ON THIS DAY ·
Alexei Stakhanov’s record coal shift
Alexei Stakhanov cuts 102 tonnes of coal in a single shift, about fourteen times the norm — and a movement is born that will raise everyone else’s quotas.
WW2 is free in full, and chapter 1 of every atlas is free. A free account opens 3 more chapters a day. Starter, at $9 a month, opens all 21 with no daily limit — see the plans.
Free printable Stalin’s Soviet Union study guide, sent by email ↓
The moment in context
Gosplan’s First Five-Year Plan resembled a company’s budget in one respect: it assigned factories amounts to produce. But its targets had the force of law. In 1929 the leadership chose the most ambitious draft for 1928–32, called the “optimal variant”, and then raised its demands further. The overriding purpose was speed, even when the cost was high.
From Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, chapter 4 of The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953 (1935).
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — Fear of war drove the pace. The Bolsheviks expected capitalist powers to attack the first socialist state, and the war scare of 1927 made preparation urgent. Steel and…
- The turn — Magnitogorsk, February 1932. Three years before the first blast furnace was lit at Magnitogorsk in February 1932, its site had been empty steppe. The furnace showed that a heavy…
- What it changed — The industrial base for victory in 1941–45. When the western industrial regions were lost in 1941, factories in the Urals and Siberia supplied the Red Army through the war. The experience of…
Then ask the room: To what extent were the Five-Year Plans a success? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
THE FREE PRINTABLE STUDY GUIDE
Get the printable study guide for The Soviet Union under Stalin free. I’ll send you a few short letters, then one when a new atlas opens. That’s all. — Paul
NO TRACKING · YOUR ADDRESS IS USED FOR THE DISPATCH AND NOTHING ELSE · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME