The First Soviet Five Year Plan

just jumping in here from the future before we get started with today's mega projects video look a lot of you have been suggesting things in the comments that i just don't think are quite mega enough for this channel so i am spinning them off to a brand new channel called appropriately side projects which i'm linking to below it covers stuff like secret soviet space weapons world war two's greatest airplanes history's lost treasures and the movement of london bridge from london to a random town in america stuff like that stuff that you know is a little bit more soft not quite as mega as the stuff we cover here but still a whole lot of fun new videos on that channel every day that we are not publishing a video here on mega projects so if you were thinking boy simon just doesn't make enough stuff well good news for you subscribe to side projects below and let's get into the video hello everybody welcome back to another brand new episode of mega projects i am your host simon as always there are no other hosts here sorry to disappoint you this is the first soviet five-year plan i looked this up on wikipedia i had no idea there were so many of these so if this one's popular expect many more also if it's unpopular and people really like it you know give me lots of love in the comments i'll probably make one anyway because or more anyway because i love praise anyway let's get in the first of many we are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries once said joseph stalin the man who ruled over the soviet union from the mid-20s until his death in 1953 not so much with simply an iron fist but rather a total maniacal control that cost the lives of millions of people we must make up this gap in 10 years either we do it or they will crush us he went on to add his vision to do this was the five year plan a hugely ambitious idea that called for the country to double its real national income over five years and treble investment with consumption per head to rise by two-thirds these were targets that few have ever attempted in such a short space of time ambitious doesn't really seem to cut it as the right word here the soviet leader presided over a period which included just about every extreme you can imagine the horrors of starvation during the famines caused by the forced agricultural collective came just a decade before what happened to the soviet citizens during world war ii and the eventual triumph of the red army stalingrad even to those who've never visited or who don't really know much about what happened the name just seems laced with pain and suffering the battle of stalingrad remains one of the bloodiest longest and largest battles that the world has ever known an estimated 2 million people died in or around the city that's more than the total number that currently lives in milan or barcelona it's only slightly more than the entire population of paris the chaotic nightmare of what happened between the 23rd of august 1942 and the 2nd of february 1943 will forever be remembered as one of the most appalling acts that humans have ever taken part in and while it would be a dark overstatement to suggest there was much of a winner that emerged the soviets not only held off hitler's vast army but eventually crushed it not too bad for a country 50 or 100 years behind the more advanced german nation the truth was that much had changed in the soviet union between the mid-20s and when hitler launched operation barbarossa in 1941 breaking his non-aggression pact with stalin and invading the ussr with over three million men the rapid industrialization collective farming and general modernization had transformed the soviet union in the years leading up to world war ii and it's doubtful such resistance could have been summoned had many of these changes not taken place but there was an awful cost to all of this yes the soviet union emerged stronger as a collective and as a country but the millions who died along the way are a very testament to the crazed drive for improvement which swept the ussr along this is a dark story but it's one that must be viewed evenly bolshevik leader vladimir lenin died in 1924 leaving a power struggle which eventually disgorged certain joseph stalin as communist party general secretary it was a position he would remain in for the rest of his life now you might imagine such a man would immediately get down to business but the early years of his reign perhaps as he bedded himself in experienced relatively liberal economics but the country faced some formidable problems perhaps the most significant was the serious economic downturn that had occurred since the bolshevik revolution of 1917. years of conflict followed by bad management and hyperinflation had left the young soviet union on really shaky ground the nation also began to experience a growing dissatisfaction among the peasantry the communist revolution had promised a more equal society but for those nearer at the bottom of that society things remained much the same lastly there was a growing fear that the soviet union would be attacked and this glorious experiment in socialism would come crashing down with other democratic nations zieger to see it fail the ussr had certainly begun to flex its muscles and some might say get involved in other nations business which had begun to rather irritate other countries there's no doubt that many countries would have been more than happy to see the soviet union fall flat on its face and so proved their doctrine to be completely wrong or unattainable but how many would have backed that up with war is debatable nevertheless the war scare of 1927 in which rumors of planned invasion circled through society caused panic across the soviet union and with it came the realization that the country was just hopelessly unprepared should such an invasion ever take place now let's remember this was the ussr and any slight cause was more than enough to paint a convenient propaganda picture one that would leave the soviet people with no doubt that radical industrialization was the only way forward that's not to say that industrialization wasn't needed but the timing and methods used to convince the people were dubious and that's really saying the least the first of 13 five-year plans that would eventually happen in the soviet union began in 1928. the goal was quite straightforward albeit insanely complicated the ussr would transition itself over five years from a weak backward agricultural state to an industrial powerhouse capable of taking on the world while the wording and ideas were often lofty and worthy the planning and execution was regularly ineffective the cornerstone of this first five-year plan was the rapid expansion of heavy industry even lenin shortly before his death said modern industry is the key to this transformation the time has come to construct our fatherland anew with the hands of machines what happened to soviet industry in less than five years was probably the most important era of industrialization that the nation will ever see and well there's nothing like an unrealistic target with fear of death if you fail to light a fire under your bottom the ussr set itself a target of a 350 percent increase in output by the end of the five-year plan it was these kinds of absurd targets that may have driven the nation on but ultimately led to chaos by 1933 the ussr had increased its heavy industry output by 50 percent which is still astonishingly high but a full 300 below what was actually planned 80 percent of total investment during the five-year plan was spent on improving heavy industry sometimes this took the shape of huge revamping operations on current factories but for others the soviets just simply built entirely new monstrously large factories as well as new cities totally from scratch we actually recently did an entire video on magnetogorsk which is probably the most famous example of these built cities this city was built to have a population that would work at a gargantuan steel plant nearby it was meant to sort of be this model industrial city a sort of socialist utopia but the opposite actually happened in the early days of magneto course were simply hellish with prisoners and hungry peasants forcibly relocated to construct a city that would go on to become one of the most polluted in modern russia so socialist utopia the stalingrad tractor plant also emerged in this era and quickly became the largest tractor manufacturing plant in the entire ussr tractors along with materials to be used in war they were a particular focus at the start of the five-year plan the tractor plant was built with the expertise of several foreign experts mostly from the united states and it cost in the region of 30 million about 450 million today as the soviet union went to war the factory seamlessly shifted to tank production and became one of the most important producers in the whole ussr soviet propaganda really came into its own during the first five-year plan much of it painted industry in the same way as war and effect which urged the soviet population on and sort of made them believe that they were part of something bigger words like fronts campaigns breakthroughs became common workers were urged to frantically help with the war effort but of course the soviet union was not at war and it wouldn't be at war for another decade but this didn't seem to matter them versus us mentality quickly emerged and those seen as being against the great plan were deemed to be traitors and we all know what happened to traitors in the soviet union it was not a good time but this plan was not simply about economics and industry it involved a large-scale reorganization of the soviet union where people lived and what they did for work it suddenly didn't really matter if the state wanted you to work for a factory whether you knew anything about the industry or not you would quickly find yourself breaking your back in some horrid soot-covered facility during this time the industrial workforce rose from 3.12 million in 1928 to 6.01 million at the start of 1933. just five years [Music] redirecting so many resources towards heavy industry was already putting a strain on many aspects of soviet society but it was in addition to the five-year plan in 1929 that caused unimaginable hardship a kolkaz was a type of collective farm that emerged in the soviet union after stalin decided to collectivise farming a year into the five-year plan if we completely remove the fact that this caused a famine that decimated parts of the soviet union you can kind of sort of maybe see what they were trying to do but in terms of human loss it was totally catastrophic stalin's plan called for vast amounts of farms across the soviet union to be collectivized meaning that they would give and i really can't think of another word other than that large portions of their produce animals or production just handed over to the state this was needed because of the vast numbers who were now heading to the industrial centers and who no doubt wouldn't be planting crops of their own hard-working factory folk needed to be fed and they needed to be fed well to keep production high by 1929 it'd become clear that food production just couldn't keep pace but this wasn't the first time a farming collective had actually been attempted in the ussr a land decree in 1917 had essentially banned private ownership of land but attempts to distribute food and crops more evenly failed horribly estate farms that were set up often floundered either due to poor management lack of motivation or just lack of expertise wealthier peasants who farmed were reluctant to make up the shortfall as you might expect while stockpiles in the countryside grew and grew people in the cities were going hungry to address the issue lenin established the new economic policy this was a program that allowed peasants to sell their produce to the state rather than simply handing it over and one that was far more capitalist than communist but it kept the country afloat the decision in 1929 to collectivize the farms was met with both resistance but also support often depending on which class of peasant you were from those at the top the kulaks resisted forcibly while the serednyak middle and bednak lower were more receptive as you might imagine while the participation in the collective system was technically optional to the villages and farms failure to comply normally led to horrific ramifications what happened to the kulak class during the first five-year plan and subsequent plans has come to be known as decoulacization the word genocide today is a deeply contested phase some have argued that what happened to the kulak class between 1929 and 1932 constitutes such an atrocity numbers of those who died from execution hunger or disease ranges from 500 000 to close to 5 million while an estimated 1.8 million were deported between 1930 and 1931 and all of this had come from the mouth of the man himself stalin had said now we have the opportunity to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks break their resistance eliminate them as a class and replace their production with the production of coalhouses and solvers i love how this is yeah yes totally voluntary but if you don't well you're gonna be subject to genocide voluntary the culax became the fall people to be blamed when things didn't go well the soviet propaganda machine painted them as selfish people looking to sabotage the grand ascension of the soviet union while stalin managed to achieve his goal of eliminating millions of people the farming collective showed barely any increase in food production a famine tore through kazakhstan between 1931 and 1933. the area had been one of the largest grain producers in the ussr but had opposed collectivization and slowly the screw had turned food quotas were set impossibly high a tactic to break the resolve of the people there are no official numbers of those who died from famine during the first five-year plan but estimates place it between six and seven million [Music] i know leading on from such horrific numbers to talk about successes might seem a bit heartless but in many ways that epitomized what was happening in the soviet union at the time it's just very little regard there for human life but there was progress on a state level certain sectors within the economy saw enormous growth capital goods goods used to produce other goods increased 158 consumer goods increased by 87 and total industrial output increased by 118 although as you remember heavy industry was much much lower these numbers may seem pretty meaningless but bear in mind germany after the fall of the berlin wall saw only 4.6 economic growth even china in the heyday of the late 1980s was only seeing 11.3 percent growth we could certainly debate what kind of benefits the average person gained from this kind of success and the answer is probably almost nothing but what it did do was establish the ussr as a global power president franklin d roosevelt officially recognized the soviet union in 1933 much of it on the back of the success stories that were coming out of the country the last success would not be felt for a decade in 1941 the soviet union went up against the best most technologically advanced war machine that the world had ever known the early stages went as many had expected as the nazis rolled quickly through the ussr but as the soviets dug themselves in organized better and unleashed the full might of their industrial and human power the germans were halted and then pushed back the harrowing defeat at stalingrad was one that they never recovered from and the heavy industries that had been put in place years before certainly proved their worth the many failures of the five-year plan are almost always associated with human tragedy the numbers of those who died of starvation who were killed or deported to bolster numbers in the cities they're difficult to imagine at least 23 million soviets moved to cities during this period with moscow alone seeing a population increase of nearly 60 percent and these were those who at least had a choice although in truth there were a few other options between 1929 and 1931 1.4 million peasants were deported into cities that's more people than currently live in britain's second largest city birmingham [Music] stalin's five-year plan ended after four years and three months with the targets apparently met i say apparently like that because i trust a soviet statistic about as far as i could throw joseph stalin but anyway things came to an end at the start of 1933 with the plan fulfilled to the extent of 93.7 if anything i'm just a little suspicious it was that low the five-year plan had been a time of chaos darkness and unimaginable growth it's almost impossible to separate the two which is inconvenient for us because humans love a good versus evil story the human toll is believed to be similar if not more than the number killed a decade later during the holocaust and it left scars on soviet society that took generations to heal and some which may never it was truly horrifying how it was all done but the soviet union that emerged in the first five-year plan was considerably stronger it didn't know it yet but that strength would soon be tested to nightmarish levels when a simple tractor factory and stalingrad began churning out tanks at a dizzying rate to help stop the german blitzkrieg the war that the soviet union had been preparing for for a decade had begun but that's where we end the video today the first of the five-year plans if you enjoyed this one if you'd like more five-year plans and for us to continue this story please do let us know in the comments below also i mean you watch this video to the end so thank you for doing that if you did like it smash that like button below and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 179,170

Rating: 4.9573002 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: bwi1w4uHTyo

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020