30 Years of Soviet Industrial-ization
Grossman, Gregory
Slightly more than thirty years ago, in October 1928, the first Five-Year Plan was launched. For three decades the resources of a vast country, the energies of a large and talented population,...
...Of course it must do more to educate and train its citizens...
...The postscript was written for DISSENT...
...1955-62.5, 0.6...
...Over even somewhat longer periods, South Africa (1911-1940) averaged 9 or more per cent, and Japan (1910-1937)8.5 per cent per year...
...But what of the Soviets' own long-range plans...
...cit., Table IV, p. 59) of the size of the working-age population—which he defines as males 15-59, and females 15-54—the following percentages of working-age population in the total population and dependency ratios (persons in the other age groups per persons of working age) can be computed: 1926 —55, 0.82...
...Remembering that a low dependency ratio means not only fewer children to feed, clothe, and educate, but also more mothers released for work outside the home, we may well ask whether as large a proportion of resources could have been devoted to reconstruction and further growth as has been since the War, had the number of children been more nearly "normal...
...especially since it was primarily young adult males who were leaving the village for economic, military or educational purposes...
...Thirdly, and closely linked, is the "index number problem," which makes its appearance whenever we ask—as we inevitably do—such comprehensive questions as: How much has total industrial production increased...
...By meeting these targets, he claimed, Soviet industry would attain the 1957 American level of industrial output...
...3) channeling the human and ma terial resources so mobilized into the rapid expansion of heavy industry, construction, and supporting activities, and into the creation of associated technical skills...
...During the last five years covered by Shimkin's index, 1952 through 1956, industrial output seems to have increased at an average rate of just about nine per cent per year...
...coal-650-750 (463...
...Of course the West must remain militarily strong and watchful...
...obviously not nearly as rapid as that of industry...
...of manufactured consumers goods-3.4-fold...
...Labor productivity in Soviet industry, on a man-hour basis, is substantially less than half the American level, but probably compares quite favorably with the levels in the major countries of Western Europe...
...The Academy of Sciences was already over 200 years old...
...In the last days of 1958 the Central Committee of the Party and the Supreme Soviet met and at the end of January, 1959, the XXI Congress of the Party convened...
...The "socialist law of development" pales before the authoritarian principles of its implementation...
...Years of the Great Purge and of intensified preparations for war, they show an average rate of growth (annexations apart) of probably only a few per cent a year, although the exact record is obscured by territorial change...
...However, the ratio varies greatly from branch to branch: for example, with regard to machinery and munitions it is doubtless considerably higher...
...Soviet theoretical and experimental work in this field is proceeding apace, although the widespread adoption of automation faces some characteristly Soviet obstacles, such as managerial conservatism, irregularity and undependability of materials supply, poor maintenance of equipment, and insufficient standardization of components...
...Shimkin's results however agree quite well, allowing for differences in method and coverage, with the results of other recomputations...
...In some areas progress has been exceedingly rapid, in others there has been very little growth or none at all, and in some respects there has even been retrogression...
...But it would be incorrect to assume that there was no short-run benefit to rapid industrialization in these demographic catastrophes...
...CERTAIN DEMOGRAPHIC aspects of Soviet industrialization that have received inadequate notice should not be overlooked...
...and Wm...
...8) continuous pressure from above in the face of resistance from below, for such "progressive" measures as cost reduction, rise in labor productivity, and the introduction of new techniques and products...
...Not all of these were deaths, of course...
...4 Soviet definition of industry, which includes mining, power generation, logging...
...Clear though the objective has been, it is not easy to measure the distance traversed by the Soviet economy in the three decades...
...If both the total and the rural population of the USSR...
...There are, first, the facade of propaganda and the curtain of secrecy to contend with...
...One such recomputation, quite comprehensive in coverage and extending through 1956, was recently undertaken by D. B. Shimkin and his associates, and although methodolgically this index differs from the official one, it is nonetheless interesting to examine the two side by side.3 [See table on next page.] Thus according to Shimkin's estimate there was a 7.7-fold increase in total industrial production between 1928 and 1956, 6 or only onethird as much as the official claim...
...steel-100-120 (51...
...10 The slogan is to eliminate the housing shortage in 10 to 12 years (Pravda, 2 August, 1957), whatever this may mean...
...But one wonders— remembering the shortage of draft power and other non-labor limitations to agricultural production at the time—whether the presence of these additional millions of consumers in the village would not have claimed more of the country's resources than their contribution as producers would have added...
...I shall not however dwell here on the realism, or lack of it, of these forecasts, or on the political and propaganda value of their pronouncement...
...Shimkin's index is weighted (following Hodgman's pioneeringwork) by 1934 values-added...
...Political and institutional differences for the moment apart, the uniqueness of the Soviet industrialization record therefore lies not so much in the rate of growth, or even the length of the period over which it has been so far sustained, as in that it occurred simultaneously with a huge peacetime military program, and benefited relatively little from capital inflow from abroad (taking the period as a whole...
...Khrushchev is impatient for his economic victory over America, it seems...
...Was there any improvement in levels of consumption, and if so, to what extent...
...so-called) woollen cloth, million meters550650 (282...
...Since there is usually a number of possible weighting systems, each with a logic and rationale of its own, as well as a number of mathematical formulae to employ, different answers to the same question may be obtained depending on the method...
...cf, the proceedings of a conference published by the Institute of Economics, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as Voprosy metodologii izucheniia i izmereniia proizvoditelnosti truda (Moscow, 1956), passim...
...our point (8) above) in each industry was transmitted to and exerted upon the enterprises no longer exist...
...The children of the forties have begun to enter the labor force, and until the mid-sixties it will expand very little...
...Superimposed on both was the human toll of the forced labor camps...
...in additional incentives for women (who are over half the labor force) to continue at work...
...In less than scrupulous hands fiction may simply be fable...
...10 Similarly, the transportation network—so far essentially the pre-revolutionary rail net—is due for large-scale reequipment, modernization, and extension to sustain further industrial growth...
...The human tragedy of these events, and the economic damage involved in the loss of life can be left to the imagination...
...7) assignment of physical targets to producers, from the lowly worker up to the minister, and inducing the fulfilment of the targets by administrative pressure, propaganda, and especially by means of an elaborate system of material incentives...
...The last is well summed up by such crucial indicators as total energy production and total transportation activity both of which are now to increase in the same proportions over the seven years as over the five years of the Sixth FYP...
...In fact, uncertainty with regard to military requirements may be a chief reason for the targets being stated in the form of broad ranges...
...They are, with the corresponding 1957 output in parentheses (in million metric tons, except as specified): iron ore-250-300 (84...
...The population loss—in the sense of the difference between the number that would have obtained at the end of the period had the "normal" yearly increment of about three million held good, and the number actually on hand—may be placed at over 10 million in the former case and over 40 million in the latter...
...The announced targets show no retreat from the policy of primacy of heavy industry...
...The targets were given in the form of ranges rather than single figures...
...This is not a counsel of indifference...
...in the reform of education...
...at least not quickly and cheaply, although over the longer run and with sufficient material investment it may still do so...
...The expectation that the reform will tend to promote regional autarchy has already been fully borne out...
...Because of the peculiarities of Soviet indexes, the projected rate 8.6 per cent per year cannot be taken literally, and by more acceptable measuring techniques would probably be one or two percentage points less than that...
...February 20, 1958...
...2 Soviet economists themselves admit the upward bias of the official index, at leastwhen they are engaged in serious discussion among themselves and not in defending the official position...
...Such a simply-stated and prestige-laden objective is certainly not without its benefits as a convenient measure to the planner, a spur at home, and a valuable propaganda slogan abroad...
...The earlier impression that the Sixth Five-Year Plan was too ambitious for the resources on hand, and that this was the reason for its scrapping, has now been confirmed...
...But what has been the "tempo" of Soviet industrial growth...
...Urban consump tion levels, taken separately, are probably moderately better than in 1928, though this is due not so much (if at all) to higher real wages as to the reduction in the number of dependents per wage earner...
...The relation of population to natural resources—not even excluding the least adequate of these, agricultural resources—was much better than in most countries that stand at the threshold of industrialization today...
...i The reader will find further discussion of the problems raised by the recentlypublished Soviet statistical handbook in Naum Jasny's The Soviet 1956 Statistical Handbook: A Commentary (Michigan University Press, 1957), and in Alec Nove'sarticle in Soviet Studies (Glasgow), January 1957...
...3 D. B. Shiinkin and F. A. Leedy, "Soviet Industrial Growth," Automotive Industries, 1 January, 1958, p. 51...
...The share of the urban in the total population was 18 per cent in 1928 and is approaching 45 per cent now...
...Agriculture, in par ticular, lagged badly...
...The enhanced pressure manifests itself in many ways: first of all in the added emphasis on producers goods, especially metals, oil and gas, and chemicals...
...So much the better...
...1950-60, 0.67...
...Over shorter spans of time, Sweden equalled, and (significantly) Russia herself approached, the long-term Soviet rate in the late eighties and in the nineties of the last century...
...History, Supplement VII, 1947, pp...
...it aggregates the values of output (at supposedly constant prices) of individual enterprises...
...1937-56, 0.785...
...Rapid urbanization in a peasant country, involving as it does a radi cal change in the mode of life, warps our statistical yardsticks and ren ders any over-all judgment on trends in per capita consumption very difficult...
...were now, say, 50 million larger than they are, the urban population would comprise not about 45 per cent of the total as it does, but about 35 per cent...
...8 It follows from the argument in this paragraph that the two demographic disasters explain a substantial part of the sharp rise in the statistical urbanization ratio...
...Agriculture, charged with new urgent tasks, no longer can release millions of men...
...The targets themselves, as well as Khrushchev's reference to the American level, strongly suggest that it is intended to increase over-all Soviet industrial production two or two-and-a-half-fold over the fifteen years...
...much of the data are difficult to interpret for lack of explanation of their derivation...
...and perhaps also in the absence of any mention of credit in the Soviet-Chinese economic agreement signed earlier this month...
...It would do even greater violence to reason to assume that any underdeveloped country today can reach the front rank of industrial powers in a generation or so by faithfully following the Soviet formula for industrialization...
...But in any assessment of growth prospects the largest unknown of all is the diversion of resources to military use, which during the fifties has probably been approximately of the same order of magnitude as net investment (i.e...
...8 The deficit of births during the War is also largely responsible for the higher ratio of the population of working age to the total population, and a correspondingly lower dependency ratio, 9 in the post-war years just elapsed...
...To calculate the average annual rate of Soviet industrial growth we cannot simply consider the growth to have taken place over the 28 Soviet Industrial Production, 4 1928 = 100 1937 1940 1948 1950 1955 1956 1957 (as °Jo of 1956) Total Official index 1,119446 646 761 2,069 2,290 110 Shimkin's Index 274 294 294 715 773 434 Producers and military goods Official index 2,049652 1,000 1,299 3,895 4,339 111 Shimkin's Index 426 452 536 781 1,290 1,400 Consumers goods Official index 311 415 409 510 899 984 108+ Shimkin's Index 171 183 128 197 323 344 years that separate from 1956 to 1928...
...Secondly, the ministerial channels through which pressure for cost reduction, new techniques, etc...
...The official index on the other hand is a "gross" one, i.e...
...130ff...
...The heroic period—heroic in the scale of its feats, sacrifices, and errors—was surely the years 1929 through 1936, when the rate of growth of industrial output averaged 12 or more per cent per annum (and well over this during the last four years of the period) . It was in those years that the basic institutional framework of the Soviet economy was established, and the basic loca 152 tional pattern laid...
...1958 issue of the English journal Soviet Survey and revised by the author...
...Whether the long-range targets will be in fact achieved remains to be seen...
...Today, as contrasted with three decades ago, the Soviet Union produces about the same range of industrial articles (though in different proportions) as do the more advanced western countries, and in many instances the levels of technology are also similar...
...Alexander Gerschenkron, "The Rate of Industrial Growth in Russia Since 1885," Jour...
...Although incomparably more statistical information has been published in the last few years than in the preceding twenty (but still less than before that), the data are far from satisfactory for purposes of careful analysis...
...Surely the expansion of industrial production while reconstruction is still proceeding cannot be equated with "normal" growth, and therefore we count these two years as four...
...The economically efficient and inefficient, the technically advanced and backward, are constantly found side by side, often under the same roof...
...As is now generally known, this is to be achieved by 1970, if not sooner...
...No less significant from a dynamic point of view is the fact that the reform has affected the communication pattern within branches of industry...
...For three decades the resources of a vast country, the energies of a large and talented population, and the capacity of a most elaborate and centralized organization, have been mobilized as no country has been mobilized before, for the attainment of supremacy in the twin fields of industrial power and military might...
...and many statistics are of questionable reliability or are even known seriously to distort what they purport to reflect...
...He expected, to be sure, that American output would probably rise over the next fifteen years, but a few more years of Soviet growth would take care of that too...
...In other significant respects, e.g...
...If the long period of rate of industrial growth implicit in Shimkin's index-9.7 per cent per year over 22 "effective" years—is approximately correct, then the tempo of Soviet industrial expansion has certainly been extremely high, though not entirely without precedent or parallel among non-communist countries...
...146 and 156...
...even with the considerable upswing that occurred after Stalin's death, it is very doubtful that agricultural production, and especially food production (for there was a shift to industrial crops), is much above the level of three decades ago in relation to the country's population...
...and sugar910 (4.5...
...However, the composition of urban consumption has shifted greatly: housing, clothing, and foodstuffs of high nutritive value are in lower or approx imately equal supply per person, while there has been a marked increase in the availability of the more "modern" manufactured consumers goods...
...The SYP reduces by 5 to 8 per cent the annual volume of investment as compared with the Sixth FYP (allowing for the intervening growth of the economy), and stretches out over six or seven years the relative increases in output that the FYP envisaged over five...
...Although per capita income and industrial production were low by European (but certainly not by Asian) standards, and the population was still mostly illiterate and some 80 per cent agricultural, Russia already possessed (as we have noted earlier) the fifth largest industrial complex in the world, including a substantial heavy industry...
...In 1928, Russia had a much more favorable heritage than the typical underdeveloped country enjoys today...
...Some slowing down apparently took place in 1957, and, as we shall presently see, the Soviet planners apparently expect considerable retardation over the next ten to fifteen years...
...In fact there was such benefit on two scores: in the reduction of the surplus agrarian population, and in a shift in the age structure of the total population...
...It is clear that their substantial re-channeling to benefit investment could con siderably, and favorably, influence the rate of economic growth...
...The recently announced program to expand greatly the production of plastics and synthetics is a case in point, as it is also an important attempt to by-pass the inadequacies of the agricultural base (e.g...
...While to a certain extent this unevenness of development was unin• tended, generally it is the result of consciously adopted and pursued priorities...
...Since then, in mid-November, the draft of the "Control Figures" of the Seven-Year Plan (SYP) and the "Theses" for a reform in education were published...
...Beyond that, of course, and for many reasons, it should expand its economies at a good rate, avoid economic instability, and redress inequities...
...The avowed goal—to "catch up with and overtake America" in per capita output—is now being daily proclaimed to be within easy reach...
...Considering the difficulties in agriculture (still far from overcome despite the official optimism), and the likely population growth, it is difficult to see more than a small annual improvement in per capita consumption in the next decadeanda-half...
...A month later Khrushchev delivered his important report on achievements and prospects in Soviet agriculture...
...While before such growth-inducing and growth-promoting organizations as research, development, and design institutes in a given industry were under the same ministry as the corresponding producing enterprises, now the former as well as the latter are administratively dispersed, with indications that the collaboration necessary for technical advance may at times suffer...
...The three political bodies rubber-stamped Khrushchev's economic program directed at "solving the basic economic task of the USSR," i.e., "catching up with and overtaking America in terms of output per capita" and thereby (though it does not necessarily follow) giving the Soviet people "the highest material standard of living in the world...
...Could there have been as large an urban population, and hence as rapid reconstruction and further economic growth, as there was in the late forties and the fifties...
...The Russian rate during 1890-1900 was over eight per cent per year...
...Urban housing, which (aside from heavy war destruction) has been severely overcrowded and badly undermaintained for nearly thirty years, is now claiming a larger share of resources...
...in the resolution of the long-smoldering debate over criteria of the choice between alternative technologies in favor of the rationalists and against the dogmatists...
...electric power, thousand million kw-hrs--800-900 (209.5...
...however, since 1950 the two components have been growing at an equal pace...
...Lately, taking the America recession year together with the preceding peak, the ratio has been perhaps 40-50 per cent...
...from about 152 million in mid-1928 to some 206 million in mid-1958, or by 36 per cent...
...serious as they are, the outlook is not one-sided...
...In terms of Shimkin's index, the output of producers and military goods increased 14-fold from 1928 to 1956...
...The well-known policy of "primacy of heavy industry" stands out in sharp relief in our table...
...Secondly, although recovery in this sense was achieved by 1948, reconstruction of damaged capacity con tinued on a substantial scale at least until the end of 1950, and indeed (as can be computed from our table) industrial output rose during 1949 and 1950 at about twice the annual rate that obtained in the more "normal" years...
...Of course its countries must draw closer together...
...net addition to the capital plant...
...The statistician knows that even in scrupulous statistical hands the concept of parity of output is entirely relative to the method employed in computing it, and that at any rate such over-all comparisons are fiction, for they abstract from significant diversity and disparity...
...For lack of precise data on age distribution for all years except 1926, these figures can be only approximate, but the trend is not in doubt...
...III The unborn children and the drastic excision of a large part of the agrarian overpopulation under tragic circumstances were a loan extended by time to the Soviet industrialization drive...
...in the cutting back of the expensive, though prestige-laden, hydroelectric projects...
...5) political coercion and terror to maintain the collective farm system and low consumption levels...
...4) once a large investment potential has been created, using a part of it to raise consumption while retaining most of it to expand heavy industry, i.e...
...The next four years, 1937 through 1940, stand in sharp contrast...
...Lastly, Khrushchev's targets give no indication of an expected sharp curtailment of military outlay...
...2) a readiness to depress consumption sharply and to keep it low until a large investment and defense potential has been created...
...The explanation of course lies with the two great demographic disasters: one associated with the collectivization crisis of the early thirties, and the other with the War and the hard years immediately thereafter...
...to enlarge the capacity for further growth (to the extent that these resources are not diverted to military use...
...in any case it makes a balanced appraisal more difficult...
...11 Pravda, 7 November, 1957...
...The three chief ingredients of the Soviet industrialization formula have been the technology of the West, the country's natural resources, and the underemployed manpower of the village...
...natural gas, thousand million m3-270-320 (201...
...I1 There is no miracle or mystery about the speed of Soviet economic expansion...
...This gives us altogether 22 "effective years" of growth of industrial production, and the average annual rates implicit in Shimkin's series therefore are: 9.7 per cent for total industrial output, 12.7 per cent for producers and military goods, and 5.8 per cent for consumers goods.° IT WOULD BE wrong to think of Soviet industrialization under the Plans as a smooth and steady process...
...More concretely, with 50 (or 40, or 30) million more people in the village after the War, could the rate of extraction of agricultural "surplus" have been as high as it was...
...Leaving aside for the moment the matter of "catching up with America," the most striking thing about these targets is the considerable decline in the annual rate of industrial growth that they imply: namely, 4.7 to 6.3 per cent per year, as compared with something like nine for the recent years...
...And the more uneven the growth among the individual components, the greater the likelihood that the answers will differ significantly...
...Western economists have analyzed the official Soviet index of industrial production, and have generally concluded that because of various faults in its construction it greatly overstates the actual growth of Soviet industrial output.2 For this reason several attempts at constructing a more reliable index of Soviet industrial production have been made in the West, based on the available information on the output of commodities in physical terms...
...And, finally, Russia had had a centuries-long history of centralism, authoritarianism, elitism, and economic leadership by the state—which the new regime was quick to adopt, adapt, perfect, and pervert...
...answers to such questions depend on the relative importance, i.e...
...National power does not rest on index points but on concrete capabilities, and in this sense parity has already been established between the two sides in at least two significant respects: in the threat to destroy the other side through military action, and (within practicable limits) in the capacity to render large-scale assistance to the underdeveloped countries...
...It is not unreasonable to assume that nearly the whole impact of the population deficit caused by the two disasters fell on the village...
...It would be too much to contend that the presence of an additional 10 million persons in agriculture in the thirties, or of (say) an additional 40-50 million after the War, many of working age, would not have had a positive effect on agricultural output...
...Or alternatively and also plausibly, whether average consumption levels would not now be substantially lower than they actually are...
...In 1928, Soviet industry produced approximately one tenth as much as American industry...
...Important gaps in information remain...
...a From Shimkin's estimates (loc...
...And lastly, the rapidly growing supply of Soviet scientific and technical man-power is certainly another favorable factor, and a well-known one...
...As was expected, therefore, the SYP does exhibit some retardation in the rate of industrial growth...
...and by steel and electric power, the output of which is to increase proportionately only moderately more in the SYP than in the FYP...
...A Seven-Year Plan, covering the years 1959-1965, is currently being prepared to supersede the truncated Sixth Five-Year Plan (1956-1960...
...At the same time an even longer-range program, or series of programs, is being worked out, the core of which is apparently the set of output targets for 1972 for eleven major industrial commodities that was disclosed by Khrushchev during the 40th anniversary celebration last year...
...History is recalling other loans at the same time...
...W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan (Princeton, 1954), p. 117...
...a large part were, so to say, non-births...
...Underemployed" elsewhere, in administration, in the forced labor camps, even in the armed forces (we are told), are being transferred to more productive work...
...6 Strictly speaking, a small downward adjustment in these rates should also be made to take account of the annexation of industrial capacity at the beginning and at the end of the Second World War...
...The last refers particularly to summary measures of economic growth.' A second difficulty arises from the character of Soviet economic growth, namely, its great unevenness...
...Territorial coverage corresponds to the boundaries of the respective years...
...This observation also applies to the total national product, whose growth had also been very rapid (over the long period...
...5 All such estimates of course are less than perfect...
...The NOTE: This article is reprinted from the Oct.-Dec...
...If not: Could recovery in urban living standards from the post-war low in 1946 have been as fast as it was...
...The above article was written in July, 1958...
...7 For the underlying statistics see League of Nations, Industrialization and Foreign Trade (Geneva, 1945), pp...
...To the statesman the concept of parity of output is perhaps even less important...
...living standards, parity is still far out of sight...
...Khrushchev spoke of a date "some fifteen years hence," which seems to denote 1972, although it is possible that he and his planners have 1975—the likely final year of a Plan—in mind...
...cement-90-110 (29...
...6) constant over-commitment of resources, oriented toward a severe system of priorities and a succession of "campaigns...
...Such are some of the major retarding factors...
...It remains to be seen whether the new administrative set-up, in which regional problems take precedence over those of any particular branch of production, can fully replace the old one in this respect...
...The town population could not have grown much more than it ac tually did (from 28 million on the eve of the First Plan to 70 million by the end of 1950), at least without diverting large additional capital resources from pre-war industrialization or post-war reconstruction to town-building...
...From here on the will and the skill with which policy is pursued are likely to be more decisive than the exact size of the industrial base...
...Yet for all its significance to national pride and propaganda, industrial parity is a false objective...
...Ix TERMS of total industrial production the Soviet Union has moved up from fifth place in 1928 (after the U.S.A., Germany, Britain, and France, and before Italy) to second place today, although on a per capita basis it ranks—now as then—considerably lower than on an over-all basis...
...We omit it for the sake of simplicity and statistical "conservatism...
...so-called) leather footwear, million pairs-600-700 (315...
...The Soviet economy still has quite a bit of slack to take up and quite a few technological gaps to bridge, not to mention the new frontiers that technology is unfolding and will continue to unfold...
...pig iron-75-85 (37...
...Automation is the subject of an intense campaign and great expectations for overcoming the labor shortage rest on it...
...There is of course nothing distinctly Soviet about them—these are the obvious ingredients of industrialization in any backward, overpopulated agrarian society— although the lavish scale on which all three have been drawn is worthy of note...
...Rather, the Soviet experience is distinguished by (1) close centralized controls over the physical "surplus" of agriculture and over the "reserve army" of the rural underemployed, both implemented primarily through the collective farm system...
...Organizational reforms, such as the transfer of tractors and other machinery from the machine-tractor stations to the collective farms, may help, and even more radical institutional reforms may help more...
...Fifteen-year plans have a way of going down the drain of history...
...The Soviet challenge imparts urgency to what otherwise would be merely wisdom...
...So far as the peasants are concerned, the virtual silence of Soviet statistics with regard to their income, consumption, or even numbers, in itself suggests (to put it mildly) no great advance since the pre-collectivization level...
...Much is made by the Kremlin of catching up with America in total industrial production...
...The loan is falling due...
...Considering the territorial annexations which added over 20 million people, and the high rate of natural increase in "normal" years, the total population has increased relatively little in the past three decades...
...First, we must eliminate the eight years (1941-1948) that elapsed until the pre-war (1940) level of indus trial production was re-attained...
...On the other hand there is no indication that military preparedness was sacrificed for the sake of economic growth any more in the drafting of the SYP than in the drafting of the Sixth FYP three years earlier...
...petroleum-350-400 (98...
...fibers...
...But even so it is to be as high as or higher than the upper limit of the range (6.3 per cent per year) that my article mentions as being implicit in Khrushchev's fifteen year targets...
...It is thus likely that between the end of 1957 and the end of 1958 a decision was taken to step up the rate of Soviet industrial growth in relation to the earlier prognosis...
...While sectors closely linked with the industrialization program, such as transportation and construction, have more or less kept pace with industrial expansion, and the military sector of course grew rapidly too, agriculture and the various activities directly serving the consumer (housing, retail trade, and even education and medical care) expanded much more slowly...
...and fishing...
...of Econ...
...At the same time, to attribute it—as does the quasimystical Kremlin cliche—to the "socialist law of proportional, planned development of the national economy" is to ignore several elements of at least equal importance...
...She had a relatively small but well-qualified supply of scientific and technical skill, and—within its limits—a brilliant tradition in these fields...
...but even in the early years of the plan era, when it was only dimly seen, the eyes of the leaders were already fixed upon it...
...Interesting questions can be raised about the longer-run effects of the reorganization of industrial management introduced by Khrushchev in mid-1957, which created over a hundred regional authorities, in the place of a score of ministries each in charge of an industry...
...This fact cannot be emphasized too strongly...
...the "weights" assigned to the individual components while aggregating (combining) them...
...The railway system, which for over half a century had been in the van of economic development, was small in relation to the country's vast territory, but large enough to serve as a basis for much further industrial growth...
...Yet it is clear that the rate of growth, though considerably reduced, is planned to remain high—higher than the American postwar rate of about four per cent per year, although no higher than what many a non-Communist country has achieved in recent years...
...How rapidly has the national income grown...
...in the relatively modest shift of industry's center of gravity to the east, where production is often cheaper but takes more time and capital to start...
...The output of manufactured consumers goods, the more problematic among Khrushchev's goals in any case, is to grow more slowly than that of producers goods...
Vol. 6 • April 1959 • No. 2
