The history of the industrialization of the USSR

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FROM THE EDITORIAL OFFICE

The Main Archive Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Institute of History of the USSR and the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR are publishing a series of documentary collections "History of the Industrialization of the USSR (1926-1941)".

Socialist industrialization is the most important part of Lenin's plan for building socialism in our country. "The only material basis of socialism," wrote V. I. Lenin, "may be large-scale machine industry capable of reorganizing agriculture as well" [1]

The successful restoration of the national economy made it possible by the end of 1925 to raise the question of the industrialization of the Soviet Union. Proceeding from Lenin's plan for building a socialist society in the USSR, the XIV Congress of the Communist Party gave instructions "to follow the course towards the industrialization of the country, the development of the production of means of production ..." [2]... Socialist industrialization, as indicated in the theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU "50 years of the Great October Socialist Revolution", was carried out in an atmosphere of capitalist encirclement and the constant threat of attack from the aggressive forces of imperialism. This led to extremely tight deadlines and an extremely high rate of industrial construction, which required a lot of exertion of all forces and means. Industrialization in the USSR was carried out without outside help, solely at the expense of internal savings, the strictest economy.

The implementation of Lenin's GOELRO plan and the first five-year national economic plans ensured the country's rapid economic development. The Soviet Union has become a powerful industrial power. Completely new industries were created - automobile, tractor, aviation, a number of chemical and other industries, a number of new large industrial centers were created in the Eastern regions of the country, technical reconstruction of the largest enterprises in all sectors of the national economy was carried out. In 1940, the gross industrial output increased in comparison with 1913 by 7.7 times, and the production of means of production by 13 times. The output of consumer goods also increased significantly.

Industrialization was of key importance for the construction of socialism in our country. It created the necessary material basis for strengthening the economic independence of the Soviet Union, for the technical reconstruction of all branches of the national economy, for transferring agriculture to a new, socialist basis. She created the material basis for raising the people's well-being. Industrialization was of tremendous social and political importance. It strengthened public ownership in a decisive area of the economy, ensured the ousting of capitalist elements in the city, the victory of the socialist order in industry, and the growth of the working class, which contributed to the strengthening of its leading role in society. Industrialization has strengthened and strengthened the economic and defense might of the socialist country, was one of the decisive factors in the elimination of the economic backwardness of the national outskirts. The industry created by the Soviet people largely predetermined the victory in the Great Patriotic War.

Researchers of the history of socialist industrialization of the USSR already have a number of editions of the most important directive documents of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, which reveal not only the development of economic policy, but also the specific guidance of the country's industrial development [3] . A significant addition to them are previously published such important sources as five-year plans for regions and the country as a whole, reports on their implementation, annual reports of the government, reports of regional party committees, economic people's commissariats to congresses and conferences, statistical collections of the CSO and a number of other materials.

It should be noted that most of the departmental publications have survived in a small number of copies and are bibliographic rarities.

Soviet historians and archivists also made a certain contribution to the creation of a source study base for studying the processes of socialist industrialization. In recent years, a number of documentary collections have been published covering the development of industry in individual regions of the country [4].

These collections provide researchers with a large amount of documentary material not previously published. However, they are mainly devoted to the labor heroism of the Soviet working class, leaving aside economic problems. The overwhelming majority of published collections reflect the industrialization of industrially developed areas; therefore, the peculiarities of the development of industry in the national, previously backward republics were not reflected in them.

In this series, an attempt is made, using a large, previously unpublished material stored in state and party archives, to reveal the basic laws of the socialist industrialization of the USSR and the peculiarities of its implementation in the main economic and national regions of the country, the leading role of the Communist Party in mobilizing all the forces of the Soviet people to resolve the fundamental economic task, to show the joke of overcoming those great objective difficulties that were caused by the economic backwardness of Russia and the capitalist environment of the world's first socialist state. In the collections of the series, mainly for the first time, a large number of archival documents are published, which contain information about the development of the material and technical base of Soviet industry and related quantitative and qualitative changes in the environment of the working class and technical intelligentsia. The collections of the series contain mainly summarizing reports of the USSR Council of People's Commissars, Council of People's Commissars of the union non-autonomous republics, the Council of Labor and Defense, party, trade union and Komsomol organizations, as well as economic bodies. As for the directives of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, the reader will find them in a number of well-known publications mentioned earlier. The directive documents of local party and Soviet organizations are presented in serial collections much more fully, since they were almost never republished; Besides,

The documents included in the collections of the series reflect the most important problems, on the solution of which the success of the whole industrialization business depended. The reader will find materials about the sources and methods of financing the industry, construction and reconstruction of the most important branches of heavy and light industry and individual largest enterprises, about the methods of construction work and the transformation of construction into an industrial sector of the national economy. The successful development of new enterprises, which was a serious victory for the workers, a maturity test for new Soviet specialists, the elaboration of five-year long-term plans for the development of the national economy, the constant improvement of the industrial management system and the participation of broad masses of workers in it,

The collections of the series reveal a number of important pages in the history of the Soviet working class and the technical intelligentsia: improving the system of personnel training, quantitative and qualitative changes in the composition of workers and specialists.

The creative activity and labor heroism of the working class and the engineering and technical intelligentsia is especially widely and fully shown - one of the most important conditions for the successful implementation of socialist industrialization.

The documentary collections of the series are divided into two groups. The collections of the first group, published in the center, reflect the process of industrialization as a whole, on a national scale. Collections of the second group contain materials on the features of the industrialization of individual regions

The first group provides for the publication of four collections of documentary materials, the first of which is dedicated to the initial period - 1926-1928, the second, third and fourth collections, respectively, include documents that reveal the process of industrialization in the first, second and third five-year plans. In addition, two collections of documentary materials on the history of railway transport and communications for the entire period of the socialist reconstruction of the national economy will be published. As part of the second group, collections are being prepared on the history of industrialization of the union republics, as well as the main economic regions.

Archaeographic processing of documents was carried out in accordance with the generally accepted rules for the publication of historical sources, and individual deviations and features are specified in the prefaces to the corresponding collections

[1] V. I. Lenin. Poly. collection cit., vol. 44, p. 9

[2] "The CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee", Part II. M., 1954, p. 197.

[3] "The CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee", Part II, III. M., 1954; "Directives of the CPSU and the Soviet government on economic issues", vols. 1, 2; "Decisions of the party and government on economic issues", vol. I, 2. Moscow, 1967

[4] See collections of documents: "The Saratov party organization in the years of socialist industrialization of the country and the preparation of the complete collectivization of agriculture (1926-1929)". Saratov, 1960; "The struggle of the workers of the Kharkov region for the creation of the foundation of the socialist economy (1926-11932)". Kharkov, I960; "The political and labor rise of the working class in the USSR (1928-1929)". M., 1956; "The first steps of the industrialization of the USSR (1926-1927)". M., 1959; “Socialist competition in enterprises. Leningrad during the first five-year plan (1928-1932) ". L., 1961; "Communists of Leningrad in the Struggle to Implement Party Decisions on the Industrialization of the Country (1926-1932)". L., 1960; "Socialist industrialization of Azerbaijan". Baku, 1957.

IN THIS SERIES:

The History of the Industrialisation of the Soviet Union:

1926–1928. Documents and Materials. Moscow: Science. 1969. PDF