Кеңес Одағының 1928-1932 жылдардағы бірінші бесжылдық жоспары

Economic policy of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932
the first five year plan in the Soviet Union

The first five year plan (I пятилетний план, первая пятилетка) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, implemented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in one country. Leon Trotsky had delivered a joint report to the April Plenum of the Central Committee in 1926 which proposed a program for national industrialisation and the replacement of annual plans with five year plans. His proposals were rejected by the Central Committee majority which was controlled by the troika and derided by Stalin at the time. Stalin's version of the five year plan was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932. The Soviet Union entered a series of five year plans which began in 1928 under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Stalin launched what would later be referred to as a "revolution from above" to improve the Soviet Union's domestic policy. The policies were centered around rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin desired to remove and replace the mixed economy policies of the New Economic Policy. Some scholars have argued that the programme of mass industrialisation advocated by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition was co opted after Trotsky's exile to serve as the basis of Stalin's first five year plan. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation. The plan, overall, was to transition the Soviet Union from a weak, poorly organized agricultural economy, into an industrial powerhouse. Its grand and idealistic vision, enforced through Stalin's various ministries, saw planners and builders often disregarding practical constraints as they worked to meet demanding schedules, with the possibility of facing severe consequences for failure to do so.

In 1929, Stalin edited the plan to include the creation of kolkhoz collective farming systems that stretched over thousands of acres of land and had hundreds of thousands of peasants working on them. The creation of collective farms essentially destroyed the kulaks as a class (dekulakization). Another consequence of this is that peasants resisted by killing their farm animals rather than turning them over to the State when their farms were collectivized. The resistance to Stalin's collectivization policies contributed to the famine in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan as well as areas of the Northern Caucasus. Public machine and tractor stations were set up throughout the USSR, and peasants were allowed to rent these public tractors to farm the land, with the intention to increase the food output per peasant. Peasants were allowed to sell any surplus food from the land. However, the government planners failed to take notice of local situations. In 1932, grain production was 32% below average; to add to this problem, procurement of food increased by 44%. Agricultural production was so disrupted that famine broke out in several districts. Because of the plan's reliance on rapid industrialization, major cultural changes had to occur in tandem. As this new social structure arose, conflicts occurred among some of the majority of the populations. In Turkmenistan, for example, the Soviet policy of collectivization shifted their production from cotton to food products; Russian settlers were given the best land, and Kazakh and Kyrgyz nomads were forced to settle down on soil without agricultural potential. Such a change caused unrest within a community that had already existed prior to this external adjustment, and between 1928 and 1932, Turkmen nomads and peasants made it clear through methods like passive resistance that they did not agree with such policies, the Kirgiziya area also knew guerrilla opposition. The first war threat emerged from the East in 1924. A war scare arose in 1927 when multiple Western states, like Great Britain, began cutting off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. This created fear among the Soviets that the West was preparing to attack the Soviet Union again; during the Russian Civil War, foreign powers had occupied portions of Russian territory. The fear of invasion from the West left the Soviets feeling a need for rapid industrialization to increase Soviet war making potential, and to compete with the Western powers. At the same time as the War Scare of 1927, dissatisfaction grew among the peasantry of the Soviet Union. This dissatisfaction arose from the famine of the early 1920s, as well as from increasing mistreatment of the peasants. Also during this time the secret police (the OGPU) had begun rounding up political dissenters in the Soviet Union. All these tensions had the potential to destroy the young Soviet Union and forced Joseph Stalin to introduce rapid industrialization of heavy industry so that the Soviet Union could address external and internal threats if needed.

The central aspect of the first Soviet five year plan was the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union from October 1928 to December 1932, which was thought to be the most crucial time for Russian industrialization. Lenin himself before the time of his death, knew the importance of building a transitional state to communism and was quoted saying "Modern industry is the key to this transformation, the time has come to construct our fatherland anew with the hands of machines". Rapid growth was facilitated starting in 1928 and continued to accelerate because of the building of heavy industry, which in turn raised living standards for peasants escaping the countryside. The Bolsheviks' need for rapid industrialization was once again out of the fear of impending war from the West. If war were to break out between the Soviet Union and the West, the Soviets would be fighting against some of the most industrialized nations in the world. The rapid industrialization would inhibit fears of being left unprotected if War between the Soviets and the West were to occur. To meet the needs of a possible war, the Soviet leaders set unrealistic quotas for production. To meet those unrealistic needs, the facilities had to be constructed quickly to facilitate material production before goods could be produced. During this period 1928–1932, massive industrial centers emerged in areas that were highly isolated before. These factories were not only for war production, but to produce tractors to meet the needs of mechanized agriculture. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant was built with the help of western allies and was meant to play a major factor in the rapid industrialization of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. These isolated areas included Magnitogorsk, Dnieper, and Nizhny Novgorod. Magnitogorsk, the largest of the rapid industrialized areas of Russia, was founded in 1743, but became more prevalent in the early 1930s by Stalin. His plan was to make it a one industry town. The city would become the largest steel producer in Russia and was meant to rival production that was being seen in the U. S. at the same time. During this era of Soviet history, heavy industry was supposed to experience a 350% increase in output. To achieve this massive economic growth, the Soviet Union had to reroute essential resources to meet the needs of heavy industry. 80% of the total investment of the first five year plan, was focused heavily on the industrial sector. Programs not necessary to heavy industry were cut from the Soviet budget; and because of the redistribution of industrial funding, basic goods, such as food, became scarce. The Soviet Union then decided that the workers necessary for further industrialization should be given most of the available food. From this rapid industrialization a new working class emerged in the Soviet Union. This new society was to be an industrial working class, which could be considered much of the population with the purpose of becoming a technologically advanced industry. During this time the industrial workforce rose from 3.12 million in 1928 to 6.01 million at the end of the plan in 1932. The Soviet Union promoted shock work during the First Five Year Plan period in an effort to increase productivity through human effort in the absence of more developed machinery.

Agricultural collectivisation, within Russia, had its origins under Lenin during the New Economic Policy. One reason for the collectivization of Soviet agriculture was to increase the number of industrial workers for the new factories. Beginning in 1929 under the FYP, mass collectivization was communal farms being assigned an amount of agricultural output with government coercion. Villages had to agree to collectivization: some collectivization planners would hold endless meetings that would not end until villages joined; another tactic was through intimidation and coercion. Mass agricultural collectivization was largely supported by the middle and poor peasantry Resulting from this, the party behavior became uncontrolled and manic when the party began to requisition food from the countryside. The kulaks who were considered "counter revolutionary" were executed or exiled, those who opposed collectivization were deported to remote regions and the rest were resettled to non arable land in the same region. Although Stalin reported in 1930 that collectivization was aiding the country, this was the era of exaggeration. Collectivization was under planned; a lack of instructions, and unrealistic quotas were the reality. Farmers of Kazakhstan rejected collectivization, and protested, while Stalin raised quotas, meaning peasants would not be able to eat and would psychologically break them. Those who did not give up their grain were considered breaking Soviet law, which caused the famine. Death rates are estimated between 6–7 million. By the end of the FYP, agricultural collectivization showed minimal growth in production as well as profits.

To meet the goals of the first five year plan the Soviet Union began using the labor of its growing prisoner population. Initially the Soviet leaders sought to decrease the number of prisoners in the Soviet Union so that those resources could be rerouted to the five year plan. This legislation led to many dangerous prisoners being released from prison into labor camps. Early in the plan, however, the Communist leaders realized the necessity and the benefit of prisoner labor to complete the five year plan. At this time the Soviet leaders attempted to orchestrate an increase in prison population. This was an attempt by the Soviet Union to acquire free labor for the rapid industrialization; however, it led to the incarceration of many innocent people in the Soviet Union. Eventually Western nations, such as the United States, began to boycott goods produced by this form of labor.

Although many of the goals set by the plan were not fully met, there were several economic sectors that still saw large increases in their output. Areas like capital goods increased 158%, consumer goods increased by 87%, and total industrial output increased by 118%. In addition, despite the difficulties that agriculture underwent throughout the plan, the Soviets recruited more than 70,000 volunteers from the cities to help collectivize and work on farms in the rural areas. The largest success of the first five year plan, however, was the Soviet Union beginning its journey to become an economic and industrial superpower. Stalin declared the plan a success at the beginning of 1933, noting the creation of several heavy industries where none had existed, and that the plan was fulfilled in four years and three months instead of five years. The plan was also lauded by some members of the Western media, and although much of his reporting was later disputed, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty received the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for his coverage of the first five year plan. Duranty's coverage of the five year plan's many successes led directly to Franklin Roosevelt officially recognizing the Soviet Union in 1933. The first five year plan also began to prepare the Soviet Union to win in the Second World War. Without the initial five year plan, and the ones that followed, the Soviet Union would not have been prepared for the German invasion in 1941. Due to the rapid industrialization of the plan, as well as the strategic construction of arms manufacturers in areas less vulnerable to future warfare, the Soviet Union was partially able to build the weapons it needed to defeat the Germans in 1945.

The first plan saw unrealistic quotas set for industrialization that, in reality, would not be met for decades to come. The great push for industrialization caused quotas to consistently be looked at and adjusted. Quotas expecting to reach 235.9 percent output and labor to increase by 110 percent were unrealistic in the time frame they allotted for. The goals for the plans were not set and those that were, were constantly changed. Each time one quota was met, it was revised and made larger. Hitler claimed the supposed disregard of human life by Russians toward non Russians as one of his reasons to conduct Operation Barbarossa and gain initial victories over the Russians. In his work, Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky argued that the excessive authoritarianism under Stalin had undermined the implementation of the First five year plan. He noted that several engineers and economists who had created the plan were themselves later put on trial as "conscious wreckers who had acted on the instructions of a foreign power".