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[Darkademic]

After some intense debates with several supporters of the Soviet Union I am going to compile facts and figures here.

Pre Revolution 19th Century Russia

Before the revolution, in the 19th century, Russia was already seeing industrial progress:

In 1865 the number of industrial workers was 700,000 and this increased to 1,432,000 in 1890, more than doubling.

The agricultural system was reformed so that there was communal ownership of agricultural allotments which collectively paid tax. It was greatly inefficient. Agricultural inefficiencies meant that the country was devastated when the world grain markets collapsed in the 1870s and 1880s.

In the mid 19th century industrialization saw major obstacles. The country lacked a proper institutional infrastructure; its regressive business law made it possible to establish only 32 corporations by 1855. Russia was not attractive for investment from either domestic or foreign sources due to its low market creditbility and a lack of domestic banking. The only railway line before 1855 was between the two capitals, and the transportation system was still very poor. The country was also still technologically backward, and imported 70% of its machinery, relying on outmoded technology.

The aggregate growth was modest, especially in the 1860s and 70s, but by the 1880s the country saw an extraordinarily high rate of growth. A major part of this growth was transportation - the number of railway lines increased nearly 13 fold (from 2,238 versts in 1861 to 28,240 in 1887). Simultaneously, the number of enteprises grew from 15,000 to 38,000, with corresponding increases in fixed capital, labour force and output. The corporate structure also expanded substantially from 78 stock companies (with 72 million roubles capital) in 1861 to 357 (with 1.1 billion roubles capital) in 1873. Industrial production roughly doubled overall during the quarter century after emancipation. Nevertheless, the "take-off" was yet to come. If production in 1913 was taken to be 100%, then only 21% of that output had been achieved by 1885.

From 1860 to 1900 the number of university graduates rose from 20,000 to 85,000. The zemstvo employed 23,000 white collar professionals, 15,000 teachers, 1,300 doctors and 5,000 registered medical practitioners by the 1880s.

1891-2 saw the period's greatest famine, arguably caused by the poor management of the agricultural system. This was followed by devestating cholera and typhus epidemics.

[Darkademic]

Post Revolution 1917-1929

After the Communist Revolution, it was imperative to move forward and repair the ubiquitous fundamental problems. By 1921 the country faced almost total economic collapse; gross industrial output had fallen to less than one-fifth of the level before the First World War, and production in some industries such as textiles was a mere one-tenth. Agricultural matters were hardly less catastrophic: the 1921 harvest produced significantly less than half the pre-war average - famine and epidemics ensued claiming millions of lives.

By 1922, hyper-inflation had driven prices, especially those of agricultural products, to astronomical heights.

1923 saw the famous "scissor crisis" where price relationships were completely reversed compared to the previous year. In essence, agriculture had now begun to recover more quickly than industry.

By 1924, the output of large-scale industry output was nearly half the pre-war level, and exports rose to 9 times what they had been at the beginning of the decade, if still only a fifth of pre-war figures.

Private trade at this time was legal but not secure. In 1923-4, as Lenin lay dying, the national leadership responded to public resentment by arbitrarily closing 300,000 private enterprises. This proved to be short-sighted as by late 1924 it was clear that the state could not provide many of the services it had eliminated. In the period of 1925-7 there was a policy reversal and the Soviet state showed its greatest tolerance of private enterprise under the NEP. By the end of 1927 the market was in full swing again, however in early 1928 the state used administrative measures to crack down on private entrepreneurs, increasing business taxes exponentially.

The lowest level of the economy experienced problems. Stricter cost-accounting in reopened factories and the demobilization of 6 million Red Army soldiers increased unemployment from 640,000 in 1923 to more than 1.3 million in 1929. Rural poverty drove the desperate into the cities despite the shortage of jobs. Moscow, for example, gained 100,000 new residents a year causing acute housing problems, not enough spaces and chronic disrepair in overcrowded, occupied units.

The reinstitution of collective modes of agricultural cultivation led to technological regression. Inefficient strip farming, along with the primitive three-field system of crop rotation, once again predominated. In 1928 more than five million households still utilized the traditional wooden plough. The scythe and sickle still reaped half of the annual harvest. Such backwardness meant a low yield per acre.

Disease and Mortality:
An analysis of the structure of those died and the causes of death showed that during several post-war years, it became possible to relieve the epidemiological strain. In the mid-1920s the death-rate in towns due to typhus declined. A particularly drastic decrease was observed in the number of sick people with spotted fever. Tuberculosis became the first in the list of causes of death. Infant mortality kept extremely high. I pay attention to changes in the financing of the town medicine, development of sanitary service, healthy life and physical training. In the first half of the 1920s, the situation with the proportion of mortality between urban and rural population was as usual: the death-rate was higher in towns than in rural localities, the decrease of the death-rate in the latter being more steady. The death-rate in towns in 1921 was twice as high as in rural districts of Karelia. Beginning from 1926, statistical data revealed continuous decrease of the mortality rate in towns against the background of some rise in the death-rate for the rural population of the republic. In 1927 and 1928, the townspeople's mortality rate was for the first time lower than that for the rural citizens of Karelia. After a grave demographic crisis due to the revolution, the World and Civil Wars it was possible in the 1920s to achieve demographic stability rather quickly. The government's well thought-out policy played a crucial role in that. Stalin's leadership voluntarism during the industrialization and forced collectivization, creation of a system of GULAG camps in the north of Russia resulted in higher mortality in the early 1930s. In the 1929-1931 cheap dark bread was the only product supplied to townspeople by the government rather regularly. Because of malnutrition he number of cases of scurvy sharply increased. In 1931, there was a ten-fold increase in the sickness rate compared with other years. At some plants, about 90% of workers were ill. The living conditions in the north were the most difficult to bear for dekulakized people and special migrants. The overall mortality rate in the republic decreased by nearly one-third in 1934. Gulling characterized as a major achievement the decrease in infant mortality from 30 to 20 per mille, in some Karelian districts - to 13 per mille. It is hard to speak of the net result the number of people repressed in karelia in 1937-1938, they are to be refined. According to I.Takala, no fewer than 11,341 people were arrested and convicted in the republic. Forty per cent of all those repressed were Finns.

[Darkademic]

The Stalin Era: 1929-1941

The 1930s brought monumental change - reflected most dramatically in the "great purges and terror", most fundamentally in the campaign to collectivize agriculture and build a modern industrial economy. The regime expended human capital prodigiously and wastefully. The Soviet Union became a full-blown totalitarian state. Labour camps were one manifestation of the regime's repressiveness, and collective farms were a form of incarceration - a "second serfdom" for the peasantry.

The "Five-Year Plan for Industrialization and Socialist Construction" aimed to increase investment by 228%, industrial production by 180%, electrical generation by 335% and the industrial labour force by 39%.

Resistance from kulaks (richer peasants who sold their surplus or who owned production facilities or machinery) against collectivization was met with a decree which stated they were to be expropriated - 'liquidated as a class' and subjected to one of three fates. (1) resettled on inferior land; (2) deported and resettled on land in other districts; or (3) arrested and sent to prisons or labour camps in remote parts of the country. By 1933 approximately 1.5 million had been deported and 850,000-900,00 were imprisoned or sent to labour camps.

The exact number of peasants executed, killed in skirmishes, or dead from malnutrition and overwork in labour camps defies precise determination, but undoubtedly ran into millions.

The denomadization of the pastoral Kazakhs virtually wiped out their sheep herds and, in conjunction with a typhus epidemic, led to the death of approximately 40% of the population between 1931 and 1933. Throughout the Soviet Union the losses of livestock due to slaughter and neglect were enormous: by 1933 the number of cattle, pigs and sheep were less than half what they were in 1928.

By 1932 the regime could boast some real achievements. Gross industrial production, measured in 1926-7 roubles, rose from 18.3 milliards to 43.3 milliards, actually surpassing the optimal plan. Producers' goods, valued at 6.0 milliards in 1927-8, reached 23.1 milliards in 1932. Consumer goods production rose from 12.3 milliard to 20.2 milliard roubles. There were significant shortfalls however, in the output of coal, electricity and steel. Total employment rose from 11.2 million to 22.8 million, whilst working conditions worsened.

However, food was in short supply, as was living space in the massively overcrowded cities such as Moscow. Food shortages were due not only to disruptions caused by collectivization and increased urban-demand, but also because of the low priority given to food processing in the first Five-Year Plan. Harsh climate, primitive technology and the necessity of marketing or turning over a substantial proportion of the crop had left peasant producers without a margin to build up reserves. After three years of borrowing from the previous year's seed grain to deliver to the expanding urban population's industrial workers, the Red Army, and foreign consumers, there was no margin left.

The resulting famine of 1933 has been described by both Western and Russian scholars as "man-made", as its primary cause was the excessively high procurement quotas set by the state. Altogether it is estimated that the famine took 2.9 million lives in Ukraine and 4.2 million throughout the USSR in 1933.

It was clear that the economy was overstrained, so the targets were cut for the second Five-Year Plan. Instead of 100 billion kW/h of electricity, 38 billion were called for. Pig iron targets were cut from 22 million tons to 14.5 million tons, and so forth.

During the second Five-Year plan saw more industrial progress. The tempo of industrialization was literally killing and extremely wasteful, however by 1941 the USSR had closed the gap, militarily and industrially. The greatest spurt occured in the "three good years" of industrialization (1934-6). By 1937, steel output was nearly 3 times greater than in 1932, coal production had doubled, and electricity generation had risen by 250%. Defense expenditure quadrupled, which then caused growth in other branches of industry to subside. Agriculture on the other hand, still lagged. A major crop failure in 1936 yielded even less than in 1932. Investments in the collective agricultural system remained miniscule. The USSR's backwardness was intensified because party officials tried to do too much, literally beating the country towards socialism and modernity.

As Murray Rothbard put it: "Curiously, one finds that the 'growth' seems to be taking place almost exclusively in capital goods, such as iron and steel, hydroelectric dams, etc., whereas little or none of this growth ever seems to filter down to the standard of living of the average Soviet consumer. The consumer's standard of living, however, is the be-all and end-all of the entire production process. Production makes no sense whatever except as a means to consumption. Investment in capital goods means nothing except as a necessary way station to increased consumption" (Man, Economy and State, 1962: 835-36, italics original).

The Great Purges:
Slightly less than 1 million people were confined to NKVD-run camps at the beginning of 1937. This rose to 1.3 million by 1939. Another 315,000 people were in "corrective labour colonies" in 1940. Although these figures are much lower than earlier estimates (Robert Conquest estimated 7 million were incarcerated in 1938) these numbers do not include people incarcerated in prisons, special resettlements or other places of detention.

Official figures show the number of executions by the order of military tribunals, "troikas" and other special bodies to be 1,118 in 1936, 353,074 in 1937, 328,618 in 1938 and 2,552 in 1939. KGB information released in 1990 suggests the total from 1937-8 represented 86.7% of the total death sentences carried out for counter-revolutionary and state crimes between 1930 and 1953.

[Darkademic]

World War II to Stalin's Death (1941-1953)

By the end of WWII over 8.6 million Soviet troops were dead and at least 17 million civilians were killed. 25 million survivors were homeless. ????????, or earthen huts, provided the only shelter for hundreds of thousands. The war had destroyed 1,700 towns, 70,000 villages, 30,000 factories and 65,000km of railway. An estimated one third of all national wealth had been obliterated. The gross yield of all foodstuffs produced in 1945 was only 60% of what it had been in 1940. Worse still, there was severe drought during the harvest of 1946, bringing famine and typhus with it.

Economic reconstruction became first on the agenda. The army had to be rapidly demobilized and put to work on farms and in factories. Capital also had to be raised, so the state did so by manipulating its currency; slashing interest rates and reducing the face value of war bonds. There was also considerable attention given to foreign economic transfers through the continuation of American Lend-Lease, reparations and exploitation of any territories occupied by the Red Army.

These methods of raising capital were still insufficient, therefore the state resorted to squeezing rural society. Stalin signed a decree which reduced the size of private plots and levelled confiscatory taxes on the income that they were supposed to generate. Cash payments for labour on collective farms dwindled; in 1952 collective farmers in Tula earned just 1 kopek a day. Simultaneously the regime burdened the rural population with enormous state delivery quotas. Extortionate polices in the short term led to the famine of 1946 and to the impoverishment and immiseration of the villages. The result was an exodus of 9 million people from country to town.

By the end of Stalin's reign, after the fourth Five-Year Plan, gross industrial output was pushed to exceed that of 1940 by 40%. However, structural faults were becoming increasingly apparent. Stalin's heirs had to decide whether to continue Stalin's one-sided industrialization which concentrated on heavy-industry, or whether to develop light industry and agriculture.

[Darkademic]

Khrushchev (1953-1964)

Khrushchev admitted "there is little milk or meat", referring to the sheer backwardness of the agricultural system. He, and other leaders, also commented on how Stalinist policy had favoured a highly stratified social order where scarce goods were directed to the political elite and the scientific-technical intelligensia. A letter to the Central Commitee complained bitterly that "of late, our country has forgotten the simple person - the worker, the kolkhoznik. All that the press and radio talk about is the academicians, scholars, agronomists, engineers."

The Khrushchev era was one of perilous reforms. He shifted focus from heavy industry to light industry, and in contrast to Stalin's utter neglect of the economy, he increased investment there. His Virgin Lands policy initially hugely increased agricultural output by 35.3% between 1954 and 1958. Industry was decentralized, shifting more power towards the republic level.

The late 1950s represented the golden age of the Khrushchev economy which boasted amazingly high rates of growth in both agricultural and industrial sectors. Altogether the annual rate of growth in the GNP increased from 5.0 percent in 1951-5 to 5.9 per cent in 1956-60 (the fifth Five-Year Plan). The industrial sector grew a spectacular 80% which exceeded the already ambitious plan of 65%.

There were many other examples of economic growth up until 1960. After 1960, the economic policies of the USSR began to go awry and growth slowed after 1960, but this was considered characteristic of a mature, industrialized economy at the time. However, the planning ministries had failed to loosen their control of the enterprise level in time to stem the prolonged stagnation of the 1970s and 1980s, which showed signs of a chronic problem. Agricultural production, although still better than under Stalin, was insufficient due to underestimation of demand and overestimation of output. Calls for greater freedom for managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and 1980s were largely ignored.

Under Brezhnev, Krushchev's successor, the economy declined further and was on the verge of collapse by the time Gorbachev took control.

[Darkademic]

Deaths Caused by the Soviet Regime

Estimated 24,000,000 - 29,000,000. Not including deaths caused by wars.

Russian Civil War and Lenin (1917-22): Taking into account 10 complete estimates, the median is 8.8M-9.0M.

Stalin (1924-53): The lowest estimates are around 9,000,000 and the highest range from 50,000,000 to 70,000,000 (though these seem unrealistic). The median of the estimates given by 17 scholars is 30,000,000.

Although it's too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity. Official figures place the death toll at around 10 million, however the (generally agreed) unreliability and incompleteness off these records has increased the estimation given by most researchers. Recent books place the number at 15-20 million whilst Vadim Erlikman estimates 15-17 million.

War casualties:
World War I: est. 2 million.
World War II: est. 20 million.
Afghanistan: 1.8 million.

http://users.erols.c...28/warstat1.htm
http://www.overpopul...iet_famine.html
http://www.hawaii.ed...rkills/20TH.HTM

Refutations of Revisionists / Apologists:
http://www.paulbogda...om/deniers.html
http://www.paulbogda...nfeld-getty.pdf
http://eddriscoll.co...ives/007365.php

[Mastermind]

Wow, some nice research there. I can't believe someone actually supports the Soviet regime as it was. Who are these ignoramuses you speak of?

[Darkademic]

Here's one of them. This was his last post in our debate and I have yet to respond to it.

http://www.mootsf.or...mp;postcount=76

I was going to compile the most enormous and crushing response possible, and I still will if I get the time.

[Twilight]

That guy is living in his own private fantasy realm. I wouldn't have the patience to deal with such open supporters of genocide and slave labour.

[Insathius]

As far as I'm concerned, I think the Soviet Union was one of the greatest mistakes this world has ever made along with Nazism, Hiroshima and Nagasaki... the list continues.

I hope for everybody's sake that we learn from these instead of doing them all over again.