USSR Industrial and Agricultural policies

- Land Decree (Oct 1917) - abolishes private ownership of land

- Decree on Worker's Control (Nov 1917) - factories under industrial workers' control

- 'State Capitalism' - industry owned by state and ran by workers. 

- Dec 1917 - All banks nationalised under one state-owned entity

- Results in great economic loss with huge pay rises, rises in inflation and little productivity

- Needed to deal with inflation and boost productivity

- Give Red Army resources they need to win Civil War

- Nationalisation of all industry

- Hierarchal factory structure

- Money replaced with bartering

- Rationing

- Military discipline

- Food prod. at 48% of 1913 level with widespread famine

- War Communism v. unpopular

- Kronstadt Mutiny and Tambov Rising 

- Requisitioning of food replaced with taxation

- State control banks and heavy industry

- Small-scale businesses in private hands

- Successes: Creates NEPmen, repairs roads and bridges from war

-  Failures: Black market flourishes, imbalance between agric. and indus. goods

- Stalin outmanoevres left in 1926 but changes his mind in 1928, believing the NEP was holding back industrialisation

- Want to increase food prod. and gain more foreign exch.

- State control for FYPs ensures adequate prod. and distrib. of essential materials

- Remove NEPmen and Kulaks

- Consolidate party power

- Emphasis on heavy industry recommended by 'superindustrialisers'

- Industrialisation under authority of the Gosplan

- Industrial expansion with industrial centres and new plants - Magnitodorsk from 25 people 1929 to 250,000 1932

- Use of Gulag population - White Sea Canal Project 180K prisoners 1932. Winter 1931-2 - 10,000 prisoners die

- Rewards for model workers like new flats and bigger rations

- 'Shock Brigades' - Alexei Stakhanov used as a model worker

Second FYP:

- More use of technical expertise

-New industrial centres

- 35.4 mill tonnes of coal 1927 to 152.5 million tonnes 1937 and progress in chemical industry

-Starts focused on consumer goods but turns back to heavy indus. in light of war

Third FYP:

- Towards arms prod. and defense of indus.

-Both plans develop trad. indus centres like Moscow and Leningrad

-Relocation of factories to Kazakhstan and Ural Mountains

- x4 steel prod. and x6 coal prod. but consumer indus. but textiles and housing ignored

-17% growth rate 1928-41

- Need to industrialise with fear of invasion

- Extend socialism to countryside and get rid of kulaks

- 'Dekulakisation squads' - OGPU round up peasants to deport and send to labour camps 

- Dec 1927 - voluntary collec.

  1928 - grain requisitioning due to food shortages

  1932 - 62% peasant households collectivised 

- Collectives created by local officals in villages

- MTS (Machine and Tractor Stations) set up

- Famine 1932-33 - 4 million die in 1933 and food still exported

- Removal of kulaks and killing of livestock has damaging impact - grain down by nearly 6 mill tonnes

- Devastating food prod. - grain 95 mill 1940 to 30 mill 1942

- Centralised economy

- Local defense committess to co-ordinate war prod.

- 1943-5 - over 73K tanks and 94K aircraft

- Consumer goods non-existent

- Reconstruction of large industrial centres

- Reperations of industrial equip. from E. Germany

- 2 million Gulag workers

- 35K plants and factories and 40K hospitals destroyed

- 1945 - mining and metallugy at 40% 1940 levels

- 40% railway destroyed

- Continued growth at slower rate

- Spent on arms and military (Cold War)

- Buildings in Moscow instead of addressing housing issues

 - 1948 - living conditions improve in towns

- 1952 - real wages for urban workers reach 1928 levels

- Price reduction

- C.side recovers slower

- Peasants given concessions for food prod.

- Link system - Groups of peasants given areas of a collective and can sell left-overs

- Taxes raised on private plots after war

- Drought 1956 and Ukraine famine 1947 slow down process

- Khrushchev promotes larger collectives - 1952: 100K collectives

- Focus on promotion of light industry and consumer goods

- Bring more pleasure to Soviet lives

- Inflexible system of targets can't cope with increase in demand 

- 1957 - 105 Regional Economic Councils set up to de-centralise decision-making

- 1960 - working week from 48 to 41 hours

- Managers can spend 40% of profit on any aspect of their factory

- Liberman Plan 1962 - (Evsei liberman) greater autonomy for local mangers and market to replace state in deciding prices. Watered down by conservative Politburo members

- Shift from coal to oil and natural gas

- Targets for synthetic fibres from 166K tonnes 1958 to 666K 1965

- Regional development

- 1957 - Sputnik is first space satellite

- 1961 - Yuri Gagarin is first man in space

- Consumer goods and living standards rise 

- Annual growth in 1950's at 7.1%

- Low labour productivity

- Div. into agric. and indus. confuses people in 1962

- VLS opens agric. up to new areas - 6 mill acres

- Peasants can sell food at priv. markets, increasing productivity

- Food requisitioning replaced with food purchases

- Agro-industrial villages created but unpopular with peasants

- MTS abolished and peasants pay for their own machinery

- 1953-58 - food prod. up by 51%

- Cash crops replaced with food crops so many plants die, causing low productivity

- Not enough to fill years of underinvestment under Stalin, having to import grain from N. America and Australia 

- 1965 - PM, Alexei Kosygin, wants to spark creativity and productivity

- Focus on costs and profits rather than quantity

- Incentives to enterprise managers 

- Little achevied and Kosygin sidelined by Breznhev in 1968

- Most of K.'s controversial policies abandoned (regional economic councils go back to Gosplan)

- 1973 - Industrial complexes join with scientific institutions to produce latest tech.

- 1974 - targets on profits rather than output

- New tech. slows down prod. when being installed

- Focus on consumer goods and high investment in transport

- 1980 - 85% houses have TVs and 70% have washing machines 

- Only 9% of people have cars

- VLS abandoned

- Power transferred to Ministry of Agriculture

- 1976 - 26% of all investment into agric.

- Brigade system gives collective peasants decision on how to distribute profits

- Largely unskilled workforce, broken equip., rotten food, increasing food demand leading to increase in prices

- Wants a tougher, more disciplined system

- Removal of corruption - fake results and black market

- Stalinist system - rapid industrialisation after WW2

- Command Economy - too inflexible and discourages creativity

- 'Social Contract' - unproductive workers being rewarded with reasonable living standards

- Lack of investment - Both K. and B. couldn't make up for underinvestment under S.

- Outdated tech. - Struggle to keep up with USA in 80s 

- Military-Industrial Complex - resources spent on arms instead of agric. and indus.

- Central planners hold onto power and influence