After the end of World War II, Stalin confessed to the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Harriman, that the industrial development of the Soviet Union was largely due to the help and technical assistance of the United States. Looking back at the end of the 20s of the 20th century, the United States had not yet become the leader of the Western world, the world camp was not clear, and technology did not have obvious ideological overtones. At that time, most technology and equipment could be freely circulated, and with the help of Western technology, the Soviet Union successfully industrialized, laying a solid industrial foundation for later competition with the Western world.
From 1928 to 1932, the Soviet Union implemented its first five-year plan, and from 1929 to 1933, the global economic crisis broke out. During this period, the Soviet Union was in dire need of support from various materials, equipment, and technologies, while the Western world faced the problem of a mountain of materials and equipment. The perfect combination of the two needs produced a wonderful chemical reaction: the Soviet Union, which was relatively backward in just a decade, quickly rose to become the first industrial power in Europe and the second largest in the world.
The Soviet Union was a backward agrarian country built on the Tsarist Russian Empire and did not have an advantage over the United States, Great Britain and France. In 1928, for example, although the Soviet Union restored industrial and agricultural production through the implementation of the New Economic Policy, its total output value even exceeded the level before the First World War in 1913. However, the industrial output of that year was less than half of that of Germany, only 18 of the United States, and 99% of the country's farming still relied on animal or human power. Steel and electricity production are also lagging behind. The Soviet Union was almost blank in the field of new large-scale industries such as automobiles, aircraft construction, chemical synthesis, and large-scale machinery and equipment construction.
Lenin and Stalin were well aware of the backwardness of the Soviet Union, and they aspired to the industrialization of the Soviet Union. However, industrialization is a gradual process that requires long-term technological accumulation and wealth accumulation, and all aspects of society need to develop to a certain extent. Obviously, the USSR did not have these conditions. Therefore, in order to achieve rapid industrialization, the USSR had to rely on domestic funds and foreign technical assistance to find shortcuts.
The initial capital for the industrialization of the USSR came mainly from the peasantry, from which the USSR raised a lot of money through the collectivization of agriculture and the poor worker-peasant scissors. In addition, the export of grain to foreign countries in exchange for foreign exchange is also an important capital**. In terms of technical assistance, the Soviet Union relied mainly on the introduction of Western equipment, technology and personnel. Both Lenin and Stalin considered it necessary. Lenin once said: "How does a Marxist society achieve the combination of Soviet power and the Soviet apparatus with the latest advances of capitalism." He also said: "Soviet power plus Prussia's railway management system plus European and American technology and trust organization plus national education = Marxist society." Stalin also believed that the USSR lagged behind the West by at least 30 years, and it would be difficult to develop industry, organize transport and electrify urban and rural industries on its own without exchanging its own raw materials for machinery and equipment from Western countries.
In October 1928, the Soviet Union launched its first five-year plan from an agrarian to an industrial country. In the next four years and three months, more than 1,500 large-scale enterprises with advanced technology and equipment were built one after another. The construction of these enterprises is mainly concentrated in the electric power, iron and steel smelting, machinery manufacturing and other industries, in fact, to make up for the shortcomings of the second scientific and technological change. Before the implementation of the five-year plan, the overall industrial level of the USSR was still at the stage of the first industrial reform. In fact, the process of industrialization in the Stalin era was the second scientific and technological industrial revolution in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union's five-year plan had three distinctive features. First of all, the focus is on the construction of heavy industry. This strategy is quite rare and means turning the world around. The main purpose is to build a strong defense industry that ensures that the country is not bullied and subverted by foreign countries. Secondly, the plan emphasizes high-speed construction, overtime for all people, full of vitality, full of enthusiasm, and complete the entire five-year plan in 4 years and 3 months. Stalin once said: delay means lag behind, and backwardness will be defeated. Finally, the focus of the program is on the transition from technology introduction to technological self-reliance, which is also the focus of the next step.
In 1921, in order to establish ** ties with the Soviet Union, American businessman Hammer entered the Kremlin to meet with Lenin. Troubled by recovering from the wounds of war and coping with the blockade of the West, Lenin readily agreed to Hammer's proposal. After Hammer's lobbying and bridges, 30 large American companies formed the United American Corporation, which, together with the Soviet Union, transported American grain and industrial products to the USSR, and then brought back raw materials and minerals from the USSR. Although Western political circles at that time were hostile to the Soviet Union and blockaded the Soviet Union, commercial exchanges were relatively free. When the Soviet Union implemented the "New Economic Policy", it also absorbed foreign capital and technology. With the introduction of the First Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union accelerated the pace of introducing foreign technology and equipment. For example, in 1928, the Soviet Union spent 1 million gold rubles to invite the American company McKay to design the blueprint for the Magnitogorsk steel plant. 450 engineers worked around the clock to carefully design and consider details such as screws, nuts, bolts, etc. This is unprecedented in terms of workload and accuracy. Immediately after its completion, the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Plant became the largest and most advanced steel plant in the world and the largest project in the First Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union.
In 1929, just one year after the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union, New York** suddenly collapsed, starting the most protracted, deepest and most serious world economic crisis in the history of the capitalist economy. Soon the banks collapsed, production fell sharply, factories went bankrupt, and workers lost their jobs. The crisis quickly spread from the United States to the entire world outside the Soviet Union.
This economic crisis profoundly changed the political and economic pattern in the 30s of the 20th century and greatly affected the trend of historical development. In order to get out of the crisis, some countries embarked on the path of fascism; Some countries try to deflect domestic crises by waging foreign wars; The USSR turned the crisis of the capitalist world into an "opportunity" for its own development.
During the economic crisis experienced by the western industrial countries, a large number of products were unsalable, prompting them to race to reduce prices in search of markets. And during this period, a large number of skilled workers and engineers lost their jobs due to factory shutdowns or bankruptcies. This provided the Soviet Union at that time with an excellent opportunity to introduce Western technology, equipment, personnel and other resources.
In 1929, 1,123 companies in the United States signed ** contracts with the Soviet Union through the United States and the Soviet Union. The following year, Britain also signed an agreement with the Soviet Union, which opened the door to convenient exchanges between the Soviet Union. In 1931, after the visit of the German industrial delegation to the Soviet Union, the two sides signed a ** agreement on the purchase of machinery and equipment from Germany, which also involved the provision of loans from Germany to the Soviet Union. During this time, the USSR became the country that imported the most machinery and equipment in the world. Specifically, in 1931 the USSR imported a third of the machinery and equipment of the world market, and in 1932 this proportion increased to half. At the same time, the United States and Great Britain exported a large amount of machinery and equipment to the Soviet Union, 50% of which was exported to the Soviet Union in 1931, and by 1932 the proportion was as high as 90%.
These imported technologies and equipment greatly promoted the industrial development of the Soviet Union. Industries such as steel and tractor manufacturing, for example, have made significant progress in a short period of time. The three major steel plants of the Soviet Union, the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Plant, the Kuznets Iron and Steel Plant and the Zaporozhye Iron and Steel Plant, imported a full set of machinery and technology from the United States. The original 20 steel plants in the Soviet Union were also renovated and upgraded using these Western technologies and equipment. Previously, according to American experts' estimates, the Soviet technology of blast furnace construction lagged behind the West by 50 75 years.
In terms of tractor manufacturing, the three major tractor factories in the Soviet Union: Stalingrad, Kharkov and Chelyabinsk were also built on Western technology and equipment. Among them, the Stalingrad plant basically completely copied the equipment and technology of the American tractor factory. By 1932, the Soviet Union was the world's largest producer of tractors, a leading position that was maintained until the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is worth mentioning that these tractor manufacturers make not only tractors, but also tanks and automatic artillery.
The Soviet Union also made great progress in automobile manufacturing. The three major automobile manufacturers of the Soviet Union: the Gorky automaker, the Moscow Stalin automaker, and the Yaroslavl automaker, formed the basis of the Soviet Union before World War II. Among them, the Gorky plant was built in complete imitation of the Ford Motor Plant. Since 1932, 100,000 gas buses and trucks have rolled off the assembly line here, while the other two old factories have been reconfigured and expanded by using Western machine tools.
However, in the process of introducing technology and equipment, there are also many problems. In the case of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Plant, due to the relatively low level of operation skills of Soviet workers at that time, the new coke ovens seemed to take more than ten years to use in just a few months. It was originally designed to last 20 years, but it actually took only 45 years before it had to be replaced. In addition, 35% and 23% of the conveyor belts of the Gorky Automobile Plant and the Moscow Stalin Automobile Plant were idle due to problems with the level of management and operation, respectively. These problems need to be solved by relying on the guidance of high-level foreign experts and skilled workers, and then gradually learning and improving. This shows that the introduction of technology and equipment is not a one-time thing, but a process that requires continuous learning and improvement.
In the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union, one of the important means of rapidly raising its industrial level was the introduction of advanced technology and equipment from abroad. However, the process was not all smooth sailing, and the Soviet Union was challenged by the low level of technology and management of the workers. In order to solve these problems, the Soviet Union needed to constantly study and improve its own technical and managerial level.
Since 1928, the Soviet Union began to massively introduce foreign specialists and skilled workers, and this number reached 20,000 in 1932. These foreign specialists were involved in all areas of the Soviet Union, from the first department to the factory, workshop and even the team.
Take, for example, the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, which hired 620 foreign specialists for guidance. The Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Plant also has 250 American experts involved in the production guidance process. The construction of the Dnieper hydropower station is even more dependent on American equipment and specialists. In 1930, the American Moritz Kahn led a staff team of 25 specialists to help the Soviet Union establish a design bureau. The director of the USSR State Building Committee was the American expert Scrimthour, and the manager of the All-Soviet Building Trust was the American expert Nemets.
In terms of cotton textile technology in the USSR, almost all of it came from Germany. Davis, a well-known American irrigation engineer, directed the construction of irrigation projects in Central Asia and Transcaucasia and was appointed general counsel to the Soviet Cotton Administration.
The USSR gave generous awards to foreign specialists who made outstanding contributions to the USSR. For example, the American expert cartel was called "an expert in solving the difficulties of the USSR", "an extraordinary figure of Russia" and was awarded the Order of Lenin. Svojan, the American chief engineer of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant and the Kharkov Tractor Plant, was also awarded the Order of Lenin. Six American engineers at the Nieper hydroelectric power station were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
At the same time, the USSR did not stop learning from the West. In 1928 alone, 208 expert groups were sent to the United States to learn advanced technology. From 1929 to 1930, more than 1,000 Soviets entered the United States to study, about 90 percent of them in order to master American technology and transfer it back to the Soviet Union.
In 1933, the USSR completed its first five-year plan ahead of schedule. In his speech, Stalin noted: "In the past, we did not have steel, tractors, automobiles, machine tool building, large-scale modern chemical industry, really large-scale agricultural machine-building and aviation industry. "It can be said that the export of Western machinery and technology played an indispensable role in the industrialization of the Soviet Union.