{"id":4920,"date":"2015-02-17T19:40:44","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T00:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/?p=4920"},"modified":"2016-02-01T14:14:46","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T19:14:46","slug":"five-cheers-for-five-year-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2015\/02\/17\/five-cheers-for-five-year-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Cheers for Five Year Plans?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When collectivization started, it opened a new chapter in Soviet economics, while closing another. \u00a0With the ending of the NEP\u00a0that attempted to use the private sector to bring Russia away from its perceived ‘backwardness’, the Five Year Plans were implemented to achieve the same goal. \u00a0However, as Lewin in\u00a0On Soviet Industrialization<\/em> describes, it was at great cost.<\/p>\n

Lewin begins by establishing that he declares the NEP to be too weak and did not encompass enough of the economy to be successful. \u00a0He states that the “NEP showed signs of not coping”, which could eventually lead to an economic crisis (273). \u00a0Unfortately, as Lewin continues, it is clear that the Five Year Plans were not better, possibly even worse. \u00a0Beginning with the first plan that ended a year early which plunged the entire economy into chaos, it was unclear what the future of the system was going to be. \u00a0Since there was no incentive for workers to be productive, unlike in the NEP, the end of quarters always became mad dashes for quotas and manipulation of books became rampant. \u00a0Lewin attributes this to the command system, where there were simply too many superiors making too many demands causing resources to be stretched too thin or not to be created at all. \u00a0 \u00a0Lewin concludes that this ruined “initiative from below” (283), with too many bureaucratic layers and leaders with self-interests.<\/p>\n

The Five Year Plans quickly enveloped the entire economic system, where so many citizens had to sacrifice so little. \u00a0This is an economic system that should not be celebrated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When collectivization started, it opened a new chapter in Soviet economics, while closing another. \u00a0With the ending of the NEP\u00a0that attempted to use the private sector to bring Russia away from its perceived ‘backwardness’, the Five Year Plans were implemented … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1932,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110561,51180],"tags":[104644,110664,77999,51863],"class_list":["post-4920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hist254-archive","category-miscellaneous","tag-five-year-plan","tag-lewin","tag-nep","tag-stalin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1932"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}