Gosplan

PREFACE TO THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN OF THE USSR

The Presidium of the Gosplan begins the publication of the Five-Year Economic Plan of the USSR for the period 1928/291932/33 after the plan has been subjected to a detailed discussion at the congress of planning organs and in the government and after the Five-Year Plan (in its optimal variant) has been approved, in principle, by the government as a program of the economic construction for the coming five-year period. The Presidium of the Gosplan considers it necessary to emphasize some most general conclusions reached during the course of the discussion on the Five-Year Plan.

First of all, a complete unity of the entire planning front of the country in the evaluation of the proposed project of the perspective plan should be noted. All basic problems of the Five-Year Plan (the problem of rates of growth and proportions of economic development, of the scale and structure of capital investments, of the character of the program of construction, of the socio-economic aspect of the plan, etc.) have, in principle, received unanimous approval. This unity in the evaluation of the Five-Year Plan could be reached only on the basis of a correct incorporation of the directive of the XVth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party and of the later plenums of the Central Committee concerning the rise in the productive forces along the way toward industrialization of the country, the socialist reconstruction of the village, and the overcoming of the capitalist and consequent strengthening of the socialist elements in the economy of the country. The Five-Year Economic Plan is being submitted for an examination by the XVIth Party Conference and the Vth All-Union Congress of Soviets as a plan of large projects and of an extended socialist attack.

The second thing stressed during the entire period of the discussion on the Five-Year Plan was the triumph of the concept of massive development of electricity as a basis of planned reconstruction. The “energy” orientation of the plan met with a warm response and a full acknowledgment on the part of the workers on the economic front as well as on the part of wide circles of the Soviet public. This secures a continuity of the Five-Year Economic Plan with the GOELRO Plan of electrification which at one time was called by V. I. Lenin the second program of the Party.

The third very important peculiarity of the discussion on the Five-Year Economic Plan was the unity in the evaluation of the district division of labor in the USSR for the coming historical period. For the first time a five-year plan has been presented for discussion by the country in the form of a detailed analysis on the district level, with a thorough elucidation of inter-district problems of economic construction. Everybody knows how varied the economy of the Soviet Union is and what complex problems have to be solved in our economic construction with regard to raising backward economic districts and national republics oppressed under tsarism. A complete unity concerning this problem, achieved jointly with the representatives of all republics and economic districts, attests to the fact that the socialist plan of economic construction of the country has been compiled in correspondence with the nationality policy of the Soviet authorities and on the basis of a correct unification of the interests of the entire Soviet Union with the interests of the republics and regions composing it.

The interest in the Five-Year Plan shown by the scientific organizations and the workers of science should be particularly noted. A socialist plan should and can be a scientific plan. The formulation of a socialist plan of the economy relies on the work of an extensive system of scientific organizations and of a wide cadre of scientific workers. But, on the other hand, a plan of construction of a socialist economy opens up unlimited possibilities for the scientific thought and for the workers of science to realize all that is fruitful, advanced, and revolutionary in all the critical areas of knowledge.

Finally, the unity of the planning front of the country in the evaluation of the Five-Year Plan is extremely important from the point of view of the current conjuncture. The Five-Year Economic Plan has to be examined and approved in the conditions of considerable current difficulties. Under the influence of these current difficulties some people are inclined to doubt the expediency of approving a perspective plan at the present moment. Our opponents are crying unceasingly about the notorious contradiction between the scope of construction and production tasks of the Five-Year Plan and the character of current difficulties. Let them recall how many cries there were at one time about the contradiction between the GOELRO Plan and the conditions of the productive forces and the economic situation of the country in 1920. However, an overcoming of current difficulties, which are those of a critical stage in the economic construction of the USSR, can be achieved only by means of an inexorable realization of the proposed plan of large projects and an extended socialist attack.

Piatiletnyi Plan narodno-khoziaistvennogo stroitel’stva SSSR (Five-Year Plan of economic construction of the USSR), Moscow, USSR Gosplan, 3rd ed., 1929, pp. 6-8.