iv) “to overcome the survivals of capitalism... in the consciousness of man”.² This time no fewer than 120 branches of industry were brought within the scope of the new Five Year Plan.

The Soviet leaders made no secret of their desire to preserve peaceful and normal relations with other countries, in order to have the opportunity of performing as smoothly as possible the tasks they set before themselves. It was on this occasion that Stalin made the memorable observation: “Those who want peace and seek business relations with us will always have our support. But those who try to attack our country will receive a crushing repulse, to teach them not to poke their pigs’ snouts into our Soviet garden.”³ His preceding remarks had made it clear that he was referring in particular to the rulers of Germany and Japan, and to “a certain section of the English Conservatives”. But at the same time, he said, while relying on its own economic and political strength, on its army, and on the moral support of the peoples in every country vitally interested in the preservation of peace, the U.S.S.R. was also relying “on the prudence of those countries which for one motive or another are not interested in disturbing the peace, and which want to develop commercial relations with such a punctual client as the U.S.S.R.” The Soviet Union’s foreign policy was one of “preserving peace and strengthening commercial relations with all countries”.⁴

The success of the second Five Year Plan was even more marked than that of the first. In fact, the output of industry during the period was more than doubled, and the whole increase in output was accounted for by Socialist, publicly-owned enterprise. Private industry had shrunk to a minute fraction—0.03% of the total— represented by small handicraftsmen.⁵ Moreover, 80% of Soviet industrial output was accounted for by new or completely reconstructed works of all kinds.⁶ So also in agriculture. The 240,000 collective (i.e. co-operative) farms which had replaced small-scale individual farming since 1930 were uniting more than 93% of all peasant households, and accounting for 97% of the grain-crop area. Technically, agriculture had also been in the main reconstructed, by the creation of more than 6000 State machine and tractor stations to serve the collective farms.

As for the capitalist elements, which in 1928 had still amounted to 5% of the population—in the shape of rich peasants (kulaks) who rented their neighbours’ land in order to farm it with the help of hired labour, and also of a certain number of people living by private trade—these had completely disappeared as a class, and were engaged upon more useful pursuits.⁷ Private traders in 1928 had still accounted for 20% of retail trade; by 1930 their share was only 5.6%, and thereafter they had been completely absorbed by the State or co-operative trade machinery.⁸

In respect of the standard of living, the programme had in fact been carried out by 1937: real wages had doubled, and the income of each peasant household in the collective farms had increased three and a half times.⁹ Rationing, reimposed during the period of greatest strain in the first Five Year Plan, was abolished in 1934 as a result of the greater abundance of foodstuffs and raw materials.

Progress had been made in overcoming “the survivals of capitalism in the mind of man”. The Stakhanov movement was the most striking response to this part of the Five Year Plan. Stalin defined it as “a movement of working men and women which sets itself the aim of surpassing the present technical standards, surpassing the existing designed capacities, surpassing the existing production plans and estimates”. But its significance did not end there, he said. It also represented the “first beginnings” of that rise in the cultural and technical level of the working class which would be required to eliminate the distinction between mental labour and manual labour. And upon the elimination of that distinction—the heritage of past forms of society—depended whether the country could move from Socialism to Communism—i.e., from a condition in which “each works according to his ability and receives articles of consumption, not according to his needs, but according to the work he performs for society”, to a condition in which “each works according to his abilities and receives articles of consumption, not according to the work he performs, but according to his needs as a culturally-developed individual”.¹ The fact that those participating in the Stakhanov movement numbered some 25% of the working class by the end of the second Five Year Plan² was one of the signs that the elimination of non- Socialist influences in the mind of man, the substitution of a wider social horizon in the mind of the worker for the old horizon limited by his personal interests, was at any rate well begun.