p Lenin firmly believed in the rapid industrialisation of the U.S.S.R. as first priority if socialism were to be built. His plan for building socialism provided for establishing a powerful heavy industry and envisaged two further measures that were to be of historic importance: the organisation of the millions of peasants in co-operatives within collective farms, and a far-reaching cultural revolution. In one of his last works, Lenin was to write: “Indeed, since political power 39 is in the hands of the working class, since this political power owns all the means of production, the only task, indeed, that remains for us is to organise the population in co- operative societies. With most of the population organised in cooperatives, the socialism which in the past was legitimately treated with ridicule, scorn and contempt by those who were rightly convinced that it was necessary to wage the class struggle, the struggle for political power, etc., will achieve its aim automatically.” He further made it clear: “Strictly speaking, there is ‘only’ one thing we have left to do and that is to make our people so ‘enlightened’ that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the co-operatives, and organise this participation. ‘Only’ that. There are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve this ‘only’, there must be a veritable revolution—the entire people must go through a period of cultural development."  [39•1 

p Socialist economic planning based on social property in the means of production stands to the greatest credit and advantage of the socialist system, and helped to fulfil Lenin’s plan for transforming Russia in the shortest possible time. The proletarian government was able directly to control the economy and concentrate on the primary targets.

p In the early part of 1918, when the threat of foreign military intervention hung over the country and civil war had become a bitter reality, Lenin writes a Draft Plan of Scientific and Technical Work proposing that the Supreme Economic Council empower the Academy of Sciences to set up a number of specialist bodies urgently to draw up a plan to reorganise industry and boost the economy. He emphasised that socialist organisation of social production should be based on electrification and the correct deployment of industry.

p The GOELRO Plan for Russia’s electrification was approved by the Eighth Congress of Soviets in 1920 and became a historic landmark in socialist economic planning. It was in fact the initial plan for industrialising Russia. In addition to the building of 30 large power stations with a total capacity of 1,500,000 kilowatts (before the revolution the 40 capacity of all of Russia’s power stations amounted only to 1,100,000 kilowatts), the plan envisaged a big increase in the extraction of oil, coal, and peat, the smelting of pig iron, steel, and ferrous metals, and the production of cement, paper, machinery, textiles and mineral fertilisers. In fact, the keystone of the plan was to establish a heavy industry and to revive and restructure transport. The GOELRO Plan saw the light of day when the country lay in ruins and it is not surprising that it appeared to be an extremely audacious and imaginative programme for carrying Russia from the dark ages into socialism.

p In the wake of the 10-15-year electrification plan, followed the First and Second Five-Year plans. Under those plans, designed to establish the material and technical basis for socialism and abolish what was left of the exploiting classes, socialist industry was developing at unprecedented rates. In the space of two five-year plan periods (1928-32 and 1933-37), the economy was completely restructured on a new technologically advanced foundation. More than 6,000 large industrial enterprises were started, including such world-renowned projects as the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk metallurgical combines, the Volgograd, Kharkov and Chelyabinsk tractor works, the Gorky Motor Works, the Rostov Farm Machinery Factory, the Urals and Kramatorsk heavy engineering works, the Dnieper Hydro-Electric Station and the Dnieper Aluminium Combine, and the Berezniki and Voskresensk chemical combines. In the Urals, Siberia, the Far East and the Arctic North, new industrial centres, cities and ports sprang up. The country escaped from technical and economic dependence on the most advanced Western countries.

p The widespread socialist industrialisation gave the country a powerful material and technical basis for collective farming. Hundreds of thousands of tractors, combine harvesters and other farm machinery now poured into the countryside and made it possible greatly to extend the area under crops and to grow more wheat.

p This meant improved living standards for the Soviet people. Urban unemployment and rural overpopulation became evils of the past. Between 1913 and 1940 the population increased by 22 per cent while the number of gainfully employed increased by 170 per cent, workers’ real wages by 41 85 per cent and real agricultural incomes doubled. For the first time in history, a government had afforded its people education at all levels and a health service both free of charge. The number of general school pupils increased 4.6 times, special secondary school pupils 27 times, and students 7.2 times, doctors 7 times, hospital beds 4.5 times, etc.

p Practically all school-age children attended primary or incomplete secondary schools, and adult illiteracy was being wiped out. Between 1918 and 1940, some 1,800,000 young men and women graduated from special secondary schools and 1,200,000 from higher schools. From 1914 to 1941 the number of research institutes increased 6.3 times and research workers 9.8 times.

p But living standards could not be markedly improved because the Soviet government had to give priority in use of economic resources to heavy industry, transport and agricultural reconstruction. Sizable resources had to be allocated for defence so long as the capitalist encirclement remained. And the slow rate of growth in agriculture, while the collective farms were being established and a bitter class struggle raged in the countryside, further hindered production of consumer goods.

p The fulfilment of the First and Second Five-Year plans resulted in the construction of socialism, the main historical task of the period. All exploiting classes and all causes dividing society into exploiters and exploited were rooted out. The socialist economic system became the foundation of all social progress, so that by 1937-39 the socialist economic sector accounted for 99 per cent of the country’s fixed capital and 99.8 per cent of industrial output. By occupation, 97.4 per cent of the population were industrial and office workers and collective farmers; 2.6 per cent were individual farmers and artisans.

p The Soviet economic system, based as it is on social property, opened up fresh reserves of productive power—the creative energies and initiatives of millions of working people, which took the form of socialist emulation. They produced at well above the old technical rates, brought out and cleared bottlenecks in industry, thereby making for the fastest growth of production with the available supplies of raw materials and machinery.

p Soviet economic plans were increasingly based on the 42 experience of the front-rankers in production and scientific and technological achievements. Research establishments, on the one hand, and shopfloor workers on the other, both played their part in bringing out the immense reserves and potentials latent in a socialist economy. As a result, there was massive participation in the business of planning economic development.

p By consolidating the new relations of production, it took the Soviet people 15-20 years to build almost all of the material and technical basis meeting world scientific and technological standards. The boosting of the productive forces during the initial five-year plans—at a much faster rate than in the U.S.A.—brought a qualitative change to the economic competition between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. by enabling the former to reduce the gap separating it from the world’s leading capitalist producer.

By 1937, the Soviet Union was already turning out as much as one-third of U.S. industrial production, a 3-fold improvement over 1913, and a 20-fold improvement over 1920. The U.S.S.R. had moved into second place in the world’s industrial league. In 1940, it was on the whole poised to enter the decisive stage of economic competition with the major capitalist countries, primarily the U.S.A.