Industrialization of the Soviet Union
The industrialization in the history of the Soviet Union especially true with the under Josef Stalin made ruthless and brutal state coercive measures connected. During the first five-year plan from 1928–1932, the Soviet Union experienced an unprecedented transformation process from a purely agricultural state to an industrial state, which was accompanied by enormous economic growth . The rapid restructuring of the Soviet Union and the high level of labor to be achieved went hand in hand with the forced collectivization and “ de-kulakization ” of rural property.
The process of industrialization began already after the October Revolution under Lenin , who pointed out the project with the slogan "Communism equals Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country".
The rise of the Soviet Union to a world power went hand in hand with the economic development . This included the massive armament of the armed forces , which began in the 1930s before the start of the Second World War .
The history of industrialization represented one of the main ideological pillars of the Soviet state.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the historical significance of industrialization has been the subject of various studies. Goals, methods, means and the historically mentioned results are critically examined.
Discussions in the time of the NEP
Until 1928, the leadership of the Soviet Union pursued a relatively liberal economic policy known as the NEP (New Economic Policy (Russian NEP - N owaja e konomitscheskaja p olitika)):
The heavy industry , the transport sector , the banks , the wholesale and foreign trade were nationalized . The agriculture , the retail , the service sector , the food and light industry were opposed even privately organized. With the NEP, the actual communist ideology was temporarily deviated from in order to regenerate the country's economy, which had fallen into disrepair after the civil war .
Until the beginning of the 1930s, the Soviet Union was largely isolated in terms of foreign policy and, in Stalin's view, had to expect military attacks from outside. The rapid modernization of the armed forces, which was directly dependent on the efficiency of Soviet heavy industry, was one of the primary goals of the government.
One of the main reasons for this situation, according to the government, was the catastrophic food supply for the urban population, which was explained by the unwillingness of the farmers to produce sufficient quantities of food at low prices for the urban population.
In order to solve this problem, the WKP (B) and the III. People's Deputies Congress in 1925 decided to redistribute resources between the “country” and the “city” in favor of (heavy) industry.
The procedure for implementing this resolution was controversial in the leadership of the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1928. The proponents of the “ genetic view” , W. Basarow , W. Groman, N. Kondratjew , advocated the establishment of an industrialization plan on the basis of an objective inventory of the current situation in the economy as a whole.
The supporters of the " teleological view" , ( G. Krschischanowski , W. Kuibyshev , S. Strumilin ), presented the plan itself as an important formative and structuring tool for the further development of the Soviet national economy, which is primarily to be achieved by the Should be guided by goals (see also planned economy ).
Among the leading party functionaries of the CP , Nikolai Bukharin in particular represented the "evolutionary approach" , the most influential representative of the other approach was Leon Trotsky , who insisted on accelerated industrialization.
The General Secretary of the WKP (B) Josef Stalin initially took over the “genetic view”, but changed his position after Trotsky was expelled from the party .
The first five-year plan
The first five-year plan , valid from October 1, 1928 to October 1, 1933, was discussed at the XVI. Conference of the WKP (B) in April 1928 as reported on a carefully thought out and realizable set of tasks. According to the first five-year plan, after its confirmation by the V Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union in May 1929, a series of economic, political, organizational and ideological measures were introduced which gave industrialization the status of the most important state doctrine and the beginning of the era of the "great upheaval" marked.
Because this industrialization could not be financed by exploiting colonies or by taking out loans abroad, the peasantry had to pay a “ tribute ”, according to Stalin. Despite the shortage of grain, the Soviet Union exported the grain in order to be able to buy machines, technical equipment and devices with the funds generated by the export proceeds (so-called starvation exports). The farmers themselves should not receive full equivalents for the agricultural products they acquire . With this, Stalin turned the rural area into an internal colony from which the necessary capital for economic development was to be extracted. According to estimates by the British historian Robert Conquest , the famine of 1932/33 ( Holodomor ), which was largely triggered by collectivization and deculakization , cost the lives of up to 14.5 million people.
On the other hand, the first five-year plan made a major contribution to the fact that the Soviet Union won the German-Soviet war . Industrialization made it possible to produce many more weapons and factories were built in areas of the Soviet Union that, despite the initial successes of Operation Barbarossa, were beyond the reach of German troops.
See also
- GOELRO , State Plan for the Electrification of Russia
Individual evidence
- ^ Leonid Luks : History of Russia and the Soviet Union. From Lenin to Yeltsin. Pustet, Regensburg 2000, ISBN 3-7917-1687-5 , p. 264 f.
- ^ Leonid Luks: History of Russia and the Soviet Union. From Lenin to Yeltsin. Pustet, Regensburg 2000, ISBN 3-7917-1687-5 , p. 265. On Stalin's speech about the “tribute” of the peasants, see Lynne Viola : The unknown Gulag. The lost world of Stalin's special settlements. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-538509-0 , p. 15 f.
- ↑ Lynne Viola, Viktor P. Danilov, Nikolai A. Ivnitskii, Denis Kozlov (eds.): The War against the Peasantry, 1927–1930. The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 2005, ISBN 0-300-10612-2 , p. 64.
- ↑ Hellmuth Vensky: Stalin century crime. In: Die Zeit online , from February 1, 2010.
- ↑ David R. Stone: The First Five-Year Plan and the Geography of Soviet Defense Industry . In: Europe-Asia Studies . 57, No. 7, 2006, ISSN 0966-8136 , pp. 1047-1063. doi : 10.1080 / 09668130500302756 .