The plan, put into action ruthlessly, aimed to make the USSR self-sufficient and emphasized heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods. The first plan covered the period from 1928 to 1933 but was officially considered completed in 1932, although its achievements were greatly exaggerated. One objective of the plan was achieved, however: the transformation of agriculture from predominantly individual farms into a system of large collective farms. The communist regime thought that the resources for industrialization could only be squeezed out of agriculture. Moreover, they believed that collectivization would improve agricultural productivity and produce sufficient grain reserves to feed the growing urban labor force caused by the influx of peasants seeking industrial work. Forced collectivization also enabled the party to extend its political dominance over the peasantry, eliminating the possibility of resurrection of market relations in agriculture. The traditional Russian village was destroyed and replaced by collective farms (kolkhoz) and state farms (sovkhoz), which proved to be highly inefficient. Although the first five-year plan called for the collectivization of only 20 percent of peasant households, by 1940 some 97 percent of all peasant households had been collectivized, and private ownership of property was virtually eliminated in trade. Forced collectivization helped Stalin achieve his goal of rapid industrialization, but the human costs were huge. Stalin focused particular hostility on the wealthier peasants or kulaks. Beginning in 1930 about one million kulak households (some five million people) were deported and never heard from again. Forced collectivization of most of the remaining peasants resulted in a disastrous disruption of agricultural production and a catastrophic famine in 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, one of the richest agricultural regions in the world, which exacted a toll of millions of lives. The rationale for collectivization in the Soviet Union, with all of its negative consequences, was its historic necessity in communist terms: Russia had to engage in rapid industrialization in order to create a massive heavy industry and subsequently powerful modern armed forces.
The second five-year plan (1933-1937) continued and expanded the first, albeit with more moderate industrial goals. The third plan (1938-1942) was interrupted by World War II. The institution of the five-year plan was reinforced in 1945, and five-year plans continued to be published until the end of the Soviet Union.
From the very beginning of industrialization, the Communist Party placed the main emphasis on the development of heavy industry, or, as it was called in the Soviet literature, “production of means of production.” Metallurgical plants that included the whole technological chain from iron ore refining to furnaces and metal rolling and processing facilities were constructed or built near the main coal and iron ore deposits in Ukraine, the Ural Mountains, and Siberia. Similarly, production plants for aluminum and nonferrous metals were constructed at a rapid pace. Electric energy supply was ensured through the construction of dozens of hydroelectric and fuel-operated power stations; one of them, a Dnieper plant, was canonized as a symbol of Soviet industrialization. Railroads and waterways were modernized and built to ensure uninterrupted flow of resources. Automobile and aviation industries were built from scratch. Whole plants were purchased in the West, mostly from the United States, and put in operation in the Soviet Union. Stalingrad Tractor Plant and Gorki Automotive Plant began production in the early
INORODTSY
1930s. Many American engineers were lured by promises of high wages to work at those plants and contributed to a rapid technology transfer to Russia.
New weapon systems were developed and put into production at the expense of consumer goods. On the eve of World War II the Red Army had more than twenty-three thousand tanks-six times more than Fascist Germany. Similar ratios applied for artillery, aircraft, navy vessels, and small arms. Substantial resources were materialized and frozen in the stockpiles of weapons. Nonetheless, World War II did not begin according to Stalin’s plans. The USSR was unprepared for Hitler’s invasion.
During the first period of war a substantial portion of the European territory was lost to Germany. During the second half of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, industrial facilities were relocated to the east (beyond the Volga river and the Urals) from European Russia, Central and Eastern Ukraine (including major industrial centers of Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk, Krivoy Rog, Mariupol and Nikopol, Donbass), and the industrial areas of Moscow and Leningrad; this relocation ranks among the most difficult organizational and human achievements of the Soviet Union during World War II. The industrial foundation laid between 1929 and 1940 proved sufficient for victory over Fascist Germany in World War II. See also: INDUSTRIALIZATION; INDUSTRIALIZATION, RAPID
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Nove, Alec. (1965). The Soviet Economy: An Introduction, rev. ed. New York: Praeger.
Any non-Slavic subject of the Russian Empire, such as Finns, Germans, or Armenians.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the term inorodtsy carried pejorative overtones. First used in a legislative project of 1798, the word was given a precise legal definition by a legal statute of 1822. Here it was used to refer to groups of Russian subjects for whom the fundamental laws of the Empire were deemed inappropriate and who therefore required a special, protected status. While under the protection of the state, they would be gradually “civilized,” becoming more like the settled Russian population. Initially applied to peoples living in Siberia, the category also came to include newly-annexed peoples of Middle Asia (Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Turkmen), some of whom had a long tradition of permanent settlement and high culture.
With the exception of the Jews, the inorodtsy were indigenous peoples who inhabited areas of Siberia and Central Asia. (Thus, the common translation of this term in English as “aliens” is misleading; “natives” might better convey what the term implied to Russian colonizers.) They included the Kyrgyz; the Samoyeds of Archangel province; the nomads of Stavropol province; the nomanic Kalmuks of Astrakhan and Stavropol provinces; and the Kyrgyz of the Internal Hordes of Middle Asia (the regions of Akmolin, Semipalatinsk, Semi-rech, and the territory beyond the Ural mountains).
The Statute on the Inorodtsy of 1822, associated with Mikhail Speransky’s enlightened administration of Siberia, sought to protect the traditional hunting and grazing areas of native peoples from encroachment by Russian settlers. The Statute placed all inorodtsy into one of three categories: settled, nomadic, and wandering hunter- gatherer-fishermen. Each category received special prerogatives and levels of protection thought appropriate for its level of culture and its economic pursuits. The inorodtsy were permitted local self-administration, which included police duties, administration of justice (based on customary law), and the collection of taxes in money or in kind, as appropriate. Administration was placed in the hand of the local elites, generally tribal elders and chieftains.
With a few exceptions, such as some groups of Buryats, inorodtsy were generally exempted from military service. The military reform of 1874 began to erode this privilege. A Bashkir cavalry squadron was created in Orenburg province in 1874, while in the 1880s a growing number of native peoples in Siberia were subject to some form of service. Some groups were permitted to substitute service with a monetary tax, while others were recruited on an individual basis, with the assurance that they would be assigned to specific regiments. An attempt, announced on June 25, 1916, to end the tradition of a general exemption from military service of many Middle Asian peoples and to draft
INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS
390,000 inorodtsy into the army for support duties, triggered a vast anticolonial revolt in Middle Asia, which was put down with great brutality.
Jews were included in the category of inorodtsy by a statute of 1835. This categorization was entirely anomalous. The general tendency of Russian legislation towards the Jews was to promote their sliyanie (merger) with the non-Jewish population, yet their designation as inorodtsy placed them in a special, unique category. All other inorodtsy received special privileges and exemptions as a result of this status, while for the Jews it was a vehicle for the imposition of liabilities. The inorodtsy of Siberia in particular were viewed as living at a lower cultural level, as followers of animistic, pagan belief systems. (Many of the inorodtsy of Middle Asia were Muslims.) The Jews, in contrast, were adherents of a “higher” religion. Most inorodtsy were in the eastern regions of the Empire; the Jews were resident in the Russian-Polish borderlands; indeed, they were largely barred from settlement in those areas where most inorodtsy were to be found. The most distinctive privileges of the inorodtsy were their own institutions of government, and exemption from military service; the Jews were made liable for military service in
