The economic breakthrough strategy: how it was accomplished 90 years ago
The author offers historic-logical approach for understanding the modern economic problems in Russia in comparison with the Soviet industrialization of 1920th. The exogenous and endogenous circumstances at those times were somehow similar to the contemporary economic hardships in Russia. During the First Year Plan instead of theoretical priorities the strategic decisions were taken in a strict correlation with the economic realities, which in turns featured the Soviet industrialization model. Technological priorities were laid upon the labour-intensive standardized technologies of mass production. Because of shortage in skills and experience, technologies, implemented for the production of predominantly unsophisticated products were imitating the western technologies. The main features of the Soviet industrialization model during its first years, as the western investigators notes, were specialization, concentration and standardization. The other important fact about the Soviet industrialization relates to its strict balance keeping between the industrial and agrarian sectors, achieved by organizational reforms and capital facilities improvement. Meanwhile the regional or spatial dimension of the industrial reforms was also well elaborated. Success in the First Five Years plans fulfillment enabled the country to move further in the complexity of the technologies, to accept the import substitution policy, substantially easing the dependence of the Soviet Union from the other countries and to embark the production of the armament which became important under the worsening international environment
Keywords: economic growth, industrial policy, technological development, raw resources dependence, labour-intensive production, first five year plan, import substitution, national economic security
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