Five Year Plans

Question 1

What were the dates of the first Five Year Plan?

Answer 1

October 1928 - December 1932

Question 2

What were the dates of the second Five Year Plan?

Answer 2

January 1933 - December 1937

Question 3

What were the dates of the third Five Year Plan?

Answer 3

January 1938 - June 1941

Question 4

What were the dates of the fourth Five Year Plan?

Answer 4

January 1946 - December 1950

Question 5

What were the dates of the fifth Five Year Plan?

Answer 5

January 1951 - December 1955

Question 6

What was GOSPLAN?

Answer 6

State planning committee established in February 1921, it was responsible for economic planning in the Soviet Union during the NEP. It set up control figures to monitor the production of each industry. Under the FYPs these control figures became the targets for industrial growth.

Question 7

What were the political reasons for introducing the Five Year Plans?

Answer 7

• Having won the leadership struggle there is evidence to suggest that Stalin was no longer content to be seen as Lenin’s pupil. On his fiftieth Birthday in 1929, Stalin gave a speech about Lenin’s mistakes.
• Stalin stated that Lenin’s Russia, the Russia of the NEP, was over, and ‘Stalin’s Russia’ was beginning.

Question 8

What were the economic reasons for introducing the Five Year Plans?

Answer 8

• Improvements in crude oil and coal still left Russia significantly behind Germany, France and other Western nations.
• Stalin was concerned that Russia would be unable to defend itself against capitalist nations in the event of war. In order to repel attacks, Russia would need to develop iron, steel, oil and coal industries on a grand scale, because these were the industries necessary for modern warfare.
• The amount of iron, steel and copper produced under the NEP never exceeded the amount produced in the last years of tsardom.
• The first FYP was introduced because of the NEP’s failure to industrialise Russia.

Question 9

What were the ideological reasons for introducing the Five Year Plans?

Answer 9

• Stalin set the agenda: “In ten years at the most we must make good the distance which separates us from the advanced capitalist nations”.
• Stalin believed that socialism was only possible in a highly advanced, industrialised nation.
• Stalin intended to replace the ‘bourgeois specialists’ who managed industry during the NEP with ‘Red specialists’ who were educated by the Communist government and came form the working classes.