Industrialisation

The Five-Year Plans were intended to:

• provide machinery (e.g. tractors), to mechanise farming
• catch up with the Western world so Russia would be less dependent on the West for industrial goods
• ensure a strong armaments industry so Russia could defend herself

Stalin believed in state planning. The state would decide what was to be produced and how, when and where. It would decide prices and wages. Stalin decided on three Five-Year Plans.

First Five-Year Plan 1928–1932

• This emphasised heavy industry (coal, oil, iron and steel, electricity) to lay the foundations for future industrial advance.
• A total of 1,500 new industrial plants and 100 new towns were built.

Second Five-Year Plan 1933–1937

• Heavy industry remained top priority, but communications, especially railways, were important.
• Chemicals and metallurgy industries grew enormously.

Third Five-Year Plan 1938–1941 (cut short by the war)

• More and more resources switched into armaments: tanks, planes and weapons.

Effects of the Five-Year Plans

There was:

• a huge increase in the production of industry
• a huge increase in the number of railways, canals (Belomore Canal), dams (Dneipr Dam), gigantic factories (Stalingrad Tractor Works) and new cities (Magnetogorsk) built
• a variety of social changes:
  • the urban population more than doubled
  • more than nine million peasants left the land during the First Five-Year Plan alone: squalid urban conditions, poor transport and services and a serious housing shortage resulted
• lack of jobs reduced workers’ discipline, but the sabotage scare introduced fear into the workplace. The Stakhanovite movement 1935–1936 tried to stimulate workers by producing positive role models

Within the economy, industry became the dominant sector and the government the dominant power.