SOVIET FIVE-YEAR PLAN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17438, 9 April 1931, Page 11

SOVIET FIVE-YEAR PLAN

TROTSKY SPEAKS UEGES ENGLAND'S HELP LONDON, April 1. Specially interviewed at Prinkipo Islaiifl n week before fire destroyed his villa with its valuable library, M. Leon Trotsky, the banished Soviet leader, broke bis long silence to disclose his views of the Five-Year Plan. The plan, he said, was succeeding, and already industrialisation by the Soviet showed an unprecedented increase of from 20 to 50 per cent, a year over the level of Russia's former appalling backwardness. M. Trotsky's wife and daughter entertained the interviewer until ftl. Trotsky, returning from fishing, jumped up iu his boat and saluted"the visitor. World opinion of the Fiveyear Plan, he said, had long consisted til contradictory assertions. It was said that it was Utopian, thai the Soviet was verging on economic failure, also that Soviet dumping threatened to overset the capitalist order. This presupposed unprecedented development of productive forces, and was incompatible with the alleged disintegration. Roth Hie contradictory assertions were false. Efforts to transform the Five-Year Plan into a Four-Year Plan proves that it had not sulfered a check. I'hough this acceleration was liljudged, the ban; possibility proved the plan to be far from failure. Industrialisation by the Soviet showed ail unprecedented increase of £ls, to 30 per edit, a year over the level "1 Russia's .former appalling backwardness. The Soviet, even after realisation of the plan, must bo far behind advanced capitalist States. An eightfold increase in the. Soviet export trade would be necessary to threaten the, w/orl(,l trade balance, incidentally ruining Russia's own economy. The suggested boycott of Soviet trade was a factual path to war, but even wax would, not overthrow the. Soviet system. The Five-Vea.r Plan with inevitable adjustments,, was certainly realisable. Capitalist industries in Tsarist Russia yielded a 12 per cent, dividend between tlie owners, and means of increasing production. Almost the entire 12 per cent, under nationalisation could servo industrialisation, to which must bo added savings due to the absence of competition, centralised works, and unity of financing and supplies.

Since the increase in Russian industry was 20 per cent, a year, it was proved that even a backward nationalised country outstripped civilised nations. If England and' Russia cooperated in exchanging machinery and raw material, both would vastly in> crease their mutual prosperity. A centralised economic plan, proved by a poor backward country such, as Russia, would, when enlarged to cover the relations of the Soviet with advanced nations, provide a spacious outlook for mankind.