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Read the book here or DownloadTHE FIVE -YEAR PLAN OF THE SOVIET UNION Political Interpretation
G. T. GRINKO
VICE-CHAIRMAN, STATE PLANNING COMMISSION OF THE U.S.S.R.INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS NEW YORKCOPYRIGHT, 1930, BY INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., INC.This book is composed and printed by union labor. Printed in the U. S. A.
We, the Bolshevik Party, have convinced Russia. We have won Russia from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the toilers.
-- V. I. LENIN, 1918.
We will solve this problem, no matter what the cost: that NEP Russia shall become Socialist Russia.
-- V. I. LENIN, 1922.
We are going full steam ahead through industrialization toward Socialism, leaving behind the ageold Russian backwardness. We are becoming a land of metals, of automobiles and tractors; and when we put the U.S.S.R. into a motor-car and the muzhik into a tractor then let the reverenced capitalists who pride themselves on their "civilization" try to catch up with us. It is still to be seen which country will then have to be considered backward and which advanced.
-- JOSEPH STALIN, 1929.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Gregory Theodore Grinko is one of the most prominent of the Soviet statesmen. His career has been largely in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, where he was for a number of years People'sCommissar for Education, and later head of the State Planning Commission of the Ukraine and Vice-Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
In these positions he became known as one of the leaders of economic and industrial planning in the U.S.S.R. and he was transferred to the State Planning Commission of the U.S.S.R. (Gosplan), as Vice-Chairman. Mr. Grinko took a leading part in the preparation of the Five-Year Plan for the industrial reconstruction of the Soviet Union, and was one of the authors of the four volume report in which it was presented. Mr. Grinko is now forty-three years of age.
The present translation was made from the Russian manuscript. The rapid progress of development under the Plan, however, has made it necessary to add certain new and revised figures. These, included in editorial footnotes, have been prepared from the official reports as presented in Soviet newspapers and periodicals.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER II: The Achievements of the Rehabilitation Periodand the Economic Conditions at the Beginning of the Five-YearPlan 31
CHAPTER III: The Principles and the General Line of SovietEconomic Development 40
CHAPTER IV: Prospects of Industrial Development 57
1. General Trends of Capital Investments in the NationalEconomy . 57
2. General Trend of Investments in Socialist Industry and theRate of Industrial Development. 66
3. State Electrification . 70
4. Fuel . 80
5. Metals and Machinery . 93
6. Chemicals . 107
7. Other Industries. 113
CHAPTER V: Socialist Rationalization and the Workers 119
1. The Numbers of Industrial Workers . 121
2. Wages and the Productivity of Labor . 126
3. Hours of Work . 131
CHAPTER VI: Agricultural Advancement and Socialist Reorganization in the Villages 135
1. Introductory Remarks . 135
2. At the Crossroads . 138
3. The Scope of Agricultural Socialization under the Five-Year Plan . 147
4. Land Organization and the Industrial Equipment of Agriculture . 158
5. Economic Stimulation of Individual Peasant Holdings . 165
6. The Production Program in Agriculture for the Five-Year Period . 171
CHAPTER VII: The Worker-Peasant Bloc and the Economic Development of the U.S. S.R. 178
1. Some Historical Observations . 178
2. The Alliance between Workers and Peasants in the Period ofSocialist Reconstruction. 182
CHAPTER VIII: The Perspective of Transportation . 189
1. Building the Railroad System . 191
2. New Railroad Construction . 197
3. Waterways . 205
4. The Development of Improved Roads in the U.S.S.R . 215
5. Aviation . 219
CHAPTER IX: Housing and City Planning 223
1. Housing Conditions in the Cities . 223
2. Construction of Housing During the Present Five-Year Period . 226
3. The New Type of City . 232
CHAPTER X: The Problem of Skilled Personnel and the Cultural Uplift of the Masses 234
1. The Peculiarities and Difficulties Connected with the CulturalTasks of the Proletarian Revolution. 234
2. Engineers and Skilled Workers . 242
3. The Preparation of Skilled Workers . 252
4. The Preparation of Red Specialists and the Proletarization of the Colleges. 258
5. The Preparation of Social Organizers . 264
6. Raising the Cultural Level of the Masses . 268
CHAPTER XI: The Problem of Equilibrium During the PresentFive-Year Period. 280
1. The Supply and Demand of Labor . 282
2. The Dynamics and Structure of the National Income . 287
3. Problems of Consumption . 296
4. Economic Relations with Foreign Countries . 305
CHAPTER XII: The Interregional Division of Labor in the Lightof the National Policy of Communism 310
1. Economic Regions of the U.S.S.R. 312
2. Economic Regions and the National Policy of the U.S.S.R. 324
CHAPTER XIII: Whither U.S.S.R.? 330
APPENDIX: Table of Weights, Measures and Currency 339
ILLUSTRATIONS :
Gross Production of the Soviet Union 33
The Shterovka Electric Power Plant 80
The Dnieper Hydro-Electric Power Plant 80
Machine and Assembly Shop of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant 96
Laying a Gas Pipe at Kemerovo Chemical Works 96
Peasants on a Collective Farm in Orenburg 160
Sailors Helping Peasants Repair a Tractor 160
Noting Results of Socialist Competition 160
Kolomna Locomotive Assembly Section 176
Workers' Apartment Houses at Ivanovo-Veznesensk 176
District Electric Power Plants 340