LogFAQs > #894033130

Stalin's so-called "economic miracle" was riddled with structural defects, mismanagement and waste. It's significant that colossal, slave labour-based construction projects, like the Salekhard-Igarka railroad and the tunnel to Sakhalin, got cancelled within days of his death because the authorities knew only too well Stalin's track record of being obsessed with pointless and wasteful pet projects. (One Gulag inspection report carried out in 1951 showed that an entire 83km of far northern railway track, constructed at great expense and at the cost of many lives, had not been used for 3 years. Another 370km of similarly costly highway had not been used for 18 months. In 1953, another inspection, carried out on the orders of the Central Committee, showed that the cost of maintaining the camps of the Gulag far exceeded any profits made from prison labour.)

Stalin's meddling in the Soviet economy in the 1930s hamstrung the state's capacity to meet the industrial challenges of preparing for a major war. The needs of the First Five-Year Plan required the hiring of skilled foreign labour; consequently, craftsmen and engineers were recruited from abroad on short-term contracts. They were predominantly German; although they totalled barely 1% of the workforce (23,000 by 1933), their skills were critical in the electro-technical industry. But the slashing of wages for German foreign workers in 1930-31, combined with chronic bad conditions, meant that in 1932 there was an outflow of skilled labour as disillusioned workers returned to Germany, and production suffered accordingly. The average Soviet worker in 1933 spent only five and a half hours of his working day actually working.

Then there was the damage done by the waves of arrests, expulsions and executions during the purges. Around 858 out of 5,000-6,000 skilled German foreign workers were kicked out of the USSR between November 1937-January 1940, and an unknown number simply 'disappeared' -- presumably shot. Additionally, under NKVD Order 00439, all Soviet citizens of German nationality working in defence-critical industries were arrested in a massive, all-Union operation between August 1937-November 1938. Out of the 55,005 who were sentenced, 41,898 were shot and 13,107 were sent to the Gulag.

During the Russo-German war and particularly the earlier phase, the Soviet industrial manpower shortage grew critical and the Gulag workforce was a potentially invaluable source of labour: nearly 14% of the total Soviet workforce in 1942. But between the crucial months of October 1941-January 1942, on average nearly a quarter of the Gulag population (23.4%) was unable to work because of the appalling conditions in the camps -- in which roughly 250 men in every thousand died during 1942-1943.

The Stalinist purges decapitated the Red Army just as the Soviet military was undergoing critical reform and expansion. Professional military leadership was sent to the slave camps and execution pits, and by 1941 officers were too paralysed by terror to make decisions that could have blunted the German advance. If Stalin had been a paid agent of Hitler, he couldn't have done a better job of sabotaging the defence of the USSR ahead of the invasion.

If you view Stalin as a genius, fine. I mean, youre a lunatic, but fine. I view the system over which he presided as wasteful and inefficient, and which accomplished its goals only because it had the cheapest form of raw material available to it: human lives, which could be treated like paper cups -- use once, then throw away. If instead of using one man to screw in a light bulb, you can afford to use twenty and let half of them die doing the job, who needs rational management?
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