rather than low estimates of the Second World War losses. Significantly, the ratio of males to females among the peoples of the U.S.S.R. in 1959 stood at 45 per cent males to 55 per cent females.
Material losses were similarly enormous. In addition to the destruction suffered in the fighting, huge areas of the country were devastated - frequently more than once - at the hands of the retreating Red Army or the withdrawing Germans. The Red Army followed the scorched-earth policy, trying to destroy all that could be of military value to the enemy. The Nazis, when they were forced to abandon Soviet territory, attempted to demolish everything, and often did so with remarkable thoroughness. For example, they both flooded and wrecked mines and developed special devices to blow up railroad tracks. Much of the Soviet Union became an utter wasteland. According to official figures - probably somewhat exaggerated as all such Soviet figures tend to be - Soviet material losses in the war included the total or partial destruction of 1,700 towns, 70,000 villages, 6,000,000 buildings, 84,000 schools, 43,000 libraries, 31,000 factories, and 1,300 bridges. Also demolished were 98,000 kolkhozes and 1,876 sovkhozes. The Soviet economy lost 137,000 tractors and 49,000 combine-harvesters, as well as 7,000,000 horses, 17,000,000 head of cattle, 20,000,000 hogs, and 27,000,000 sheep and goats. Soviet authorities estimated the destruction in the U.S.S.R. at half the total material devastation in Europe during the Second World War. It may have also amounted to two-thirds of the reproducible wealth of occupied Soviet areas and one-quarter of the reproducible wealth of the Soviet Union.
The war affected Soviet Russia in other ways as well. It led to a strong upsurge of patriotism and nationalism, promoted by the Communist government itself which did all it could to mobilize the people for supreme effort and sacrifice. The army acquired new prominence and prestige, whereas from the time of the Civil War it had been kept in the background in the Soviet state. Religion, as already mentioned, profited from a more tolerant attitude on the part of authorities. In addition, a striking religious
revival developed in German-occupied territory. While the Soviet government maintained control over the people, in certain respects it relaxed somewhat its iron grip. Many Soviet citizens apparently felt more free than before the war. In particular, some kolkhozes simply collapsed, the peasants dividing the land and farming it in private. On the whole, because of lessened controls and a great demand for food, many peasants improved their position during the war years. In the German zone of occupation the people immediately disbanded the collectives. The Nazis, however, later in part reintroduced them as useful devices to control peasants and obtain their produce. The war also led to closer and friendlier relations with Western allies and made widespread contacts of the Soviet and the non-Soviet world inevitable. Moreover, millions of Soviet citizens, prisoners of war, deportees, escapees, and victorious Red Army soldiers, had their first look at life outside Soviet borders. Other millions, the inhabitants of the Baltic countries, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina, brought up under alien systems and in different circumstances, were joined to the Soviet Union.
Another obvious result of the Second World War was the great rise in the Soviet position and importance in the world. The U.S.S.R. came to dominate eastern Europe, except for Greece, and much of central Europe. Barring the Allied expeditionary forces, it had no military rival on the entire continent. The international Communist movement, which had reached its nadir with the Soviet-German treaty and Hitler's victory in the west, was experiencing a veritable renaissance. After the German attack on the U.S.S.R., Communists had played major roles in numerous resistance movements, and they emerged as a great political force in many European countries, including such important Western states as France and Italy. With the total defeat and unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, the earlier defeat of Italy, and the collapse of France, only exhausted Great Britain and the United States remained as major obstacles to Soviet ambition in the whole wide world.
In a sense, Stalin and the Politburo had their postwar policy cut out for them. They had to rebuild the Soviet Union and to continue the industrial and general economic advance. They had to reimpose a full measure of socialism on the recalcitrant peasant, and to supervise and control closely such non-Marxist sources of inspiration and belief as religion and nationalism. They had to combat the 'contamination' that had come to their country from the non-Soviet world, and they had to make all their people, including the inhabitants of the newly acquired territories, into good Soviet citizens. They had to maintain complete control over the army. They had to exploit the new position of the U.S.S.R. and the new, sweeping opportunities open to the Soviet Union and international communism in the
postwar world. Those numerous observers who were surprised by the course of Soviet politics at home and abroad from 1945 until Stalin's death in the spring of 1953 for the most part either had altogether failed to understand the nature of the Soviet system or believed that it had undergone a fundamental change during the Second World War.
To repair war damage and resume the economic advance, Stalin and the Politburo resorted, characteristically, to a five-year plan, and indeed to a sequence of such plans. The Fourth Five-Year Plan, which lasted from
1946 to 1950 and was proclaimed overfulfilled in four years and three months, was cut out of the same cloth as its predecessors. It stressed heavy industry, which absorbed some 85 per cent of the total investment, particularly emphasizing the production of coal, electrical power, iron, steel, timber, cement, agricultural machinery, and trucks. The demobilization of more than ten million men provided the needed additional manpower, for the total number of workers and employees had declined from 31 million in 1940 to 19 million in 1943. The rebuilding of devastated towns and villages, which had begun as soon as the Germans had left, gathered momentum after the inauguration of the Plan. But the Fourth Five-Year Plan aimed at more than restoration: Russian industry, especially heavy industry, was supposed to achieve new heights of production, while labor productivity was to rise 36 per cent, based on an increase in the amount of capital per worker of about 50 per cent. As usual, every effort was made to force the Soviet people to work hard. A financial reform of December
1947 virtually wiped out wartime savings by requiring Soviet citizens to exchange the money they had for a new currency at the rate of ten to one. Piece work and bonuses received added emphasis. Official retail prices went up, although the concurrent abolition of rationing and of certain other forms of distribution alleviated somewhat the hardships of the consumer. Foreign economists noted a certain improvement in the urban standard of living as well as a redistribution of real income within the urban population, primarily against the poorer groups.
The Fourth Five-Year Plan obtained a great boost from reparations and other payments collected from defeated Germany and its allies. In 1947, for example, three-fourths of Soviet imports came from eastern Europe and the Soviet zone of Germany, that is, from the area dominated by Red military might. The total value of Soviet 'political' imports, including reparations, especially favorable trade provisions, and other economic arrangements, as well as resources spent by different countries for the support of Red Army troops stationed in those countries, has been estimated at the extraordinary figure of over twenty billion dollars. Some reparations
were made in the form of complete factories that were dismantled, transported to the Soviet Union, and reassembled there.
In the end the Plan could well be considered a success in industry, much like its predecessors, in spite of the frequently inferior quality of products and uneven results, which included large overfulfillments and underfulfillments. While industry was rebuilt and even expanded in Ukraine and other western areas, the Plan marked a further industrial shift east, which grew in relative economic importance compared to the prewar period. By mobilizing resources the Soviet Union managed to maintain during the Fourth and Fifth Five-Year Plans the very high annual industrial growth rate characteristic of the first three plans and estimated by Western economists at some 12 to 14 per cent on the average - a figure composed of much higher rates in the late forties and much lower in the early fifties. The Fifth Five-Year Plan lasted from 1951 to 1955 and thus continued beyond Stalin's rule. Similar to all the others in nature and accomplishments, it apparently made great advances in such complex fields as aviation and armament industries and atomic energy. Its completed projects included the Volga-Don canal.
Agriculture, as usual, formed an essential aspect of the plans and, again as usual, proved particularly difficult to manage successfully. The war, to repeat, produced sweeping destruction, a further sharp decline in the already insufficient supply of domestic animals, and at the same time a breakdown of discipline in many kolkhozes, where members proceeded to divide the land and farm it individually or at least to expand their private plots at the expense of the collective. Discipline was soon restored. By September 1, 1947, about fourteen million acres had been taken away from the private holdings of members of collectives as exceeding the permissible norm. Moreover,
