Joseph Stalin: “Results of the First Five-year Plan”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Stalin's report explains the First Five-year Plan's essence and the reasoning for its implementation, including the desire to transform the Soviet Union from a backward economy to an economy superior to that of capitalist countries. Other needs included a sound foundation for the Soviet regime and prevention of the future reemergence of capitalism. Stalin states that the Communist Party had openly acknowledged the sacrifices that would be required to implement a plan centered on heavy industry that relied solely on internal resources, openly criticizing the indebtedness and international plundering that he felt fueled earlier Western capitalist industrialization. Other goals included agricultural collectivization and technological development. The plan's role as a propaganda tool meant that Stalin emphasized successes, downplayed negative aspects, and counteracted criticisms.

One section of Stalin's report is devoted to the plan's successes in improving the material conditions of the country's workers and peasants despite the state's inability to meet all of their material needs. Here he notes that unemployment and its accompanying uncertainty about the future have been eliminated among workers, while their numbers in large-scale industry have doubled and their average wages and national incomes have risen. Stalin also comments on the increases in social insurance funding and public catering facilities. Among peasants, he emphasizes the success of agricultural collectivization, the destruction of the old class of wealthy peasants known as kulaks, and the elimination of peasant impoverishment.

Stalin emphasizes the international aspect of these achievements through his statistical comparisons with the material conditions of industrial and agricultural workers in capitalist countries, who suffer from unemployment, low wages, lack of sufficient social funding, and numerous agricultural crises. He does not detail the harsh discipline and poor conditions endured by most Soviet workers and peasants, including such issues as relocation to labor camps, low wages, lack of consumer goods, and poor housing, education, and health care.

Next, Stalin emphasizes the First Five-year Plan's results in terms of the ongoing struggle between the Communist Party and remnants of the older classes who resisted the implementation of Communism. Elements of these classes continued to infiltrate workplaces, collectives, and the Communist Party itself. Stalin states that although a classless and stateless society is the ultimate goal, the intensification of the ongoing class struggle and strengthening of Soviet state government are necessary middle steps. The Soviet system and law must protect public property as the foundation of Socialism, just as capitalists protect private property as the sacred and inviolable foundation of their system. Stalin uses the need for revolutionary vigilance to justify the implementation of a totalitarian government not afraid to purge itself of internal enemies.

Stalin correctly assesses that the plan had numerous successes, including setting the Soviet Union on the path to becoming a modern global industrial power capable of international defense. While collectivization did result in improved agricultural mechanization and efficiency, it proved less successful than industrialization. Stalin also fails to concede that many of his claims of success in exceeding plan goals were based on inflated statistics formed out of fear of reprisal for failure. Stalin credits the plan's success to the hard work and support of workers and collective farmers as well as engineers and technical workers, the Communist Party and Soviet government's strong leadership, and the merits of the Soviet economic system.

In both his opening and concluding sections, Stalin highlights the international significance of the plan's successes, stating that the achievements vindicated Vladimir Lenin's earlier statements that the slow and steady implementation of Soviet Socialism would inspire the global proletariat. He also emphasized that the plan's successes repudiated bourgeois capitalist beliefs and fueled their fears of worldwide proletarian revolutions. Stalin clearly acknowledges that the success of the First Five-year Plan did not eliminate all problems from the Soviet economy and society, but he downplayed their importance in the face of gaining the worldwide admiration of the working classes and refuting bourgeois claims that the plan's goals were utopian and not attainable.