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Soviet Union
Resumes Peaceful Construction

p Now that the war was over and the world was once again at peace, the Soviet people were free to turn again to that work of peaceful construction which the war had interrupted.

p War and nazi occupation had taken a staggering toll of death and caused wide destruction. The loss of life exceeded 20,000,000. 1,710 towns had been sacked and ruined, over 70,000 villages destroyed by fire, something like 32,000 industrial plants demolished. The nazis had destroyed the metallurgical works which had accounted for over 70 per cent of the country’s output of steel; they had flooded the coal-mines which had produced around 60 per cent of the coal output; and blown up 4,100 railway stations and 65,000 kilometres of railway track.

p In agriculture, too, destruction had been heavy: 1,876 state farms, 2,890 machine and tractor stations and 98,000 collective farms had been plundered. The loss in livestock totalled 71,000,000 head. This meant that the technical resources of agriculture in the formerly occupied areas had to be built up anew. Heavy damage had been sustained by cultural and medical facilities and housing. The total loss suffered by the country as a result of the war has been put at around 2,600,000 million rubles, including military expenditure and temporary loss of income from the national economy in the occupied areas. The war had set back the country’s development by at least ten years.

p There was a critical shortage of food supplies. Manufactured goods were also in short supply. The housing situation was disastrous, both in town and country: millions lived in dug-outs.

p The Soviet people, however, who had stood the crucial test of war, did not let these difficulties discourage them. Instead, they tackled with great enthusiasm the task of economic reconstruction and further development.

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p In June 1945, that is to say, almost immediately after the victory over Germany, the Soviet Government began to demobilise the armed forces. By March 1948, this demobilisation was completed, the numerical strength of the army having been reduced from 11,400,000 to 2,900,000, which was the minimum compatible with the country’s security. The Soviet Government thereby clearly demonstrated that it stood for peace and harboured no aggressive intentions.

p The government made the welfare of the demobilised soldiers its particular concern, providing them with a considerable cash allowance, jobs, living quarters and fuel. Lumber for building homes was provided free of charge in the areas that had suffered under enemy occupation, together with adequate loans.

p Meantime, the government had acted to repatriate as speedily as possible the Soviet people who had been carried off to work in Germany, and by the end of 1945 some 5,200,000 men and women had been repatriated, including over 600,000 children.

p The state of emergency was terminated as soon as the war was over. Industrial facilities which had been contributing to the war effort, as well as many armament plants, began to shift back to peace-time production. The 8-hour working day was reestablished, and compulsory overtime work, which had been a war-time measure, was abolished. And regular paid vacations for workers and employees were reinstated (cash compensation had been allowed in lieu of vacations during the war).

Elections to the Second Supreme Soviet of the USSR, held on February 10, 1946, bore evidence of great political enthusiasm, nearly all of the electors (99.7 per cent, to be precise) unanimously voting for the candidates nominated by the Communist and nonParty bloc. Elections to the Supreme Soviets of the Union and Autonomous Republics were held in February 1947, and to the local Soviets at the close of 1947 and in early 1948. Participation was nearly 100 per cent.

Economic Reconstruction

p The advantages of socialist planned economy became apparent once more in the process of the reconstruction of the country’s economy. The Fourth Five-Year Plan of Economic Reconstruction and Development, drawn up by the planning authorities and approved by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, covering the period 1946-50, established the ways and means of raising the nation’s economic and cultural level and living standards. In accordance with this plan the Soviet Government concentrated the available 284 material and manpower resources and channelled capital investments into the top-priority reconstruction projects.

p The transition from war-time to peace-time production on a national scale was accomplished in a single year, all the difficulties involved notwithstanding. Millions of men and women participated enthusiastically in the work of peaceful construction, in friendly competition for fulfilling the new five-year plan ahead of schedule. Hundreds of thousands of workers formally pledged themselves to anticipate the deadline in respect of their personal yearly or five-year quotas. Initiative was displayed in many novel ways, such as by speeding up the processes of cutting metal, drilling oil wells, smelting ores, etc., or by economising raw materials, supplies, fuels, or electric power in order to apply the savings thus effected to increasing output over and above the volume planned. Workers of certain Moscow enterprises launched a movement for increasing such accumulations through improved organisation of production, higher productivity of labour, lower costs, quicker turnover of capital, etc. This resulted in increasing the output over and above the volume planned by more than 20,000’ million rubles in 1949 alone.

p Workers, technicians and engineers displayed great ingenuity and resourcefulness in speeding up the reconstruction of demolished industrial plants. At the Azovstal Metallurgical Works in Mariupol, for instance, one of the blast-furnaces dynamited by the Germans had been knocked out of shape and out of position. The first decision was to dismantle it and build a new one, but the plant’s Party organisation suggested, and the engineers and workers figured out, a way to set it right again, and the huge blast-furnace weighing 1,300 tons was actually straightened out and moved back into place in just six weeks.

p The personnel of the Dnieper Hydropower Station invented a novel way of shutting off the channel-type spillways of the dam, which made it possible to reconstruct the plant considerably under the scheduled time, so that it was back in operation in March 1947. The Donets Coal Basin, the country’s most important supplier of coal, was put back in operation in record time. 650,000,000 cubic metres of water had to be pumped out of the pits here, which was like draining a lake with an area of 70 square kilometres and 10 metres deep. Over 2,500 kilometres of debrisblocked workings had to be cleared, which could be roughly likened to excavating and timbering a tunnel reaching from Moscow to Paris at a depth of 700 metres.

p The work of reconstruction, in industry as well as transport, gathered speed from year to year. The annual increase of industrial production was 20 per cent in 1946, 22 per cent in 1947 and 27 per cent in 1948. The average monthly level of industrial 285 output of the pre-war year 1940 was reached as early as October 1947, in advance of the date set under the five-year plan, and in 1948 the 1940 level was reached and surpassed in respect of the aggregate annual volume of output.

p It will thus be seen that the Soviet people actually took less than three years to accomplish the formidable task of rehabilitating industry and re-equipping it with modern machinery, thereby giving convincing proof of the limitless possibilities of the socialist system of economy.

Under the Fourth Five-Year Plan, however, the Soviet Union did more than rebuild the demolished plants; for in parallel with this work of reconstruction old plants were enlarged and new ones built. A total of over 6,000 important industrial plants were built or reconstructed under the five-year plan. The industrial output of 1950 was 70 per cent higher than the pre-war level.

Achievements of New Soviet Republics

p The achievements of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which joined the family of Soviet Socialist Republics only in 1940, may be taken as a good illustration of the advantages of the socialist system of economy. Their national economy had been completely wrecked by the German invaders, who had demolished industrial plants, blown up all the power stations and driven off hundreds of thousands of men and women to forced labour in Germany. The entire country came to the aid of the three republics: machinery, equipment, raw materials and fuel were shipped here from all parts of the country, and workers and engineers from Russia advised the workers of the Baltic Republics on the methods of socialist construction. As a result, in 1950 Estonia tripled her industrial output as compared with 1940. Her shale industry was reconstructed from top to bottom: new, first-class mechanised pits were built, equipped with coal-cutters, conveyers and electric locomotives supplied by the other Soviet Republics. The Krenholm Textile Mill at Narva, the Baltic Textile Mills at Tallinn, and other plants were rebuilt and equipped with first-class Soviet machinery. Estonia began to build ships, motors, wireless receiving sets, machine tools, and so on.

Latvia’s industrial facilities, too, were entirely rebuilt and reequipped, and many new plants were added. Her industrial output of 1950 was three times that of 1940, the share of her heavy industry having doubled. Important new industries were introduced in Lithuania, which began manufacturing electric motors, metalcutting machine tools, building equipment, wireless receiving sets, measuring instruments, etc. The industry of bourgeois Lithuania 286 had accounted for 25 per cent of the aggregate output of her economy, whereas the share of Soviet Lithuania’s industry, in 1949, topped 50 per cent.

Agriculture Faces Difficulties

p Agriculture found itself up against great difficulties after the war, having suffered the heaviest losses. Areas under cultivation and crop yields had dwindled during the war years, so that the aggregate output of agricultural produce in 1945 totalled only 60 per cent of that of 1940. The number of tractors and other farm machines had dwindled by one-third, and what remained was worn out. And the number of able-bodied men and women in collective farms was considerably less than before the war.

p The drought of 1946 was even more disastrous than that of 1921. Moreover, recovery in agriculture was complicated by the fact that the government channelled the comparatively slender resources at its disposal chiefly into the reconstruction of heavy industry and transport.

p Nevertheless, all of the collective and state farms in the liberated areas, as well as most of the machine and tractor stations, were reconstructed with the help of the government, and supplied with tractors, lorries, farm implements, cattle, seed and 287 fodder. A great deal of attention was given to the material and technical basis of agriculture. Four new tractor works were built, in addition to the old ones that had resumed production after the war. At the end of the Fourth Five-Year Plan period agriculture was better off in respect of machinery and equipment than before the war, possessing in 1951 nearly 600,000 tractors and 211,000 combines, or 10 and 16 per cent more, respectively, than in 1940.

p In the early 1950s a reform was carried out in agriculture to create large collective farms through the amalgamation of smaller ones. 254,000 small economies were thus amalgamated to form 93,000 large collective farms, which could diversify production, make better use of their equipment, put out more marketable produce, reduce overhead costs, etc. Socialist emulation was initiated on the farms for more efficient use of equipment, higher crop yields, and higher productivity in animal husbandry.

p While these developments favoured recovery in agriculture, certain factors operated in the opposite direction. Thus, collective farms had to sell a considerable part of their output to the state at comparatively low procurement prices; income from the marketing of cereals, potatoes and animal products was also low; and in many collective farms farmers received insufficient pay for their labour, which led to their losing interest in their work. Industrial crops fared better. High procurement prices on cotton and sugar-beet promoted material interest in increasing their production. The 1950 cotton crop, for instance, was 650,000 tons bigger than planned.

p The production of cereals continued to lag by comparison with the country’s requirements. In 1953 the overall yield was 80 million tons. State procurements totalled only 29.6 million tons, which was less than it had used up, and it became necessary to take 2.56 million tons out of the state emergency reserves in order to meet consumer needs. Lagging grain production, moreover, was the main cause of a lag in animal husbandry.

Drastic reforms were needed to improve the situation in agriculture.