1. Holland, Hunter, “The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan,” Slavic Review, 32, no. 2 (June 1973) : 237–57 Google Scholar.

2. See Holland Hunter's mimeographed paper, “A Test of Five-Year Plan Feasibility“ (June 1973), p. 1, and mimeographed appendix, p. 1.

3. Gosplan, SSSR, Piatiletnii plan narodno-khoziaistvennogo stroitel'stva SSSR, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1929), 1 : 86 Google Scholar.

4. Calculated from growth coefficients in current and constant prices given in Piatiletnii plan'l : \31.

5. Similar assumptions were made for agricultural investment and production costs. See Piatiletnii plan, 1 : 133.

6. Admittedly, the differential fall in capital investment costs would only directly affect the marginal capital-output ratio. But since the marginal additions to capital stock over the five-year period accounted for over 72 percent of all 1932/33 capital stock in the optimum and 68 percent in the basic variant (excluding depreciation), the overall planned capital-output ratios would nevertheless be significantly lower than Professor Hunter assumed. See Piatiletnii plan, 1 : 130.

7. See Holland Hunter, “A Test of Five-Year Plan Feasibility,” p. 34.

8. The way in which some of the planning data are fitted into the input-output tables in Professor Hunter's article may also be open to criticism. In our opinion it has resulted in an underestimation of the significance of the critical nature of the intersectoral relationships and in particular of the planned agricultural contribution to economic development. For a detailed account of our own attempt to fit the agricultural data into the base year and target year input-output tables, apply to us at CREES, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham IS, England.

9. Piatiletnii plan, 1 : 85, 96, 107.

10. See table 51 in E. H., Carr and R. W., Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929, vol. 1 (London, 1969), p. 983 Google Scholar, and the discussion of successive plan variants, pp. 842-97. The financial philosophy of the plans was well set out in Bogolepov, M. I., Finansovyi plan piatiletiia (Moscow, 1929)Google Scholar.

11. Piatiletnii plan, 1 : 144; Piatilctnii plan narodno-khosiaistvennogo stroitel'stva SSSR (Moscow, 1930), 2 (pt. 1) : 324, 325, 332, 333.

12. See Carr, E. H., Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926, vol. 1 (New York, 1958), pp. 500–506 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also p. 796 below.

13. Strumilin, S. G., Ocherki planovoi ekonomiki (Moscow, 1928), pp. 422–34, 441-42, 456Google Scholar.

14. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, July 19, 1926. The control figures were presented to the Presidium by A. B. Shtern, an ex-Menshevik; Piatakov, who was absent, was chairman of the commission which compiled them. Ibid., April 30, 1926. Incidentally, we would not agree with Professor Cohen that under Dzerzhinskii, Vesenkha was a “bastion of Bukharinist economic thinking.” But that is another story.

15. Ibid., August 29, 1926, reporting Presidium session of August 27.

16. A verbatim report appears in Vestnik kommunisticheskoi akademii, 17 (1926).

17. It seems uncertain how far the pressure from these high officials in 1926 and 1927 reflected enthusiasm for industrialization among their own subordinates. A scrutiny of Predpriiatie (the organ of the Red Directors for the years 1926-28), made in the hope of ascertaining something of Red Directors’ attitudes from reports of the meetings of their clubs, perhaps not surprisingly yielded quite inadequate information about their attitudes toward industrialization. And the accounts of their meetings in 1927 and 1928, far from revealing any organized pressure from the Red Directors, were greatly concerned with the declining attendance at the meetings; the explanation was said to be the large amount of time which the Red Directors were devoting to their studies.

18. In Gosplan, the control figures both for 1926/27 and 1927/28 were primarily the responsibility not of the enthusiastic Strumilin, but of the more moderate Groman and Bazarov.

19. Kuibyshev was on holiday during July while the Vesenkha proposals were being discussed in the various sections of Gosplan. Rukhimovich, his deputy, wrote warning him : “They have all turned on us, and argue that the claim for finance and the amount of capital construction cannot be met in the present circumstances.” Kuibyshev replied that he would not return at once from holiday but would get really well “so as to enter the fight with fresh energy.” See Kuibysheva, G. V. et al., Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev (Moscow, 1966), p. 271 Google Scholar.

20. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gaseta, July 23, 1927.

21. Ibid., August 12, 1927. The report was presented by Rukhimovich, a leading party member in Vesenkha. Critics included V. I. Iakovlev (from the timber industry), Mezhlauk (chairman of Glavmetall), Lobov (chairman of Vesenkha of the RSFSR), Matrosov (from the Northern Chemical Trust), Lepse (from the Metalworkers’ Trade Union), and Sukhomlin (chairman of Vesenkha of the Ukraine).

22. Industrialisatsiia SSSR, 1926-1928 gg. (Moscow, 1969), p. 514.

23. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gaseta, October S, 1927. Actual costs reduction in 1927/ 28, according to official figures, was either 5.1 or 6.2 percent, so the revised costs plan was not unrealistic. This success formed the basis, however, for arguing in favor of annual costs reduction targets which proved unrealistic for 1928/29 and later years. See Kontrol'nye tsifry narodnogo khosiaistva SSSR na 1928-1929 god (1929), pp. 280-81 and Promyshlennosf SSSR v 1927/28 godu (1930), pp. 109-15.

24. Popov continued as chairman of the Central Statistical Administration (TsSU), which he had directed since its foundation in 1918.

25. See Kritsman's, articles in the new journal of the Academy, Na agrarnom jrontc, 1925, nos. 1, 2 and 3 Google Scholar.

26. See the report of Golendo's, speech in Puti sel'skogo khoziaistva, 1926, no. 1, p. 192 Google Scholar.

27. See reports in Planovoe khosiaistvo, 1925, no. 8, pp. 125-33, 135-37 and Puti sel'skogo khoziaistva, 1926, no. 1, pp. 192-97. An ambiguous resolution, affirming the plan on the proviso that certain corrections be made, was passed on September 1, 1925 and finally published in the Narkomzem journal in mid-1926 (Puti sel'skogo khoziaistva, 1926, no. 4, pp. 159-67), but was apparently not published in Planovoe khosiaistvo.

28. Kritsman soon became Osinskii's deputy. ‘

29. See Vyshnevskii's, complaints of Narkomzem “isolationism” in Planovoe khoziaistvo, 1927, no. 3, p. 112 Google Scholar and similar complaints by Oganovskii in Ekonomichcskoc obosrenie, 1927, no. 2, p. 77.

30. See Planovoe khoziaistvo, 1926, no. 2, p. 86.

31. See Vainshtein's, article in the Ekonomicheskii biulleten’ koniunkturnogo instituta, no. 11/12 (1927), p. 15 Google Scholar. This was the last edition edited by Kondratiev and Vainshtein.

32. Oganovskii, N. P. in Planovoe khoziaistvo, 1927, no. 7, p. 54 Google Scholar; Oganovskii implied, however, that this proposal was less realistic than a lower variant.

33. Piatnadtsatyis“ezdVKP﹛b) (1961), 2 : 1358-63.

34. Piatiletnii plan (1930), 2 : 324-25.

35. Sobranie sakonov, 1926, no. 51, art. 374.

36. The reduction in grain prices and in industrial prices formed links in a chain. On September 16, 1926, the Politburo resolved that the reduction of grain prices made it necessary to reduce industrial prices (Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1926-1928 gg., p. 510). 37. Torgovo-promyshlennaia gaseta, August 14, 1927.

38. For some evidence that Stalin was already envisaging a revolutionary approach to the construction of socialist society in 1925-26 see Tucker, R. C., Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929 : A Study in History and Personality (New York, 1973), pp. 395–404 Google Scholar.

39. Davies, Carr and, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929, pp. 884–86Google Scholar.

40. Ekonomicheskaia zhisn', December 19, 1927.

41. The course of the debate may be traced in Torgovo-promyshlcnnaia gazeta, April 20, July 10, August 1, August 4, September 21, and December 11, 1928.

42. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to assess how much this pressure by 1928, if not earlier, amounted merely to the standard kind of struggle for resources among administrators who accept, without troubling themselves with the wider consequences, that they are in a situation in which available resources are increasing.

43. See Davies, Carr and, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929, pp. 316–17, 321-28Google Scholar.

44. For a report of the session see Ekonomicheskaia zhizn', November 24, 1928.

45. Ekonomicheskaia zhizn', July 18, 1928.

46. At the December session of TsIK of the USSR which affirmed the Rabkrin project, Kubiak seconded Iakovlev and stated that Narkomzem considered that the pro posed growth rates could be exceeded! See report of the session in Ekonomicheskaia zhizri, December IS, 1928.

47. See report on Grinko's, speech in Ekonomicheskaia zhisn, March 9, 1929 Google Scholar. Grinko went on to justify this stance by interpreting the TsIK decree as referring to an unspecified five-year period and not to the current Five-Year Plan. If 1929 was counted as the first year, the full 35 percent increase need not be expected until 1933/34.