The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

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Haven
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The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

#1

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 21:18

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The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-30
R. W. Davies
Palgrave Macmillan
1980

By the summer of 1929 Soviet industrialisation was well under way, but agriculture was in a profound crisis: in 1928 and 1929 grain to feed the towns was wrested from the peasants by force, and the twenty-five million individual peasant households lost the stimulus to extend or even to maintain their production. In the autumn of 1929 the Soviet Politburo, led by Stalin, launched its desperate effort to win the battle for agriculture by forcible collectivisation and by large-scale mechanisation. Simultaneously hundreds of thousands of kulaks (richer peasants) and recalcitrant peasants were expelled from their villages. This book tells the story of these events, as momentous in their impact on Russian history at the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, and of the temporary retreat from collectivisation in the spring of 1930 in the face of peasant resistance. The crisis in the Communist Party which resulted from this upheaval, in the months preceding the XVI party congress in June 1930, is described in detail for the first time.

My God, I can't find any easily accessible copies of this work!!! -- Haven

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Re: The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

#2

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 21:27

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The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930
R.W. Davies
Harvard University Press
1980

'R.W. Davies lays bare the chaotic reality behind the images and illuminates both the successes of the new centralized economy and its colossal dislocations ... Davies is the foremost economic historian of Stalin's Soviet Union ... Though no historical work is ever 'definitive', Davies' three volumes on the industrialization of Soviet Russia are foundation stones for any further studies.' - Ronald Suny, Business History Review

'Future generations of university students may well follow courses on comparative Russian/Soviet perestroika studies from Peter the Great to Gorbachev. If so, they will find The Soviet Economy in Turmoil an essential text.' - David Dyker, Slavonic and East European Review

My God, AGAIN!!!, I can't find any easily accessible copies of this work!!! There is a wealth of research in this series!!! -- Haven


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Re: The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

#3

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 21:38

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The Soviet Economy in Turmoil 1929-1930
R. W. Davies
1989

In 1929-30, the 'spinal year' of the first five-year plan, a vast investment programme began the transformation of the Soviet Union from a peasant country into a great industrial power. This book, the third part of The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, re-examines the breakdown of the mixed economy. In those days of heroism and enthusiasm, hunger and repression, crucial Soviet economic and political institutions were established, and are only now being effectively challenged by Gorbachev's revolution. While complementing the previous two volumes of this author's work, the book is designed to be read independently. It sheds new light on a dramatic moment in Soviet history and in the formation of the Soviet system.

Again, I can't find anything! -- Haven

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Re: The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

#4

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 21:44

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Crisis & Progress in the Soviet Economy, 1931-1933
R. W. Davies
Palgrave Macmillan
1989

The profound economic crisis of 1931-33 undermined the process of industrialisation and the stability of the regime. In spite of feverish efforts to achieve the over ambitious first five-year plan, the great industrial projects lagged far behind schedule. These were years of inflation, economic disorder and of terrible famine in 1933. In response to the crisis, policies and systems changed significantly. Greater realism prevailed: more moderate plans, reduced investment, strict monetary controls, and more emphasis on economic incentives and the role of the market. The reforms failed to prevent the terrible famine of 1933, in which millions of peasants died. But the last months of 1933 saw the first signs of an industrial boom, the outcome of the huge investments of previous years. Using the previously secret archives of the Politburo and the Council of People's Commissars, the author shows how during these formative years the economic system acquired the shape which it retained until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

I would love it, if someone can post a book review. I can't find anything. -- Haven

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Re: The Industrialization of Soviet Russia

#5

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 21:45

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The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933
R. W. Davies, Stephen G. Wheatcroft
December 2003

Planned as a number of independent volumes, this work covers the years 1929-1937, the crucial period of the first two five-year plans. In these years the Soviet Union became a great industrial power, and the economic system took the form which, inits main features, it retained until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Agriculture was collectivised and the whole economy was subordinated to central state planningl the Stalinist political regime was consolidated a new social structure emerged. This was the first attempt of a major country to manage economic and social development by a comprehensive plan. The weaknesses which ultimately led to its failure may partly be traced back to the 1930s: the tendency to overinvestment and overtaut planning, the inability to innovate, and the frustration of the grandiose efforts to modernise agriculture. While the Soviet system ultimately failed, Soviet industrialisation was a crucial stage in spreading the economic and social transformation which began in England in the middle of the eighteenth century to the thousands of millions of peasants who lived on the borders of starvation in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The Series:
1 THE SOCIALIST OFFENSIVE: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-1930
2 THE SOVIET COLLECTIVE FARM, 1929-1930
3 THE SOVIET ECONOMY IN TURMOIL, 1929-1930
4 CRISIS AND PROGRESS IN THE SOVIET ECONOMY, 1931-1933
5 THE YEARS OF HUNGER: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 (With Stephen G. Wheatcroft)
6 GROWTH, PURGES AND THE THREAT OF WAR: The Soviet Economy, 1933-1937 (in preparation) (with Oleg V. Khlevnyuk and Stephen G. Wheatcroft)

PDF Version: http://www.busin.biz/library/soviet%20u ... -1933'.pdf

BOOK REVIEW

EH.NET

Popular media and most historians for decades have described the great famine that struck most of the USSR in the early 1930s as “man-made,” very often even a “genocide” that Stalin perpetrated intentionally against Ukrainians and sometimes other national groups to destroy them as nations. The most famous exposition of this view is the book Harvest of Sorrow, now almost two decades old, by the prolific (and problematic) historian Robert Conquest, but this perspective can be found in History Channel documentaries on Stalin, many textbooks of Soviet history, Western and even World Civilization, and many writings on Stalinism, on the history of famines, and on genocide.

This perspective, however, is wrong. The famine that took place was not limited to Ukraine or even to rural areas of the USSR, it was not fundamentally or exclusively man-made, and it was far from the intention of Stalin and others in the Soviet leadership to create such as disaster. A small but growing literature relying on new archival documents and a critical approach to other sources has shown the flaws in the “genocide” or “intentionalist” interpretation of the famine and has developed an alternative interpretation. The book under review, The Years of Hunger, by Robert Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, is the latest and largest of these revisionist interpretations. It presents more evidence than any previous study documenting the intentions of Soviet leaders and the character of the agrarian and agricultural crises of these years.

More: http://eh.net/book_reviews/the-years-of ... 1931-1933/

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