How would we live if there was no war?
The plans for the economic development of the Soviet Union for the 40s shook their scope. Unfortunately, these plans were canceled out by the invasion of the western armies of the Hitler coalition. The Great Patriotic War inflicted a wound on the Soviet economy that it was able to heal only a few decades later. But what if it was not? How would our grandparents live if they didn’t know the horrors and devastation of war? How could their grandchildren live?Cinema and bullshit
The theme of the Soviet past has become incredibly popular with the creators of the pseudo-historical television series. And writers and producers have a particular affection for the colorful times of the "personality cult". Almost every month we are pleased with the new history: a harsh citizen chief of the MUR catches a lesson learned, supermen-counterintelligence suppress another dirty trick of fascist saboteurs, and "innocently repressed" escapes from arrest in order to get to the front and protect the country they repressed.
They shoot on the conscience, especially diligently trying to depict the life of that time. The actors sit on a stool in a flaky kitchen, make terrible grimaces and famously overthrow the “stopariki”, the same “loft” rides along the lane (the only one for the entire film studio), and the place itself for shooting is specially found in the depressed blocks of the old building forgotten by God, not seen repair since the time of their construction. It would seem a complete resemblance to the original. But wait! The discrepancy is obtained!
If all Soviet citizens either banged or stolen, as shown in cinema, then who in 30's spent enormous industrialization, and after the war, raised the country from the ruins? Who built three hundred large industrial enterprises a year, who built new residential quarters, increasing the urban population and the size of the cities themselves at times? And where are these new houses, new hospitals and schools, where are giant factories with smoking pipes?
They are not on the screen. There is only a crap "communal" in disrepair and its residents, who generally do not work anywhere. They only drink, steal, and write denunciations of each other. This is exactly how the Stalinist USSR is shown to us — gloomy, impoverished, in constant ruin and an atmosphere of complete hopelessness. But everything was completely different!
Ruin in their heads
The Soviet Union 20-s very reminiscent of the current Ukraine. The only difference is that then there were no oligarchs who seized all profitable enterprises for squeezing out super-profits from the people. There were very few enterprises themselves - just like now! But if the Ukrainians 2 / 3 profiled their factories, scrapping them, then they have not yet been built. And what remained of the tsarist regime, took care. It would never occur to anyone to close, for example, the Putilov (the future Kirov) factory and rebuild its workshops into a Komsomol leisure club. For such ideas could and put to the wall - as a pest.
Otherwise, everything was as it is now. Fractions of power and opposition fought bitterly with each other. In Kharkov (the capital of our republic), the Ukrainizers enthusiastically engaged in a "national revival." In the field of public policy, a complete mess was going on: almost every year, slogans, holidays, and heroes changed. The holidays themselves in the year, in the end, it became much more 18! Red was not only the revolutionary dates, but Christmas (it was celebrated for two days) and Easter (three days), Ascension, Trinity, Assumption and Transfiguration. But it practically did not affect the work of the Soviet economy, since there was simply no work in the country.
In the 150 million country, there were only 11 millions of workers and employees. At the same time, official unemployment was about 10% (1,2 million registered), and the figure was unofficially an order of magnitude greater. Half of the urban population sharpened knives, scissors, cleaned shoes, and sold cigarettes and candy from trays. The remaining 120 million people, unable to go to work abroad, survived in the village. In the best case, on its natural economy, in the worst - soiled for wealthy neighbors.
The atmosphere of despondency and hopelessness reigned in the country — all that remained was to steal and plump. However, this was the pre-Stalinist USSR, and this did not last long. Already in 1927, the Trotskyist opposition was crushed, and after a couple of years and expelled - and endless political discussions in power stopped. But the Soviet government did not relax in an atmosphere of serene "stability." It adopted a grand plan for the development of the Soviet economy. And instead of spending budget funds for the construction of residences with gold toilets, it invested them, all to the penny, in the industrialization of the country.
In modern Ukraine, we note, everything is being done the other way around: the country has been practically deindustrialized so that a bunch of oligarchs can make billions of themselves.
From shovel to excavator
The Stalinist plan was simple: instead of continuing to sit on the ass and moan about the devastation, everyone had to get up and start working, as in the film “Chairman”. Not on someone, but on themselves. Is it hard to plow a plow? Build a tractor factory! Close to live in three families in the basement of an old house? Let's build a brick factory, and then new residential buildings!
The outcome of the Soviet industrial revolution was impressive. Already in 1932, unemployment not only disappeared, but also had to additionally attract nearly two million workers. By 1940, the number of workers and employees has increased to 31,2 million, the country's urban population has tripled! But there were still not enough labor hands - then prisoners were brought to work, who were sweeping the tundra with brooms. It is in modern serials that Stalinist convicts lie on the banks and lazily felled cedars with dull saws, in reality they built new cities and factories in Siberia in a year or two. Worked not under sticks, but for parole, reinforced soldering, cash bonuses. Some remained on construction sites and after the period, civilian.
But it was still a lot of work, so I soon had to increase the working day from 7 to 8 hours, and make the working week seven days (6 working days + Sunday). Today, of course, this is interpreted as the unbearable yoke of Stalin’s tyranny, which conquered the poor, unhappy people.
During two five-year plans in the country, more than 5 000 large objects were built, among them about three hundred such giants as Dneproges, Uralmash, Azovstal, Zaporozhstal and Krivorozhstal, HTZ and STZ, Turksib, Moscow Metro. Indicators of industrial production growth (not in fictitious GDP, but in real tons and units) doubled every four years.
For ten years, a complete base of its own production has been created: from smelting metal to manufacturing machines and machines. In 1939, the USSR became the fourth country in the world, capable of independently producing any product of any complexity. And if the first plants began to be built with shovels and wheelbarrows, then after a few years, Soviet bulldozers and excavators were already roaring at construction sites.
The West looked at fantastic achievements with hatred and admiration. Already in 1932, the British banker Jarvi Gibson wrote: “Soviet Russia is moving forward, while many of our factories are idle and about 3 of a million of our people are looking for work in despair ... In all industrial cities that I visited, new areas are being built a plan, with wide streets, decorated with trees and squares, with modern-type houses, schools, hospitals, working clubs, and inevitable creches. "
By the year 1940, the USSR had changed beyond recognition. Cyclopean factories smoked with pipes, neighborhoods of new “Stalinok”, parks and squares, cozy houses of workers' settlements grew in the cities, hundreds of thousands of tractors and combines worked on the fields. Pioneer camps, rest homes and sanatoriums appeared, created a public network of developed and free medicine from scratch, the number of schools, technical schools, universities increased by an order of magnitude. It was already practically another country, in which only genetic scum of evolution could thump and loaf. As all normal people have a quite achievable goal in life: to make their lives better, both in material and in other respects.
However, in June, 1941 of the year, war broke out on the way ...
I saved money - I bought a car!
One of the main reproaches to Soviet socialism was the so-called. lack of private cars. Although in reality the situation was somewhat different: everyone wanted to have a car, even if they did not need it, but not everyone had the opportunity to buy it, even if they were free to be sold in the store. By the way, before the war, the first cars were put up for sale at the first Soviet motor show. There were no queues for them.
Nevertheless, the Stalinist government understood that public transport in such a huge country was not enough. And already in 30-ies laid the foundation for the future automobilization of the USSR. For example, the reconstruction of old city streets and the construction of new ones took into account the future of heavy traffic, although its mass production was only planned. That is why Stalin's avenues were so wide and so deserted. But the first Soviet "people's car" was not at all Khrushchev "Zaporozhets". And not even the post-war "Moskvich-401".
They became "KIM-10", mass production of which began at the Moscow Automobile Plant in April 1941. The plan called for 50 thousand cars to be assembled by the end of the year and then producing about one hundred thousand a year in three versions (2-s and 4-door sedans and phaeton). It seems to be a bit, however, this is a plan for only one of the automobile plants. And there was GAZ, which was planning to start in 1941-42. the release of four models of passenger cars at once: two subcompacts and two middle-class cars with a total circulation of half a million units per year. Well, we will not consider the VMS, since its full-size "full-sized cars" were ordered by the state.
This, we note, was only the plan of the third five-year plan (1938-1942), which was thwarted by the war. Five-year plans, the focus of which was on the construction of a huge number of factories that produce finished products, including for the mass consumer. Already then, in the second half of the 40-s, it was planned to launch several more automobile plants, increasing the production of equipment several times. It is difficult to say, the USSR could overtake in this automobile America, but producing one and a half million cars a year is easy!
But since June 1941, civilian cars had to be forgotten, all car factories switched to a military regime. And the bombed-out GAZ was even forced to abandon the release of new models of trucks developed before the war (for example, the GAZ-51), and focus on the production of the "one and a half" GAZ-AA, the Soviet jeep GAZ-67, armored cars, light tanks... And then in the war-torn country for a long time there was no time for personal cars, and they returned to this topic only in the 50s - along with the issue of mass housing construction.
Life is better
The 3 five-year plan envisaged an increase in the rate of housing construction to 35 million square meters per year. Given that the Stalinist housing standards were much more comfortable than the next ones, this would be approximately 500-600 thousands of apartments. Of course, this would not solve the housing problem of rapidly growing cities, although growth was evident: for example, in the previous two five-year plans, on average, 15 had built millions of squares over the year.
Such low rates were explained for two reasons. Firstly, the emerging construction industry (brick, cement, concrete, and other plants) was primarily engaged in the industrialization of the country. The next priority was the social sphere: hospitals, schools, kindergartens, sanatoriums, rest homes, clubs. And only in third place was housing.
Secondly, they built then not just laying blocks and overlaps on top of each other, according to a typical drawing. The architectural style "Stalin Empire" is known to residents of all megacities of the country - these houses are still prestigious. The houses on the 3-6 floors (often with shops on the ground floor) were more modest, but still stood out for individuality, and most importantly, comfort: the ceilings in 3-4 meters, rooms in 15-20 and even 30 "squares", spacious hallways and walk-in closets , massive stone balconies, curly cornices and stucco. Even at home (2-3 floor) or single-story apartment houses for ordinary workers differed in very good-quality construction and spaciousness compared with the subsequent "Khrushchev".
As we see, under Stalin they were not ashamed to divide citizens into categories, avoiding leveling. Specialists received very high salaries (as well as a state-owned car and state-paid servants) and moved into elegant high-rises along with generals, artists, foremost workers, polar explorers and other celebrities. ITR workers, teachers, doctors, officials lived in houses of the second category, and the working family was completely content with a modest apartment near their own factory.
Of course, there were communal and barracks. But their inhabitants knew that these inconveniences were temporary, and were eagerly awaiting their own or neighborly settlement. After all, the vacant rooms of communal apartments were given to the family of a responsible tenant, and the barracks were rebuilt into residential buildings into several apartments. So it was before the war, and on this trend, people planned their future. Unfortunately, crossed out by the war - it is clear that in the bombed Union the communal apartments not only ceased to settle, but also the opposite - they began to condense back.
In the second half of the 40-s, the pace of housing construction should have taken off at times. The main industrialization and creation of a social infrastructure would have already been implemented, and the vacated capacities were planned to be thrown at the solution of the housing issue. Moreover, they would have decided it quickly, since it was under Stalin that the idea of mass "industrial development" was born. Its essence was simple: for several years to build tens of thousands of residential buildings from standard blocks, panels and slabs - as designers.
However, these "stalinki" still differed spaciousness and elegance. If this idea came to life, we would have not labyrinths from gray boxes of cramped faceless "Khrushchev", but thoughtful quarters (with squares or clubs in the center) of quite decent housing. But at first the war broke out, then there was a period of restoring the destroyed, and when it came to building a new one, the power in his hands was already held by Khrushchev, the inventor, who thought the Stalinist’s designs were too luxurious for the proletariat and issued the notorious Resolution 1871 "On Eliminating Design Excesses and construction. " It ordered to build houses in a strict Spartan style, without any exterior decoration, with minimal living space, narrow staircases, with cardboard doors, a low ceiling hanging over the head and a combined bathroom.
The funny thing is that the prototype of their "Khrushchev" corn secretary general saw ... in France. During a visit to Paris, he was shown quarters of model houses for the poor and migrants from Africa. Seeing this poverty, Nikita Sergeevich enthusiastically set about trying to drive the Soviet people into the same ghetto. What Stalin would never have thought of ...
About tasty and healthy food
As is known, Khrushchev turned into an absurdity not only residential buildings (“Khrushchev’s houses”) and automobiles (Zaporozhets), but also the light industry of the Soviet Union, as well as nearly ruining the food industry. In effect, by laying a time bomb under Soviet socialism, it worked in the 80s.
The fact is that in times of severe Stalin, such a form of ownership as a cooperative (artel) developed a very large development. In fact, it was a kind of business, only the enterprise was the property of the team working in it, and not a private individual. The requirements were simple: to sell quality goods, to honestly report to the financial inspector and not to engage in "shadow schemes." Since it was not bad to earn by honest labor, and the punishment for cheating was harsh and inevitable, the artel workers preferred to work hard.
The sizes of the artels were different: from the metal workshop to a small factory. In 1940, thousands of cooperatives worked in 114 thousands of 1,8 million people who produced 40% of all furniture, 70% dishes, 85% of shoes and clothes, 95% bedding (linen, pillows, blankets), 100% of all toys and souvenirs!
In addition, the artels made a significant contribution to supplying the country with food products: 40% confectionery production, 50% cheese and sausage production, more than 60% fish catch, 80% fruit juices and jams, 100% sold in wild berries, mushrooms, nuts. Shops selling cooperative products were in every town and village — people were dropping in there to buy something delicious to the table when there was extra money (the prices in such stores exceeded the state prices).
After the war, the artels helped many people with disabilities find jobs without letting them descend into despair and hard drinking. Other cripples with their work rose so that they became prominent wealthy people, not a burden, but the breadwinners of their families.
And in the year 1960, Nikita Khrushchev considered these artels a relic of the bourgeois system and ordered them to be eliminated. The artels reassigned to state-owned enterprises, putting their workers on a meager salary, which is why they simply stopped working. And people with disabilities were thrown out onto the street (except for the blind), and they, with harmonicas and mugs, flooded the train stations and markets of the Khrushchev Union. It is clear that in the "supply of workers and employees" there was a long protracted collapse, which for a long time they were trying to fix with various "food programs." So far, in 1988, Gorbachev did not think of re-enabling co-operative production and co-operative shops, which became the foundation of the modern consumer economy. But our “artels” quickly became state of emergency and are engaged not so much in production as in resale of imports.
But the idea of Stalin was more ambitious. It was planned to promote in every possible way the development of industrial cooperation: to help it with premises and production equipment, the purchase of raw materials and sales of finished products. In fact, the co-operatives generally had to shift the care of fully meeting the demand for entire groups of consumer goods. Instead, for example, in order to build a garment factory, it was planned to build another weaving mill, and sell its products to co-operators who would have sculpted fashionable clothes for citizens from the state-owned calico and cloth. There is less concern for the state, artel workers - profit, citizens - joy. Everyone is happy!
Of particular importance was the expansion of cooperation in the countryside, as well as among livestock breeders and fishermen. Moscow was going to divide agriculture into two parts: large collective farms would surely provide the state with strategic products (grain, butter, meat), and numerous artels would produce for the citizens anything they wanted: from jam and marinades to smoked balyks and refined wines
In fact, the implementation of this plan would eliminate the shortage of consumer goods already in the 50-ies. In the Soviet Union, the long-awaited abundance would have arrived, and people would have only had to earn more to buy tasty food, elegant clothes, new furniture, appliances, and a car. In the future there would be no shortage, a crisis of socialism, a lack of confidence in the government, the collapse of the Union. We would live not in the country of crumbling "Khrushchev", amid the chaos of wild capitalism, but in the beautiful cities of the strongest and richest state on the planet. Alas, the damned war ...
However, the USSR had a chance to start all over again. To fall behind in their plans for years on 15, but, having restored the country after the war, continue to strive for what was planned. However, a man by the name of Khrushchev was worse than any war.
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