RUSSIA’S AMBITIONS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3241, 11 December 1930, Page 6

RUSSIA’S AMBITIONS

THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN. Even Communism cannot do without capital. At any rate, the Soviet plan for economic reconstruction, of which an English translation has recently been published, has much to say about “capital investments,” and is largely worked out in terms of capital. The five-year plan aims at transforming the Soviet Union from a country primarily agrarian to one predominatingly industrial. It is estimated that when the fiveyear plan is complete in 1933 the capital investments will be increased from 26,500,000,000 roubles to 64,600,000,000 roubles. It is calculated that by October 1, 1933, there will be 63.6 per cent, of this “basic capital” invested in State enterprises, 5.3 cooperative, and 31.1 in private. There are 42 large projects for. central power plants, leaving out of account electrification within purely local limits. The amount invested in electric development is to be 24 per cent, of the total investment in industry.

It is hoped that the output of coal will have been inci'eased during the five years from 35,400,000 tons to 73,000,000. It is reckoned that, by the end of the period, 75 per cent, of the coal of the Donetz basin, the chief mining centre, will be mined by machinery.

It is admitted that there are hardly any detailed plans for the proposed series of new mines, and that the technical personnel available is not enough to carry out the programme within the time limit. The programme, however, is the strict minimum required to ensure the industrial development embodied in the five-year plan. It is proposed to double the output of oil, raising it from 11,600,000 tons to 21,000,000 tons. Even this is regarded as insufficient, and further expansion is to be sought. In the steel plants is it intended to apply the methods of post-war Germany, thus increasing the output and lowering the cost of production. Provision is made for a minimum output Of 10,000,000 tons of pig iron

a year as against 4,000,000 at the outset of the plan. The production of copper is expected to rise from 28,300 tons to 85,000, of zinc from 3250 to 77,000, and of lead from 3020 to 38,500, with 5000 tons of aluminium as compared with nothing. These figures include concession enterprises.

After enumerating large expenditures on locomotive, machine-tool and mining machinery, the “plan” gives details of a motor car factory at Nizhni-Novgorod, with an annual output of 100,000 cars a year, and of a plant at Stalingrad to turn out 50,000 tractors a year. Another tractor plant is to be built, according to the plans, in the Urals to turn over another 50,000 a year, to say nothing of 20,000 at Leningrad, and 3000 at Kharkov, or 123,000 a year in all.

It is stated that the whole plan of economic reconstruction hinges on the metal and machine industry. The difficulties are emphasised and mention is made of the need for “considerable technical aid from the advanced countries of Europe and from America.”

In regard to industry generally, the naive hope is expressed that the plan will “mark a considerable advance in the process of raising the Soviet Union to the level of the advanced capitalist countries and will provide a basis for even more rapid progress in the great competitive race between socialist and capitalist economy.” The capitalist countries, especially the United States, are evidently expected to give joyful aid to their competitor so that they may be outstripped.

Railway plans provide for the opening of over 10,000 miles of new lines and it is hoped to reduce transportation charges by 20 per cent. Large sums are also set down for canals, roads, ports, ship-building and commercial aviation. In housebuilding it is intended to adopt the best methods of European and American technique.

In a general survey stress is laid on the need for a considerable extension of the practice of engaging foreign expert aid on all important construction work.

Not only, are foreign experts to be employed, but it is intended to send abroad numbers of Soviet engineers, technicians, agronomists, skilled workers, and, eventually, more advanced peasants, so that they may learn from the benighted “capitalist” countries.