Defending Russia against the West meant embarking on a program of rapid industrialization. The vehicles for this program were the Five-Year Plans, the first of which went into effect in 1928. The first Five-Year Plan (19281932) called for a quadrupling of heavy industry and an increase in the output of consumer goods. In order to fulfill the plan, the Communist Party imposed strict controls over the Soviet economy. Before the plan's implementation, managers of state-owned enterprises produced for the marketplace as they saw fit. Afterwards, managers produced what the state planning commission told them to produce. Trade unions were transformed from organizations that protected work ers into glorified cheerleading squads that promoted productivity. The small factories and businesses that had survived the first decade of communism were nationalized, so that the state became virtually the only employer in the Soviet Union. Any resistance to these plans by workers.....
This is a free excerpt of 147 words. This section contains 293 words. This
article contains 55,869 words (approx. 186 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Soviet Communism Access Pass.
