In 1932, a year before the plan was due to end it was completed and industrial output had doubled also some 1500 new industrial plants had been built. Machine building was concentrated on the most whilst consumer goods were the least.
There had been many advantages of the rapid industrialization, the industrial output had been doubled, heavy machinery had been quadrupled, electricity had been developed with the building of giant hydroelectric plants on many of the major rivers and so the Soviet Union (Russia) was now ahead of all industrial countries bar one, the U.S.A.
The disadvantages though really weren’t pleasant. Working hours were increased and so the people lost their freedom as they no longer worked to live, but lived to work and got paid little, however if they did not do their job to Stalin’s standards they were sent to the gulags (prison camps/slave labour camps where they were literally worked to death within usually 6 months on average). The Zeks were the inmates at the gulags, made up of mainly Kulaks, political opponents and industrial saboteurs. Stalin eventually sent round his private police force the N.K.V.I to arrest quota, which is a certain number of peasants for his slave labour camps who built things such as Belomor canal. Also little consumer goods were produced, as it was not the aim to raise the living standards of the peasants, the same went with the electricity.
Another disadvantage of the five year plan was that workers were told where to go rather then ask or apply and so 80% of farmers were moved from the collective farms—collectivisation, and so the 20% of farmers left had to try and make up for the loss of the other farmers in consumer goods. The farmers were moved to the new city where they were near the factories.
The Gosplan (state planning commission), who were set up by Lenin in 1921, provided or was meant to provide guidelines of how much industry and agriculture could produce. Stalin had changed the role of commission, so that targets were now set for every factory in every industry.
Due to the first five year plan being a great success and completed within a short period of four years, a new five year plan was conjured up (which ran the full five years), and then another one after that. However during the third five-year plan it was brought to a sudden end by the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Russia) in 1941.
Many people went with the five-year plan as propaganda was created showing Lenin’s face on it, which cried out to the people as it looked as though Lenin supported it or would support it and so all the peasants would follow suit.
The Soviet industry had changed to an extremely large extent during the time of the five-year plans, 1928-41. I say this as the Soviet Union started ‘fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced countries to the west,’ which were Germany, France, the U.K and the U.S.A, and far surpassed them all except for the U.S.A. The Soviet Union was also able to move their industries beyond the mountains in order to protect them, which helped lead in the defeat of Germany’s attack in 1941. Also great achievements were made for example electricity was created and the heavy machinery being quadrupled, also the fact that the first five-year plan was completed within the four years.
