|
Soviet Union [USSR] DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET INDUSTRY
Russian industrial activity began before 1700, although it was
limited to metal-working and textile factories located on feudal
estates and required some help from English and Dutch advisers. The
largest industrial concerns of the seventeenth century were owned
by the Stroganov trading family. In the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, Peter the Great applied Western technology more
widely to establish larger textile, metallurgical, and naval plants
for his military ventures. This first centralized plan for Russian
industrialization built some of the largest, best-equipped
factories of the time, using mostly forced peasant labor. After a
decline in the middle of the eighteenth century, Russian industry
received another injection of Western ideas and centralized
organization under Catherine the Great. Under Catherine, Russia's
iron industry became the largest in the world.
Another major stage in Russian industry began with the
emancipation of the serfs in 1861, creating what would eventually
become a large industrial labor force. When he became tsar in 1881,
Alexander III used this resource in a new, large-scale
industrialization program aimed at finally changing Russia from a
primarily agricultural country into a modern industrial nation.
Lasting until 1914, the program depended on massive assistance from
western Europe. From 1881 to 1914, the greatest expansion occurred
in textiles, coal, and metallurgy, centered in the Moscow area and
the present-day Ukrainian Republic
(see
fig. 1). But compared with
the West, major industrial gaps remained throughout the
prerevolutionary period.
Beginning in 1904, industry was diverted and disrupted by
foreign wars, strikes, revolutions, and civil war. After the Civil
War (1918-21), the victorious
Bolsheviks (see Glossary) fully
nationalized industry; at that point, industrial production was 13
percent of the 1913 level. To restart the economy, in 1921 Vladimir
I. Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy
(
NEP--see Glossary),
which returned light industry to private enterprise but retained
government control over heavy industry. By 1927 NEP had returned
many industries to their prewar levels. Under Stalin, the First
Five-Year Plan began in 1928. This planning system brought
spectacular industrial growth, especially in capital investment.
More important, it laid the foundation for centralized industrial
planning, which continued into the late 1980s. Heavy industry
received much greater investment than light
industry throughout the Stalin period. Although occasional plans
emphasized consumer goods more strongly, considerations of national
security usually militated against such changes.
Industry was again diverted and displaced by World War II, and
many enterprises moved permanently eastward, into or beyond the
Ural Mountains. Postwar recovery was rapid as a result of the
massive application of manpower and funds. Heavy industry again
grew rapidly through the 1960s, especially in fuel and energy
branches. But this growth was followed by a prolonged slowdown
beginning in the late 1960s. Successive five-year plans resulted in
no substantial improvement in the growth rate of industrial
production (see
table 32, Appendix A). Policy makers began
reviewing the usefulness of centralized planning in a time of
advanced, fast-moving technology. By 1986 General Secretary Mikhail
S. Gorbachev was making radical suggestions for restructuring the
industrial system.
Data as of May 1989
|
