This review is from: The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 3: The Soviet Economy in Turmoil 1929-1930: The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929-30 Vol 3 Reviewed by William Podmore In his Preface, Professor Davies wrote, "I am still convinced that rapid industrialisation was incompatible with the market economy of NEP; the industrial objectives of the leadership required the replacement of NEP by some kind of administrative planning system." He pointed out, "In France, Germany and the Soviet Union industrial production approximately recovered to the pre-war level by 1926/27. The Soviet achievement was impressive. The decline in production, and the damage and destruction of industrial plant, had been far greater than in the other belligerent countries. ... the rate of growth of Soviet industry in the mid-1920s was already higher and more consistent than in the capitalist countries." In August 1928 communists forecast `tremendous catastrophes'. The 6th Congress of Comintern also foresaw growing contradictions within and between the major capitalist states, an increasing danger of war and intensifying class struggle. Davies noted, "Bukharin wanted to restrict industrial development to a level compatible with a market relation with the peasants." Davies concluded, "In spite of its major imperfections and defects, Soviet planning achieved notable successes. The outstanding achievement was the astonishing expansion in industrial investment, which was in 1929/30 more than 90 per cent above the level of the previous year, and several times as large as in 1913. With the aid of the increased investment, the building season of 1930 saw the completion of the first three major projects - the Turkish railway, the agricultural machinery factory at Rostov-on-Don, and the Stalingrad tractor factory. Construction of the Dneprostroi hydro-electric plant was reaching its peak. At the Uralmashzavod heavy engineering factory in Sverdlovsk, the main production shops of the greatly expanded project began to be constructed. After many vicissitudes, construction was started at both ends of the grandiose Ural-Kuznetsk combine. The vast construction programme which began the transformation of the USSR into a great industrial power was under way."
Splendid survey of Russia in the 20th century, Reviewed by William Podmore This review is from: The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume 3, The Twentieth Century (Hardcover) Part 1 covers Russia's story through time from 1900 to the present. Part 2 looks at themes and trends - economic and demographic change, rural development, industrialisation, women, non-Russians in the USSR, the western republics, science and technology, culture, foreign policy, and the road to communism. Ronald Suny writes, "The totalitarian approach turned an apt if not wholly accurate description into a model, complete with predictions of future trajectories. The concept exaggerated similarities and underestimated differences between quite distinct regimes, ignoring the contrast between an egalitarian, internationalist doctrine (Marxism) that the Soviet regime failed to realise and the inegalitarian, racist and imperialist ideology (Fascism) that the Nazis implemented only too well. Little was said about the different dynamics in a state capitalist system with private ownership of property (Nazi Germany) and those operating in a completely state-dominated economy with almost no production for the market (Stalin's USSR), or how an advanced industrial economy geared essentially to war and territorial expansion (Nazi Germany) differed from a programme for modernising a backward, peasant society and transforming it into an industrial, urban one (Stalinist Soviet Union). The T-model led many political scientists and historians to deal almost exclusively with the state, the centre and the top of the political pyramid, and make deductions from a supposedly fixed ideology, while largely ignoring social dynamics and the shifts and improvisations that characterised both Soviet and Nazi policies. Even more pernicious were the predictive parallels: since Nazi Germany had acted in an expansionist, aggressive way, it could be expected that another totalitarian regime would also be aggressive and expansionist. Indeed, during the Cold War Western media and governments fostered the notion that the USSR was poised and ready to invade Western Europe. Any concessions to Soviet Communism were labelled `appeasement', a direct analogy to Western negotiations with the Nazis in the 1930s." David R. Shearer writes, "the litany of statistics chronicling Soviet industrial achievements under Stalin was and still is impressive. In the Russian republic, alone, construction of new energy sources jumped the number of kilowatt hours of energy generated from 3.2 billion in 1928 to 31 billion in 1940. Coal production increased from 10 to 73 million tons per year, iron ore from 1 to 5.5 million tons, steel from 2 to 9 million tons. The Soviet Union went from an importer to an exporter of natural gas, producing 560 million metric tons by 1932." Spending on science tripled between 1927-28 and 1933 and doubled between 1933 and 1940. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union spent a greater proportion of its national income on science than any other country. The number of research scientists grew from 18,000 in 1929 to 46,000 in 1935. David Holloway sums up, "Important though the Lysenko affair was, it did not characterize Stalinist science as a whole." The proportion of women in institutions of higher education rose from 31 per cent in 1926 to 43 per cent in 1937 and to 77 per cent in World War Two, then fell to 52 per cent in 1955 and 42 per cent in 1962. As Barbara Engel comments, "Most of the women who benefited derived from lower-class backgrounds." David R. Shearer points out, "Although the famine hit Ukraine hard, it was not, as some historians argue, a purposefully genocidal policy against Ukrainians. ... no evidence has surfaced to suggest that the famine was planned, and it affected broad segments of the Russian and other non-Ukrainian populations both in Ukraine and in Russia." Peter Gatrell notes, "The state also derived a degree of legitimacy from the promise and the reality of economic growth, technological modernisation and social progress. There were genuine and important gains in literacy and life expectancy from one generation to the next. In the words of a broadly hostile critic, Soviet economic policies secured `some broad acquiescence on the part of the people' [Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic backwardness in historical perspective, Harvard University Press, 1962, p. 29]. That acquiescence rested upon Soviet-style welfare provision and opportunities for upward social mobility, which generated a sense of civic commitment and left a positive legacy." In the 1970s, living standards, incomes and literacy rates rose dramatically. Between 1950 and 1975 Soviet agricultural output more than doubled, the world's fastest growth rate in volume and per head. But with the counter-revolution led by Gorbachev and Yeltsin came disaster. In 1996, Russia's income per head was 47 per cent of 1992's level; agricultural production was 36 per cent lower in 1997 than in 1990. Wages in 1995 were 55 per cent of their 1985 level; wages in 2000 were still only 50 per cent of their 1990 level. Unemployment rose from 3.6 million - 4.8 per cent - in 1992 to 8.9 million - 10 per cent - in 1998. There were 8.2 million fewer industrial workers in 1998 than in 1991, a 36.8 per cent fall. Science lost half its workers
By William Podmore This review is from: TWO SYSTEMS: SOCIALIST ECONOMY AND CAPITALIST ECONOMY. Eugene Varga. Between 1927 and 1936, production of the means of production grew eightfold in the Soviet Union, while it was static in the USA, Germany and Poland. The Soviet Union's annual rate of accumulation was 14.5%, Britain and the USA's 2%. Between 1920 and 1937, industrial production in the Soviet Union grew by 29% a year, in the capitalist countries by just 2.7%. In the years of the Great Crash, 1930-32, the industrial production of capitalism fell by 38%, while the Soviet Union's rose by 81%. This disproved Trotsky's notion that the Soviet economy was still somehow `subjected to', `regulated by', capitalism. Yet the forces of production do develop under capitalism, although this development is always uneven, limited and subject to crisis. Lenin said that capitalism was decaying, in absolute decline, not that it was dead. (Trotsky, on the other hand, said that the forces of production stagnated under capitalism.) This decline was not technological decline, or a decline in GNP. But capitalism cannot use existing productive forces, if it could, it wouldn't be capitalism. The market problem - the limited consumption power of the working class - puts a constant constraint on the development of the economy, a problem that gets ever worse under capitalism. This results in chronic unemployment, the growing underuse of productive plant in capitalist countries, using only about half the capacity in the USA, Britain and Germany, and in constant cuts in the numbers of productive workers, those who directly create value and surplus value
This William Podmore book review, is from: Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin) **** This is a fascinating study of the Soviet government in the 1930s. Khlevniuk presents evidence that refutes Khrushchev's claim that during the Stalin years there was always a split in the leadership, between the good guys, pre-eminently Khrushchev himself, and the bad guys. So, as Khlevniuk writes, "New versions of events, countenanced from above, entered into circulation through a variety of channels. There were new accounts of meetings of high-level party functionaries, who purportedly were hatching plans during the 17th Party Congress to replace Stalin with Kirov as general secretary of the Central Committee; a new notion that Kirov was killed by order of Stalin, who saw in the Leningrad party secretary a political rival; a new version of the circumstances of Ordzhonikidze's death and allegations that it resulted from conflict with Stalin; and a new suggestion that Postyshev spoke out against repression during the February-March 1937 Central Committee plenum, among others. "None of these accounts were backed up with documentary evidence. Even Khrushchev, who had the entire party archive at his disposal, preferred to rely on the recollections of old Bolsheviks returning from the camps. This did not faze historians. The complete inaccessibility of Soviet archives and the lack of candidness, to put it mildly, of Soviet political leaders were both taken for granted. Given the unavailability of hard evidence, for many historians the slightest hint in a speech by Khrushchev or in the official Soviet press took on the weight of fact. As a result, every scrap of evidence that there was conflict within the Politburo was stitched together into a confused patchwork in which it was hard to distinguish rumor from hard fact or opportunistic falsification from mistaken recollection." Khlevniuk concludes, "Archival sources do not back up widely held beliefs about the reformist role of Kirov and his supporters within the Politburo. ... Historians have yet to offer a single solid piece of evidence to sustain or develop the hypothesis that Kirov was seen as an alternative to Stalin. Analogous conclusions can also be drawn in regard to other suppositions about a struggle within the Politburo between moderates and radicals." Further, Khlevniuk presents much evidence that refutes claims that Stalin worked as a solitary dictator. For example, he cites Stalin's letter to Ordzhonikidze in September 1931, "I don't agree with you about Molotov. If he's giving you or VSNKh [Supreme Economic Council] a hard time, raise the matter in the PB [Politburo]. You know perfectly well that the PB will not let Molotov or anyone else persecute you or the VSNKh. In any event, you're just as much to blame as Molotov is. You called him a `scoundrel'. That can't be allowed in a comradely environment. "... Do you really think that Molotov should be excluded from this ruling circle that has taken shape in the struggle against the Trotsky-Zinoviev and Bukharin-Rykov deviations? ... To isolate Molotov and scatter the ruling Bolshevik circle ... no, I won't go for that `business', however much that might upset you and however close our friendship might be. "Of course Molotov has his faults, and I am aware of them. But who doesn't have faults? We're all rich in faults. We have to work and struggle together - there's plenty of work to go around. We have to respect one another and deal with one another." And again, on 4 October, "We work together, come what may! The preservation of the unity and indivisibility of our ruling circle! Understood?" **********
This review is from: The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36 (Annals of Communism Series) (Hardcover) Reviewed by William Podmore This is an interesting compilation of letters between Joseph Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich. In the 1930s, Kaganovich was Stalin's deputy on party matters, a secretary of the Central Committee, secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee, and Stalin's deputy in the Defence Commission. Despite the intentions of the anti-Soviet editors, we can learn much about how the Soviet working class governed the Soviet Union. During these years, the Soviet working class collectivised agriculture, industrialised the country and hugely expanded the health and education services. The first Five-Year Plan (1928-33) successfully laid the foundations of a heavy industry able to re-equip the national economy. This reconstruction doubled industrial output between 1929 and 1933, while the capitalist world was mired in slump. The Soviet working class built a workers' state in the teeth of hostile encirclement by the capitalist states, and of sharpening class struggle in the country and in the party. The Soviet Union also, alone, aided the Spanish Republic's heroic struggle against the Hitler-Mussolini invasion. Stalin urged that the Soviet Union sell oil, grain and food to the Republic `on the most favourable terms for them'. The book shows how the capitalist class used splits in the Bolshevik party, supporting oppositions `left' or `right' to try to defeat socialism and restore capitalism. The party continually struggled to defeat the kulaks (the rural capitalist class) and the Opposition. The Opposition assisted the Soviet Union's enemies abroad and adopted a strategy of terrorism: Trotsky wrote, "Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist." In 1936, the Soviet Union responded by trying members of the Anti-Soviet United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre for their terrorist activities, including the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a member of the Politburo. This focused and open response is surely a better way to fight terrorism than the Bush/Blair method of holding terrorist suspects forever without charge or trial.
Fascinating account of a popular movement in the USSR. REVIEWED BY WILLIAM PODMORE This review is from: Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire: Women and State Formation in the Soviet Far East This is a fascinating study of a little-known aspect of Soviet society. In 1937, the government launched a campaign to attract female settlers to the Soviet Far East as part of its plan to develop this vast region. Investment in the Soviet Far East was eight times higher in the Second Five-Year Plan (1932-37) than in the First (1928-32). By 1934 the region was receiving nearly half of all Soviet investment. Voluntary resettlement programmes supported this effort. Many demobilised soldiers, but most significantly, hundreds of thousands of women volunteered to live and work in the Soviet Far East to assist in the work of development. As Shulman writes, "Such volunteers made explicit offers to put patriotic undertakings above familial duties. These were not victims appealing for aid. Rather, these women assumed that they were needed to defend the frontier and to `bring everything to life that will win patriotism'. The presence of such strategies belies the notion that a Great Retreat pushed women into the confines of the domestic hearth. These sentiments also indicate a fervent current of support for the Soviet regime." ************
Intresting books dodger, these will definatley help in my further study of Marxism Leninism during the Stalin era.
Intresting books dodger, these will definatley help in my further study of Marxism Leninism during the Stalin era. GLAD TO HEAR THAT R.M....William Podmore is a prolific reviewer of books on a wide range of subjects...check him out on AMAZON UK. No hack, tells it like it is.
I'll have to read this. After all in order to increase the strength of Marxism-Leninism as an ideology and a practice, rigorous study must be taken in order to ensure that Marxism-Leninism can be turned into a concrete ideology that will lead the proletariat to victory.
