Fundamentals of the military economy of the USSR. Economy of the ussr during the great patriotic war

Anniversary statistical yearbook

ECONOMY OF THE USSR IN THE YEARS OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

« The victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War fully revealed the advantages of socialism, its enormous economic, socio-political and spiritual potential. It was the Victory of the Soviet state created by the great Lenin, the most advanced social system, the socialist economic system"(Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU" On the 40th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 ").

The victory in the Great Patriotic War was a vivid confirmation of the correctness of the policy of the party, which in the pre-war years steadily pursued a course towards a significant increase in the country's economic and defense potential. The plans of all pre-war five-year plans were aimed at solving this problem.

Using all the resources, industry and other industries continuously expanded the production of products for the needs of the army.

Main characteristics economic development USSR during the war years

	1940=100	1942=100

Produced national income
Fixed production assets of all sectors of the national economy (excluding livestock)
Industrial products
Engineering products
Gross agricultural output
Capital investment
Freight turnover of all types of transport
Average annual number of workers and employees
Retail turnover of state and cooperative trade

The war dramatically changed the challenges facing the Soviet economy. Of particular importance in the first months of the war was the massive redeployment from the front and front-line areas of a huge amount of valuables, equipment and millions of people for thousands of kilometers to the eastern regions of the country, providing in the shortest possible time at a new place of production, urgently needed by the front. A total of 2,593 enterprises were evacuated from July to December 1941 from the threatened areas. Among them there were 1,523 large enterprises, of which 1,360 enterprises, mainly military ones, were evacuated in the first three months of the war.

Of the total number of evacuees large enterprises 226 were sent to the Volga region, 667 to the Urals, 244 to Western Siberia, 78 to Eastern Siberia, 308 to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. More than 10 million people were transported to the rear areas by rail, more than 2 million people were transported by water.

During the war, about 1.5 million wagons, or 30 thousand trains with evacuated goods, traveled by rail from areas threatened by seizure by the enemy.

2.4 million heads of cattle, 5.1 million heads of sheep and goats, 0.2 million pigs, 0.8 million horses, a lot of agricultural machinery, grain and other foodstuffs were moved from the western regions.

Temporary loss of very important economically regions and industrial centers in the first months of the war had a heavy impact on the work of all sectors of the national economy. Late 1941-early 1942 was the most difficult and critical period for the Soviet economy. The national economy experienced an acute shortage of labor, fuel, electricity, raw materials, and various materials. The volume of gross industrial output from June to December 1941 decreased 1.9 times. But already in December 1941, the decline in industrial production was stopped.

By the middle of 1942, the lost capacity of the military industry was not only restored, but even surpassed. The Soviet Union has created a well-coordinated war economy capable of ensuring the production of war products on an increasing scale.

The radical change in the work of industry, which began in the second half of 1942, was consolidated in 1943; in comparison with 1940, the output of the defense industries has more than doubled.

The USSR surpassed Nazi Germany as a whole in 1942 in the production of tanks and self-propelled guns by 3.9 times, combat aircraft by 1.9, guns of all types and calibers by 3.1, rifles and carbines by 3 times. More ammunition was fired.

The climax of the growth of the war economy of the USSR was 1944. In 1944, the USSR produced more than in 1942, tanks and self-propelled guns by one-fifth, and combat aircraft by 1.5 times.

The creation of a solid base of military-industrial production in the East of the country was of decisive importance for the well-coordinated work of all parts of the economy.

In 1942, 20 new electric furnaces and 9 rolling mills began to produce metal in the eastern regions. The total capacity of the turbines, put into operation in 1942 in these regions, amounted to 672 thousand kW. The Chelyabinsk CHPP, Karagandinskaya TPP, Kirovo-Chepetskaya CHPP were put into operation.

In total, during the war years, production in the Urals increased 3.6 times, in Siberia - 2.8 times, in the Volga region - 2.4 times.

The output of military products increased at a particularly high rate in the eastern regions of the country. So, in 1942, compared with 1940, in the Urals, it increased more than 5 times, in the Volga region - 9 times, in the regions of Western Siberia - 27 times.

During the war years, high efficiency of the military economy was ensured, and first of all, of the defense industries. For three years, from May 1942 to May 1945, labor productivity in industry increased by 43%, and in the defense industries by 2.2 times.

Along with an increase in labor productivity, the costs of producing the most important types of weapons have been significantly reduced. In 1944, the cost of all types of military products, compared with 1940, decreased on average by 2 times. In general, the economic effect of reducing the cost of military products for 1941-1944. amounted to an amount equal to almost half of all expenses State budget USSR for military needs in 1942

Soviet. the state, relying on its own resources, solved the most difficult problem of rearmament and material support of the multimillion army. Lend-lease deliveries to the USSR accounted for about 4% of industrial production in our country.

The war test showed that it was the advantages of the socialist economy that made it possible to withstand and win in the most difficult conditions.

Smelting about 3 times less steel and producing almost 5 times less coal than Nazi Germany (taking into account the import from the occupied countries, annexed territories and imports), “During the war the Soviet Union created almost 2 times more weapons and military equipment.

The victorious end of the war opened a new stage in the life of the Soviet country: from the solution of military tasks it was necessary to pass to peaceful creative work, healing the grave wounds inflicted by the war.

The peoples of the USSR won the victory over fascist Germany at a high price. On the battlefields, in the territory occupied by the enemy, in concentration camps and in fascist penal servitude, up to 27 million people, that is, more than a sixth of the country's population, died. The war left millions of invalids, orphans, widows, and brought grief to almost every family. The death of Soviet people is the most difficult, unforgettable and irreparable loss suffered by the Motherland.

The war caused colossal material damage to the USSR. The German fascist invaders completely or partially destroyed and burned 1,710 cities and more than 60 thousand villages and villages, deprived of their homes about 35 million people. Great destruction was inflicted on Stalingrad, Leningrad, Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol and many other cities.

The aggression of fascist Germany caused colossal damage to the economy of the USSR. Was destroyed 31,850 factories, plants and other industrial enterprises, which before the war employed about 4 million workers and produced one third of all industrial production in the country. The invaders destroyed 65 thousand km of railway tracks, 4100 railway stations, blew up 13 thousand bridges. Has undergone barbaric destruction agriculture... The Nazis destroyed 98 thousand collective farms, 1876 state farms and 2890 machine and tractor stations to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of fields were overgrown with weeds and dropped out of economic circulation. Part of the population lived in dugouts. During the war years, the living standards of the working people fell sharply.

The invaders sought not only physically, but also spiritually to enslave the peoples of our country, to completely destroy their culture. They deliberately destroyed everything that was associated with the history of our Fatherland, the memory of its great sons. Such sacred places for every Russian as the Pushkin Museum-Reserve and the grave of the great poet in the Svyatogorsk Monastery, the Yasnaya Polyana Museum-Reserve, where the great L.N. Tolstoy, house-museum of P.I. Tchaikovsky in Klin, and many other priceless monuments of antiquity and culture. Many famous works of ancient Russian architecture, masterpieces of world architecture and art were turned into ruins. History has not known such massive barbarism and inhumanity that the fascists did on our land. As a result, they destroyed almost a third of the national wealth of the USSR.

The decline in the working-age population during the war years had a significant impact on agricultural production. The number of able-bodied collective farmers has decreased by almost a third, and men by more than 2.5 times. About three quarters of all workdays worked out on collective farms were accounted for by women, teenagers and old people. There was a shortage of personnel, specialists and machine operators.

The state's labor resources have significantly decreased as a result of the war. The number of workers and employees in the national economy of the USSR has become 16% less than before the war. The most acute shortage of labor was felt in Ukraine, Belarus, and regions of the RSFSR, liberated from the Nazi occupation, which complicated the restoration and development of the economy here.

The damage caused to the country by the aggressor exceeded the losses during the Second World War of all the other European states combined. Our indirect material losses were also great, for example, due to a two-fold technological restructuring of the production apparatus. The war delayed the socio-economic development of society for more than 10 years. But no statistics can calculate and express in numbers that titanic work, thought, talent that many generations of compatriots have invested in the creation of material and spiritual values \u200b\u200bdestroyed by the enemy.

The consequence of the German-fascist aggression was significant losses in the intellectual and moral potential of society. It was impossible to make up for the losses of millions of young people who did not have time to show their talents and abilities in peaceful creative work.

The restoration of the national economy of the USSR began as the occupiers were driven out already in 1943. But this task became a priority after the victory over Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan. At the initial stage, state and party bodies promptly solved the problem of transferring the country's economy from the military to a peaceful track.

Implementing the program of demilitarization of the economy (conversion), the State Defense Committee in May 1945 decided to transfer the defense industry to the production of goods for the people. In accordance with it, material and financial resources began to be directed to the development of civilian sectors of the economy. The conversion feature consisted in the fact that it was of a partial nature, since simultaneously with the reduction in the proportion of manufactured military equipment and weapons, significant funds were invested in the modernization of the military-industrial complex, in the development of new types of weapons. In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb, and in 1953, for the first time in the world, a hydrogen bomb. The Soviet Armed Forces began to be equipped with nuclear missiles. As a result of the mass demobilization of the army - from 11.4 million people in May 1945 to 2.9 million in 1948 - millions of workers and peasants returned to creative work. The restructuring of the economy to a peaceful direction was basically completed by 1947.

The transition from war to peaceful construction was associated with a change in the forms of management of the national economy. In connection with the abolition of the State Defense Committee (September 1945), the functions of state leadership were transferred to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which was soon transformed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Along with this, many military departments were abolished or reorganized, measures were taken to restore normal working conditions and regimes. On behalf of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the State Planning Committee of the USSR was actively developing a plan to transfer the military economy to a peaceful track.

In March 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the "Law on a five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR for 1946-1950." The key task of the fourth five-year plan was to "restore the affected areas of the country, restore the pre-war level of industry and agriculture and then surpass this level on a significant scale."

Shortly before the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in a speech at the pre-election meeting of voters of the Stalin electoral district in Moscow on February 9, 1946 I. Stalin, regarding the main tasks of the five-year plan, said that they include the restoration of the affected regions of the country, the pre-war level of industry and agriculture, and then it is necessary to surpass this level on a significant scale. In his speech, he touched upon the issue of abolishing the rationing system in the near future, said that special attention would be paid to raising the living standards of the people.

The plan determined the stages, specific tasks for the restoration and further development of the USSR economy. It was envisaged: to ensure the priority restoration and development of heavy industry and railway transport; to achieve an upsurge in agriculture and industry; to ensure further technical progress in all sectors of the national economy; maintain the defense capability of the USSR at the proper level; ensure high rates of socialist accumulation.

During the years of the fourth five-year plan (1946-1950), it was planned to restore, build and put into operation 5900 state enterprises, including 3200 enterprises in the regions affected by the occupation. It was planned in 1950 to achieve an excess of the volume of the gross industrial output of the USSR, compared with 1940, by 48%, including in areas affected by the occupation - by 15%. To implement the planned program, it was envisaged to invest 338.7 billion rubles in the national economy, that is, 5.2 times more than in the first five-year period, and 2.3 times more than in the second. At the same time, 40% of all capital investments were intended to restore the regions of the USSR that suffered from the occupation.

A significant place in the fourth five-year plan was occupied by social program ... Based on production growth, it was assumed:

restore the pre-war level of well-being of the people;

to increase during the five-year plan the national income in relation to 1940 by more than 30%;

consistently lower prices for all goods, improve housing conditions and cultural and social services for the people;

to restore and expand the network of primary and secondary schools, technical schools and higher educational institutions, to ensure the further flourishing of culture and science;

to bring the number of hospital beds to 985 thousand by 1950 against 710 thousand in 1940;

to completely restore the network of rest homes and sanatoriums. Special attention was paid to medical care and improvement of health care for invalids of the Great Patriotic War.

The means that were used to fulfill the planned targets were:

socialist accumulation based on the mobilization of intra-economic sources;

increasing labor productivity and reducing the cost of products;

strict adherence to state discipline;

mass movement of inventors and innovators;

increasing the labor activity of workers based on the development of socialist competition.

The fourth five-year plan was a large-scale comprehensive program for the development of the national economy and social sphere in the post-war years, testifying to the vitality of the social system in the Soviet Union, the mobility of transferring the economy to peaceful development. Wartime restrictions were lifted: mandatory overtime work was canceled, regular rest of workers and employees was established, paid holidays and an 8-hour working day were restored. And yet the country lived hard in the first years of the post-war five-year plan.

Nevertheless, a lot was done: destroyed cities and villages were revived, old ones were restored, new enterprises were built. The social energy of creativity, the labor enthusiasm of the Soviet people manifested itself in the massive All-Union socialist competition for the early fulfillment and overfulfillment of the plan of the fourth five-year plan. It began in May 1946. The initiators were the metallurgists of the Makeevka Plant named after I. CM. Kirov, workers of a number of Moscow factories, Donbass miners, the staff of the North Donetsk railway, labor collectives of many enterprises in the country. By the end of 1948, over 90% of all workers and employees employed in the national economy took part in it.

Coal miners of Donbass and Kuzbass, machine builders of Leningrad and Kramatorsk, metallurgists of the Urals and Ukraine competed with each other. Many new forms of competition were born. If in the previous period the competition was aimed mainly at overfulfillment of plans, then in the fourth five-year period the obligations covered all the main directions of production development: overfulfillment of the plan, improving the quality of products, reducing its cost, saving material and technical resources, rational use of new technology, etc. ...

In the history of the labor feat of the people in the first post-war years, many undertakings of labor collectives and individual workers, rural workers were included as a vivid example. For example, N. Rossiyskiy, a foreman of the Moscow tool factory "Kalibr", initiated the training of workers in rational methods and techniques of labor; A. Voloshin, assistant foreman at Trekhgornaya Manufactory, began a movement for a high culture of production; A. Chutkikh, assistant master of the Krasnokholmsk manufactory, organized a competition for the production of only excellent quality products; the notable miner of Donbass G. Zaporozhets showed an example of high-performance work on a cutting machine. The well-known collective farmer of the Zhytomyr region N. Zaglada set a world record for flax yields in those years; tractor drivers P. Angelina and A. Gitalov began a movement for the efficient use of tractors and agricultural machines.

On the initiative of the Moscow turner Pavel Bykov and the Leningrad turner Genrikh Bortkevich - yesterday's front-line soldier who was awarded 11 military awards - a movement of "speedmen" has developed in the country. In February 1948, using technical innovations, G. Bortkevich made 13 daily norms on a lathe in one shift. Pupil of the famous Chelyabinsk "Tankograd" P. Bykov approached the development of new methods in his own way. In the tradition of that time, a personal meeting of the innovators of production took place, who entered into a competition agreement. These undertakings were supported by hundreds and thousands of leaders in the production of various industries. Among the people of speedy people, the innovators of production were called people ahead of their time.

A number of machine-building enterprises have switched to the production of new, most productive machines and assemblies. For example, the Leningrad Metallurgical Plant manufactured the most powerful turbine in the world with a capacity of 150 thousand kW, Uralmashzavod - a 14-cubic meter walking excavator, the production of powerful dump trucks and new models of agricultural machinery began. The most important scientific and technical achievement of the first post-war years was the disclosure of the secret of obtaining atomic energy. The discoveries of a team of Soviet physicists led by I.V. Kurchatov, the dangerous monopoly of the United States on atomic weapons was eliminated.

On the path of scientific and technological progress, the community of scientists and production workers was strengthened. “There is not a single field of industry, not a single plant,” noted S.I. Vavilov, - who would not have presented their special requirements to science, would not have asked for its help. " Soviet scientists and engineers designed the world's first industrial nuclear power plant. Fruitful results were yielded by the activities of research and design organizations in rocket technology, including the experimental design bureau, headed by a planetary scientist S.P. Korolev. As the chief designer for the creation of complexes of automatic long-range missiles, he played an outstanding role in space exploration, solving the most complex problems of rocket and space technology, training rocket scientists, and the cosmonaut corps. In 1948, the launch of the first domestic long-range missile R – 1 was successfully completed.

New types of aircraft and aircraft engines for civil and military aviation were developed by design bureaus headed by A.N. Tupolev, S.V. Ilyushin, A.S. Yakovlev, O.K. Antonov, V. Ya. Klimov, A.I. Mikoyan, M.I. Gurevich, S.A. Lavochkin, A.A. Mikulin, A.D. Shvedov, N.D. Kuznetsov and others. In 1951, a team led by Academician S.А. Lebedev assembled and tested the first Soviet electronic computer.

Efforts were stepped up to automate production and create automatic production lines. In 1950, the world's first automatic plant for the production of pistons for automobile engines went into operation.

In the last year of the fourth five-year plan, the government decided to build the largest economic facilities - the Stalingrad, Kuibyshevskaya HPP on the Volga, the Kakhovskaya HPP on the Dnieper, the South Ural and North Crimean irrigation canals, which were not previously included in the five-year plan. In 1948, the volume of industrial production in the country exceeded the pre-war level.

The situation in agriculture was sharply aggravated in 1946 by the most severe drought that struck Ukraine, Moldova, and the south of Russia. Taking into account plans for the restoration of agriculture during the war years, three tractor plants were built - Altai, Vladimir, Lipetsk, and after the war, the Stalingrad and Kharkov tractor plants were restored. The Chelyabinsk plant resumed the production of tractors, which produced tanks during the war years. As a result, instead of the three tractor factories that operated before the war, there were seven of them by the end of the fourth five-year plan. 1945-1950 they provided agriculture with 536 thousand tractors (in terms of 15-strong), i.e. almost as much as their agriculture received in the pre-war five-year plans.

And yet there was not enough equipment in the countryside. In the early 50s. in many Russian villages, peasants plowed on cows. According to the prevailing norms of the pre-war period, the freedom of movement of collective farmers was limited due to their lack of passports. They were not covered by state pensions. Organized recruiting of the rural population for construction sites and factories intensified the outflow of peasants to the city.

The vigorous measures taken by the government helped to stabilize the situation with food and raw materials. So, at the end of 1947, cards for food and manufactured goods were abolished, a monetary reform was carried out, which made it possible to strengthen the financial position of the state. In 1947-1950. prices for foodstuffs and manufactured goods dropped three times.

Nevertheless, the development of the agricultural sector in the country as a whole proceeded with great difficulties. In 1950 it was not yet possible to eliminate the damage caused to agriculture by the war. In addition to the consequences of the war, miscalculations in the management of agriculture made themselves felt.

The working people of all union and autonomous republics, and especially young people, took part in creative work. Over 600 thousand boys and girls voluntarily went to the restoration and construction of industrial and transport enterprises. The Komsomol took patronage over the revival of 15 ancient Russian cities, among which were Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Bryansk.

Through the efforts of the Soviets and party bodies, public education and culture were further developed. Thousands of schools have been rebuilt and rebuilt. More than a hundred new higher educational institutions were opened. At the end of the 50s there were 766 of them, against 105 in 1913. Many research institutes were created. By the end of the fourth five-year plan, the network of hospitals, polyclinics, hospitals for invalids of the Patriotic War and other medical and preventive institutions was restored and expanded. The network of sanatoriums, rest homes, and pioneer camps expanded.

Post-war construction was overshadowed by Stalin's abuse of power and illegal arrests. In the late 40's - early 50's. accusations were fabricated against a number of Soviet and party workers in Leningrad. A large group of doctors were falsely accused of "crimes". Genetics and cybernetics were persecuted. Scientists who tried to express their understanding of social development, different from Stalin's, were accused of anti-patriotism and persecuted.

During the implementation of the fourth five-year plan, enormous difficulties were overcome, but not all of them were resolved. However, on the whole, the five-year plan was marked by achievements in strengthening the might of the Soviet Union. The main result of the selfless labor of the Soviet people was the restoration of the leading sectors of the national economy - industry, construction, energy, transport and communications. Industrial production increased significantly and in 1950, as a whole, surpassed the pre-war figures by 73%.

These achievements were facilitated by the following basic factors: high mobilization readiness of the directive economy, which remained in the conditions of far from exhausted opportunities for extensive development; reparations (that is, reimbursement by Germany of a certain part of the material damage inflicted by the USSR) in the amount of $ 4.3 billion, which ensured the supply of a part of equipment for industry; redistribution policy from light industry and the social sphere in favor of industrial sectors.

Western experts predicted that it would take decades for the Soviet Union to overcome the grave consequences of the war. However, the Soviet people opposed these forecasts with organization and solidarity, labor heroism, and the desire to heal the wounds of war in the shortest possible time. The Fourth Five-Year Plan was an important step in the restoration and development of the national economy, solving social problems, and laid the foundation for building up the might of the USSR.

Germany's sudden invasion of Soviet territory required the Soviet government to act quickly and accurately. First of all, it was necessary to ensure the mobilization of forces to repel the enemy. On the day of the Nazi attack, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the mobilization of those liable for military service in 1905-1918. birth. In a matter of hours, detachments and subunits were formed. Soon, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution approving the mobilization national economic plan for the fourth quarter of 1941, which provided for an increase in the production of military equipment and the creation of large enterprises of the tank-building industry in the Volga region and the Urals. Circumstances forced the Central Committee of the Communist Party at the beginning of the war to develop a detailed program for restructuring the activities and life of the Soviet country on a military basis, which was set out in the directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of June 29, 1941 to the party, Soviet organizations of the front-line regions. Slogan "Everything for the front, everything for the victory!" became the motto of the life of the Soviet people.

The Soviet government and the Central Committee of the Party called on the people to abandon their moods and personal desires, to switch to a sacred and merciless struggle against the enemy, to fight to the last drop of blood, to rebuild the national economy in a war-like manner, and to increase the output of war products. "In the areas occupied by the enemy," the directive stated, "create partisan detachments and sabotage groups to fight against parts of the enemy army, to incite guerrilla warfare everywhere and everywhere, to blow up road bridges, damage telephone and telegraph communications, set fire to warehouses, etc. e. In the occupied areas create unbearable conditions for the enemy and all his accomplices, pursue and destroy them at every step, disrupt all their activities. " Among other things, local discussions were held with the population. The nature and political goals of the outbreak of the Patriotic War were explained. The main provision of the directive of June 29 was outlined in a radio speech on July 3, 1941 by J.V. Stalin. Addressing the people, he explained the current situation at the front, revealed the program of protection for the goals that had already been achieved, expressed his unshakable faith in the victory of the Soviet people against the German invaders. "Our forces are incalculable, - emphasized in his speech. - The arrogant enemy should soon be convinced of this. Together with the Red Army, many thousands of workers, collective farmers, intellectuals are rising to war against the attacked enemy. Millions of masses of our people will rise."

On June 23, 1941, the Headquarters of the Main Command of the Armed Forces of the SSR was formed for the strategic leadership of military operations. Later, it was renamed into the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (VGK), headed by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars I.V. Stalin, who was also appointed People's Commissar of Defense, and then the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Full power was concentrated in the hands of Stalin, and this was just as bad luck would have it. The VGK also included A.I. Antipov, S.M.Bubenny, M.A.Bulganin, A.M. Vasilevsky, K.E. Voroshilov, G.K. Zhukov and others.

EVACUATION OF HAZARDOUS AREAS

In connection with the rapid advance of German troops to the east, there was an urgent need to evacuate the population, factories and plants, valuables from territories that were in danger and could pass into the hands of the enemy.

This task was terribly difficult. On June 24, 1941, an evacuation council was created, which was entrusted with the leadership of the movement to the east from the front-line areas of the population, institutions, military cargo, equipment of enterprises and other valuables. It was headed by L. Kaganovich, and then N. Shvernik.

The evacuation was carried out in two stages: summer-autumn 1941 and summer-autumn 1942. The first stage was especially difficult, since the leadership had no experience in such matters. In addition, circumstances could turn all plans backwards due to military operations, which, alas, were not controlled by the Red Army. Often during the evacuation of especially important objects, the enemy "stepped on his heels." people forgot about tiredness and sleep. The work of rescuing industry and values \u200b\u200bfrom the enemy became the meaning of their lives in those days. Not everything went smoothly and successfully. Due to the complete occupation of Belarus, the evacuation of the potential of this republic was stopped already in August 1941. In the Leningrad region, the evacuation began in July, and because of the blockade of Leningrad, it was interrupted in September of the same year.

Nevertheless, the Soviet people accomplished a great feat. During the evacuation, 7 million people were evacuated in 1941 and 4 million.

people in 1942 were transported such factories as: "Zaporizhstal" from Dnepropetrovsk to Magnitogorsk (it took 8 thousand cars); Kirov and the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (both of these plants were from litas into a single one for the production of tanks).

The relocation of productive forces to the east is one of the brightest pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. The heroic efforts of Soviet workers, engineers, production commanders and railroad workers ensured the evacuation of many hundreds of large enterprises and more than 11 million people to the east. In fact, an entire industrial country has been moved thousands of kilometers. There, in uninhabited places, often in the open air, machines and machine tools were literally put into operation from the railway platform.

REBUILDING OF THE PEOPLE'S ECONOMY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

The first years of the war were the most difficult. We had to rebuild the economy, put it on a war footing. The country's scientific forces were involved in solving major scientific and technical problems. In August-September 1941, the USSR Academy of Sciences determined the main directions of scientific work in wartime conditions. They were based on: improving military equipment and creating new means of fighting the enemy, scientific assistance to industry in organizing and expanding military production, finding and using new labor resources of the country, replacing scarce materials with local raw materials, reducing production cycles in metallurgy and the chemical industry.

The Soviet national economy had to solve many difficult problems in those days, and one of the most pressing was the issue of labor, since a huge mass of people had to be mobilized into the army. In addition, due to the occupation of part of its territory, the country temporarily lost significant human contingents. To provide personnel for the military industry and related industries, it was necessary to rationally distribute the remaining labor reserves, to involve new layers of the population in production. Of great importance in solving this problem was the arrival of women, high school students, students, and retired cadre workers in production, who stood at the machines to replace their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers who had gone to the front in this post. The system of state labor reserves created before the war played an important role in replenishing the decisive branches of the military economy with qualified personnel. Hundreds of thousands of young people joined the ranks of the home front workers.

The main link in the transfer of the entire economy to a war footing was the restructuring of industry, primarily heavy industry, at the factories of which, from the very first days of the war, the production of tanks, mortars, shells, mines, aerial bombs and other types of military products was established. The transformation of the eastern regions into the leading industrial base of the country, the increased capacity of the military industry required the development of the main branches of heavy industry - metallurgy, coal and oil industries, and electric power.

An important role in providing the military industry with metal belonged to the Magnitogorsk giant combine, created during the pre-war five-year plans. Residents of Magnitogorsk were among the first to take up the straightening of armor steel in ordinary large open-hearth furnaces, adapted for cooking "peaceful" metal. Without special rolling machines, Magnitogorsk residents simultaneously set up the production of armor plates on blooming. This daring idea, which seemed at first fantastic, belonged to the deputy chief mechanic of the plant N.A. Ryzhenko. In ten days, the necessary preparation was carried out and on July 23, the first armor plate was issued.

The workers of the Soviet countryside also had to solve major economic problems in extremely difficult and unfavorable conditions. The war tore away the most able-bodied and qualified part of the rural population from peaceful creative work. Due to the conscription into the army, mobilization for the construction of fortifications, in industry and transport, as well as due to the temporary occupation of parts of the country, the number of people able to work in agriculture has sharply decreased. A large number of tractors, cars and horses were transferred to the front, which, naturally, significantly weakened the material and technical base of agriculture. The supply of fuel, spare parts, lubricants, and mineral fertilizers also fell sharply.

The first summer of war was very difficult. It was necessary to put into operation all the reserves of the village in order to harvest the crop and carry out state procurements and purchases of grain in the shortest possible time. The entire rural population, from adolescents to old people, entered the fields of the country. Women have always played an important role in collective and state farms, but now the worries that were placed on men in peacetime have almost entirely fallen on their shoulders. Hundreds of thousands of women have mastered tractors and combines.

Labor heroism has become a daily occurrence on collective and state farm fields. In the western regions of the European part of the country, collective farmers, workers of state farms and machine and tractor stations, often harvested grain under enemy fire.

During the last four months of 1941 in the Volga region and in the Urals, on the basis of displaced and some newly created enterprises, 8 tank, 6 corps (made hulls for tanks) 3 diesel plants were deployed. On the basis of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, a powerful tank-building plant has grown, deservedly received by the people the name<<ТАНКОГРАД>\u003e. Ural heavy machine building plant named after Ordzhonikidze in Sverdlovsk began to build hulls and turrets for heavy KV tanks. A group of factories, among which the leading place was occupied by the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, became an important integrated base for tank building in the Volga region.

In addition to tanks, the front also needed combat aircraft. Therefore, urgent measures were taken to accelerate the development of the aviation industry. Already in the first military half of the year, although with interruptions, it was possible to organize mass production of Yak-1 and Yak-7b fighter planes, Pe-2 dive bombers, Il-2 attack aircraft. The new aircraft not only were not inferior to the counterparts of the enemy, but also surpassed them in many characteristics.

The production of weapons was also getting better. On July 12, 1941, the State Defense Committee adopted a special decree on the production of 45 and 76 mm anti-tank and tank guns. caliber. The production of mortar weapons also expanded. In the first year of the war, 82 and 120 mm were mainly produced. mortars. Much attention was paid to the production of rocket launchers (<< КАТЮШ >\u003e) which already at the beginning of the war with their crushing volleys terrified the enemy.

In the second half of 1941, the Soviet industry produced 4.8 thousand tanks, 8.2 thousand combat aircraft, 9.9 thousand 76 mm guns. and above. Mass production of anti-tank guns began in October, of which 17.7 thousand were produced in the fourth quarter.

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Thanks to the efforts of the Soviet people, by the middle of 1942, the restructuring of the economy on a war footing was completed. By the summer, 1200 large evacuated enterprises were already operating in the east of the country. In addition, 850 new factories, mines, power plants, blast and open-hearth furnaces, rolling mills and other important facilities were commissioned.

In the summer and autumn, new difficulties arose, primarily associated with the temporary loss of the southern regions of the country and with the need for evacuation from the threatened zone. The difficult situation was aggravated by the fact that the reserves created in peacetime were exhausted. To overcome the imbalance, it was required to use internal resources to the maximum and rationally, to increase the capacity of heavy industry, and to accelerate the pace of industrial construction.

In the east of the country, the construction of blast furnaces, metallurgical plants, high-quality steel plants, pipe-rolling, aluminum and other enterprises, power plants, railways, and coal mines expanded.

The All-Union Leninist Communist Youth Union effectively patronized the most important construction projects. With the active help of the Komsomol members, for example, the expansion of the Chelyabinsk and Krasnodar TPPs, the Sredneuralskaya TPP and the construction of the Farhad hydroelectric power station in Uzbekistan were carried out at a high speed.

As a result of the skillful use of the economic system, the Soviet people in a short time sharply increased the production of military equipment. In the second half of 1942, in comparison with the first, the Soviet industry produced military aircraft more than 1.6 times, a gun - 1.1 times, mortars from 82 mm. and higher - 1.3 times, shells and mines - almost 2 times. The production of tanks, especially the T-34, also increased. Tank factories of the country in the third quarter produced 3946 T-34 tanks, and in the fourth quarter - 4325, which made it possible not only to make up for losses, but also to create a certain reserve of tanks. The production of self-propelled artillery mounts SAU-76 and SAU-122 was launched.

Despite industrial successes, 1942 was a particularly difficult year for the country's agriculture. Due to the occupation of important food regions of the USSR by the enemy, the sown area and the gross harvest of grain were significantly reduced. The losses suffered by agriculture were significant, its material and technical supply deteriorated sharply, and there was an acute shortage of labor. By the end of the year the number of able-bodied collective farmers had halved in comparison with the pre-war period, the machine park of machine and tractor stations and state farms decreased, there was a shortage of fuel, and the production of mineral fertilizers was reduced. All this affected the production of agricultural products. The village workers were given the task of developing new lands in the east. In a short time, the sown area was increased by 2.8 million hectares.

At the beginning of 1943, the Red Army carried out a series of strikes against Germany, which finally determined the turn of events in favor of the USSR. In the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of February 23, 1943, it was said:<<Немецко-фашистская армия переживает кризис в виду полученных от Красной Армии ударов, но это еще не значит, что она не может оправиться. Борьба с немецкими захватчиками еще не кончена, она только развертывается и разгорается... Эта борьба потребует времени, жертв, напряжения наших сил и мобилизации всех наших возможностей>>.

In a resolution adopted in July 1943 on the organization of political reports of party and Soviet workers for the rural population, the Central Committee suggested that local party bodies hold meetings in each collective farm at least once every one and a half months with a report on current military and political events. To this end, 60 thousand executives went to rural areas within a year after the decree, about 1 million were organized. reports and conversations.

The successful implementation of the outlined plans made it possible to overcome great difficulties in the development of industry, significantly strengthen the country's heavy industry, and achieve an accelerated rate of expansion of production in its leading industries. Compared to 1942, electricity generation increased by 11 percent, coal production by more than 23 percent, pig iron smelting by more than 17 percent, and steel smelting by about 5 percent. The total volume of industrial production in the Soviet Union increased by 17 percent over the year.

The armored and mechanized troops received improved T-34 tanks, SU-122 and SU-152 self-propelled artillery mounts. The new Soviet fighter La-5FN was better than German fighters in terms of combat qualities. The famous Il-2 attack aircraft was being improved. Improved performance characteristics of the Pe-2 dive bomber. All this was created by the hands of millions of Soviet workers, technicians, and engineers who did not leave the shops for several shifts, ate and slept at the machines, worked without days off and holidays.

The successes of the country's economy made it possible to strengthen and improve the country's Armed Forces. The number of automatic weapons in the active army by July 1943 compared to April increased by almost 2 times, anti-tank artillery by 1.5 times, anti-aircraft artillery by 1.2 times, tanks by 2 times, aircraft by 1.7 times. By this time the active army and navy numbered 6,612 people, were armed with 105 thousand guns and mortars, more than 10 thousand tanks, over 10 thousand combat aircraft, more than 120 warships of the main classes.

great efforts were required from the Soviet people to overcome difficulties in agriculture, the gross output of which decreased for a number of reasons. Collective farmers, workers of state farms and MTS strove to make maximum use of all reserves of agricultural production. Sowing was carried out with tremendous effort on the devastated land, liberated from the enemy. The collective farm peasantry did, it seemed, impossible to provide the front and rear with food. The townspeople came to the aid of the village: in the summer of 1943, 2.7 million townspeople worked in the fields. Agriculture provided the Soviet Army and the population with food, and industry with raw materials practically without serious interruptions.

LIFE OF THE USSR IN 1944

The victories won by the Soviet Army in 1944 became possible thanks to the new achievements of the home front workers. The increase in the speed of the offensive operations of the Armed Forces, the completion of the liberation of Soviet territory, the implementation of the liberation mission became possible thanks to the rallying of the efforts of the soldiers and home front workers, the mobilization of all the reserves and capabilities of the country.

In 1944, new problems arose. It was necessary to restore the territories liberated from the enemy. This required tremendous effort on the part of people and a lot of money. Transport workers worked selflessly, ensuring uninterrupted communication between the front and rear, fulfilling the increased tasks of transporting military and national economic goods. The turnover of all types of transport increased by 15.3 percent and mainly met the needs of the country. In the State plan for the restoration and development of non-native economy for 1944 and in special decisions for sectors of the national economy, economic regions, republics, industries, territories and cities, the main objects of restoration, the sequence of restoration work were determined. People showed special concern for the revival of the industry of Leningrad, the coal mines of Donbass, metallurgical and machine-building plants in the South.

The industry and the national economy of the country were gaining momentum. In 1944, 39.2 million tons of coal, 18.3 million tons of oil were produced, 7.3 million tons of rolled products were produced, etc.

The troops entered 160 mm. a mortar that had no equal abroad. Tank factories began to produce more new IS-1, IS-2 vehicles. The troops received modernized T-34-85 tanks, which have high speed, stronger armor and a more powerful cannon.

Collective farmers, workers of state farms and MTS labored heroically for the front. The war had a heavy impact on the development of the country's agriculture. The total number of the able-bodied population in 1944 decreased by 18 percent in comparison with 1940. The struggle for bread was going on in incredibly difficult conditions. Difficult peasant labor was performed by women, adolescents and the elderly.

1944 was a turning point in the development of agriculture during the war period: the level of 1943 was significantly exceeded. The country received 49.1 million tons of grain, 1.1 million tons of raw cotton, 54.9 million tons of potatoes.

The basis for the victories of the Soviet Armed Forces were: the growth of the military and economic might of the Soviet Union, the purposeful work of the Communist Party. On March 25, 1945, the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved the State Plan for the Recovery and Development of the National Economy for 1945. It provided for the full provision of the needs of the Red Army, although, on the whole, the share of military production declined. Military expenditures continued to occupy a significant place, but compared with the previous year, they decreased from 52.2 to 42.9 percent of all state expenditures.

From the beginning of 1945, the All-Union socialist competition developed even more widely, stimulating the development of technical progress and an increase in labor productivity. The introduction of the experience of the innovators was extremely important. In the tank industry alone, the widespread use of the advanced experience of the front-line brigade of E.P. Agarkov made it possible to release 6087 people in four and a half months, and in 23 regions about 19 thousand skilled workers. Competition among collective farmers, workers of state farms and MTS became widespread. In the spring, 22,450 tractor brigades joined it.

In the first half of the year, significant results were achieved in the industry. The energy sector continued to develop at an accelerated pace. Successes in the construction and restoration of the energy industry in the USSR made it possible to increase the generation of electricity. Compared with the second half of 1944, the country's production of the main types of industrial products has grown significantly. Thus, coal was mined by 8.6 percent, iron ore by 15.4 percent, pig iron output by 5 percent, steel by 1.7 percent, and rolled metal by 5.1 percent.

The development of agriculture, like other industries, was affected by the grave consequences of the enemy invasion, and above all the heavy damage inflicted by the Nazis on the agricultural regions of the European part of the country. In the devastated, burned, plundered villages, there was a lack of workers everywhere, especially machine operators, as well as machines, equipment, livestock, seeds, fertilizers. The restoration of agriculture in the territory liberated from the enemy took place with enormous difficulties. However, thanks to the leadership of the party, the labor of mainly women, old people and adolescents, and the active help of workers, agriculture gradually gained strength. Successes in restoring the national economy of the country allowed the Soviet state in 1945 to increase the production of machinery, fuel and mineral fertilizers for agriculture. The village workers, despite the late spring, organized a sowing campaign. At the same time, for the first time in the war years, collective farmers were able to fulfill the state plan for sowing spring crops, and state farm workers even overfulfilled it. The very outcast labor of the Soviet peasantry, the efforts of mechanization in agriculture made it possible to bring the sown area in the last war year to 113.8 million hectares, which amounted to 75 percent of the sown area in 1940.

The Patriotic War was a special period in the development of the national economy of the USSR, a difficult test of the strength of the socialist economy. This period was one of the most difficult and difficult in the history of our Motherland.

The military economy of the USSR went through two distinct stages in its development.

The first stage lasted from June 1941 to mid-1942 and is characterized by the fact that during this period the national economy was reorganized on a war footing, the available material and technical resources accumulated before the war were mobilized and redistributed in favor of the military industry and other sectors. servicing military production and the needs of the army, by reducing the production of civilian products. The sources of these resources were the reduction of the non-production sphere (in favor of the production sphere) and the sphere of civil consumption, as well as additional loading of equipment, an increase in the fund of working time, etc. Labor productivity in this period increased mainly due to the growth of the fund of working time; the number of workers in the military industry increased due to its decrease in other sectors of the national economy; investments in the military industry increased due to a reduction in investments in other industries and the conservation of a number of construction projects. These sources were temporary and relatively limited, so their use could not be sustained.

From the middle of 1942, these sources could no longer provide a significant increase in war production, and in order to achieve further growth in war and the rise of heavy industry, it was necessary to find additional internal resources for accumulation. From that time on, the second stage of development of the USSR's military economy began, which is characterized by the fact that military expenditures on an ever-increasing scale began to be covered by the military economy, which was developing on its own basis, i.e. normal economic sources came into effect and became leading in the development of the economy, under which the growth of raw materials and energy resources was the basis for increasing the production of military products. At the second stage, expanded reproduction and the absolute growth of the social product and national income became the main source of costs. This was a regularity of the war economy of the USSR.

During the second period, along with military equipment, the share of heavy industry production began to increase in the social product, the normal cycle of social reproduction resumed and began to expand, and the national income began to be directed on an ever greater scale not only to ensure military spending, but also to increase accumulation in the national economy. farm. The redistribution of resources in favor of war production ceased to play the role of the main source of military expenditures, which were now provided by the created well-coordinated and rapidly growing war economy, which was a prerequisite for the rise of the country's economic forces in the final period of the war.

Although in the summer of 1942 the country was forced to carry out a second evacuation of the productive forces and suffered heavy losses, by this time conditions had already been created for the successful solution of the problem of expanded reproduction by means of the massive commissioning of evacuated equipment and large-scale capital construction in the eastern regions. By the end of 1942, it was possible to materially provide a turning point in the course of the war, which was finally determined in 1943. This year was marked by the largest victories of the Red Army and became a turning point for the military economy of the USSR.

Relying on a well-coordinated and rapidly growing military economy created by the beginning of 1943, the Soviet state achieved major successes in increasing the production of military products and expanding the combat reserves of the Soviet Armed Forces. Beginning in 1943, the military economy of the USSR in its scale, technical level and structure more and more fully satisfied the requirements of the war and reliably ensured the successful solution of the strategic, tactical and operational tasks of the Red Army.

Before the Great Patriotic War, history did not know a state that could, in the course of the war, so decisively reverse the balance of forces and military-economic potentials, which was so unfavorable for itself at first, as the USSR achieved. The achievement of a general economic and military superiority of the USSR over Nazi Germany was prepared by the heroic Soviet people under the leadership of the Communist Party. Already in the winter of 1942/43, during the Battle of Stalingrad, the superiority of the Nazi troops in the amount of military equipment was eliminated.

Both in peacetime and in wartime, the economy of the USSR developed on the basis of the knowledge and purposeful use of the Communist Party economic laws socialism. And although the whole life of the Soviet state was rebuilt on a war footing, and 57-58% of the national income, 65-68% of industrial and about 25% of agricultural products were sent to meet military needs, the economic development of the country, like the entire Soviet society, continued. This was evidenced by the growth of fixed assets, large-scale capital construction, an increase in national income, and the concern of the Communist Party and the Soviet government for the material and cultural conditions of the working people.

Under war conditions, the role of the subjective factor in the formation and development of the military economy, the interconnection of production and superstructure phenomena, and the conscious activity of people has grown significantly. The objective nature of the operation of the most important economic laws of socialism during the war period remained immutable. The Communist Party did not discover new and did not abolish the existing economic laws of socialism, but learned the peculiarities of their manifestation during the war period and on this basis developed its economic policy, determined the tasks, methods and methods of creating and developing the war economy.

The achievement of military, political and economic victory over Nazi Germany depended to a great extent on the depth of reflection of the objective conditions in the policy of the Communist Party, in the system of state administration and in all the conscious activities of the Soviet people. The Communist Party, proceeding from the requirements of the economic laws of socialism, developed the forms and methods of organizing and managing the war economy, influenced by its policy the consciousness of Soviet people, and directed their efforts to create a powerful and well-coordinated war economy. The economic laws of socialism were thus appropriately reflected in the measures carried out by the party to improve management and planning and in the daily activities of the Soviet people.

During the war, the manifestation of the economic laws of socialism had significant features due to the specifics of the military situation. The war economy as a whole, its demands were not a "green street" for the operation of the economic laws of socialism. The most important feature of the use of the economic laws of socialism in the formation and development of the military economy was the narrowing of their scope in comparison with the period of peaceful construction. This was primarily manifested in a significant change in the pre-war economic proportions: between production and consumption, I and II divisions, accumulation and consumption, industry and agriculture, production and transport, means of production and labor resources.

So, if in 1944 all industrial production of the USSR amounted to 104% of the pre-war level, then the production of means of production increased by 36% in comparison with 1940, and the production of consumer goods fell to 54% of the 1940 level. Heavy industry was facilitated by the fact that during the war years, the main funds, material and labor resources were sent here.

In contrast to the peace period, when normal value relations were ensured between the I and II divisions of socialist production, in the war period the correspondence between production and consumption was out of necessity violated, since heavy industry was forced to sharply reduce production and supply of means of production for the branches of the national economy. producing consumer goods.

While the distinguishing feature of the economy of the USSR during the peaceful years was the proportional development of all sectors of the national economy at the outstripping rates of development of heavy industry, during the war years there was an accelerated development of the military industry and related industries, mainly the metallurgical and fuel industries, mechanical engineering and energy, with low rates of reproduction of branches of the II division, non-industrial branches of material production, including agriculture, and limitation of the development of the non-production sphere, which introduced changes in the proportions of social reproduction.

For example, during the war years there was a certain disproportion between the growth of industry and the development of agriculture. The level of development of agriculture was lower than the level of development of industry. In agriculture, until 1944, there was a process of reducing production, while in industry this process stopped already in 1942, and in 1943 industrial production began to grow.

At the same time, the law of preferential treatment continued to operate in the military economy of the USSR, i.e. outrunning growth of production of means of production. True, the limits of its action were also narrowed, because society used it in one direction - with the aim of ensuring the correct proportions in the sphere of the war economy at the expense of the forced admission of certain disproportions in the entire national economy and temporary infringement of the needs of the population. If in 1945 the industrial output of the "A" group exceeded the 1940 level by 12%, then the industrial output of the "B" group was only 59% of the pre-war level. However, at the final stage of the war, the party and the government began to intensively switch part of the production capacity of the military industry to the production of both equipment for the industry of group "B" and its products in order to increase the level of supply of the population.

Both in peacetime and during the war years, the main source of the national income of the USSR was industry, but its share in the national income changed and increased, amounting to 56.4% in 1943 and 51.2% in 1944 against 50.6 % in 1940, which was due to the growth in the share of mechanical engineering and metalworking in the industry itself. In 1945, the share of industry in the national income of the USSR temporarily decreased due to the fact that the need for military products began to decrease, and the release of more labor-intensive civilian products could not compensate for the reduction in military production for one (second) half year.

The share of agriculture in the national income of the USSR, which amounted to 27.3% in 1942, decreased in 1943 to 24.6%, and in 1944 and 1945. exceeded the pre-war level.

During the war years, the share of capital construction in the national income of the USSR increased from 5.5% in 1940 and 5% in 1942 to 6.8% in 1945, which led to the accumulation of fixed assets.

During the war, despite the enormous material damage inflicted on the national economy by the Hitlerite invasion, our country strengthened and developed its productive forces. The socialist state turned out to be strong enough to channel significant funds in the difficult conditions of war to carry out huge capital work in the leading sectors of the national economy. Meanwhile, in most of the capitalist countries that participated in the Second World War, including Nazi Germany, the volume of capital construction declined.

Capital investments in the national economy of the USSR increased from 18.6 billion rubles. in 1942 to 27.4 billion rubles. in 1944 and 36.3 billion rubles. in 1945. Total capital investments during the war years amounted to 94.6 billion rubles. The most important feature of the economy of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War was the expansion of the restoration of the national economy destroyed by the Nazis as the Soviet territory was liberated from the enemy. Thanks to the enormous efforts of the Communist Party and the Soviet people, industry and agriculture were rapidly reviving. In this regard, in 1944 the total volume capital investments in the national economy of the USSR increased in comparison with 1943 by 1.4 times. In the country as a whole, in just three years (1942-1944), new and restored production facilities with a total cost of 77 billion rubles were put into operation.

The most important factor in the growth of the national income of the USSR was the systematic growth in the number of workers employed in the sphere of material production. The decisive factor in the growth of national income was the rise in labor productivity. During the war years, labor productivity increased 1.5 times, and in the military industry - even more.

Labor productivity growth was mainly achieved without large capital investments through the implementation of such effective measures as improving the organization of labor; assignment to the most important sectors of the national economy of the main qualified personnel of workers and specialists; improvement of production technology; equipping equipment with high-performance tools and fixtures; mechanization of labor; introduction of production lines and a conveyor system of production in assembly, machining and procurement shops; preferential material and technical supply of the most important branches of the national economy; creation of normal reserves in military production; equipping military factories with new types of high-performance machine tools; modernization of a piece of equipment; ensuring the preferential supply of the best production workers; the development of a system of material and moral incentives for production initiative and labor enthusiasm for workers.

An important source of growth in labor productivity was an increase in the level of labor skills. During the war period, new cadres of workers received the necessary vocational and technical training and gained production experience.

But the main factor in the growth of labor productivity was the labor upsurge of Soviet workers. The working class, the collective farm peasantry, the Soviet intelligentsia worked with inspiration and selflessness. The source of their great labor feat was patriotism, high ideological conviction, conscientiousness, a nationwide desire to make their own contribution and bring the victory over fascism closer. At factories, collective farm fields, construction sites, transport - everywhere pre-war production quotas were exceeded many times over. All-Union socialist competition for the fastest and high-quality fulfillment of the tasks of the front was unfolded throughout the country on an unprecedented scale. It was an important factor in the massive development of initiatives in solving production issues, identifying production reserves, increasing output, and increasing labor productivity.

During the war period, the socialist principle of distribution according to work was consolidated and continued to develop. In industry, construction and transport, this was facilitated by the development of premium forms of wages and the introduction of moderately progressive norms, in agriculture - by improving the system of payment for workdays, taking into account the quality of work, increasing the yield of fields and the productivity of animal husbandry.

Economy was a significant source of growth in national income material costs... As a result of the measures taken by the party and the government to reduce production costs during the war period, prices for military equipment were reduced by more than 50 billion rubles. During the war years, a strict regime of saving material and financial resources... In industry, measures were widely carried out to introduce new technology and modernize old ones, specialize and cooperate in production, and use substitutes for scarce raw materials.

During the war period, the regularities inherent in the reproduction of the country's national income in years of peace were preserved and manifested. Due to the growth of national income and the use of accumulated reserves, the solution of the problems of consumption, accumulation and reimbursement of military expenses was ensured. The national income of the USSR, which declined during the first period of the war, increased continuously during the subsequent war years. If in 1942 the national income of the country fell to 66% of the pre-war level, then in 1944 it increased to 88% of the 1940 level.This growth was the result of expanded reproduction and was not associated with the liberation of areas temporarily occupied by the enemy, because the products produced in 1944 the industry of the liberated regions accounted for only 18% of the volume of 1940, and in the rear regions the gross industrial output increased 2.3 times against 1940.

During the war years, the process of an increase in the share of accumulation in the national income took place, although in comparison with the pre-war period in 1943 it was 7% and in 1944 - 15% of the total national income against 19% in 1940.

During the war, a significant part of the increase in accumulation was destroyed without a trace (military equipment) and, therefore, did not return to the national economic turnover, which limited the material and technical basis of reproduction of civilian products. Of course, these factors could not have taken place during the period of peaceful construction.

During the period of the war economy, the circulation of the social product changed significantly, since the predominant part of the social product went to meet the needs of the front. Thus, heavy industry supplied the means of production mainly to the defense industry and related industries, and to industries producing consumer goods, much less than in the pre-war years. In this regard, the rate of reproduction of fixed assets in many civilian sectors has dropped sharply.

A convincing proof that during the war years the development of the economy was carried out on the basis of the conscious use of the economic laws of socialism by Soviet society was the process of expanded socialist reproduction in a comparable territory. The war imposed on the Soviet Union could not be fought only at the expense of previously created state reserves and required expanded reproduction. The presence of expanded reproduction in the USSR during the war was evidenced by the provision of the needs of the front, which throughout the war grew from quarter to quarter, and the needs of the front were satisfied almost completely at the expense of own resources, since the supplies of the Western allies under the Lend-Lease amounted to only $ 9,800 million and were important for the elimination of certain "bottlenecks".

During the war period, expanded socialist reproduction was a unity of the planned expanded reproduction of such productive forces and production relations that contributed to the rapid growth of the war economy as a whole. The expanded reproduction of socialist production relations was based, as in years of peace, on the basis of the development of socialist property, the strengthening and development of socialist principles of organizing production and distribution. For extended reproduction, the social product and the national income of the USSR were used in a planned and expedient manner.

Socialist reproduction was carried out on the basis of the use of the basic economic law of socialism within the framework of new production relations caused by economic conditions wartime, In the course of socialist extended reproduction, the reproduction of the social product, labor resources, the development of new production relations was achieved.

The process of expanded reproduction under war conditions had specific features and qualitative features that significantly distinguished it from the process of expanded reproduction in peacetime. Along with a radical change in the conditions for the reproduction of the social product and its material structure in comparison with peacetime, expressed in the switching of production capacities and the use of a huge mass of material and labor resources for the production of military products, a distinctive feature of reproduction during wartime was also the special nature of the redistribution of the social product and national income - increased concentration of resources on "narrow", but the most important sectors of the economy.

During the war, the process of expanded reproduction of fixed assets did not begin immediately. The first year and a half of the war had an extremely unfavorable effect on the state of fixed assets, since they were destroyed in the temporarily occupied Soviet territory.

Since the second period of the war, there has been a significant increase in fixed assets in the country, which was the result of an increase in capital investments in the national economy. Investment in industry has exceeded the depreciation of fixed assets several times. The volume of capital work in 1944 was 1.5 times more than in 1943. Due to this, the fixed assets of the industry were significantly updated, its technical re-equipment took place on the basis of equipment modernization, the introduction of numerous improvements, new devices and tools.

Despite the enormous difficulties associated with the war, production assets of the national economy increased significantly. In 1943, the main production assets (excluding livestock) increased in comparison with 1942 by 20%, in 1944 - by 24, in 1945 - by 29%. The volume of fixed assets has significantly approached the pre-war level. If in 1942 the cost of fixed assets fell to 68% of the 1940 level, then in 1943 it increased to 76%, in 1944 - to 84%, in 1945 - to 88%. This increase testified to the fact that during the war years in the national economy accumulations were obtained, some of which were directed to increase fixed assets in amounts that covered their disposal.

Along with this, during the war years, there was a progressive change in the structure of fixed assets: the share of fixed assets of industry increased sharply, and among its branches the share of fixed assets of heavy industry increased more rapidly. In general, the sectoral structure of production assets provided the necessary proportions in the sphere of material production.

The main production assets were also growing in agriculture. True, in 1942 the fixed assets of agriculture fell to 55% of the pre-war level, but in 1945 they rose to 74%, although their growth rates were lower than the growth rates of industrial assets. In the context of the diversion of millions of workers to the front, the mechanization of agriculture and the industrial structure of its basic production assets made it possible to maintain agriculture at the lowest possible and necessary level in wartime. In the structure of fixed assets of agriculture in the USSR, even during the war, equipment, machines and other means of mechanization occupied more than 50%.

During the war, transport funds also grew, which ensured the normal circulation of the entire commodity part of the social product. In 1945, the basic production assets of transport and communications amounted to 87% of the 1940 level against 67%, in 1942.

During the war period, non-productive fixed assets increased. Although they are not means of labor, their role in the economy is great, therefore, the proportions between production and non-production assets have essential for the growth of productivity of social labor, for the optimal combination of accumulation and consumption.

At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War, the restoration and use of depreciation deductions for capital repairs of fixed assets began. Additional funds were allocated from the USSR State Budget for overhaul and replenishment of repair work on production fixed assets not completed during the war years.

Extended reproduction included the restoration process. Although at the beginning of the war it was restrained by the pace of economic development, as the wartime difficulties were overcome, the restored enterprises themselves became an additional factor in accelerating the pace of economic development.

The high rates of expanded socialist reproduction during the war is a clear manifestation of the advantages of the socialist social system, convincing evidence of its enormous potential.

In the war economy, other economic laws of socialism were in effect, although not in full force. For example, the law of the fullest satisfaction of the needs of the people, which expresses the goal of socialist reproduction, operated within a limited framework, since in conditions of war the state did not have sufficient funds to realize this goal. The scope of this law was narrowed by the emerging objective social need for maximum satisfaction of the needs of the front. And yet this economic law did not lose its force, since the conditions that gave rise to it were in effect: public ownership of the means of production and socialist production relations.

The Soviet state, proceeding from the conditions of social production, invariably took into account the economic law of the fullest satisfaction of the needs of the people. During the war, its effect was manifested, firstly, in maintaining the state retail prices for consumer goods at the same level both in state and cooperative trade throughout the war; secondly, in the continuation, albeit of a limited amount, of financing the social and cultural services for the Soviet people. In the USSR, there was no freezing or lowering of wages in the sphere of material production. It was thanks to the conscious use of this law and the planning of the economy that the Soviet state managed to organize an organized supply of the population, without resorting to balancing the budget at the expense of the working people, as is the case under similar circumstances in capitalist countries.

During the war years, the ratio of the need for an increase in the social product, aggravated by the needs of the war, and the balance of labor resources, limited in wartime, should have caused an intensification of the use of the law of saving social labor, but this did not happen.

Here it is necessary to distinguish between the economy of living labor and the economy of all social labor. If the productivity of living labor increased during the war years, then the operation of the law of economy of all social labor was narrowed by an insufficient increase in the equipment of labor and a decrease in the average level of labor qualifications due to the involvement of unskilled workers in production. The limited effect of this law was also manifested in an increase in output per worker due to an increase not only in labor productivity due to the improvement of technology and production technology and other similar factors, but also in hours worked by lengthening the working day and introducing overtime work. Of course, the productivity of social labor as a whole has increased primarily due to the heroic work of the Soviet people.

Thus, the law of economy of social labor and time continued to operate, but with some deviations. The peculiarities of the manifestation of this law during the war affected the operation of the law of value. The characteristic deviations in the operation of the law of value were caused and explained by changes that have occurred in the operation of other economic laws with which it is associated.

During the war, the law of value, as an expression of the objective needs of economic management, was perceived by Soviet society as particularly relevant for the management of social production. But the war limited the possibilities of using this law, since, firstly, the role of money, through which the law of value operates, has decreased, and, secondly, the action of spontaneous forces has increased in the unorganized market due to a decrease in commodity resources in the hands of the state and a plurality of prices. The operation of the law of value is evidenced by both centralized measures to save material, labor and financial costs, and the mass initiative of the working people for the rational use and conservation of resources. But the operation of this law underwent significant deviations, because during the war, to a certain extent, the basis of the law of value was violated - the production of a product at socially necessary costs.

During the war period, the law of distribution according to work weakened. The highest wages were associated not with the highest qualifications of workers, but with the importance of the industry in which they were employed for defense. Since the majority of workers were concentrated in the sectors related to defense, a significant part of the wage funds, and therefore the purchasing funds, was concentrated here. For the same reasons (the concentration of human and material resources in the defense industries), the production of the industry of group "B" has absolutely decreased, as a result of which an unrealized demand for consumer goods has formed. All this has led to an imbalance between supply and demand - one of the sides of the law of value.

Thus, the reduced supply of goods by the state increased the demand for them on the collective farm market, where prices rose. As a result, the purchasing power of the ruble has slightly decreased. In some sectors, the growth of wages was not compensated by the growth of labor productivity, which led to an increase in the cost of production. In agriculture, due to a decrease in the means of mechanization, the cost of production increased and through the operation of the law of value exerted its influence on the ratio of price and value: prices were separated from value. For this reason, the inequality of exchange between industry and agriculture increased. In the city, the rationing system led to some leveling in real wages. All this undermined the operation of the law of value.

In the process of the formation and development of the military economy, the Soviet state took into account the economic law of the rational distribution of productive forces, the scientific principles of which were formulated by V.I.Lenin. Although the operation of the law of rational allocation of productive forces was violated to a certain extent due to the need to send evacuated and new equipment to points where there were free production areas for this, in general, the placement of evacuated production facilities was not carried out spontaneously, not by gravity, but in an organized manner, with taking into account the proximity to sources of raw materials, energy resources, the availability of a transport network, etc.

Accommodation of evacuated productive forces, as well as the construction of new industrial enterprises in the eastern regions were of decisive importance for the development of the military economy, had a positive effect on the rational use of the country's various natural resources, accelerated the process of expanded reproduction and the growth of labor productivity.

An important means of organizing the war economy of the USSR and achieving economic victory over Nazi Germany was the strengthening of organizational centralism in public administration and planning of the national economy.

The struggle of the Soviet people against the treacherously attacked enemy was led by the Communist Party, its Central Committee, the Soviet government and the State Defense Committee. The organizing and guiding role of the Communist Party was clearly manifested in the unity of the political, economic and military leadership of the country and the Armed Forces. All the fullness of state power was concentrated in one body - the State Defense Committee, all of whose activities took place in close contact with the Headquarters of the Soviet Supreme Command. This made it possible to provide a comprehensive and prompt solution to the issues of armed struggle and the work of the Soviet rear. Issues of major military-political importance were considered at joint meetings of the Politburo of the CPSU (b), GKO and Headquarters.

GKO commissioners were appointed to the field to manage the military economy, coordinate the activities of party, Soviet and economic bodies to mobilize all the country's resources. In areas located in the immediate vicinity of the front, city defense committees were formed.

The creation of the State Defense Committee, the institute of GKO commissioners and local defense committees ensured increased centralization in the management of the military economy, made it possible to quickly and concretely implement the party's policy, to carry out the most complete mobilization and use of the state's material and human resources to defeat the enemy.

By the decision of the State Defense Committee, people's commissariats of the tank industry, weapons, ammunition, mortar weapons were created, under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the Committee for the Registration and Distribution of Labor, the Council for Evacuation, and the Soviet Information Bureau were formed. I. V. Stalin, A. A. Andreev, N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Zhdanov, M. I. Kalinin, A. P. Kosygin, A. I. Mikoyan, V. M Molotov, N. M. Shvernik. The leaders of the main branches of the USSR military economy were M.G. Pervukhin, B.L. Vannikov, V.A.Malyshev, D.F. Ustinov, I.F. Tevosyan, A.I. Shakhurin, P.I. K. Baibakov, V. V. Vakhrushev, A. I. Efremov, P. F. Lomako and others

With regard to wartime conditions, the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Central Committee of the Communist Parties of the Union republics, the regional and regional party committees, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Council of People's Commissars of the Union and autonomous republics, regional executive committees, regional executive committees, local party and Soviet bodies were reorganized. In the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of the Union republics, regional and regional committees, new branch departments for the defense industry and transport were formed. The composition of the party organizers of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Komsomol members of the Central Committee of the Komsomol at factories and plants increased. For the prompt implementation of the decisions of higher bodies, the rights of the Council of People's Commissars of the union and autonomous republics, as well as local government bodies, were expanded.

The Great Patriotic War subjected the Party and Soviet governing bodies and their organizational and business skills to a severe test. They passed this test with honor.

In wartime, strict planning and production discipline was strictly observed, and the personal responsibility of leading personnel increased.

During the war years, increased centralization in planning the national economy, due to the needs of wartime. The redistribution of the resources of the national economy, primarily in favor of war production, as well as the limitation of the output of a number of important goods caused by the war, required the centralized distribution in a planned manner of a much larger quantity of products than in peacetime. During the war, the number of products distributed from a single center according to the state plan more than doubled.

National economic planning was carried out on a scientific methodological basis. Among the most important scientific principles of planning, the principle of the leading link and the closely related principle of the greatest economic efficiency have acquired particular importance. The military-economic plans included such a use of the potential capabilities of the socialist economy, which made it possible to surpass Hitler's Germany in the production of military equipment, despite the fact that it used the economic and labor resources of almost all of the Europe it occupied. The plans took into account the main, decisive sectors of the military economy and concentrated on them a maximum of material, financial and labor resources. The planning widely used the balance method, economic calculations of the most efficient use of production capacity, labor resources, raw materials, materials, etc.

The planned nature of the Soviet economy, due to the domination of socialist socialist ownership of the means of production, made it possible to establish proportions between industries and enterprises on the basis of state plan and made it possible in a short time to radically change the proportions of the peace period in the interests of victory over the enemy. In the distribution of labor and material assets, the predominant share was occupied by military production and the branches of the military economy cooperating with it.

The change in the proportions in the national economy, aimed at the fastest development of the war economy and meeting the needs of the front, was reflected in the balance of the national economy. It included a scientific analysis of the main proportions and interrelationships between industries for the previous planning period and scientifically based calculations on the most important indicators of production and use of the social product and national income for the planning period. The balance of the national economy was based on the use of the economic laws of socialist reproduction, made it possible to rationally distribute production, material, financial, and labor resources and determine the optimal tasks for the development of the war economy in the interests of defeating the enemy.

During the war years, the law of planned, proportional development of the national economy was used in planning when developing plans, agreeing and coordinating all parties and branches of reproduction in order to ensure the fastest creation of a well-coordinated war economy, but with some restrictions. This was manifested in the fact that the unified national economic plan was balanced on a unilateral basis of the maximum possible satisfaction of the needs of the front while limiting and limiting the remaining needs of society and therefore could not provide that optimal combination of consumption and accumulation inherent in socialism, as well as divisions I and II of social production, which provided in peacetime. The effect of this law had an effect on the fact that the production capacities of industries interconnected with the military industry were fully used. Economically, this meant that the law of planned, proportional development operated under conditions of a somewhat limited manifestation of the basic and other economic laws of socialism, and therefore the sphere of its action also had some limitations.

During the war, the principle of democratic centralism also did not receive the necessary scope in planning, since it was precisely in planning that centralization especially intensified.

From the first days of the war, all work on rebuilding the economy on a war footing, deploying the military industry and other defense industries went strictly according to plan. The military-economic plans drawn up by the USSR State Planning Committee and approved by the USSR Council of People's Commissars and the State Defense Committee had the force of law, contained an extensive program of military production, and gave a clear perspective for the development of the military economy. They played a great mobilizing and organizing role. Along with the main task - the maximum development of the military industry, the plans also provided for an appropriate level of development of metallurgy, fuel industry, energy, mechanical engineering, transport, agriculture, i.e. those industries, without the development of which there could be no lasting rise in the military economy.

During the war years, systematic strict control over the fulfillment of planned targets was carried out, bottlenecks and imbalances in the development of the military economy were promptly identified and decisive measures were taken to urgently eliminate them.

State planning, being the most important instrument of centralized distribution and redistribution of material, labor and financial resources, ensured the rapid mobilization of the country's production potential to defeat the enemy.

The decisive factors that ensured the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany were: the leadership and military-organizational activity of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the war years, unparalleled in scale and complexity; the strength and might of the Soviet socialist state — a state of a new type; the valor and courage of those who emerged from the depths of the Soviet people and are closely connected with them by the unity of goals and interests of the Soviet Armed Forces, who honorably fulfilled their patriotic and international duty; labor feat of workers of the Soviet rear.

The Communist Party - the guiding and inspiring force of Soviet society - from the first days of the war mobilized the masses for the sacred struggle against the German fascist invaders and for the defense of the gains of socialism. During the Patriotic War, the Communist Party was a worthy organizer and inspirer of the fighting Soviet people. Guided in all its activities by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, the party developed a scientifically grounded program for the defeat of the German fascist invaders, rallied all the peoples of the USSR around itself, united the efforts of the front and rear, soldiers and workers, led the nationwide struggle against fascism and brought it to a victorious end. ...

The wise leadership of the Communist Party clearly demonstrated the skillful use of all the objective possibilities inherent in the socialist system to create a solid military organization of the entire Soviet society. Through the efforts of the party and the government, the Soviet rear has turned into a single combat camp, feeding the front with human reserves, weapons, ammunition, food, and maintaining the morale of the fighting soldiers.

The Communist Party launched colossal activities to organize a nationwide struggle in the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR. In the rear of the enemy, underground party organizations were created, and a massive partisan movement developed. More than a million Soviet people were active in the ranks of partisan detachments, formations and underground organizations.

In the initial, especially difficult period of the war, when the Soviet people had to experience both setbacks and the bitterness of defeat, the party did not conceal the full weight of the trials that befell our country. The directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of June 29, 1941 said: "... in the war imposed on us with Nazi Germany, the question of the life and death of the Soviet state is being decided, about whether the peoples of the Soviet Union should be free or fall into enslavement." The party and the government demanded "to put an end to complacency and carelessness and to mobilize all our organizations and all the forces of the people to defeat the enemy, for a ruthless reprisal against the hordes of attacking German fascism."

The party, using the advantages of the socialist mode of production and planned management of the economy, in an extremely short period of time transferred all branches of the Soviet economy to a war footing: industry, transport, agriculture. In the course of the creation and development of the war economy, the party warned against the danger of overestimating its own forces, pointed out the inadmissibility of being content with the successes achieved, exposed shortcomings in the work of the war economy and called for the concentration of all forces on meeting the needs of the front in order to ensure the fastest defeat of Nazi Germany.

Based on a deep analysis of the basic laws that objectively determine the course and outcome of the entire war, the party showed the main factors as a result of which the German fascist troops achieved success in the first period of the war: the surprise attack on the USSR, the economic and military superiority of the aggressor, and convincingly proved that that they were of a temporary, transient nature, for the Soviet state, by virtue of the advantages of the socialist economic system, fully possessed the military-economic capabilities for a decisive change in the balance of the armed forces and foreign policy conditions in its favor.

“The war has shown,” says the History of the Second World War, “that the outcome of an armed struggle is not determined by a simple ratio of material and human resources of the parties. The outcome of a long struggle is decided by a combination of political, economic, social and moral factors, skillful and purposeful use of all available and potential forces, achievement of superiority at decisive stages and in the most important areas. "

The party skillfully and decisively put into action all the forces and means of the Soviet state for the all-round development and strengthening of the country's economic and military potential, determined the political and strategic goals of the war, and exercised leadership in all spheres of social and state life of the USSR. Under her leadership, the most important operations of the Great Patriotic War were prepared and carried out, topical issues of building the Armed Forces, the organization of Soviet troops, their technical equipment and combat use were resolved. She supervised the distribution of the labor, material, technical and financial resources of the Soviet state, organized in the shortest possible time a well-coordinated military economy.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a truly fighting party. The communists were the first to go to the front. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) made a redistribution of party forces in favor of the organizations of the Red Army and the Navy. In just four years of the war, 1,640,000 communists were mobilized into the Armed Forces, which was equal to half of the entire party membership by the summer of 1941. By the spring of 1945, every fourth Soviet soldier was a communist, while at the beginning of the war - every ninth. Party members have always been at the forefront of the fighting troops.

In the Soviet rear, the party had a close-knit militant party organism, numbering almost 2 million communists who fought selflessly on the labor front.

The Communist Party turned the friendship of the peoples of the USSR, which was firmly established during the years of peaceful construction, into a powerful source of victory over Nazi Germany, rallying even more closely into a single multi-million army of fighters for victory over fascism all the nations and nationalities of the country.

The Communist Party found slogans accessible and understandable to the broad masses, calling them to fight the Nazi invaders, to win victory. The Soviet people, responding to the Party's calls, displayed high political consciousness and devotion to the Party's cause.

During the war years, Soviet people vividly demonstrated the greatest courage, resilience, high patriotism and internationalism, selfless labor, creative and political activity.

Thanks to the solid unity of the political, state and military leadership, the army and the people, the front and the rear, the Soviet Union turned into a huge military camp, engulfed in a single impulse - to defeat the enemy, drive him out of Soviet soil, and destroy fascism.

Local party bodies carried out a great deal of work to develop the war economy. During the period of military restructuring of the national economy, they often assumed the functions of direct economic leadership.

Local party organizations mobilized and directed the efforts of the workers of the Soviet home front to quickly meet the urgent needs of the front, improve the work of industry, agriculture and transport, make the most efficient use of materials, equipment, increase labor productivity, supervise the activities of scientific institutions and public organizations.

The party attached great importance to the revitalization and enhancement of the role of local bodies of Soviet power and public organizations in the creation and development of the military economy. The Central Committee of the CPSU (b) determined the content and methods of work of state and public organizations. The local Soviets of Working People's Deputies carried out military mobilizations in the rear, were engaged in general military training, the everyday life of the evacuated population, provided assistance to the families of military personnel, ensured sanitary and epidemic security, led the centralized supply of the population, etc. They were loyal and reliable assistants to the party.

The most important site activity of local party and Soviet bodies was work to raise agriculture. To strengthen party leadership in agriculture under war conditions, the system of political departments of the MTS and state farms was re-created. Together with local party and Soviet bodies, they strengthened the party's influence on the development of agriculture, helped the collective and state farms fulfill their duty to meet the needs of the front and the population in food and industry in raw materials.

Local party and Soviet organizations widely attracted the urban population and collectives of industrial enterprises to help agricultural workers. In the order of patronage over collective farms, MTS and state farms, workers of factories and plants repaired tractors and other agricultural equipment, participated in construction and restoration work.

The trade unions and the Komsomol did a lot of work to mobilize forces, develop the military economy, and provide the front with everything necessary for a successful armed struggle against the Nazi invaders. The trade unions widely and widely developed socialist emulation, actively participated in conducting universal education, in mass training and retraining of workers, in organizing treatment of the wounded and assistance to families of servicemen. In the harsh years of the war, as in peacetime, the Leninist Komsomol was the party's combat assistant. From the first days of the war, under the leadership of the party, he rebuilt and subordinated all his work of mobilizing young people to resolutely rebuff the enemy, to defend the Motherland and selfless labor in the rear.

During the war years, under the leadership of the Communist Party, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry - the unshakable class basis of the socialist system, its military organization, became the most important source of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

The Communist Party in its organizational activity relied on strong ties with the working class, peasantry, and intelligentsia. Friendly cooperation, mutual assistance, patriotism, loyalty to the socialist system, high labor and political activity of the working class, the peasantry, and the intelligentsia were the foundation on which the party in an extremely short time mobilized the available human, material, production, and monetary resources in the country and used them with such high efficiency, which is impossible in a capitalist society torn apart by class contradictions.

Thanks to this, the Soviet Union had the strongest rear. The workers of the Soviet home front during the war created a powerful military economy and won an economic victory over Hitlerite Germany. This fully revealed the superiority of the Soviet experience in running and managing the national economy and the possibilities of the socialist mode of production.

The victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War showed the whole world what a colossal, inexhaustible might the country of socialism and its people have, who stood up breast under the leadership of the Communist Party to defend their revolutionary gains, freedom and independence.

The victory of the Soviet people and the crushing defeat of the forces of fascism and militarism is a historically conditioned, natural phenomenon. The Great Patriotic War convincingly showed that there are no forces in the world capable of crushing socialism, bringing to their knees a people loyal to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, loyal to the socialist Motherland, rallied around the Leninist party. The invincibility of socialism is the main lesson of the war and a formidable warning to the imperialist aggressors.

... looking back after the defeat of the external enemy, we saw in front of us a picture of the complete destruction of the national economy.

("Speeches at the IV conference of the KP (b) of Ukraine" v.4 p. 296.)

... you are wrong, when you qualify our country as a country of "colonial countries" type. Colonial countries are countries mostly beforecapitalist. Our country is a country bycapitalist. The former have not matured to developed capitalism. The second has outgrown developed capitalism. These are two fundamentally different types.

("Letter to Comrade Shatunovsky" v. 13, p. 18.)

We have a certain diversity in our economic system - as many as five orders. There is an almost natural way of farming: these are peasant farms, the marketability of which is very low. There is a second mode of economy, a mode of commodity production, where marketability in the peasant economy plays a decisive role. There is a third mode of economy - private capitalism, which has not been killed, which has revived and will revive to certain limits as long as we have NEP. The fourth mode of economy is state capitalism, i.e. the capitalism that we have allowed and have the ability to control and limit the way the proletarian state wants it. Finally, the fifth mode is socialist industry, that is, our state-owned industry, where production is represented not by two hostile classes - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but one class - the proletariat.

("XIV Congress of the CPSU (b)" v. 7, page 303.)

Party plan:

1. We are re-equipping industry (reconstruction).

2. We are starting to seriously re-equip agriculture (reconstruction).

3. For this, it is necessary to expand the construction of collective and state farms, the massive use of contracting and machine-tractor stations as a means of establishing production link between industry and agriculture.

4. With regard to grain procurement difficulties at the moment, it is necessary to recognize the admissibility of temporary emergency measures, backed by public support of the middle and poor masses, as one of the means to break the resistance of the kulaks and take from them the maximum grain surplus necessary to do without the import of grain and save the currency for the development of the industry.

5. The individual poor-middle peasant economy plays and will still play a predominant role in supplying the country with food and raw materials, but it is only one thing is not enough - the development of the individual poor-middle peasant economy must therefore be supplemented by the development of collective and state farms, mass contracting, enhanced development of machine tools. -tractor stations in order to facilitate the ousting of capitalist elements from agriculture and the gradual transfer of individual peasant farms to the tracks of large collective farms, to the tracks of collective labor.

6. But in order to achieve all this, it is necessary first of all to strengthen the development of industry, metallurgy, chemistry, machine building, tractor plants, agricultural machinery plants, etc. Without this, it is impossible to resolve the grain problem, just as the reconstruction of agriculture is impossible.

Output: the key to the reconstruction of agriculture is the rapid pace of development of our industry.

("On the right deviation in the CPSU (b)" v.12 p.62.)

They say that rationalization ( production and management of the economy - approx. comp.) requires some temporary sacrifice on the part of some groups of workers, including the youth. This is true, comrades.

The history of our revolution says that not a single major step has been done without some sacrifices on the part of individual groups of the working class in the interests of the entire working class of our country. Take the civil war, although the current minor casualties cannot be compared with those serious casualties that took place in our country during the civil war. You see that those sacrifices are already paying off with interest.

It scarcely needs proof that the current minor sacrifices will pay off more in the near future. That is why I think we should not stop at some minor sacrifices in the interests of the working class as a whole.

("Speech at the V All-Union Conference of the Komsomol" vol.9 p.197.)

... what could the abolition of the foreign trade monopoly mean for the workers? This would mean for them a rejection of the industrialization of the country, the construction of new factories and factories, and the expansion of old factories and plants. This would mean for them the flooding of the USSR with goods from capitalist countries, the curtailment of our industry due to its relative weakness, the increase in the number of unemployed, the worsening of the material situation of the working class, and the weakening of its economic and political positions. This would mean, in the final analysis, the strengthening of the Nepman and of the new bourgeoisie in general. Can the proletariat of the USSR agree to commit suicide? It is clear that it cannot.

And what would the abolition of the monopoly of foreign trade mean for the laboring masses of the peasantry? It would mean the transformation of our country from an independent country into a semi-colonial country and the impoverishment of the peasant masses.

("Conversation with the First American Workers' Delegation," v. 10, p. 110.)

... we think that a powerful and full of life movement is inconceivable without disagreements - only in a cemetery is "complete identity of views" possible!

("Our goals" v.2 p. 248.)

Comrades! Since the 15th Congress, 2 1 / 2 of the year. The time period does not seem to be very long. Meanwhile, during this time, there have been major changes in the life of peoples and states. If we describe in a nutshell the period that has elapsed, it could be called the period turning point... It was a turning point not only for us, for the USSR, but also for the capitalist countries of the whole world. But there is a fundamental difference between the two. While this turning point meant for the USSR a turn towards a new, more serious economic upswing, for the capitalist countries the turning point meant a turn towards economic growth. decline... We, in the USSR, growingan upsurge in socialist construction both in industry and in agriculture. They, the capitalists, growing crisis economy and industry, and in agriculture.

This is the picture of the current situation in a nutshell.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" v.12 p. 235.)

The development of our national economy is proceeding under the sign of industrialization. But we don't need all kinds of industrialization. We need an industrialization that provides a growing preponderance socialist forms of industryover small-scale forms and even more capitalist.The characteristic feature of our industrialization is that it is industrialization socialist,industrialization for victory socializedindustrial sector over sector private, over the small-scale and capitalist sector.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" v.12 p.267.)

The growth of our national economy is proceeding not spontaneously, but in a certain direction, namely, in the direction of industrialization, under the sign of industrialization, under the sign of an increase in the share of industry in common system national economy, under the sign of the transformation of our country from an agrarian into an industrial one.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" v.12 p.264.)

Some comrades think that the main thing in the offensive of socialism is repression, and if repression does not grow, then there is no offensive either.

Repression in the field of socialist construction is a necessary element of an offensive, but an auxiliary element, not the main one. The main thing in the offensive of socialism, under our modern conditions, consists in increasing the rate of development of our industry, in increasing the rate of development of state and collective farms, in increasing the rate of economic ousting of the capitalist elements in town and country, in mobilizing the masses around socialist construction, in mobilizing the masses against capitalism. You can arrest and expel tens and hundreds of thousands of kulaks, but if at the same time you do not do everything necessary to accelerate the construction of new forms of economy, replace old ones with new forms of economy, capitalist forms, to undermine and liquidate the sources of production for the economic existence and development of the capitalist elements in the countryside — the kulaks will still revive and continue to grow.

Others think that the offensive of socialism is an indiscriminate advance, without appropriate preparation, without regrouping forces during the offensive, without consolidating the positions won, without using reserves for developing successes, and if there are signs of, say, a withdrawal of one part of the peasants from collective farms, then this is means that we already have the "ebb of the revolution," the decline of the movement, the suspension of the offensive.

Is this true? This is, of course, not true.

Firstly, not a single offensive, be it the most successful, is complete without some breakthroughs and overshoots in certain sectors of the front. To speak on this basis about the suspension or failure of the offensive is to not understand the essence of the offensive.

Secondly, it never happened and cannot be successfuloffensive without regrouping forces in the course of the offensive itself, without consolidating captured positions, without using reserves to develop success and bring the offensive to an end. With indiscriminate promotion, i.e. without these conditions, the offensive must inevitably run out of steam and fail. Indiscriminate advance is death for the offensive. This is evidenced by the rich experience of our civil war.

Third, how can an analogy be drawn between the "ebb of revolution", which usually arises on the basis of declinemovement, and the ebb of one part of the peasants from the collective farms, which arose on the basis of the continuing rise of the movement, on the basis of the continuing liftingof all our socialist construction, both industrial and collective farm, on the basis of the continuing upsurge of our revolution? What can be in common between these two completely dissimilar phenomena?

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" v.12 p.309.)

It cannot be denied that not little has been done in the field of housing construction and the supply of workers in recent years. But what has been done is completely insufficient to meet the rapidly growing needs of the workers. One cannot refer to the fact that there were fewer dwellings before than now, and that, in view of this, one can rest assured of the results achieved. Nor can one refer to the fact that the supply of the workers was much worse in the past than it is now, and that, in view of this, one can be content with the existing situation. Only rotten and thoroughly rotten people can console themselves with references to the past. We must proceed not from the past, but from the growing needs of workers in the present.

("New Situation - New Tasks of Economic Development" v. 13, pp. 58-59.)

Until now, we have been saving on everything, including the light industry, in order to rebuild heavy industry. But we have already restored heavy industry. It only needs to be expanded further. Now we can turn to light industry and move it forward in accelerated darkness. What is new in the development of our industry consists, among other things, in the fact that we now have the opportunity to develop at an accelerated rate both heavy and light industries.

("Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)" v.12 p. 331.)

Of course, we have not yet succeeded in fully meeting the material needs of the workers and peasants. And we are unlikely to achieve this in the coming years. But we have undoubtedly achieved that the material condition of the workers and peasants is improving in our country from year to year. This can only be doubted by the sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, or, perhaps, by some representatives of the bourgeois press, including one part of the correspondents of this press in Moscow, who understand the economy of peoples and the position of working people hardly more than, say, the Abyssinian king in higher mathematics.

("Results of the first five-year plan" v. 13 p. 200.)

Our period is usually called the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. It was called the transitional period in 1918, when Lenin, in his famous article "On the Left" childishness and on the petty-bourgeois nature, first described this period with its five modes of economic life. It is called transitional at the present time, in 1930, when some of these structures, as obsolete, are already sinking, and one of these structures, namely, the new structure in the field of industry and agriculture, is growing and developing with unprecedented speed. Can we say that these two transitional periods are identical, that they do not differ from each other in a radical way? It is clear that it is impossible.

What did we have in 1918 in the field of the national economy? Destroyed industry and lighters, the absence of collective and state farms as a mass phenomenon, the growth of the "new" bourgeoisie in the city and the kulaks in the countryside.

What do we have now? The restored and reconstructed socialist industry, a developed system of state and collective farms, which have more than 40% of all crops in the USSR on only one spring wedge, the dying "new" bourgeoisie in the city, the dying kulaks in the countryside.

And there is a transitional period. And here is a transitional period. And yet they are fundamentally different from each other, like heaven from earth. And yet no one can deny that we are on the verge of eliminating the last serious capitalist class, the kulak class. It is clear that we have already emerged from the transitional period in its old sense, having entered the period of direct and expanded socialist construction along the entire front. It is clear that we have already entered the period of socialism, for the socialist sector now holds in its hands all the economic levers of the entire national economy, although it is still far from building a socialist society and eliminating class distinctions. And yet, despite this, national languages \u200b\u200bnot only do not die out and do not merge into one common language, but, on the contrary, national cultures and national languages \u200b\u200bdevelop and flourish. Is it not clear that the theory of the withering away of national languages \u200b\u200band their merging into one common language within one state during the period of expanded socialist construction, during the period of socialism in one country, there is a wrong theory, anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist.

("Closing remarks on the political report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the CPSU (b)" v.13, page 5.)

Each period in national development has its own pathos. In Russia we now have a pathos of construction. This is its dominant feature now. This explains why we are now experiencing a construction fever. This is reminiscent of the post-civil war period in the USA.

("Mr. Campbell is lying" v. 13, page 149.)

Sure, natural resources our countries are rich and varied. They are more diverse and richer than is officially known, and our exploration expeditions are constantly finding new resources in our vast country. But this is only one side of our capabilities. The other side is that our peasants and workers are now relieved of the old burden of landlords and capitalists. The landlords and capitalists previously squandered unproductively what now remains in the country and increases its purchasing power within the country. The growth in demand is such that our industry, despite the rapidity of its development, lags behind demand. The demand is huge for both personal and industrial use. This is the second side of our unlimited possibilities.

("Mr. Campbell is lying" v. 13, p. 152.)

We are told that all this is good, many new factories have been built, the foundations for industrialization have been laid. But it would be much better to abandon the policy of industrialization, from the policy of expanding the production of the means of production, or at least to put it aside in order to produce more chintz, shoes, clothing and other consumer goods.

Indeed, less consumer goods have been produced than needed, and this creates certain difficulties. But then one must know and must be aware of what such a policy of relegating the tasks of industrialization to the background would lead us to. Of course, out of the one and a half billion rubles in foreign currency spent during this period on the equipment of our heavy industry, we could set aside half for the import of cotton, leather, wool, rubber, etc. We would then have more chintz, footwear, and clothing. But then we would not have had either a tractor or an automobile industry, would not have had any serious ferrous metallurgy, would not have had metal for the production of machines, and we would have been unarmed in the face of a capitalist encirclement armed with new technology.

We would then have deprived ourselves of the opportunity to supply agriculture with tractors and agricultural machinery — therefore, we would have been sitting without bread.

We would deprive ourselves of the opportunity to win a victory over the capitalist elements in the country - therefore, we would incredibly increase the chances of the restoration of capitalism.

We would not then have all those modern means of defense, without which the state independence of the country is impossible, without which the country turns into an object of military operations by external enemies. Our position would then be more or less analogous to the position of today's China, which does not have its own heavy industry, does not have its own military industry, and which is now pecked by all and sundry.

In a word, in this case, we would have a military intervention, not pacts of non-aggression, but a war, a dangerous and deadly war, a bloody and unequal war, for in this war we would be almost unarmed in front of the enemies who have at their disposal all modern means of attack. ...

This is how things turn out, comrades.

It is clear that a self-respecting state power, a self-respecting party could not take such a disastrous point of view.

And precisely because the Party rejected such an anti-revolutionary line, it is precisely for this reason that it achieved a decisive victory in fulfilling the five-year plan in the field of industry.

("Results of the first five-year plan" v.13 p.181.)

They say that the collective and state farms are not entirely profitable, that they absorb a lot of funds, that there is no reason to keep such enterprises, that it would be more expedient to dissolve them, leaving only the profitable ones. But only people who know nothing about questions of the national economy, in questions of economics, can speak like that. More than half of the textile enterprises were unprofitable several years ago. One part of our comrades then suggested that we close these enterprises. What would happen to us if we obeyed them? We would have committed the greatest crime against the country, against the working class, for we would have ruined our growing industry by doing so. What did we do then? We waited for more than a year and made the entire textile industry profitable. And what about our car plant in the city of Gorky? It is also unprofitable for now. Would you like to close it? Or our ferrous metallurgy, which is also unprofitable so far? Shouldn't we close it, comrades? If we look at profitability in this way, then we would have to fully develop only some industries that give the highest rent, for example, the confectionery industry, the flour-grinding industry, perfumery, knitwear, the industry of children's toys, etc. I, of course, do not against the development of these industries. On the contrary, they must be developed, since they are also needed for the population. But, firstly, they cannot be developed without the equipment and fuel that heavy industry gives them. Secondly, it is impossible to base industrialization on them. That is the point, comrades.

You cannot look at profitability as huckster from the point of view of a given minute. The profitability must be taken from the point of view of the national economy in the context of several years. Only this point of view can be called truly Leninist, truly Marxist. And this point of view is obligatory not only in relation to industry, but even more so in relation to collective and state farms.

Speaking about the unprofitability of collective and state farms, I do not at all want to say that they are all unprofitable. Nothing like this! Everyone knows that there are already a number of highly profitable collective and state farms. We have thousands of collective farms and dozens of state farms that are already quite profitable. These collective and state farms are the pride of our Party, the pride of Soviet power. Collective and state farms, of course, are not the same everywhere. Among the collective and state farms there are old, new and very young. These are still weak, not completely molded economic organisms. In their organizational construction, they are going through approximately the same period as our plants and factories experienced in 1920-1921. It is clear that they cannot still be profitable in their majority. But there can be no doubt that they will become profitable in the course of 2-3 years, just as our factories and plants became profitable after 1921. To deny them help and support on the grounds that not all of them are profitable at the moment is to commit the greatest crime against the working class and the peasantry. Only enemies of the people and counter-revolutionaries can raise the question of the uselessness of collective farms and state farms.

("Results of the first five-year plan" v. 13 pp. 192-194.)

It should be noted, however, that business cannot be limited to the expansion of Soviet trade. If the development of our economy rests on the development of trade, in the development of Soviet trade, then the development of Soviet trade, in turn, rests on the development of our transport, both rail and water, and road. It may happen that there are goods, there is a full opportunity to expand trade, but transport does not keep up with the development of trade and refuses to carry goods. As you know, it happens very often with us. Therefore, transport is the bottleneck that can stumble, and, perhaps, our entire economy and, above all, our trade turnover are already starting to stumble.

There can be no doubt that all these modes of transport could work much better if the transport authorities did not suffer from a well-known disease called the bureaucratic method of leadership. Therefore, besides the fact that it is necessary to help transport people and means, the task is to eradicate the bureaucratic and clerical attitude to business in the transport authorities and make them more efficient.

("Report to the 17th Party Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b)" v.13, pp. 345-346.)

You know that we fought for three years with the capitalists of the whole world in order to win these conditions of peaceful development. You know that we have conquered these conditions, and we consider this to be our greatest achievement. But, comrades, every conquest, including this conquest, also has its negative sides. The conditions for peaceful construction were not in vain for us. They left their mark on our work, on our employees, on their psychology. During these five years we went smoothly forward, as if on rails. In this regard, a number of our workers have developed the mood that everything will go like clockwork, that we are almost sitting on an emergency train and moving along the rails directly without a change to socialism.

("Speech at the VIII Congress of the Komsomol" vol.11 p.67.)

... successes also have their shadow side, especially when they are obtained relatively “easily”, in the order, so to speak, “unexpectedly”. Such successes sometimes instill a spirit of conceit and conceit: "We can do everything!", "We don't care about anything!" They, these successes, often get people drunk, and people begin to feel dizzy from successes, they lose a sense of proportion, they lose the ability to understand reality, there is a desire to overestimate their strengths and underestimate the strength of the enemy, adventurous attempts appear "in no time" to resolve all issues of socialist construction ... There is no longer any place for concern about consolidating the achieved successes and systematically using them for further progress. Why do we need to consolidate the achieved successes - we will be able to run "in no time" until the complete victory of socialism: "We can do everything!", "We don't care about anything!"

("Dizziness with success" v.12 p.192.)

Sometimes they say: if socialism, why still work? We worked before, we are working now - isn't it time to stop working? Such speeches are fundamentally wrong, comrades. This is the philosophy of idlers, not honest workers. Socialism does not deny labor at all. On the contrary, socialism is built on labor. Socialism and labor are inseparable from each other.

Lenin, our great teacher, said: "He who does not work does not eat." What does this mean, against whom are Lenin's words directed? Against the exploiters, against those who do not work themselves, but force others to work and enrich themselves at the expense of others. And against whom? Against those who themselves idle and want to profit at the expense of others. Socialism requires not idling, but that all people work honestly, work not for others, not for the rich and exploiters, but for themselves, for society.

("Speech at the First Congress of Shock Collective Farmers," v. 13, p. 249.)

It must be understood that the strength and authority of our Party, Soviet, economic and any other organizations and their leaders have grown to an unprecedented degree. And precisely because their strength and authority have grown to an unprecedented degree, now everything or almost everything depends on their work. The reference to the so-called objective conditions is not justified. After the correctness of the political line of the party has been confirmed by the experience of several years, and the readiness of the workers and peasants to support this line does not raise any more doubts, the role of the so-called objective conditions has been reduced to a minimum, while the role of our organizations and their leaders has become decisive and exclusive. What does it mean? This means that the responsibility for our breakthroughs and shortcomings in work now falls by nine-tenths not on "objective" conditions, but on ourselves, and only on us.

("Report to the 17th Party Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" v. 13, page 366.)

During the first five-year plan, we managed to organize enthusiasm, pathos new construction and achieved decisive successes. It is very good. But now that's not enough. Now we must supplement this matter with enthusiasm, pathos mastering new factories and new technology, a serious rise in labor productivity, a serious reduction in production costs.