Five year plan

• 1st 5 Year Plan

  Industrialisation would provide a heavy industrial base essential for national defence and be the essential base for Socialism in One Country – arms industry vital
• Industrialisation

  Necessary for the construction of socialism and to break the mould of Russian backwardness. Only class inherently pro-socialist are the industrial working class, but 80% of Russian pop. were peasants, therefore Stalin needed to create the necessary social base.
• Socialism

  Only possible with industrialisation and improbable wealth - state of 'abundance' a pre-requisite!
• By 1927-8 Stalin had defeated all his political rivals on the Left and Right so there was now the political possibility of implementing his own line.
• Stalin and his colleagues were the first to realise the excitement of the notion that you could plan the economy by fiat from the centre rather than the chaos of the market system.
• Stalin's industrialization coincided with the Great Depression in the West. Stalin claimed that he was introducing into the USSR the technical successes of Western industrialization without the destructive capitalist system.
• The details of the First Five-Year Plan were adopted by the Part in mid-1929. It was backdated to the previous October when it was considered to have begun. Its target was to increase dramatically the productivity of heavy industry (coal, iron, steel, engineering, etc.) in the USSR. It was finally declared to have been fulfilled in January 1933.
• It was followed by a Second FYP (1933-37) and a Third FYP, which began in 1937 but was cut short by the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. Each of the Plans had a slightly different focus for achievement.
• Problems faced implementing the Plans

  • Waste and inefficiency
  • Shortage of trained workers
  • Lack of worker discipline
• The scale and speed with which factories were built led to huge confusion. Machines were ordered and then left to rust. Workers were seen constructing tractors beside conveyor belts that should have supported an assembly line but did not work.
• In some factories expensive machines were available but there was a shortage of nails and bricks. These had previously been produced by groups of peasants and their production had been disrupted by collectivisation. For the same reason there was a shortage of animals needed to pull carts and waggons.
• There was a shortage of workers to be employed in the new industrial enterprises. This was met by the massive shift of population caused by collectivisation. Millions of people moved from the countryside to the new industrial enterprises. Around half of the labour force by the end of the First Five-Year Plan were made up of peasants.
• Most lacked even a basic education and few had the technical skills needed to work the new machines. This led to the breakage of machines and a high rate of industrial accidents.
• John Scott, an American engineer who worked in the USSR: 'I would wager that Russia's battle of ferrous metallurgy alone involved more casualties than the battle of the Marne'
• The new workers were not used to the discipline needed in modern industries. Workers were often late, or they drifted from job to job. In the coal industry in 1930, the average worker moved jobs three times a year. The high rates of labour turnover on industrial enterprises saw one Communist leader talk of Russia being like a huge 'nomadic gypsy camp' whilst the historian Moshe Lewin likened it to a 'quicksand society'.
• In 1932 one day off work without food reason could lead to instant dismissal with loss of home and ration card. By 1939 'absenteeism' was defined as being 20 minutes late. In 1940 it could be punished by a 25% pay cut for six months. By this date prison was used to punish any worker who left a job without permission.
• As early as 1932 the death penalty was used to punish theft of state property and internal passports had been introduced to restrict movement.
• As late as 1938 the average Soviet worker changed jobs every 17 months.
• To meet the fantastic target of the plan, industrial managers had to 'storm' production


  1. Working round the clock

  2. Paying workers piece-rates dependent on their meeting output norms

  3. Workers formed 'Shock Brigades' and attempted impossible targets under slogans such as 'There are no fortresses which Bolsheviks cannot conquer'

  4. Brigades and factories competed with each other to fulfil their norms in 'socialist competitions' with league tables, medals and rewards for higher productivity
• Stakhanovite movement

  Started in September 1935, named after a miner – Aleksei Stakhanov from the Donbass coalfield – who on one shift dug 14 times the amount of coal expected. His achievement became nationally famous and was used to encourage other workers to emulate his massive productivity.
• While some workers resented the privileges of the Stakhanovites and the pressure they put on others to copy them, recent research suggests that many workers put pressure on their managers to let them become Stakhanovites. The success of the movement indicates that a significant number of workers were highly motivated by it.