Industrial policies

• Stalinist economic policy


  Largely focused on industrialisation
• Aims of Stalinist economic policy


  • Launch a war against Russia's tsarist past
  • Prepare for potential conflict with Russia's capitalist enemies
• Launch a war against Russia's tsarist past

  Stalin believed Russia had failed to keep up with the West due to the incompetence of the tsarist regimes, and that only a system with more worker autonomy and that encouraged workers to believe they were key to economic success would allow Russia to become a major industrial force
• Prepare for potential conflict with Russia's capitalist enemies


  The development of heavy industry was key to expansion and modernisation of the armed forces, which was essential to the defence of Russia
• Stalinist economic policy


  Involved abandoning the NEP and replacing it with strict state control and centralised planning, with industrialisation stimulated through production targets over a series of five-year periods
• Stalinist economic planning process

  1. Initial targets stipulated by key party officials

  2. Gosplan researched and calculated figures for target setting

  3. Targets and information passed to industrial commissariats to frame plans

  4. Plans passed to regional managers to implement
• First Five-Year Plan


  Officially introduced in spring 1929, covering October 1928 to September 1933, but did not run its full course due to government exaggeration of achievements and upward revision of unrealistic targets
• Second Five-Year Plan


  Ran from January 1933 to December 1937, and was more economically successful than the first
• The signing of the Non-aggression Pact with Nazi-Germany in August 1939 was partly the result of Stalin's wish to gain extra time to strengthen Soviet forces to prepare for what was viewed as an inevitable invasion by Germany
• The eventual invasion by Germany of 1941 was to be repelled (1944-45) indicating that Stalin's strategy paid off