the First 5 Year Plan

Question 1

What was the aim of the first 5-year plan?

Answer 1

ensure Russia caught up with West within 15 years

Question 2

What was Gosplan?

Answer 2

Organisation responsible for economic planning in Stalin’s Russia

Question 3

What did the first 5-year Plan focus on?

Answer 3

heavy industry - coal, oil, iron, steel

Question 4

Why did the first 5-year plan focus on heavy industry?

Answer 4

• industries produced raw materials needed for future economic development and rearmament
• Russian workers little experience of industry - better suited to simple tasks in heavy industry

Question 5

What were the 2 main successes of the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 5

• Production

- Social Mobility

Question 6

How was production a success in the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 6

- economy increased 14%/ year
Between 1928-32:
- iron production 3.3. - 6.2
- Steel production 4.0 - 5.9
- Coal production 35.4 - 64.3
- Oil production - 11.7 - 21.4

Question 7

How was social mobility a success in the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 7

• urban population trebled during 30’s
• Promotions available for experienced workers
• Bourgeois specialists replaced by 150,000 red specialists
• gov. invested in technical education
• workers encouraged to attend Uni. courses

Question 8

What are bourgeois specialists?

Answer 8

Ran industry during NEP

Question 9

What are red specialists?

Answer 9

members of working class educated and given positions of responsibility within Russian industry

Question 10

What were the 4 main failures of the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 10

• Quantity and Quality
• Living Standards
• Black Market
• Slave Labour

Question 11

Why was the quantity and quality of production a failure during the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 11

• production increased
• plan focused on quantity - not quality
• much of what was produced useless - terrible quality
• focus on quantity - pressures to meet targets - caused lying on extent of production

Question 12

Why were living standards a failure during the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 12

• Stalin introduced 7 day week, longer working hours
• lateness, striking, breaking industrial equipment banned
• consumer goods very scarce - heavy industry prioritised

Question 13

How did the Black Market develop during the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 13

• objective of First 5-Year Plan to abolish free market

- scarcity of consumer goods led to black market development

Question 14

How did the slave labour develop during the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 14

• most success of F5YP due to slave labour

- 40’000 slaves used to build Magnitogorsk (industrial town)