seven year plan

• when was it 


  1959 - 1965
• aims

  • increase industrial production
  • increase consumer goods production by 177%
  • extend collectivisation
• process

  • all owners of estates larger than 250 acres were dispossessed without any compensation
  • majority of land was given to small holding
  • remainder was given to communities
• Success

  • due to difficulties with food supplies the SED started introducing voluntary collectivisation through the creation of agricultural production co-operatives called CPGs
  • by the 1970s the productivity of LPGs was higher than in most other east European countries
• failure

  • the GDR economy had expanded so quickly that the industrial growth rate declined sharply from 1960
  • the number of refugees to the west began to climb again up to 1000 per day in 1960
  • in 1949 they faced fundamental problems with agriculture such as hardy any modern machines, fertilisers or even sufficient seed to work the land
  • collectivisation was a disaster and farmers began going to the west causing refugee figures to reach a peak in 1961 which was the key reason for the Berlin Wall in 1961
  • food production declined significantly
  • rationing was reintroduced in 1961
• VEBs 


  people-owned companies in the GDR. factories owned on behalf of the people and managed by the state, which controlled production targets and all worker discipline
• SAGs 


  soviet state-controlled companies set up in January 1946 as part of reparations for the USSR