Gosplan

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR ECONOMIC PLAN OF THE USSR

1. STARTING POSITIONS

The XVth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party provided exhaustive politico-economic directives for the formulation of the Five-Year Economic Plan, starting from a general course toward industrialization of the USSR, toward a socialist reconstruction of the village, and toward overcoming the capitalist and consequently strengthening the socialist elements in the economic system of the country. The later plenums of the Central Committee of the Ail-Union Communist Party, on the one hand, and a series of governmental acts, on the other (a decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR concerning crop yields) have additionally developed and concretized the instructions of the XVth Congress concerning the ways of raising the productive forces of the country and the problems of economic construction during the coming period. It was the duty of the Gosplan of the USSR and of the entire system of planning organs to translate these general politico-economic orientations and directives into the language of concrete economic and technico-economic calculations and to transform them into a plan of economic construction for the coming five-year period. The present report on the Five-Year Economic Plan represents an attempt at a solution of this task.

2. ORGANIZATIONAL AND METHODOLOGICAL REMARKS

The proposed Five-Year Plan considerably exceeds the calculation of all previous projects with respect to the scale of projected growth of material production, of capital investments, and of qualitative indicators. This is based, on the one hand, on the newly accumulated experience of the initial years of the period of reconstruction, which has shown possibilities underestimated before, and, on the other, on some changes in the character and order of the work on the Five-Year Plan. In accordance with the directives of the XVth Congress about lending to the work on the Five-Year Plan a wider public character, and also for the purpose of a more thorough scientific expertise with regard to the more important elements of the plan, Gosplan conducted during the course of the work on the Five-Year Plan special conferences with the participation of the most prominent representatives in the science and practice of metallurgy and machine building, reconstruction of agriculture, reconstruction of transportation, chemical, lumber, and textile industries, small-scale industry, cooperative construction, growth of skilled labor force, and local economy.

Relying on these conferences, and also on the extensive work of a number of People’s Commissariats and, in particular, the Supreme Council of the National Economy and the People’s Commissariat of Communication, it proved to be possible to construct a sufficiently concrete program (with designation of objects, districts, and time periods) of the new construction, and also a program of reconstruction and rationalization of the critical branches of the economy, on which all the projected rates of quantitative and qualitative growth are based. From the methodological point of view, this provided the possibility of breaking away from the method of extrapolation to which we had inevitably to resort in the previous stages of perspective planning, and which led to the underestimation of the possible rates of our development and construction.

Along with that, the Gosplan conducted special conferences with the workers of the more important economic districts of the country, during which the real resources and possibilities of every district were weighed thoroughly, with the participation of local people themselves, both from the point of view of Ail-Union tasks allocated to the area and from that of its specific peculiarities and needs. The work of these district conferences makes it possible for the first time to present the most important elements of the Five-Year Plan by districts, thus revealing the general lines of the redistribution of productive forces among districts and the special tasks regarding the raising of backward districts particularly noted in the decisions of the XVth Congress.

Finally, in the work on the Five-Year Plan during the recent period we have succeeded in somewhat increasing the clarification of the series on national income, collectivization, energy balance of the country, etc.

The work on the Five-Year Plan has not been definitively completed at the present time and, therefore, a further exposition will require supplementary corrections. The main conclusions, however, will not undergo any essential changes as a result.

3. ON THE TWO VARIANTS OF THE PLAN

The Gosplan starts from the necessity of compiling the Five- Year Economic Plan in two variants. During an analysis of the problem of variants it is necessary to emphasize, very categorically, the unity of economic policy and economic program in both variants. The problems of industrialization and collectivization are determinative in both variants. The construction of the collectivized sector in agriculture has been projected on almost the same scale for both variants, with the greatest possible forcing of this matter in view of its particular importance. The distribution of national income of the population, in particular, in principle proceeds along the same lines in both variants. Finally, the program of the work on strengthening the defense capacity of the country is almost identical in both variants.

The difference between the initial and optimal variants—with unity of their economic policies—proceeds along the following lines. The starting variant takes into account:

(a) the possibility of partial crop failures during the five-year period;

(b) the present-day type of relations with the world economy, approximately (particularly in the sense of the growth of longterm credits—namely, a projected increase at the rate characteristic for recent years);

(c) a relatively less rapid progress in the realization of high qualitative objectives in economic construction in general and in agriculture in particular;

(d) under conditions of approximately the same defense program in both variants, a larger relative weight of the latter in the starting variant.

The optimal variant, on the contrary, postulates:

(a) the absence of any even moderately serious crop failure during the five-year period;

(b) a considerably greater scope of economic ties with the world economy by virtue of the presence of greater export resources in the country (complete realization of the decree of the Party’s Executive Committee concerning crop yields) as well as by virtue of a considerably more rapid growth of long-term foreign credits in the initial year of the Five-Year Plan;

(c) a sharp shift in the qualitative indicators of economic construction during the next two years (production costs, crop yields, etc.);

(d) a lower specific weight of expenditures for defense within the general economic system.

Thus the progress of our economic construction during the coming five-year period in accordance with one of these variants can be conditioned by a number of independent factors (failure of crops, insufficient long-term credits) as well as by the degree of our successes in the very difficult matter of realization of high qualitative tasks (production costs, crop yields). In accordance with this, the starting variant can be looked upon as a kind of ironclad minimum within the optimal variant, with unity in their economic programs. The discrepancy between them is fixed at, approximately, 20 per cent (with identity of a number of indicators), i.e., at a one-year period of development. In other words, the program (optimal), which under some conditions we can realize in five years, under other less favorable conditions (characteristic of the starting variant) will be stretched over approximately six years. The formulation of the Five-Year Economic Plan in two variants, even considering the difficulty of this problem, should secure great maneuverability in annual economic plans and a high preparedness for overcoming those enormous difficulties which lie on the way toward the realization of the five-year program of economic construction.

Piatiletnyi Plan narodno-khoziaistvennogo stroitel’stva SSSR (Five-Year Plan of economic construction of the USSR), Moscow, USSR Gosplan, 1929, pp. 9-12.