The Giant Strides of Russia’s Planned Industry

Ir 1HE October Revolution had done nothing more than to make possible the transformation of backward Russia into the second industrial world Power it would have been an event of prime importance. But, in addition, the nature of the Revolution enabled industrialization to be carried forward with the unique conditions of nationalized property and as a conscious, centrallydetermined policy.

The tempo and scale of industrial growth thereby realized had, and has, the profoundest effect on world opinion, especially in the under-developed countries.

In beholding the achievements the gross mistakes and gigantic crimes with which they were accompanied—comparable to the worst results of industrialization under capitalism—are frequently overlooked or misunderstood.

For the propagandists and apologists they are to be omitted from the record or hurriedly glossed over. For the denigrators of socialism and professional anti-communists it is dogma that coercion and terror spring directly from nationalization and planning.

The record needs to be set straight if Soviet industry is to be appraised in its full context in accordance with Marxist methods and standards. Like all industrial structures, that of the USSR carries the indelible marks of its origins and history; a retrospective treatment is therefore obligatory.

Russian industrialization began in the late nineteenth centary. The proletariat to which it gave birth provided the class basis for October; but it remained greatly outnumbered by the vast peasant multitudes.

War. revolution, civil war and foreign intervention—with their train of scarcity, famine and epidemic—brought tremendous disorganization in the factories and in the entire economy.

Equipment lay idle, rusted away, worn out: workers were drained off by the front and administrative needs or simply drifted back to the villages where food was nearer at hand.

Production fell to catastrophic levels and the whole economy as spiralling downwards. The survival of the Revolution depended upon the speediest reversal of this process and a vast expansion of the productive forces.

With misgivings, concessions were made to the petty bourzeoisie and the peasantry—the New Economic Policy—and a major struggle arose in the Communist Party as to how and at what rate the problems of industry were to be tackled.

OPPOSITION PROPOSALS

That in a party of striking personalities, in which uninhibited discussions had been the rule, there should be differences of epinion on this vital question was to be expected. These differences became part and parcel of the political struggle ‘proceeding in the party, State and Comintern) which, arising dering Lenin’s last illness, was carried to its fateful conclusion en the half decade after his death in a manner utterly foreign to the traditions of Bolshevism.

From 1923 onwards the need for a more energetic industrial programme and the drawing up of plans for expansion were being advocated by what became known as the Left Opposition. The most detailed exposition of its thinking was con+2ined in the Platform of 1927. by which time the followers of Zinoviey had joined with those of Trotsky.

Tt was argued that without a planned flow of resources into industry it would not be possible to supply the peasants with the goods to encourage them to voluntarily relinquish (or increase) their crop surpluses and improve the living standards of the people.

At the same time without a correct international political orientation the sacrifices of the Russian people could not be lightened and shortened.

These proposals were suppressed. distorted and misrepresented by a machine increasingly under the control of the general secretary and their advocates were dubbed, in derision, the ‘super-industrializers’. But, within two years, in the dramatic turn of 1929, these very proposals were seized upon and partially embodied in the Five Year Plan.

The adyances of the next decade, primarily in the field of heavy industry and constructional engineering, were indeed breath-taking, even granted the great human and material resources of the country.

But these impressive economic achievements were accompanied by ruthless suppression of opposition in the party and the State under the aegis of an all-powerful secret police and the use of compulsion and terror throughout the population.

The acceleration of industrial growth apparently required a degree of repression far exceeding that of the worst days of the civil war!

As for industry, in a famous speech in 1931 Stalin laid down the rules which have governed industrial management, discipline and remuneration to this day.

Rapid industrialization meant immense disturbance of accustomed ways of life, clashing with accepted standards, dissolving old social forms and involving painful readjustment in the lives of large masses of people.