The Second Five-Year Plan
By P. A. SLOAN.
THE first Five-Year Plan has ended. It has been com- pleted after four years and a quarter. In many directions it has achieved considerably more than was originally anticipated. Its chief aim was to provide the U.S.S.R. with a foundation of heavy industry. This was absolutely essential to a further development of the material and cultural well-being of the peoples who inhabit the U.S.S.R. In the original plan the new metal- lurgical centre in the Kusnetsk district was not antici- pated. This was only introduced later. Unemployment was expected to fall, but not to be completely wiped out. Agriculture was to begin to be organized on a collective basis, but such reorganization has almost been com- pleted. Such achievements as these are over and above those which constituted the main purposes of the original plan four and a quarter years ago.
But the inhabitants of the Soviet Union may be heard complaining bitterly to-day about the conditions of life to which the first plan has brought them. A superficial inventory of conversations with workers and peasants may well give the impression that the U.S.S.R. is a hotbed of discontent. Everyone has his or her particular griev- ance, and they all criticize aloud. The most frequent criticism to be heard from the survivors of the old middle class is that there is no freedom to say anything against the existing state of affairs, especially to foreigners. Foreigners frequently report this, never noting the paradox. Popular anecdotes give the impression that the new Russia is a sea of inefficiency, corruption and char- latanism. Everyone says that times are hard, and many say that " before " life was easier. " Before," if investi- gated, is usually found vaguely to refer to the period just preceding the Plan ; it is usually a mistake to interpret it as referring to the period before the Revolution.
A revolution cannot take place without the existence of a strong sense of social conflict. It takes place when a powerful class experiences discontent and feels that the only way out is the complete overthrow of the existing social and political system. When the revolution has been carried out, desires are liberated which were pre- viously latent. The population demands more than before, for it has new rights. What were previously vague hopes or fantasies become consciously-felt needs. An elderly lady in an English provincial town is in the habit of criticizing modern maid-servants for wearing silk stockings, on the ground that they are " aping their betters." In the U.S.S.R. every woman whO knows of the existence of silk stockings is learning to consider that she has a right to them ; the only restriction on her supply is production. Her status is superior to that of the English maid-servant, since she claims more rights, but she complains more. For the English maid-servant who is in work has many of her needs satisfied, and there is nothing to stimulate a desire for more ; while the opposite is true of the woman in the U.S.S.R. A certain Russian woman was giving a glowing account of the period preceding the Five-Year Plan " Then there was everything, the shops were full of cakes and sweets, people were well dressed and everyone was happy." Her daughter, aged thirteen, commented : " The shops were full but Mama was too poor to buy these things. She didn't speak like that then." A consideration of the facts of Soviet life at the end of the first Socialist plan in history shows a considerable increase in the production of many kinds of consumers' goods. But it is with regard to these very goods that people complain of increasing shortage. For increased production has been accompanied by an even greater increase in demand. The increasing production of wooden galoshes has not kept pace with the greater in- crease in the number of potential galosh users, and every- one who previously was adequately galoshed now feels galosh starved. And those who were previously never galoshed at all, but have now become galosh-conscious, are suffering from an as yet unsatisfied galosh hunger. So that all are complaining owing to the increase in the use of galoshes, which has stimulated a still greater increase in galosh-consciousness. And this applies to some extent in every walk of life.
In the case of food the situation is temporarily more serious, since it appears that in the last year and a half there has been a real decline in supplies relatively to the position at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan. To say, however, that Russia is now hungry compared with the old Russia is quite unjustifiable. On the other hand, it is hungrier than four years ago—at least, so everybody says. The revolution in the countryside has caused much chaos, for the transition from the feudal strip system to a post-capitalist large scale socialist system has taken place in a few years. New forms of organization have sprung into existence; and they cannot be made to work perfectly at once. The development of the towns has also had its effect, drawing the best man-power from village to town. The remedy is to attract the workers back to the village, and this can only be done by creating equality between the two, a fundamental feature of the second Five-Year Plan, which is likely to be greatly speeded-up owing to the present dissatisfaction with regard to food. To what extent this dissatisfaction is really due to an absolute decline in the production of food, and to what extent it is due to the people's expecta- tion of more than can be speedily supplied is hard to estimate, but an actual and serious decline in food pro- duction has certainly taken place. But even here the individual tends to overestimate the seriousness of the position. The typical story of the plump peasant woman who privately sells bottles of milk in the Russian market of to-day is something like this : " We are starving, comrade. I do not know what I should do without the cow. I have to sell the milk in order to get bread..: There is no fodder in the village, comrade ; we have to feed the cow on bread. . . . The cow eats all the bread we get." It is thus that the starving peasant woman, always plump, describes her self-supporting cowl Which means that the Russian peasant is still a peasant, but finds pretended poverty more profitable at the present time than vaunted wealth. This is not starvation, though, again, very few Englishmen could get quickly adjusted to obtaining their nourishment from black rye bread, and therefore they are frequently unnecessarily shocked at the Russian diet. Lenin, on the contrary, suffered acutely from English food when in London.
Psychologically, the first Five-Year Plan has stimulated desires more rapidly than it has been able to satisfy them, The dynamic needs of the town-dweller have taken the place of the static wants of the peasant. Far more than the already much increased supplies of consumers' goods are necessary to meet this situation. This brings us to the eve of the second Plan, which is trying to satisfy the goods-hunger which has been so recently aroused. In doing this it is essential once and for all to establish economic equality between town and rural worker. But this is a stupendous task. The collectivization of the countryside his led the peasants to claim the rights of workers. So long as the village is in an inferior position, villages are being deserted, so that the difference between town and village must be reduced as quickly as possible. It is probable that in the near future new decrees will be passed with a view to doing this even more speedily than was anticipated a year ago, when equality between town and village was contemplated for the end of the second Plan. Collectivization has increased the goods-hunger of the villages, and this has proved the most difficult psy- chological problem of the first plan. The need for more consumers' goods has been thrust to the fore. It now constitutes a far more urgent problem than four years ago. Present policy is to produce these goods as quickly as possible.. Capital development is suffering a relative check now, until the existing capital is used to capacity. The second Five-Year Plan is beginning with the satisfaction of consumers' needs as its foremost preoccupation.
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