INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRY OF THE USSR IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS WITHIN THE “COORDINATES” OF THE EPOCH OF THE WORLD WARS
G.G. Popov
Moscow Technological Institute, 38A, Leninsky str., Moscow, 119334, Russia
Keywords: military industry of USSR, Second World War, tank industry, aircraft industry, First five-year plan, Stalin’s regime, USSR’s economy in 1930s, preparing to war, military technologies
Abstract
The USSR example in the First five-year period allows us to trace the relationship between ideology, political system and restrictions on military production. In the USSR during the First five-year period the dynamics of the defense industry development was lower than in the Russian Empire on a number of points. At the beginning of the First five-year plan in terms of military production (except for tanks), the Soviet Union lagged behind Italy of the period of its participation in the First World War. So, at the end of the First five years the Soviet Union military industry returned to the tendencies of the First world war. Taking into account the fact, that the Russian war industry had been functioning under conditions of labor shortage in 1914-1917, whereas the USSR hadn’t such limitation in the early 1930s, we should conclude, that the USSR planned economy efficiency during the First five-year period was even lower than in the Russian economy of 1916, when there was a maximum mobilization of the economy in the First World War. In this regard, the development of the USSR military industry in First five-year plan should be regarded as a process of overcoming the consequences of the Civil War crisis, but not surmounting underdevelopment of Russia in general. Although we couldn’t say that Russia was on the same level with the Western powers during the First World War. Still, the backwardness of the Russian Empire was somewhat exaggerated by the Bolshevik propaganda, as well as achievements of the First five-year plan. The author relies on ideas of a work by P. Gatvell and M. Harrison, which compares the economies of the Russian Empire during the First World War and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The author criticizes the methodological approach by P. Gatvell and M. Harrison, which does not take into account the foreign policy’s factor within different global conflicts, but at the same time, the author recognizes the high scientific importance of a conceptual idea of comparing two different systems that existed in similar historical periods in the territory of Russia.
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