Die Neue Zeit
26th March 2011, 09:29
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/articles/transl_filippov_on_stalin.pdf
A significant factor behind the strictly centralized nature of the econopolitical administrative system during the Soviet period was the already obvious inevitability of a big war with Germany in the 1930’s, the war itself, and the accelerated pace of postwar reconstruction. It is this that defined the forced rates of antebellum industrialization and economic resurgence in the postwar period. No wonder foreign observers labeled the 1930’s as a ‘race against time’. The concept of accelerated modernization amidst a deficit of historical time was voiced by Stalin in February 1931: “We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. Either we make good the difference in ten years or they crush us”. Events in summer 1941 would confirm his prescience.
The ‘race against time’ in connection with the threat of war not only meant a time deficit as regards carrying through industrialization, but also exacerbated the problem of inadequate existing means of modernization – for that required an exceptionally high share of the national economy be devoted to both capital investment and military spending.
The typical view is that Stalin encouraged high military spending. Indeed the Red Army commanded on paper one of the largest European armies, and Stalin insisted on fleets of battleships even if they were about to be rendered obsolete.
However, I read this other brief remark by Jerry F. Hough in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 1985 found on Google Books:
This conflict between defense and investment is neither a hypothetical nor a new one. In the late 1920s, Marshal Tukhachevsky strongly advocated an increase in military spending and in the size of the armed forces to meet a current foreign threat, while Stalin saw the danger in long-range terms and insisted that priority be given to investment instead of defense. In his famous 1931 speech about the need to maintain tempo Stalin said: "We lag [behind] the advanced countries by 50 to 100 years. We must make up this distance in 10 years. Either we do this or they crush us." This seems to have been an argument for the maintenace of high rates of investment at the expense of defense and for the proposition that the threat was a decade away. The apparaent Kirov-Ordzhonikidze opposition to Stalin in 1933-1934 was probably the military-industrial complex insisting that the rise of Hitler and of Japanese militarism required a readjustment in this priority.
It's an interesting anecdote on the debate surrounding the course of "socialist primitive accumulation" at around the time of Stalin's speech, when it only started.
A significant factor behind the strictly centralized nature of the econopolitical administrative system during the Soviet period was the already obvious inevitability of a big war with Germany in the 1930’s, the war itself, and the accelerated pace of postwar reconstruction. It is this that defined the forced rates of antebellum industrialization and economic resurgence in the postwar period. No wonder foreign observers labeled the 1930’s as a ‘race against time’. The concept of accelerated modernization amidst a deficit of historical time was voiced by Stalin in February 1931: “We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. Either we make good the difference in ten years or they crush us”. Events in summer 1941 would confirm his prescience.
The ‘race against time’ in connection with the threat of war not only meant a time deficit as regards carrying through industrialization, but also exacerbated the problem of inadequate existing means of modernization – for that required an exceptionally high share of the national economy be devoted to both capital investment and military spending.
The typical view is that Stalin encouraged high military spending. Indeed the Red Army commanded on paper one of the largest European armies, and Stalin insisted on fleets of battleships even if they were about to be rendered obsolete.
However, I read this other brief remark by Jerry F. Hough in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 1985 found on Google Books:
This conflict between defense and investment is neither a hypothetical nor a new one. In the late 1920s, Marshal Tukhachevsky strongly advocated an increase in military spending and in the size of the armed forces to meet a current foreign threat, while Stalin saw the danger in long-range terms and insisted that priority be given to investment instead of defense. In his famous 1931 speech about the need to maintain tempo Stalin said: "We lag [behind] the advanced countries by 50 to 100 years. We must make up this distance in 10 years. Either we do this or they crush us." This seems to have been an argument for the maintenace of high rates of investment at the expense of defense and for the proposition that the threat was a decade away. The apparaent Kirov-Ordzhonikidze opposition to Stalin in 1933-1934 was probably the military-industrial complex insisting that the rise of Hitler and of Japanese militarism required a readjustment in this priority.
It's an interesting anecdote on the debate surrounding the course of "socialist primitive accumulation" at around the time of Stalin's speech, when it only started.