From Collective Farms to Industry

DOCUMENT #6

The Land of Soviets, a school textbook published in the U.S.S.R in the early 1940s.

The fulfillment of the first and second Five-Year Plans strengthened the Soviet Union’s economic position and turned it into a powerful industrial state. . . . In 1937, the industrial output of the USSR was 5.8 times larger than in 1913.  The rate of industrial growth in the USSR considerably exceeded that of the capitalist countries.  By 1937, the Soviet Union was the first country in Europe and the second in the world in the volume of industrial production. . . . Socialist industrialization was accompanied by the rapid growth of the working class, and made it possible to liquidate [eliminate] unemployment.  In 1940 there were 9,971,000 industrial workers, which was nearly three times more than in 1928.  The working class was also changing: its efficiency, technical and cultural levels were growing rapidly.