SOVIET FACTORY PRODUCTION

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27096, 20 July 1953, Page 3

SOVIET FACTORY PRODUCTION

ATTEMPT TO MATCH WESTERN TOTAL german expert reports PROGRESS . NEW YORK, June 15. A Kussia well on the way to catch S? ™ th x the ind ustrial production of the western Powers and even surpass it emerges from several well-docu-mented studies of the Soviet economy, Paul Wohl, writing in the * Christian Science Monitor.” According to these studies the Soviet union has made adequate preparations to meet retaliation bombing and allout aerial warfare. European experts believe that in case of a war, which they do not consider inevitable, both the United States and Russia could do each other immeasurable harm and that neither could work out a foolproof system of protection. These are the Views held, for in- ? a u ce ’ . by Germany’s Dr. Walter Leimpheh whose comprehensive volume on the Soviet Union’s economic geography is about to appear in a second edition. In a paper published in a leading geographical review he has 'presented what might be called the strategic quintessence of his findings. He brings out the following points: (1) The Russians have long reconciled themselves to the fact that in case of war their major cities would be bombed into empty husks. Their arsenals and essential installations have therefore long been hidden underground. Wide Dispersal Avoided (2) Recognising that distance from enemy bases is no longer a very important factor, because there is almost no limit to the range of modern bombers, they have found that more is lost than gained by too large dispersal of armament industries. Instead of dispersing their factories and mills in the endless steppes of Siberia, they have grouped them in “packages” around their principal power resources in the neighbourhood of populated areas where manpower for finishing industries is available. Some of these “packages” are almost the size of France and Britain.

(3) The Soviet strategic master plan consists in building up fighter plane capacity of at least 100,000 planes a year. As far as the effect of bombing is concerned, the Russians believe that it does not matter whether a city is destroyed in one minute by an atom bomb delivered by a single plane or in one hour by ordinary high explosives delivered by a large number of planes. They therefore concentrate upon their aviation industry rather than upon atom bombs. As Dr Leimbach sees it, Russia’s three essential strategic requirements are aluminium, power and oil. He believes that the Russians soon will have enough of each. Soviet Aluminium Needs

According to his calculations, the Kremlin would need 240,000 tons of aluminium to build every year 94,000 planes of the fighter type. This is more aluminium than they today can afford to allocate to their aviation industry. Production of bauxite, the raw material from which aluminium is made, theoretically would allow Russia to equal the combined aluminium output of the United States and Canada in 1943—close to 1,300,000 tons. This would require 4,000,000 tons of bauxite of the Russian type, which was the target set in the fourth fiveyear plan. Geologically this target is realistic. If it has not been attained already, it probably will be attained shortly. But there also is the problem of power. Dr. Leimbach figures that the roughly 250,000 tons of aluminium which, the Soviets turn out today swallow up at least 5,000,000,000 kilo-watt-hours of electricity, or 4.8 per cent, of the Soviet total for 1951. Though this is not a very large share, Russia apparently does not have sufficient surplus power to match North America’s aluminium production peak, reached in 1943. A few years hence, however, enough power may be available in the Stalingrad and Kuibyshev power stations which are to have a capacity of 10,000,000,000 kilowatthours each. End of Fuel Problem Seen

By then the question of fuel also will be solved. On the basis of German war time figures. Dr. Leimbach assumes that it takes 1,800,000 tons of kerosene to keep 20,000 rocket planes 33 hours in the air. These 1,800,000 tons, or 12,600,000 barrels, would be required for training purposes only. At the present rate of production it would be difficult for the Soviets to fuel the huge fighter fleet their factories are scheduled to turn out. Russian agriculture alone consumes 9,000,000 tons of petroleum fuel a year for its tractors and other mechanised equipment. Total oil production at present is less than 50,000,000 tons.

Dr. Leimbach and other German experts think, however, that the Soviets soon will break this bottleneck. They assume that by 1960, Russia will turn out, not only 60,000,000 tons of oil — the long-range target set by Stalin in 1946—but about 100,000,000 tdns, or almost one-third of America’s 1951 output Allocations Compared The strategic importance of Russia’s 100,000,000 tons will be much larger than that of the same quantity in the United States, where more than onethird of the total production is consumed by cars. The Soviets, on the other hand, are hard at work to save oil through increased use of electrical machines in agriculture and new types of tractors such as the Diesel Kirovyets 35, which will cut kerosene consumption by more than one-third. The over-ail picture, according to this estimate, is favourable for the Soviet Uniqn.

Although Dr. Leimbach avoids a general political appraisal, this patient and methodical fact-finder intimates repeatedly that the time has long passed for superficial and complacent statistical comparisons. What matters first, in his opinion, are not the quantities of oil, steel etc., produced in the West and by the Soviet bloc, but rather the strategic weight or significance of production items and their relation to domestic requirements, and the tempo of development. In this perspective, he is inclined to attach much more real importance to Moscow’s percentage increase figures than they usually are given in America.