History Ia Final Draft

To what extent did the economic successes of the industrialisation efforts in the USSR during the first five year plans justify its social consequences?

Shriya Mrug Word Count: 2197

Identification & Evaluation of Sources: This investigation will explore the question: To what extent did the economic successes of the industrialisation efforts in the USSR during the first five year plans justify its social consequences? The first source that was crucial during the investigation process was ​The Soviet Five-Year Plan​, an academic journal​ ​by H. R. Knickerbocker which discusses the international doubts surrounding the industrialisation efforts of the plans. The second source is a journal article titled ​The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan (1973) ​by Holland Hunter which analyses the plan’s feasibility in achieving the goals it wanted to achieve. The Soviet Five-Year Plan ​was significant since it allowed me to gain insight to the Soviet peasantry which was critical in determining the social consequences. The origin of the source,​ ​in the sense that it is a journal by H.R. Knickerbocker, is of value to historians, since it is a firsthand account of the author’s experiences during 1925 to 1931 which means that the content of this source is constantly supported by interviews he’s had with Soviets and his observations of their standards of living. Along with this, the time frame in which it was written is also of value to historians since it allows them to assess the change that followed industrialisation efforts and the consequences that ensued. However, the main limitation of this source is the fact that its purpose was to inform the Royal Institute of International Affairs (based in London) on the effect of the five-year plans on the state of the USSR. This questions the validity of Knickerbocker’s claims since the two nations were heavily involved in an ideological conflict which gives him reason to exacerbate the negative point of view in which he presents the Soviet modernization efforts.

The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan, ​was also pivotal in this investigation since it presented revisionist historian, Holland Hunter’s views on the economic successes of the first five-year plans. The origin of the source, in the sense that it was written in 1973, 40 years after the end of the first five-year plans is of value to historians studying the economic effects of industrialisation since it shows that his conclusion also takes into account the long-term effects and consequences of these plans. Additionally, the source’s purpose is simply meant to inform the Soviet people about the nature of the first five year plans which is of value to historians since it shows that the author has no specific agenda to skew his data analysis to reach a certain conclusion. Nonetheless, this source’s content is a strong limitation to historians since the data that the author uses to reach his conclusion is derived from the Gosplan (Moscow, 1930). This is critical because official government values during 1930 were extremely unreliable due to how propagandic they were and many times achievements were exaggerated and any failures would be completely avoided. This calls into question the author’s conclusion since his analysis was based on this faulty data. Investigation: By the time Joseph Stalin rose to power as the leader of the USSR in 1924, the country was plagued by several post-war conflicts ranging from political instability to social crises. Stalin, who was determined to change this, introduced the five-year plans as a way to transform the country into an industrial powerhouse. As Gertrude Schroeder explains, the first of the five-year plans aimed at “increasing labor productivity, increasing the size and distribution of wage expenditures, increasing enrollments in educational institutions and promoting the growth of incomes of workers and peasants” (Labor Planning in the USSR, 63). However, the extent as

to which the Soviet peasantry truly received such benefits has been widely contested over time. Contemporary historian Naum Jasny argues that not only did the Soviet workers and peasants suffer the most, notably through “the annihilation of the kulaks as a class,” the plans also had detrimental consequences on the Soviet economy (The Nature of Soviet Planning, 110). The five-year plans “triggered a constant cycle of acceleration, waste and decline of output,” a perspective that contradicts Hunter’s conclusion that these plans ultimately strengthened the Soviet economy (The Nature of Soviet Planning, 109). Consequently, this investigation will argue that the economic successes of the Soviet industrialisation efforts did not justify the social consequences it resulted in by focusing on the implications that it had on the heavy industry and the change in GDP dependency. Firstly, the use of fear to increase the target output of the heavy industry as stated by the 5 year plans, had various consequences on workers. The first of these five year plans heavily focused on the exact industries that Stalin knew had helped drive the industrial revolution in the west: the coal, steel, and electricity industries (The Results of the Five-Year Plan in Russia). Some of the targets of the plans included, “doubling power, coal, oil and steel production, tripling metal production and quadrupling machine production” (Knickerbocker, 434). Considering the fact that the Soviet economy was virtually “nothing” in 1928, these numbers were deemed impossible by many workers to achieve in a span of just 5 years. Marxist economist and historian, Stanislav Strumilin also acknowledged the over-inflation of some of these goals by saying that “that it did not matter [that] the setting of economic targets was not based on the normal extrapolation of statistics” (The Results of the Five-Year Plan in Russia).

This perspective is also shared with revisionist historian Holland Hunter who calls the aims of the five-year plans “overly-ambitious” (The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan, 239). So, in order to motivate the workers to work at the highly demanding rate required of the first five year plans the Soviet government enforced punishments when certain aims were not met. Knickerbocker, the foreign correspondent of the ​New York Evening Post​, noticed that if certain factories were not able to produce at the level of output required, there were severe repercussions for their workers. For instance, he once saw the manager of a newly built mill along with his team of assistants being sent to a G.P.U jail because the design that they approved was found to be inefficient in terms of the mill’s overall output (Knickerbocker, 439). Along with this, when a new mill burned down before production even started, the Soviet engineers that were found responsible for leaving gasoline in the fire buckets were immediately shot (Knickerbocker, 439). This shows how the government’s use of punishments to instill fear within the workers in order to maintain the quantity and quality of output being produced ultimately allowed the Soviet economy to prosper as the total output of the three indicators of the heavy industry: coal, steel and electricity increased by 84%, 37% and 168% respectively by 1932 (Dobb, 366). However, despite Knickerbocker’s criticisms of this notion, Sheila Fitzpatrick argues that such harsh punishments were necessary and set out to primarily “drive people on towards the perfect socialist society,” even though they were not necessarily justified (Were the Five Year Plans a Success?). Secondly, in order to reach the overly ambitious targets in time, the Soviet government would use manipulative techniques that had drastic effects on worker attitude. Knickerbocker, noticed that the government had pressurised many companies within the heavy industry to complete the

target output in less than 5 years. For instance, in Baku, the Soviet Oil Trust decided to meet the target output for oil set out by the five year plans in a mere two and a half years which led to the workers having an overwhelmingly negative attitude towards their work to the extent as to which they would either “collapse from exhaustion” because they were so overworked or they would purposefully sabotage their work (Knickerbocker, 446). This shows how the rebuilding of the state was done at the expense of the physical and mental well-being of their workers who are the main group of people they intended to support in the first place. However, historian Gertrude Schroeder denies this by pointing out the worker benefits that they received in exchange for their loyal support to the Soviet industrialisation efforts. “The wages in Soviet Union for an ordinary worker in a factory is at least 100 rubles, almost a third more than they were before the first five year plans began” (Labor Planning in the USSR, 65). With this perspective, it is important to note that the content of this source does contain some limitations in the sense that the historian does not take into account rising inflation rates during this time which would naturally result in rising worker incomes to encourage consumer spending. At the end, this technique was successful as it allowed the Soviet Oil trust to “[turn] out 58,000 tons of oil a day by 1930, compared with the initial ambition of turning out 57,000 tons by 1933” (Knickerbocker, 446). Lastly, the USSR’s shift to an industrial nation caused widespread cases of worker inequality. Between the years of 1927-28, the dependency that the overall GDP had on agriculture had decreased from 32% to 24% while that of the industry had significantly increased from 28% to 42% (Hunter, 241). The country’s economy being more dependent on the industry rather than agriculture was significant because it allows the economy to remain stable since the agricultural sector is extremely unreliable due to its low elasticities of supply and demand.

However, this economic success had severe consequences and resulted in various instances of worker inequality because of the increase in demand for specialised labor; a notion most prominently seen through their access to food. Due to post world war conditions and previous famines, food was extremely limited which led to it being rationed amongst the population and the government, who deemed workers in the heavy industry more useful than those who weren’t gave them a greater access to grains and necessities. For instance Knickerbocker noticed that if one is not a manual worker, then he/she belongs to an “inferior class” thus meaning that while a manual worker is entitled to “2 pounds of bread everyday, ⅗ pounds of meat three times in ten days and 4 pounds of cereal,” a “brain” worker will only receive “1 pound of bread everyday, only ⅖ pounds of meat and 2 pounds of cereal” (Knickerbocker, 436). This sense of inequality was also highlighted on a grander scale where “industrial towns such as Azbest were given more food than all the villages between Moscow and Sverdlovsk combined” despite Azbest only having a small population of 10,000 people (Knickerbocker, 438). Historian Robert Allen also goes further to say that the overall “standards of living for the working population declined or at best remained static, during the 1930s”(Were the Five Year Plans a Success?). Once again, these economic successes do not justify the social consequences since it contrasts the strong emphasis that was placed on worker equality during the formation of the first five-year plans. Knickerbocker addresses this inequality by stating that the plan is a failure since it is primarily a method for Russia to “starve itself great” (Knickerbocker, 450) In retrospect, although both heavy industry output and the shifting of GDP dependency were important economic achievements, its resulting in a negative worker attitude and worker inequality is a fundamental betrayal of socialist principles which means that the benefits of the

industrialisation efforts of the Soviet Union were not worth its consequences. This perspective was strongly influenced by historians like Naum Jasny, H.R. Knickerbocker and the data presented by Maurice Dobb and Hunter. Reflection: Throughout this investigation, I have come across various difficulties that have greatly made me understand the difficulties that historians face when attempting to gain accurate historic knowledge. A significant problem that is faced is the rapid change of technology that constantly undermines the conclusions that historians had come to through the use of previous technology. One specific instance of this arose whilst I was reading Robert C. Allen’s ​The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928-41, ​and he was refuting another historian’s report on consumer spending by citing a new technology that in his perspective allowed to more accurately determine a piece of data which ultimately allowed him to reach a conclusion significantly different to the other historian’s initial report. This confused me since I never realised that technology could play such a big role in the study of history to the extent as to which two experts in their field (Economic history) came to conclusions that were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Overall, I think that this experience allowed me to realise that although technological development has allowed us to observe the past more directly, its constant perpetuating and changing form, creates a sense of uncertainty to any conclusion that a historian comes to. Another significant problem that historians face when attempting to gain truthful knowledge about the past, is the reliability of the primary documents that such knowledge is based on. For instance, during my research process, I discovered that the primary data that historian Holland Hunter was basing his conclusions from was extremely unreliable since it was

derived from the central planning committee of the five-year plans. This put me in a very difficult position because even though I knew the limitations, I couldn’t do anything about it because it was the only source that had the specific data that I was looking for. This shows how history in itself is an uncertain area of knowledge because there is now way to truly guarantee the reliability of primary sources, especially when their authors could already be dead.

Works Cited Five-Year Plan​. warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/fiveyearplan2006.pdf. Accessed 15 Feb. 2018. Journal Article Improving Soviet Planning: Thirty-Five Years of Mediocrity​. Vol. 37, no. 4, Oct. 1961. ​Oxford University Press​, www.jstor.org/stable/2611070. Accessed 20 May 2018. Labor Planning in the USSR​. Vol. 32, no. 1, July 1965. ​Southern Economic Association​, www.jstor.org/stable/1054984. Accessed 20 May 2018. The Nature of Soviet Planning​. Vol. 14, no. 2, Oct. 1962. ​Taylor & Francis, Ltd.​, www.jstor.org/stable/149438. Accessed 20 May 2018. The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan​. Vol. 32, no. 2, June 1973. ​Cambridge University Press​, www.jstor.org/stable/2495959. Accessed 20 May 2018. Petroleum in the Soviet Union: An Appraisal of a Recent German Study​. Vol. 29, no. 3, July 1953. ​Taylor & Francis, Ltd.​, www.jstor.org/stable/142522. Accessed 20 May 2018. Rates of Growth under the Five-Year Plans​. Apr. 1953. ​Taylor & Francis, Ltd.​, www.jstor.org/stable/148851. Accessed 15 Jan. 2018.