What were Stalin's Industrialization Policies

[Bostana]

The question is pretty much self explanatory

[Bostana]

Also new edition to this question:

What was the Five Year Plan All About?

[Grenzer]

You seem to be asking a lot of questions lately, that's good.

I have limited knowledge on the suspect, but I will tell you what I know. The key to Stalin's strategy to industrialize are the so called "Five Year Plans." In the first phase, agricultural collectivization was thought to be vital. A strong and efficient agricultural sector is required to fuel population growth and free up farmers to work in factories, that is partially the rationale behind it.

However, forced collectivization has proven to be a disastrous policy. Part of the problem is that Government planners tend to disconnected to vital economic cues. Julius Nyerere, the head of Tanzania's ruling TANU party in the sixties and seventies pursued a policy of forced collectivization similar to Stalin. Collectives tended to be placed in areas where it was convenient in terms of infrastructure; however, the planners often time failed to take into account key geographic features such as whether the ground was even arable, availability of water, and several other factors.

I can recommend The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933. I have yet to finish it, but it's a comprehensive, scholarly analysis of the agricultural policy(which as mentioned was a key cornerstone of industrialization) under Stalin. The Five Year Plans had some successes, but at the same time often terrible costs and sub-par quality which were the result of delusional expectations. ComradeOm seems well informed on the subject, so hopefully he can contribute to the thread.

You might find this (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1928/11/19.htm) informative, but it's also key to recognize the bias and limitations that obviously accompany the writer. It states what was to be accomplished in Stalin's own words. The reality, of course, was far different. These sum up in part what the policy itself actually was, hopefully other posters can provide detailed accounts of the actual results so we can compare and contrast the ideal and the reality.

Also of possible interest:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1929/12/27.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1933/01/07.htm

Again, it's key to note that this was the Agrarian/Industrial policies in the words of Stalin himself, so there will be distortions, and excessive and arbitrary self congratulations.

[daft punk]

See also my thread on Platform of the Opposition. From 1924-28 Stalin concentrated on consolidating his personal power, which meant fighting the Left Opposition. The LO stood for Lenin's policies - tax the rich, subsidise coops for poor peasants, build industry. Stalin did the opposite (some industry was built). The rich got richer and the poor peasants were not encouraged into co-ops. Trotsky warned that allowing the rich to get richer would lead to counter-revolution.

Stalin kicked Trotsky out.

Soon after that, Stalin found Trotsky's predictions coming true. There was a shortfall of grain made avalable for the government to buy off the rich peasants. There was a shortfall in industrial development, and Stalin faced rebellion form the rich peasants. Also, he had just screwed up the Chinese revolution by getting the CCP to merge with the KMT. He was however pretending that it was going ok. The masses knew different though.

In a nutshell, the LO were shown to be right in all these issues, and Stalin needed grain and so on, so he ended up making a rapid U-turn, adopting the LO policies, in a distorted way, going for rapid forcible collectivisation. This marked the start of the notorious Third Period, which led to the rise of fascism in Germany, as the Stalinists lurched to a sectarian, pseudo ultra-left stance, at exactly the wrong time. They believed, or claimed to, that world revolution was about to happen. So they refused to work with the other main workers party in Germany, the social democrats, to block the fascists.

After the Nazis took power Trotsky finally gave up on the Comintern. And soon after, Stalin lurched back to the right, with policies of collaboration with the bourgeoisie in Spain, and again in China, repeating his disastrous policies of 1925-7. This was the policy of Popular Fronts, based on Stagism or Two Stage Theory. The idea was to establish capitalism in Spain, China etc.

[Bostana]

What are your guys's comments on this info I found on a sight:


The Five Year Plans:

Stalin introduced the Five Year Plans. This brought all industry under state control and all industrial development was planned by the state. The state would decide what would be produced, how much would be produced and where it should be produced. An organisation called Gosplan was created to plan all this out.

The first five year plan was from 1928 to 1932.

The second five year plan was from 1933 to 1937.

The third five year plan was from 1938 to 1941 when the war interrupted it.

Each plan set a target which industries had to meet. Each factory was set a target which it had to meet. The targets were completely unrealistic and could not be met but vast improvements were made. The emphasis was on heavy industries such as coal, oil, iron and steel and electricity.

The following table gives some idea of what progress was made when the base line figure is 1927 - before the five year plans. The target for both plans is in brackets.



1927 1932 1937
Coal
35 million tons

64 mt (75 mt target)

128 mt (152 mt target)
Oil
12 million tons

21 mt (22 mt target) 29 mt (47 mt target)
Iron Ore
5 million tons

12 mt (19 mt target) unknown
Pig Iron
3 million tons

6 mt (10 mt target) 15 mt (16 mt target)
Steel
4 million tons

6 mt (10 mt target) 18 mt (17 mt target)
mt = millions of tons

Though these appear excellent results, it must be remembered that the base line for 1927 was small by west European standards. However, the improvements did represent a massive jump forward.

The second five year plan continued to emphasise heavy industries but there was also a commitment to communication systems such as railways and new industries such as the chemical industry.

The third five year plan put an emphasis on weapons production (which required an input from heavy industries) as war did seem to be approaching.

Stalin brought in experts from foreign countries to help them, and he introduced single managers to run factories whereas one of the main beliefs of Lenin had been the running of factories by soviets (workers councils who would come to a joint decision on how things should be done). These managers were directly responsible for fulfilling the targets set for their factory. Good managers were well rewarded. Unsuccessful managers could pay a severe price for failure.

For all the apparent success of the five year plans, there were serious flaws. Parts for industrial machinery were hard to get and some factories were kept idle for weeks on end simply because they did not have parts to repair worn out machines. Ex-peasants were used as skilled workers. This simply did not add up. Despite their valiant efforts, many machines were damaged because those using them had no idea on how to correctly use these machines. There were also no parts to repair this damage.

Factories took to inflating their production figures and the products produced were frequently so poor that they could not be used - even if the factory producing those goods appeared to be meeting its target. The punishment for failure was severe. A manager could be executed as an "enemy of the people". Workers could be sent to a prison camp in Siberia. Nobody was allowed to condemn or criticise the five year plans as they were Stalin’s idea.

Life for the workers:

Life was very hard for industrial workers. Their pay was poor and there was barely anything they could spend their money on even if they had any. Consumer goods were simply not produced. Working conditions were very dangerous and the hours were long. The homes that were provided were poor. So why did they work so hard?

• the young were still idealistic. The whole concept of communism was still intoxicating. Stalin was known as ‘"Uncle Joe" and they were willing to suffer a few years of hardship if they were going to get to the promised land of a better society.

• people were encouraged to work hard by propaganda which bombarded the workers in all directions. This played on the belief that if most did it, the rest would follow on as they did not want to be seen as different.

• rewards were given to the best workers. Groups of workers were encouraged to compete against each other. The most famous worker was Alexei Stakhanov. He was said to have mined 102 tons of coal in one shift. This was fourteen times the amount expected from one person. Logically if he could do it, so could others. To be rewarded for hard work meant that you were a Stakhanovite. In fact, Stakhanov was not a popular man with the workers - for very good reasons, as this put the burden on them of working harder. Stakhanov, in fact, was frequently not mining after this record. He was allowed to tour Russia to be greeted as a hero and to give lectures on how to work hard and there is no clear evidence that he did what was claimed.

• another way of persuading the workers to work hard was to pay by results. Successful managers were also paid more though whether this extra money was shared by the workers in a factory or mine is unknown.

• punishment was also used by those who did not work hard. The fear of the labour camps was usually enough to get people working hard. Absenteeism from work was punishable by being fined or having your ration book taken from you. In 1940, it carried a prison sentence. All workers had to carry labour books which stated whether you had worked hard or not. Bad comments from your manager could also lead to prison

• a lot of hard physical labour was done by prisoners. It did not matter if they died - only that the task was completed. The fact that these people were in prison, was enough for the government to use them as it saw fit.

For all the problems and hardship caused by the Five Year Plans, by 1941, Stalin had transformed Russia into a world class industrial power. This was to be vital for Russia as the war was about to test her to the extreme.

[daft punk]

what's your opinion on what I just posted?