Unit 2 - Industry and Agriculture

• 'State capitalism'

  • Based on nationalisation of industry
  • Required modern technology, expert management, well educated and disciplined workers
  • Had little time for leisure and had no sympathy for laziness
  • Vesenkha (group of economic experts) ensured factories properly managed and coordinated production to meet needs of society
  • Land Decree 1917 abolished private ownership of land giving peasants control over farmland
  • Decree on Workers' Control 1917 workers given control over factories, allowed to set own hours and wages
  • Was unpopular with many workers and radicals rejecting it
• War Communism 1918

  • End of free trade of goods and balance of classes by evenly distributing money
  • Cheka sent to requsition grain but brutality made it unpopular
  • Food rationing brought in
  • Money abolished and people paid in material goods
  • Public transport made free in cities
  • Decree on Nationalistion gave gov right to take ownership of any businesses - 1920 over 37,000 businesses been nationalised
  • Peasants destroyed their own crops so they couldn't be seized
  • Peasant uprising in Tambov
• NEP 1921-24

  • Announced at 10th Party Congress
  • Ended War Communism
  • Money reintroduced and other aspects of free market
  • Peasants could sell grain and keep money and those successful called 'NEPmen'
  • Allowed to establish small businesses
  • Industrial output rose rapidly during first 3 yrs due to repairing of desrtoyed roads and bridges
  • Better harvests in 1922/23
  • Private trade returned
• Collectivisation 1927

  • Agricultural policy - idea of merging small farms into large collective farms. Supplied with modern fertilisers and mechanical equipment to increase efficiency and food production
  • Sent 25,000 industrial workers to countryside to offer peasants advice on how to collectivise
  • The workers searched and confiscated hidden resources, rounded up kulaks to be shot or exiled to labour camps and forced the remaining to collectivise- paused policy in 1930 due to violence
  • 1933 campaign had led to a famine and 5.7 million deaths
• First Five-Year Plan 1928-32

  • Ambituous targets - 250% increase in industrial development
  • Concentrated on rapid growth of heavy industry
  • Labour camps turned into mines
  • Reward for model workers (new flats)
  • Slackers ridiculed
  • First 2 completed within 4 years
• Second Five-Year Plan 1933-37

  • Bread rationing ended 1934
  • Production of consumer goods doubled
  • Steel production trebled, coal doubled
  • New houses lacked running water and basic sanitation
  • 650,000 people in Moscow had access to public bathhouse
  • Looked at resources an consumer goods as did the 3rd
• Third Five-Year Plan 1938

  • Investment in rearment doubled
  • International passports
  • Purges removed most experienced
  • Food rationing
  • Impossible to buy fridges
• Khrushchev's reforms

  • Harsh labour laws removed - working week reduced from 48 hrs to 41 by 1960
  • Managers allowed to keep 40% of profits made by factory as initiative
  • Emphasis on vocational education to support industrial devlopments. Specialist technical schools set up
• The Liberman Plan 1962

  • Called for greater autonomy for local managers
  • Market to replace state as decider fo prices
  • Ideas however watered down by conservatives in Politburo
• The Seven-Year Plan 1959-65

  • Discovery of new mineral resources encouraged the government to push ahead with transforming fuel and chemical industries (natura gas cheap and available in abundances)
  • Increased targets for consumer goods (footwear, natural fabrics and housing) - quality was poor
  • 1959 K boasted to West 'We will bury you' as a claim to overtake them in consumer goods + technology
  • Poor labour, inefficiency and waste and come up against resistance from Party bureaucrats
• Khrushchev's measures to increase productivity

  • 1955 individual collectives given greater powers to make decisions at local level. Collectives increased in size becoming agro-industrial villages with controlled amounts of water to help grow crops
  • Greater concessions to peasants as to how they produce from private plots
• Virgin Land Scheme 1954

  • Opening of new areas to agriculturally produce such as Siberia and Kazakhstan
  • 6 million acres of land brough under cultivation
  • Over 120,000 factors provided
  • Incomes of farmers doubled 1952-58
  • Food prod increased 5% 1953-58
  • Too ambitious with not as fertile lands (soil often dry creating dust storms, droughts common)
  • Not enough fertiliser
  • Housing for volunteers inadequate as well as storage facilities
• 'Kosygin Reforms'

  • 1965
  • Gave incentives to enterprise managers to use resources more productively
  • Attempted to make central planning cost and profit efficient
  • Officials were unenthusiatic and hostile
  • Reforms were watered down and ineffective
• Reforms under Brezhnev

  • 1973 industrial complexes joined with scientific research institutions in attemot to ensure latest tech was applied to production
• Ninth Five-Year Plan 1971-75

  • Push for greater consumer goods
  • Living standards rose
  • By 1980 85% of families had TV's and 70% had washing machines
  • Investment in public transport high (9% had cars)
• Agriculture under Brezhnev

  • Power returned to Minstry of Agriculture
  • 1976 265 of investment in agriculture
  • Agri workforce large anf unskilled
  • Equipment and machinery prone to breaking
  • Food rotted before met market - failed to meet rising demand
  • Gap made up by private productionat private markets
  • 1978 price at markets was double in state shops
• Andropov

  • 'Operation Trawl' attempted to improve productivity
  • KGB tried to stop drunkedness and absenteism
  • Governemnt conducted spot checks for slackers which made A unpopular and added resentment
  • Focused on removal of corruption from system where figures were falsified in order to give impression targets were being met
  • Large amounts of materials stolen and diverted into private production in Black Market