Here are some notes for Russia, because we aren't including it and kinda feel bad. These notes should help with any 'comparative' industrialisation questions, which you should do based on Meiji and the USSR.
Soviet Union Industrialisation:
First 5-Year Plan (1928-1936 - Yes the dates don't add up to 5)
Historiography:
2. Second 5-Year Plan (1933-1937):
3. Third 5-Year Plan:
Primary source:
Collectivisation and Industrialisation - Mark Harrison:
Collectivisation:
Historiography:
Facts:
Soviet Union Industrialisation:
First 5-Year Plan (1928-1936 - Yes the dates don't add up to 5)
- Divide economy into heavy industry and consumer goods
- Provide electricity nation-wide - Electricity generation from 1927-1940 quintupled
- Reduce domestic production costs by 35%
- "5 in 4" mentality - completing the targets of the five year plan within four years
- Although very few targets were achieved, this mentality allowed for substantial progress over the 12 years of rapid economic development
- Propagated through Constructivist Art - Assembling new from the old, innovation
Historiography:
- Mark Harrison - "less ambitious plans could have resulted in a variety of alternative outcomes characterised by industrial growth less than or equal to that achieved, combined with fewer social and economic tensions and higher morale of the population
- Stalin attempted to do "too much too fast"; resulted in loss of output and productive assets, under-utilised capacity, wasted investment, excessive mortality and destruction of skilled personel (dekulakisation)
- "The economic mechanism of forced industrialisation emphasised quick results and rewarded people for them"
2. Second 5-Year Plan (1933-1937):
- To be fully socialist and eliminate money
- These objectives were changed in Jan 1934 - kept money and simply attempted to consolidate the first 5-year plan
- Severe social issues
- City overpopulation
- Food shortages - 10 vegetarian days per month
- Average living spaces were 5.88m^2 per person
- Increased crime rates
- Stakhanovism - portrayed heroism of the individual- part of the Soviet propaganda machine which attempted to incentivise workers to toil for the greater good of the USSR
3. Third 5-Year Plan:
- Not fully realised due to WWII
- 1928-1940: USSR claims industrial output increased 852%
- Successful outcome of WWII vindicated Soviet pre-war industrialisation and collectivisation efforts
Primary source:
- Gorbachev at Oct 1987 70-year anniversary of 1917 revolution: "Had there been no industrialisation, we would have stood defenceless before fascism"
Collectivisation and Industrialisation - Mark Harrison:
Collectivisation:
- Transition to compulsory procurement of foodstuffs
- Stripped countrysides of food stocks and developed a food crisis for subsistence farmers
- Liquidation of kulaks as a class
- Urban real wage halved between 1928 to 1932
- Amalgamation of small peasant farms into large collectives (Kolkhozy)
Historiography:
- Lynch: "Soviet authorities' neglect of basic social needs was not accidental." - was never about individuals, but rather collective gain
Facts:
- Trade unions bcame powerless after 1920
- Strikes were prohibited, and a code of 'labour discipline' was introduced
- In real terms, living standards were lower in 1937 than 1928