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How is this ‘riotous optimism’, in Alec Nove’s phrase, to be explained? Was it designed to mobilize available human resources—heedless of the real capabilities for reaching targets? This is an intriguing possibility, but not yet substantiated by concrete evidence. Or was this a political plan to provoke and discredit ‘Right Oppositionists’ (Nikolai Bukharin and others), who sought to scale down targets? It can be argued that Stalin exploited the ‘politics’ of the plan, but that the process of target inflation goes beyond such tactical manœuvres. The circumstantial should not be overlooked: with the onset of the Great Depression, the Five Year Plan had tremendous propagandistic value. Indeed, the Soviet regime expended much effort to demonstrate the contrast between general economic crisis in the capitalist world and the extraordinary feats of construction and industrial expansion in the Soviet Union. Technomania was a further impulse: the introduction of new mechanized technology, much of it imported from the West, promised bountiful, even unimaginable returns.

But the ‘over-ambitious’ Five-Year Plan (Holland Hunter), and in a larger sense the entire Stalin revolution, derived from the merger of two hitherto discrete elements within Bolshevism. One was Prometheanism, the belief that collective human effort could accomplish transformative miracles. The other was revolutionary maximalism, a psychology of egalitarianism, expropriation, even a belief in the creative role of violence. The former had its roots in nineteenth-century machine worship; the latter in the voluntarist strain of populists of the 1870s and Bolsheviks (in contrast to Mensheviks) after the turn of the century. Together, they comprised a new political culture, one that sought to ‘catch up to and overtake’ the advanced capitalist countries but, in its very haste, reproduced some elements of backward Russia.

Promoted from the top and exalted by the emerging cult of Stalin, the new political culture set the tone for industrialization and a good deal else. As Moshe Lewin has noted, ‘the readiness not to bother about cost, not being too squeamish about means, the ability to press hard on institutions and people—this was the style and the temperament of those Stalinists, for whom most old guard Bolsheviks were by now too European and too “liberal”’. Pressed by V. M. Molotov, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, L. M. Kaganovich, and other Politburo members who fanned out across the country on trouble-shooting missions, the directors of industrial enterprises and far-flung construction sites resorted to all manner of stratagems in their dealings with supply agencies and in turn pressed hard on their subordinates. Provincial (obkom) party secretaries experienced the same sort of pressure and likewise learned to deflect it downwards. As a result, Stalin concentrated power at the top even as he diffused responsibility downward through thousands of vintiki (little screws) who had their own strategies for survival.

Industrialization was analogous to a gigantic military campaign—with recruitment levies, mobilizations, ‘fronts’ (Donbas coal, the Dneprstroi dam, Magnitogorsk, the Stalingrad Tractor Factory), ‘light cavalry raids’ of the Komsomol against bureaucratic practices, heroic ‘shock troops of labour’ thrown into the breach, and victories (mostly symbolic) and frequent setbacks. In this frenzied atmosphere, replete with threats, verbal abuse, and recrimination, Angst was combined with enthusiasm, individual opportunism with collective effort. The result was a constant state of emergency, ubiquitous shortage, and near total chaos.

Yet, by 1932 the regime could boast of some real achievements. Gross industrial production, measured in 1926–7 roubles, rose from 18.3 milliards to 43.3 milliards, actually surpassing the optimal plan. Producers’ goods, valued at 6.0 milliards in 1927–8, reached 23.1 milliards in 1932 compared to a projected 18.1 milliards, and within that category, the value of machinery more than quadrupled. Even taking into account considerable statistical inflation (i.e. the overpricing of machinery), these were impressive results. Less impressive were the rise in consumer goods production—from 12.3 milliard to 20.2 milliard roubles—and significant shortfalls in the output of coal, electricity, and steel. Total employment in construction, transportation, and industry did surpass the plan, increasing from 11.3 million to 22.8 million people.

The War against the Peasants