What Main Flaws or Shortcomings in Soviet Industrialization Policy Were Exposed During World War II

Due Saturday, February 20.  Write a 3-4 page paper on the Harrison article on the question, according to Harrison, what main flaws or shortcomings in Soviet industrialization policy were exposed during World War II?  What evidence and arguments does he present in support of his conclusions?

Soviet officials from that era in 1930 would insist that they entered in this agreement to buy time to prepare for an inevitable conflict with the Germans.

Nonetheless, during the period that agreement remained intact, the Soviets went out of their way to prove themselves dependable suppliers of oil and other natural resources to the Germans.

Again, the Soviets would claim that they were fully cognizant that the Nazis would attack at some point but they were gambling that they could delay the attack, calculating that they needed about a year before they would be prepared.

One of the factors that we need to take into consideration in looking at the broader question of how well Soviet polices of 1929-41 prepared the country for the years 1941-45 is the depth of the Soviet populations loyalty.

From the outset of the war, the Soviet government cast the fight in national rather than ideological terms.

State propaganda abandoned references to the Soviet Union as the citadel of the workers movement, presenting the conflict as the Great Patriotic War.

The Nazis employed scorched earth policies in vast territories they occupied and the Soviets consciously pursued policies that they knew would result in mass casualties.

In this paper I am trying to assess the interwar Soviet programs of industrialization and collectivization, and the associated creation of a new economic system, from the viewpoint of 1941-5.

These topics are well covered in many interesting readings. [1] Whatever may be believed to explain the disaster of German violence, the ultimate factor in Germanys defeat was the resources of the opposing alliances: the volume of ammunitions produced on each side, multiplied by the intensity of their use in combat. [2] The Second World War was a war of manufacturing. The attempt to implement forceful plans resulted in lost output and productive assets, the capacity was under-utilized, investment has been wasted. Fewer determined plans could have caused a variety of other outcomes characterized by industrial growth less than or equal to that actually achieved, combined with fewer social and economic pressures and higher morale of the populace.

Here the central, clear, yet still startling fact is that the Soviet Union fought the wars decisive battles with a capital stock no more than two-thirds the size of that already collected in 1940. One was the old-fashioned concentration of Soviet heavy and defense industries in the southern and western regions of the European USSR; this created a deep vulnerability to invasion from the west one which Soviet military and economic leaders were well aware of. The other factor which helps to explain the heavy impact of territorial loss upon Soviet defense and heavy industries in 1941-2 is that, after an initial opening up of the interior regions under the First Five-Year Plan, this policy was scarcely implemented in the prewar years; existing regional specializations were maintained, and much unique capacity in military engineering and metallurgy was formed in zones of future German occupation. It was expensive in terms of additional investment resources and a slower expansion of the resulting output, given the difficulties of capital construction and capacity operation in a remote, agrarian environment.