Industrialization was always on the agenda.

In the course of the 1920s,

the most interesting discussions which were taking place in

the Soviet leadership concerned the way to bring about industrialization.

The issue was not whether we should industrialize or not.

And this was a very intellectually interesting discussion among

the various economist politicians

about how industrialization could be and should be carried out.

What happened in the 1920s that Stalin,

and it was really Stalin's decision by now,

decided to embark on an ambitious industrialization plan.

The new element was Nationalism.

A remarkable speech which Stalin gave in 1931,

he said, "If we do not industrialize,

if we do not catch up with the West,

in 10 years we will be defeated by the enemy."

As the Tsarist regime was.

That is for the first time he reclaimed

the heritage of the Tsarist regime and promised to do better.

And there is something very impressive that Stalin was saying in 1931 that in 10 years,

if we do not industrialize we will be defeated.

And of course exactly 10 years later,

the German Army invaded the Soviet.

Again, just like in the case of agriculture where

the regime destroyed the most ambitious and able agriculturalists.

The industrialization drive started out by carrying out purge trials.

Purge trials making phony charges

against experts for sabotage.

These were completely made up charges.

Also, the first five year plan was drawn up

and those who experts who work on those plans,

and they made very ambitious plans indeed,

they were not considered to be ambitious

enough and they were arrested and the regime came

up with a completely nonsensical economic plans which were incoherent.

That is planned economy begins with

something which was really not well planned.

The only thing which remained is that we are going to build as much as we can.

What will we have, what do we build?

Of course, heavy industry.

That is producer goods as opposed to consumer goods.

That is the little capital which we have,

we will use to build steel mills,

mines and undertake large scale project.

This particular economic organization was suitable for large scale projects.

Some of them made a great deal of sense economically such as building railroads,

significant railroad line was built from the Trans-Siberian to Central Asia.

Some of them are ill conceived.

Most famously, an ill conceived project was

the Mighty Canal which was built by slave labor.

Also, the idea was that it would be able

to connect the center of the country with the sea.

However, very little machinery was used,

the laborers used shovels and what they came up with,

what they produced was so shallow that actually ships couldn't use it.

So it was a job which was undertaken at the cost of enormous suffering

and a large number of death of slave laborers which ultimately was useless.

The regime in fact succeeded in building heavy industry.

That is the idea was to build and build and build.

Even if they did not really,

the plans did not fit together.

And then after four and a half years later,

the regime announced that the plan has been carried out and that it was completed.

In reality, those goals which were set in 1928 actually were reached,

some of them only in the 1950s or '60s.

But the rate of industrial growth unquestionably was very high,

according to Soviet figures,

close to 20% yearly.

This is in doubt not so much

because the Soviet statistician's were cheating, which they may have,

but because it was very difficult to evaluate in monetary terms that you produced

a new machinery which had not existed before.

You give it the monetary value and you choose what it is,

what you want to be,

and so consequently you come up with very high figures.

But this is not what matters.

What matters was that indeed the basis of

Soviet heavy industry was created and the transformation was something very significant.

How was this to be financed?

How was this to be achieved?

Well, it could be achieved only at the expense of

the peasantry because the peasants made up the great majority of the populace.

How to do this?

Taking away the grain from the peasants.

And one consequence was the Great Famine which

occurred mostly in the countryside in the early 1930s.

The Great Famine, of the course of which we are

talking about victims between 5 and 10 million people who,

it's difficult to come up with the exact figures in as much as people,

children were not born there,

whether the people died as a result of famines or diseases and these were interconnected.

The famine especially hard hit the regions which were agriculturally the most productive.

The Ukraine and some part of the Northern Caucasus.

The Ukrainians, to this day believe that this was

a manipulated famine where the regime namely

Stalin wanted to punish the Ukrainians for nationalist reasons

and also because they resisted collectivization more successfully.

Whether this was

Planned. I happen to think that this was not.

There is however no question about it that the regime

did nothing to eliminate, alleviate the suffering.

In fact, grain continue to be sold in the time of the famine abroad.

The explanation for this is that the regime needed for industrialization,

some machinery, which they could always buy only from abroad.

What was happening at the time was,

of course, the great depression in the western world,

and the consequence was that the price of grain fell in the world market and

consequently the regime had to sell more grain in order to come up with the resources,

which they needed in order to advance industrialization.

The great famine was a major turning point in Russian history,

where the leaders did not come to the aid of the people.

In fact, they denied that the famine actually existed

but foreign travelers could not report on it.

Now the famine actually affected every part of the Soviet population, the cities also.

However, the countryside suffered more because the regime simply carried away the grain.

The cost of standard of living in the cities also

fell by the great starvation occurred in the countryside.

Well, what was happening?

What was the consequence?

What was something which went along with

this industrialization drive creating a Soviet working class.

In the late 1920s, there was unemployment.

At the beginning of industrialization,

there was enormous need.

For workers. Where were the workers come from?

Of course, come from the countryside.

That was fine in as much as the countryside had been overpopulated to begin with.

People were motivated to leave

the village and that became an essential feature of Russian life.

I think to our own days namely the young male ambitious made every effort to

escape the collective farms where life was so miserable.

So, by the mid 1930s,

the agricultural working force was mostly women,

over 50 percent, 55 percent women.

Also, the old people who had no means of finding a job in the cities.

Now, there was need for labor but

the influx of the peasants from the countryside was greater than the regime anticipated.

That was partially because of

the new working class was not used to industrial discipline.

Productivity was very low.

Productivity was low because these were

peasants who were not used to working in factories.

They didn't know how to use the machinery.

The turnover of workers was very great.

We have some record that the Donets Basin something like one-third

of the working force change every year.

The turnover was so great because there was competition for labor that is there

were new factories opened and they needed workers and they could offer better wages.

The better were just weren't very good.

In fact, the standard of living in the course of

the 1930s was a miserable and other source of labor the women.

The women who were made up a small share in

the industrial working force in the 1920s now came to join.

Indeed, something like in

the second quarter of the second five-year plan

something like 80 percent of the new workers were women.

This is a major source.

This is a major importance in the Soviet method of

industrialization because of having two people work in the family.

You could give them a smaller salary and they would cost less.

This was a society,

which was described as a Quicksand society.

How do you enforce labor principles by coercion?

If a worker was three times late,

he was punished by various means.

Ultimately, by the end of the 1930s,

military discipline was imposed on the workers.

That is you could not leave your job unless you receive permission.

Again in this respect,

we see the difference between the countryside and the cities.

In 1932, the regime in order to control the great influx into the city,

introduced passports, passport control.

However, it only people in

the cities the working classes who actually had their passports.

The peasants had their passport deposited in the collective farm, headquarters,

and so if a peasant wanted to go and see his sick grandmother,

he had to go to the chairman of the collective farm and say to the man in charge that,

"I need to go to a neighboring village,

give me my passport."

The cities that the worker actually still had his passport.

Industrialization

Russian History: from Lenin to Putin

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