By the end of 1920s, Russia was in a period of changes to come. The economic policy that it had implemented, NEP, was not producing the sort of society that many communists wanted. The right wing of the party, on the other hand, did support the NEP. So, in this conflict, one thing they agreed on and was sure: Russia needed to be industrialized and modernized as quickly as possible. On how to do it there was a conflict. The NEP, from the Bolsheviks point of view, was not going quickly enough and it was not developing an industrial, urban, proletarian and socialist society. So, at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927, the Five-Years Plans were announced marking the end of the NEP. This change in Russia’s economy was called The Great Turn. These plans aimed towards a more rapid industrialization and the setting of high targets for industry to achieve, through a so called “command economy”. The extent to which the Five-Years Plans were succeeded in industry is partial.
Firstly, the Five-Years Plans were successful because Russia did achieve one of the main goals that she had pre-established which were was creating the industrial base necessary for a powerful armaments industry, by increasing rapidly the growth of heavy industry. By 1937, the USSR became a self-sufficient country in machine-making and metal working and therefore did not depend on western countries’ exports and economies. Also, Russia needed to be economically strong enough to defend herself against any possible attack from these countries. So, Russia did free herself from the dependence on capitalists states by developing the heavy industries and assured its armament and hence, its survival and strength during the II World War. According to R. Hutchings: “One can hardly doubt that if there had been a slower build-up of industry, the attack would have been successful and world history would have evolved quite differently.” This quote refers to the resistance that Russia was able to present during the Second World War due to its army strength, and how this shaped history. During the first Five-Years Plan, fifteen hundred enterprises were opened and huge new complexes were built or were in the process of building, engineering industry developed and the output of machinery increased. During the second Five-Years Plan heavy industry was still producing in amazingly big amounts, with the exception of oil that did not make the expected advances. Four thousand enterprises opened this time and there was more focus on communications and transports. Railways were built to link cities and industrial centers. Electricity production expanded and metallurgy developed. Russia was then working with minerals such as copper, zinc and tin. There was also more emphasize on footwear and food processing industries producing growth in these and consequently it showed that a balanced growth among the different branches of the economy could be achievable. For the third Five-Years Plan, the need for armament was more urgent, therefore all the resources were again focused on the production of it and heavy industry. This, surprisingly, made the output continue growing and once again the targets in the most important sectors were achieved. These characteristics of the three Five-Years Plans show that heavy industry was developed and Russia had fulfilled its purposes and, even though in some years the targets were not fulfilled, heavy industry production increased by far, being this still remarkable since the targets were very high.
