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p The Soviet wartime economy was built up in a mere 12 months. It took nearly 18 months to overcome the arms shortage. By the beginning of 1943 war production was iii full swing and the Red Army was getting arms and ammunition in required and continuously increasing quantities. Not only did the war plants recover lost capacity, but expanded considerably. The mammoth migration eastward was performed with amazing efficiency. By March 1942 the eastern regions alone yielded as many tools of war as the war plants of the entire Soviet Union did before the nazi attack.  [129•1  The 1942 output of war materiel was five times as great as in 1940 in the Urals, ay-fold in Western Siberia and g-fold in the trans-Volga area.  [129•2  Aggregate 1944 industrial output surpassed prewar by 4 per cent, and war production was 312 per cent against ig4O.  [129•3 

p At the height of the war’s bitterest battles new construction was under way in the rear. Moreover, not small enterprises, but industrial giants went up. In 1943 alone three blast and 20 open-hearth furnaces, 23 electric furnaces, 8 rolling mills and 3 coking plants were put into operation, with many other industrial plants being started up and losing no time in getting into high gear.  [129•4 

p Before the war it was a hard-and-fast rule that war production should not exceed the output of raw materials. By this token, the Soviet Union, which had less fuel and metal than Germany, could never have caught up, let alone surpassed her in war production.

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p But the people performed a miracle, with Soviet war production surpassing that of Germany in quantity, as well as quality. This wrought the economic victory, the material basis for military victory, though the first crushing counterblows of the Soviet Army were delivered before the people in the rear achieved economic superiority.

p In a nutshell, the advantages of the Soviet socialist economic system made it possible, despite the lesser production base, to produce more arms and ammunition than Hitler Germany and the nazi-occupied countries. War production also increased in Germany. But Soviet industry attained a rate of accretion that greatly exceeded Germany’s. It was this difference in the rate of growth that finally produced the physical advantage. In 1944 the Soviet Union made 29,000 tanks and self-propelted guns against Germany’s 27,300; 40,300 planes against 34,400, and 7,400 million bullets against 5,700 million.  [130•1 

p It was not until the end of 1944 that German war production began ’to decline, due, among other things, to the loss of occupied territory and some of the satellite countries, the loss of some German areas and the removal of industrial enterprises to the country’s western regions. Germany was scf aping the bottom of the barrel for manpower, while sabotage by foreign and some German workers, and general disorganisation caused by military operations on German territory, took a heavy toll.

p An important factor of the Soviet war production growth was the marshalling of all available economic resources and centring them on that one aim. Consumer goods production was reduced. The motto was: "Everything for the front, everything for victory!"

Western historiographers tend to think that the decisive part in equipping the Soviet troops was played by supplies from the United States, Britain and Canada. These were undeniably of some importance, especially the supply of motor vehicles (401,400 vehicles were supplied by the United States and Britain in wartime). But US and British supplies of arms were negligibly small, as may be seen from the following table:

131 SnppUe* to Soviet Armed Force* Daring the Great Patriotic War (i thousands  [131•1  Gum PUnc. Tank. Soviet industry 489.9 136.8 102.5 USA and Britain 9.6 18.7 10.8

p The figures speak for themselves. The Soviet Union defeated Hitler Germany with home-made arms and home-made equipment.

p Furthermore, Soviet arms surpassed the German in quality. They were incomparably better, too, than the arms supplied to the Soviet Union by the United States and Britain. There is every reason to say, therefore, that the Soviet socialist economy went it alone, achieving the historic economic victory over fascist Germany and the nazi-occupied countries of Europe.

p A tense competition was on throughout the war for superiority in the quality of arms. And Soviet designing won.’

p The Soviet T-34 tank, developed before the nazi attack, was the best medium tank in the war. Wehrmacht general Giinther Blumentritt admitted that "in 1941 this was the most spectacular A. F. V. which could only be dealt with by other tanks— This marked the beginning of what came to be called the ’tank terror’" among German soldiers.  [131•2  Guderian, the German panzer theorist, says in his memoirs that attempts to copy the T-34 ^m German works failed due to the superior Soviet steel and inability to make a similar motor.  [131•3  He referred to-the "sinking capability of German panzer troops in face of the continuously increasing capacity of the Soviet tank forces thanks to the serial production of the excellent Russian T-34 tank".  [131•4 

p Soviet designers worked on the T-34 throughout the war. They improved its engine and transmission, and added to the strength of the armour. Instead of a 76-mm gun they were able to instal an 85-mrn gun, without affecting the tank’s 132 mobility, which became even greater by virtue of engine improvements.

p In the beginning of the war Soviet plants were making a heavy tank, known as KV. By September 1943, however, the Red Army was supplied with a new heavy tank, JS, designed by the same group under G. J. Kotin. Its armour was 50 per cent superior to that of the much-vaunted German Tiger and 100 per cent to that of the Panther, and it was moreover better armed.  [132•1  Also in 1943 Soviet plants launched quantity production of the powerful self-propelled guns, SAU-I52, followed by a series of similar models. In 1943 alone Soviet designers developed 21 new types of tanks and self-propelled guns.  [132•2 

p New types of planes had only just begun to come off the production line when the war erupted. Yet a number of new ones, more up-to-date, appeared in 1942 and 1943. Designer S. A. Lavochkin’s La-5 fighter surpassed the German Messerschmitt-iog and new, improved modifications of the same Lavochkin plane proved superior not only to the Messerschmitt, but even the Focke-Wulf-igo, on which the German Command had pinned its hopes.

p Dive-bomber Pe-2 by designer V. M. Petlyakov, after improvements in 1942 and 1943, combined unsurpassed endurance, speed and mobility.

p The 11-2 Soviet attack plane, which the enemy nicknamed "black death”, was the terror of the Wehrmacht throughout the war. It was improved several times, its armour thickened and fire power increased. The final model carried a 37-mm gun. No other belligerent country was able to develop as good a plane during the war.

p Soviet artillery was constantly being improved. A number of new systems of different calibres and for different purposes was developed in wartime. Systems, designed for planes, tanks, self-propelled chassis and anti-tank troops were particularly good. In 1944, the Soviet Army received a loo-mm anti-tank gun which easily pierced the heaviest panzers. Soviet artillery had splendid ballistics, endurance, speed and power. New types of shells were developed, but the greatest indent was made by the new armour-piercing hard-core shells and jet shells.

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p Firearms, too, were greatly improved. New machine-guns were developed for planes, tanks and the infantry. And submachine-guns of several improved kinds were massproduced.

p Arms created by the genius of the Soviet working class streamed to the front in an endless flow. And the necessary abundance of arms, vehicles and-ammunition enabled the Red Army to accelerate its drive to Berlin.

p The food situation was difficult throughout the war. The stocks of grain, flour and cereals available at the beginning of the war (six million tons)  [133•1  were enough only for the first several months. The loss of agricultural areas was a bitter blow. Deliveries of grain, flour and cereals from the United States and Canada were negligible (adding about to some 0.5 million tons in all the war years).  [133•2  Food supplies had to be strictly regulated, the bulk being directed -to the active army and to workers in the war industries. Local sources of food, little farms run by factories and organisations, and vegetablegrowing by the population, were important. Also highly important were products grown by collective farmers on personal plots, which they sold directly to consumers.

p The state and collective farms provided the country with a considerable quantity of grain, a total of 68.8 million tons, in the four years of war (1941-1944); by way of comparison it may be recalled that only 22.5 million tons were procured in the country in the four years of the First World War.  [133•3 

p Though generally coping with the food shortage, the city people suffered great hardships. Their diet shrank, and its quality deteriorated. The following figures give an idea of the state of affairs: before the war an adult in the city had an average 3,370 calories per day, which met his physiological needs. In 1942 the figure dropped to 2,555 calories, although expenditure of energy increased visibly. In the later years of the war caloricity increased somewhat, but even in 1944 the average per person was only 2,810. Consumption of fats, and especially of sugar, declined steeply, and that of proteins, too.  [133•4 

p The privations were great, but could not be compared to 134 the sacrifice in the battle-lines. Nothing could break the morale of the heroic Soviet people or diminish their determination to safeguard independence and freedom, to defend their country and its socialist gains.

p It should be noted that the employment structure changed greatly during the war. The cream of the able-bodied workers, farmers and intellectuals went to the front. Women and adolescents, and older people took their places in production in town and country. Female labour in industry went up from 38 per cent in 1940 to 55 per cent in 1945.  [134•1  In agriculture the percentage rise Was still greater. More than 250,000 rural women were in executive positions—collective-farm chairmen or board members, team leaders and livestock farm managers.  [134•2 

p Young industrial workers quickly absorbed the experience and skill of the veterans. By the end of 1944 as many as one million people, comprising 150 Komsomol and youth teams, were active in industry and transport.  [134•3  They were a model of diligence, treating their work assignments as a supreme duty. Young people and adolescents did their bit on the farms. Boys and girls of 16 and under comprised 17 per cent of the farmers in 1944.  [134•4  And like the young workers, they performed their duties most conscientiously.

p The Soviet people did not wait for the war to end to begin restoring the war-ravaged economy. This was an arduous and complicated job. Not only did the nazis carry off everything they could from territories they had overrun, but had also before withdrawing senselessly, in vandal fashion, demolished factories and dwellings, valuable monuments, blowing up and burning whatever they could. Hitler’s generals boasted that their troops left a "desert zone" in their wake, in which life would be impossible for at least a decade. But the Soviet people disproved this malicious scheme, too, reviving the "desert zone" to a life of culture and humanism. An additional task faced them, that of aiding the liberated peoples in rehabilitating their economy.

p This was a task which the country tackled the moment its Army liberated a region. In August 1943, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government adopted a special decision 135 to that effect. And its implementation was successful. Factories, dwellings and public amenities rose out of the ashes and millions of hectares of land gone to waste were re-developed.

p The biggest economic assignment was to rehabilitate the Donets Basin. Its mines, factories, power stations and mining towns were a heap of ruins. The mines were flooded, some of them so vastly that they had each become reservoirs of some 25 million cubic metres of water. Many of the galleries, exposed to the effects of water, had caved in.

p V. V. Vakhrushev, a distinguished organiser of socialist production and the People’s Commissar of the Coal Industry, was put in charge of the rehabilitation project, assisted by the heads of the biggest mining combines: A. F. Zasyadko, K. I. Pochenkov, K. K. Kartashev and A. T. Kartozia. Their leadership sparked the initiative and know-how of the miners, who submitted interesting suggestions of how to speed rehabilitation. Women who had learned the mining trade, took part in the effort. In the first 12 months after the Donets Basin was liberated, 60 million cubic metres of water was pumped out of the flooded mines and nearly 1,000 enterprises re-started.

p Re-started in 1944 in territory cleared of the enemy were coal mines with an annual capacity of 29,200,000 tons, 11 blast furnaces yielding 2,100,000 tons of pig iron, 43 openhearth furnaces yielding 1,800,000 tons of steel, 2 converters yielding 240,000 tons of steel, 22 rolling mills yielding 1,400,000 tons of rolled stock, 43 coking batteries yielding 3,800,000 tons of coke, and ore mines yielding 5,400,000 tons of iron ore.  [135•1  Cement factories, sugar refineries, textile mills and garment factories, too, began operating.

p The rehabilitation of liberated areas added to the country’s economic power. The economic potential behind the Red Army’s offensives kept climbing.

p More than 1,800 state farms, 3,000 machine-and-tractor stations and 85,000 collective farms were rebuilt by the end of the war.  [135•2  Towns from which the nazi invaders had been driven out were restored, rebuilt and newly-built dwellings adding up to a housing area of 24,800,000 sq m of living space, with 1,400,000 dwellings, put up in the countryside.  [135•3 

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The vigour of a nation is measured by how it copes with the hardships of war, and also by how it eliminates its ravages. Here, too, the Soviet people wrote a new chapter in world history. For the first time ever, rehabilitation began on a great scale while the war was not yet over, while battles of great magnitude were still being fought and the nazi invader still applied the greatest effort, hoping to recover the strategic initiative. This was yet another exploit of the nation of builders, whose rehabilitation effort foiled many an enemy design.