The country was to be modernized by a series of Five Year Plans. The First Plan emphasised heavy industry, especially iron and steel. Tractor plants had a high priority, partly to replace the slaughtered draught horses on the farms but also because they could easily be converted into tank factories in the event of war. Impossibly high goals were set for each industry and for each factory.

Output was to be doubled in five years in iron and steel production, in electricity, chemicals, and engineering. After some initial success, these early targets were increased and the First Five Year Plan was ordered to be completed in four not five years. The planning was done by a new Government department called Gosplan. They set targets for growth in each industry. They planned new towns, new roads, new railways, a new landscape, a new Soviet Union. Many of these new towns and industrial centres were to be built beyond the Ural Mountains, beyond the reach of a foreign invasion. They had a huge task: to transform the world's largest country - one sixth of the surface of the earth - from a backward farming country to an industrial giant, the equal of the USA. New workers were needed for the new mines and factories. Many came from the farms. Many of these were displaced peasants, displaced in the drive to collectivize the farms.

The Central Government took over complete control of the economy. The private sector of the NEP was brought to an end. Shopkeepers, barbers, cafe owners, and tradesmen were forced out of business or into collectives. They were criticized in the press, harassed by the authorities, and many were arrested. Industrialization was being used (like collectivization of agriculture) not only to modernize, but also to complete the Socialist revolution. This could only be done, they believed, by the worker - in town and country working for the State and ending private business of any sort. The planners were intent on producing more than the West. They intended to build the newest and biggest industry, not only the equal of the West, but better than it. Whole new areas that had never previously even seen any motor cars were developed into some of the largest industrial complexes in the world. This fundamentally altered the economic map of the USSR.

The impact of industrialization

To ensure that their targets were reached, the Government went back on their more idealistic Communist ideals. All workers had targets set for them. Their wages depended on them achieving these targets. Higher wages were offered for better and more skilled work.

As the labour force wasn't educated, and an industrial society needs its workers to be educated, a massive education programme was undertaken. Initially, Stalin attracted highly educated and skilled workers from the West by offering very high wages. But this was no long term solution. Education had to expand. New colleges, schools, and universities were built. Everyone was to receive at least elementary education. Thousands of teachers, scientists, and engineers were trained. These new professionals, and the highly skilled workers, together with the factory managers, produced a new elite in Soviet Russia.

Hard work was rewarded with medals; and there were also subsidized holidays to the Black Sea and to Moscow. The highest achievement was the Order of Lenin, reserved for the best workers. Many young workers were convinced in an idealistic way of Stalin's plans for modernizing the country. These shock workers tried to urge the others on to greater effort and higher productivity. Anyone who opposed this industrial policy was accused of defeatism.

The Government was too autocratic to rely solely on the inducements of medals, holidays, and higher wages to ensure efficiency and higher productivity. Fines were imposed for lateness and bad workmanship. Persistent offenders were imprisoned and sometimes shot. Sunday was no longer guaranteed as a rest day. Added to these restrictive work practices, the workers had to endure poor living conditions. Real wages halved from 1928 to 1933. Towns grew too quickly to absorb the new workers from the farms. Sanitation and housing were poor. Several families often crowded together to live in a single room. Understandably problems grew - juvenile delinquency, crime, and alcoholism were common. Conditions were even worse on the new industrial sites cast of the Urals