Stalin Quotes on the five-year planning

For us, for the Bolsheviks, the five-year plan does not represent something complete and given once and for all. For us, the five-year plan, like any plan, is only a plan adopted as a first approximation, which must be clarified, changed and improved based on local experience, based on the experience of implementing the plan. No five-year plan can take into account all the possibilities that are hidden in the depths of our system and which open up only in the course of work, in the course of implementing the plan in a factory, plant, collective farm, state farm, district, etc. Only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with drawing up a plan. Making a plan is just the beginning of planning. This planning guidance is deployed only after the plan has been drawn up, after field verification, during implementation, correction and clarification of the plan.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" vol. 12 p. 347.)

What was the main objective of the five-year plan?

The main task of the five-year plan was to transfer our country, with its backward, sometimes medieval technology, to the rails of new, modern technology.

The main task of the five-year plan was to transform the USSR from an agrarian and weak country, dependent on the whims of capitalist countries, into an industrial and powerful country, completely independent and independent of the whims of world capitalism.

The main task of the five-year plan was to transform the USSR into an industrial country, to completely oust capitalist elements, expand the front of socialist forms of economy and create an economic basis for the abolition of classes in the USSR, for the construction of a socialist society.

The main task of the five-year plan was to create in our country an industry that would be capable of transforming and reorganizing not only industry as a whole, but also transport, but also agriculture - on the basis of socialism.

The main task of the Five-Year Plan was to transfer small and fragmented agriculture to large-scale collective farming, thereby ensuring the economic basis of socialism in the countryside and thus eliminating the possibility of restoring capitalism in the USSR.

Finally, the task of the five-year plan was to create in the country all the necessary technical and economic prerequisites for maximizing the country’s defense capability, making it possible to organize a decisive rebuff to any and all attempts at military intervention from the outside, to any and all attempts at a military attack from the outside.

What dictated this main task of the five-year plan, how was it justified?

The need to eliminate the technical and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union, which dooms it to an unenviable existence, is a necessity. to create in the country such preconditions that would give it the opportunity not only to catch up, but over time to surpass the advanced capitalist countries in technical and economic terms.

The consideration is that Soviet power cannot remain for long on the basis of backward industry, that only modern large-scale industry, which is not only not inferior, but can over time surpass the industry of capitalist countries, can serve as a real and reliable foundation for Soviet power.

The consideration is that Soviet power cannot be based for long on two opposing foundations, on large-scale socialist industry, which destroys capitalist elements, and on small individual peasant farming, which gives rise to capitalist elements.

The consideration that as long as the basis for large-scale production has not been brought under agriculture, until small peasant farms have been united into large collective farms, the danger of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR is the most real danger of all possible dangers.

("Results of the First Five-Year Plan" vol. 13 p. 171.)

...the implementation of such a grandiose plan cannot be started randomly, from anywhere. To implement such a plan, it is necessary, first of all, to find the main link of the plan, because only by finding the main link and grasping at it, it was possible to pull out all the other links of the plan.

What was the main link of the five-year plan?

The main link of the five-year plan consisted of heavy industry with its core - mechanical engineering. For only heavy industry is capable of reconstructing and putting industry as a whole, transport, and agriculture on its feet. The implementation of the five-year plan had to begin with it. Therefore, the restoration of heavy industry had to be made the basis for the implementation of the five-year plan.

("Results of the First Five-Year Plan" vol. 13 p. 174.)

 Is it true that the central idea of ​​the five-year plan in the Soviet country is the growth of labor productivity? No, that's not true. We do not need just any increase in the productivity of people's labor. We need a certain increase in the productivity of people's labor, namely, such growth that ensures the systematic preponderance of the socialist sector of the national economy over the capitalist sector.

A five-year plan that forgets this central idea is not a five-year plan, but five-year nonsense.

(“On the right deviation in the CPSU(b)” vol. 12 p. 79.)

 To switch from the impoverished peasant horse to the horse of large machine industry - this was the goal the party pursued when developing a five-year plan and achieving its implementation.

Establishing the strictest economy regime and accumulating the funds necessary to finance the industrialization of our country - this was the path that had to be taken in order to achieve the creation of heavy industry and the implementation of the five-year plan.

A daring challenge? Hard way? But our party is called a Leninist party because it has no right to be afraid of difficulties.

Moreover. The party's confidence in the feasibility of the five-year plan and faith in the strength of the working class were so strong that the party found it possible to set itself the task of carrying out this difficult task not in five years, as required by the five-year plan, but in four years, actually - four years and three months , if you add a special quarter.

On this basis the famous slogan was born: “Five-year plan in four years.”

And what?

Facts later showed that the party was right.

("Results of the First Five-Year Plan" vol. 13 p. 177.)

 Some comrades are skeptical about the slogan “five-year plan in four years.” Just recently, one part of the comrades regarded our five-year plan, approved by the V Congress of Soviets, as science fiction. I'm not even talking about bourgeois writers whose eyes widen over the mere word “five-year plan.” But what do we actually have if we consider the five-year plan from the point of view of its implementation in the first two years? What does checking the implementation of the five-year plan in its optimal version tell us? She says not only that we can complete the five-year plan in four years. It also says that we can complete it for a whole range of industries in three or even two and a half years. This may seem incredible to skeptics from the opportunist camp. But this is a fact, which would be stupid and ridiculous to dispute.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" vol. 12 p. 270.)

According to the five-year plan approved by the Congress of Soviets, by the end of the five-year period we were supposed to have 5 million hectares of sown area on state farms of all systems. But in fact, we already have 3.8 million hectares of sovkhoz sown area this year, and next year, that is, in the third year of the five-year plan, we will have 8 million hectares of sown area.

This means that we are fulfilling and exceeding the five-year state farm construction program in 3 years.

According to the five-year plan, we were supposed to have a gross grain production on state farms of 54.3 million centners by the end of the five-year plan. But in fact, our gross grain production from state farms already this year is 28.2 million centners, and next year we will have 71.7 million centners.

This means that in terms of gross grain production we are meeting and exceeding the five-year target in 3 years.

Five-year plan at 3 years old!

Now let the bourgeois scribblers and their opportunistic echoes chatter that it is impossible to fulfill and exceed the five-year plan for state farm construction in 3 years.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" vol. 12 p. 284.)