Source C does not directly express motives but implies the rapid pace of development which supports the motive in source A of rapid industrialisation. The figures indicate a remarkable increase in production overall. In a little over 12 years, coal production had grown fiver-fold, steel six-fold, and oil output had more than doubled. The most impressive statistic is the one showing that electricity generation had quintupled. These four key products provided the basis for the military economy which enabled the USSR not only to survive our years of German occupation but eventual to amass sufficient resourced to turn the tables and drive the German army out of Soviet territory. These statistics suggest that Stalin did meet his objectives to some extent, although the figures can not be fully trusted because the figures were rigged by local officials and managers to give the impression they had met their targets, they do suggest there was a rapid increase in Soviet industrial capacity which was crucial to establishing a firm industrial base and also a military one.
Stalin’s economic reforms succeeded only in the traditional areas of heavy industry. In those sectors where unskilled and forced labour could be easily used, as n the building of large projects such as factories, bridges, refineries, and canals, the results were impressive. However, the Soviet economy itself remained unbalanced. Stalin gave little thought to developing an overall economic strategy. Nor were modern industrial methods adopted. Old, wasteful techniques, such as using massed labour rather than efficient machines, continued to be used. Vital financial and material resources were squandered.
Stalin’s love of what he called ‘the Grand Projects of Communism’ meant no real attention was paid to producing quality goods that could then be profitably sold abroad to raise the money the USSR needed so badly. He loved to show off to foreign visitors the great projects that were either completed or under construction. Yet it was all vainglorious. Despite Stalin’s boasts and the adulation with which he was regarded by foreign sympathisers, the fact remained that his policies had deprived the Soviet Union of any chance of genuinely competing with the modernising economies of Europe and the USA.
Moreover, his schemes failed to increase agricultural productivity or to raise the living standards of the Soviet workers. Stalin’s neglect of agriculture, which continued to be deprived of funds since it was regarded as wholly secondary to the needs of industry, proved very damaging. The lack of agriculture growth resulted in constant food shortages which could be met only by buying foreign supplies. This drained the USSR’s limited financial resources.
Despite the official veneration of Stalin for his great diplomatic triumph in achieving the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany there was no relaxation within the Soviet Union. Indeed, the conditions of the ordinary people became even harsher and an official decree empowered Stalin’s government to encroach even further on workers’ liberties: direction of labour, enforced settlement of undeveloped areas, and severe penalties for slacking and absenteeism.
In conclusion, by the end of 1941, when the German invasion effectively destroyed the Third FYP, the conditions of the Soviet industrial workers were marginally lower than in 1928. Yet whatever the hardship of the workers, the fact was that in 1941 the USSR was economically strong enough to engage in an ultimately successful military struggle of unprecedented duration and intensity. In Soviet propaganda, this was what mattered, not minor questions of living standards. The USSR’s triumph over Nazism would later be claimed as the ultimate proof the wisdom of Stalin’s enforced industrialisation programme. The historian Gattrell who built upon the argument of E.H. Carr acknowledged that Stalin was certainly severe and destructive in his treatment of people, but pointed out that the outcome of industrialisation was an economy strong enough to sustain the USSR through four years of the most demanding of modern wars. Hard though it may be for the Western liberal minds to accept, it may be that Russia could not have been modernised b any other methods except those used by Stalin. Therefore by implementing the policy of industrialisation the USSR was able to modernise and catch up to some extent with the more advanced Western economies, even if the methods were not the best planned or manoeuvred methods.
