On the industrial front, Stalin also ordered a complete about change in policy. The Stalin-Bukharin policy of slow, cautious growth of industry was abandoned. Industrialisation was now placed on the order of the day. Industrial growth was to be achieved at breakneck speed. In December 1929, a Congress of ‘shock brigades’ adopted a call to fulfil the Five-Year Plan in four years. On 4 February 1931 Stalin spoke of fulfilling the plan “in three years in all the basic, decisive branches of industry”. In the same speech, he declared: “It is sometimes asked whether it is possible to slow down the tempo somewhat, to put a check on the movement. No, comrades, it is not possible. The tempo must not be reduced! On the contrary, we must increase it…” As Trotsky said: “All the old criteria were turned upside down; minuses and pluses changed place.” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 36.)
This dramatic shift to the left created confusion amongst a layer of the scattered forces of the Left Opposition. Since 1928 the leading group of the Opposition had been separated through exile from one another by enormous distances. A mood of conciliation and capitulation developed amongst a layer of the former Oppositionists. First of all, Zinoviev and Kamenev recanted their ‘errors’, then others, like Radek and Preobrazhensky, followed suit. Trotsky condemned these actions as a betrayal, as they could not further the aims of reforming the Party or the Soviet Union. Commenting on these capitulations, he observed: “Revolution is a mighty devourer of people.” A layer had been worn out in the stormy events of the previous decade and more. Trotsky stood out firmly against this mood: “A capitulation of the Opposition would mean: (a) condemning ourselves to a Zinovievist vegetable existence – nature knows no more shameful state, and (b) an immediate swerving of the Stalinists to the right.” (Trotsky, Writings 1929, p. 136.) In any case, this capitulation of former Oppositionists did not save them. Most were framed and shot by Stalin as ‘enemies of the Soviet Union’ between 1936 and 1938.
In assessing what had happened, Trotsky commented:
The bureaucracy conquered something more than the Left Opposition. It conquered the Bolshevik Party. It defeated the programme of Lenin… not with ideas and arguments, but with its own social weight. The leaden rump of the bureaucracy outweighed the head of the revolution. That is the secret of the Soviet’s Thermidor. (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 94.)
With supreme confidence in the working class, he concluded:
We regret nothing and repudiate nothing. We are living with the same ideas and attitudes that moved us in the days of October 1917. We can see beyond these temporary difficulties. No matter how much the river bends, it flows to the ocean. (Trotsky, Writings 1929, p. 369.)
On 5 September 1929, the principle of one-man management was introduced. The factory party organisation was told not to interfere with the director’s powers whereas the trade unions were to be “the energetic organisers of production activity and of the initiative of the labouring masses”. A series of decrees between 1930 and 1933 punished absenteeism with the sack and eviction from factory housing. On 21 November 1931, the working-week was lengthened, which eliminated Sunday as a regular day of rest. Resources were channelled away from consumption to investment in heavy industry. Those who stood against the wildly exaggerated norms of production were denounced as Menshevik saboteurs. At the end of 1930 and early in 1931 two big trials – based upon false confessions – were held concerning economic sabotage and wrecking activities. A large number were shot.
The new ultra-left zig-zag now led to economic adventurism, and a drive in the 1930s to build ‘communism’ within the confines of the USSR. Draconian methods were used to catch up as rapidly as possible with the West. Stalin declared: “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years.” This adventurist aim wrought havoc in the economy.
In January 1931, Stalin declared that the first Five-Year Plan had been completed in four years and three months. But the dash for growth hit deep crisis in 1933, as limits and bottlenecks were encountered throughout the economy. Agricultural production had reached its lowest point. Living standards suffered as a consequence. By 1934 things began to partially recover. Despite this dislocation, during the first Five-Year Plan about 1,500 big enterprises had been constructed. These included the Dneproges, the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk metallurgical complexes, the Ural machine factory, the Rostov agricultural-machinery plant, tractor factories at Chelyabinsk, Stalingrad, and Kharkov, car factories in Moscow and Sormovo, the Ural chemical works, the Kramatorsk factory of heavy machinery, and so on.
“Whatever the validity of certain official claims,” says Alec Nove, “it remains true beyond question that the second Five-Year Plan period was one of impressive achievement.” (Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, p. 231.) In 1932, 338 million roubles’ worth of machine tools were imported, which represented 78 per cent of all machine tools installed that year. By 1937, however, all the basic tools of industrialisation, and of arms production, were made in the Soviet Union. The economic growth between 1935-36 was considerable. In 1934 gross industrial output rose by 19 per cent, in 1935 by 23 per cent, and in 1936 by 29 per cent. Agricultural production also steadily recovered.
New sectors of industry were established that never existed before, such as machine tools, car and tractor manufacturing, a chemical industry, motor works, aircraft factories, production of turbines and generators, high grade steel, ferrous alloys, synthetic rubber, artificial fibres, nitrogen, and other products. The construction of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of railroad and canals were undertaken. The eastern part of the country became the second metallurgical and oil centre of Soviet industry. Hundreds of new cities and settlements were founded. In the following years, while the capitalist world was paralysed by the worst slump in history, the USSR took giant strides forward.
The Stalin regime brought in piecework, and its corollary, the shock brigades of the Stakhanovite movement to increase the productivity of labour. New higher work norms were introduced across the board. In early 1936, norms were sharply increased by 30-40 per cent in engineering, 34 per cent in chemicals, 51 per cent in electricity generation, 26 per cent in coal mining, and 25-29 per cent in oil production. At the same time the Stalin regime proclaimed the “final and irrevocable triumph of socialism”. Piecework, described by Marx as “the most suitable to capitalistic methods of production”, was hailed as socialist piecework! It was applied in its most naked form and provoked bitter resentment in the Russian working class.
State ownership of the means of production does not turn manure into gold, and does not surround with a halo of sanctity the sweat-shop system, which wears out the greatest of all productive forces: man. As to the preparation of a ‘transition from socialism to communism’ that will begin at the exactly opposite end – not with the introduction of piecework payment, but its abolition as a relic of barbarism. (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, pp. 82-3.)
Only during the second Five-Year Plan did real wages begin to rise. Bread rationing was abolished from 1 January 1935, and by October, the rationing of meat, fats, fish, sugar, and potatoes was also abandoned. In January 1936, rationing of industrial products for general consumption was also dropped. Money relations – after a period of chronic inflation – were restored. Also in 1935, the system of planned distribution gave way to trade. Bread and flour prices were reduced. In 1937, the average price of all non-food items fell by 3.8 per cent. According to Malafeyev, the retail price index rose by 80 per cent between 1932-37, while average wages rose by 113 per cent. Allowing for services, he concludes that real wages rose in this period by “at least 20 per cent”.
Alec Nove believes the increase was even greater given the greater availability of goods and better trading arrangements. Nevertheless, although life improved it was still very grim as real wages still trailed below the level of 1928. The comments of Stalin, “life has become easier, life has become happier, and when life is happy then work goes fast”, were an obviously exaggerated view of Soviet life. However, in marked contrast to the capitalist West, unemployment was abolished. In fact, the economic advance gave rise to a shortage of labour, which was overcome by millions of peasants entering Russian industry.