Essay Database

Since the late 1920's Soviet economic planners almost obsessively concentrated on the development of heavy industry. They did this for the sake of developing more heavy industry--especially the expansion of steel production. Under the First Five-Year Plan Soviet steel production (5.9 million tons) fell far short of the prescribed target of 10 million tons: but large-scale industrial production more than doubled, new blast furnaces were constructed and old ones modernized, and the foundations were laid for a …

…Soviet policy makers, however, was to promote industrial, not agricultural, growth. Collectivization gave an initial impulse to industrialization by siphoning agricultural surplus income and manpower out of the countryside and into the city: but it was clear from the very beginning that the efforts of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) and the Supreme Economic Council (Vesenkha) to plan and coordinate the economy had to be greatly, intensified if rapid economic growth was to be continued.