The Triumph and Tragedy of the First Five-Year Plan in the USSR

Abstract

The author reviews some features of the development of the oil industry during the first Soviet five-year plan in 1929–1932, examines the key aspects of decision-making on this issue on the part of the party and political leadership of the USSR. It is shown that repeated adjustments of the first five-year plan to increase oil production had no basis in the form of an in-depth analysis of reliable information on both the resource base of oil fields and capital investment needed to develop the industry. Striving to fulfill the descriptive indicators at all costs the oil fields were staked on the active exploitation of the upper productive layers of oil fields in order to initiate massive flowing production. The production volumes thus obtained in the first quarter of 1931 were presented in the reports of Azneft and Grozneft labor collectives as an early achievement of the targets of the last year of the five-year plan. The country’s leadership used this to launch a powerful propaganda campaign to justify the process of forced industrialization, presenting the oil industry as the “beacon of the five-year plan”.