Preparing for War: Industrialization and the Fascist Threat - Lessons of Soviet History, Part 3 

I am learning so much to add to my growing understanding of this history. Thanks Brian and guest, Carlos Martinez.

Outstanding interview. I recall learning about the "Intervention" a couple years ago, and was completely shocked that U.S. troops - along with a grab bag of "Allies" - invaded Russia in two places, fought against Russians and suffered casualties, and then left bodies behind - in disgrace - when they were defeated and departed Russia. Completely encouraged me to look deeper into Russian history to better understand their perspective. Thanks for casting light on events in the Soviet Union and Russia, events long obscured or warped by western "history."

Absolutely love this series! Thanks BT News for introducing me to The Socialist Program. Socialism is picking up traction in the US for the first time in a long time, we need to learn from former experiments to take the good and learn to avoid the mistakes they made.

Informative program. Long live Dr.Walter Rodney.

Excellent, one of the best talks on the history of the Soviet Union that I have ever heard.

Never heard this perspective. It really changes how I look at things. I guess it makes sense that the powers that be don't want people thinking there are other alternatives.

I am looking forward to reading Carlos' book. These series on China and the USSR have been really good. Socialists need to be able to discuss these topics with the masses. People always want to know about these things but typically get bad or limited information about them from the capitalist establishment. Hopefully there will be similar interviews hosted here in the future.

Educative, informative and urbane dialogue by two erudite geopoliticians and geostrategists! Huge respect and profound gratitude to both of you!

When I saw this, I was only checking it out as a curiousity but wow, you guys really blew it out of the water! You guys both confirmed truths I knew which were rarely told and I also learnt something new. Gonna keep checking out this series!

These episodes are invaluable, thank you.

Series is just what I’ve been looking for in terms of content and perspective. Thank you for this series!

a fantastic public service!! thanks you two (and all the people behind the scenes) for your hard work!! much appreciated!!

Interesting, very meticulous telling of the history! I'm no fan of Stalinism policy. However the above video has given me a deeper understanding of Soviet thinking in the 30's. What I still don't understand is how one can square the perception that UK and France would be ok with Nazi-germany fighting the USSR (they in fact declared war when Germany attacked Poland) with the Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact (spelling?). Maybe a strange question! If Germany and the Soviet Union hadn't signed the non aggression pact, UK and France wouldn't have declared war? I understand the Soviet thinking, they were fighting tooth and nail to find allies and/or some way to prevent/delay the war. Looking forward to the next episode.

This is an amazing series. Thank you for this

Great to see Brian Becker on BreakThrough News!

"Tens of thousands of people were willing to undergo the most intense hardships...". This blows a hole through the Laffer Curve theory. People would be willing to work for 100% tax because the reward would be a better society for them and their children.

Very good series. Thanks for the work.

great contribution to the vast majority of minds who desire to walk the path of moral living, truths...

Really educational! Thank you

Great stuff!!!!! ✊

Extremely educational.

Very informative.. great work by BTN team👏👏

Please include links in the description, to the other videos in this series, so we can find them easily and more people will watch them. You want that, don’t you?

Thanks for this!

Awesome show

From the very beginning, the USSR relied on the development of science and technology. During the Civil War in 1918-1920, about 50 research institutes were created. In 1920, in less than one year, the government of the RSFSR under the leadership of V.I. Lenin developed a long-term plan for the electrification of the country, GOERLO, which was completed in 10 years.

This is an outstanding discussion on the history of the USSR. I have greatly learned an awful lot that I didn't know previously. Carlos gave such a very factual analysis on these matters. Thank you Brian for having Mr. Carlos as a guest.

When the US sanctioned Japan from importing oil, they attacked Pearl Harbour. But when USSR got sanctioned and not even recognized by US till 1933, they didn't go berserk or invade anybody, but minded their own business. Goes to show the difference between a Capitalist and a Socialist country during a crisis.

Thanks for talking in-depth about the reason for food shortages in the 30s. This is the first time I’ve heard an explanation other than the soviets just liked building tanks and forgot somehow that food is important.

Where is part 2? I saw part 1 not too long ago, but checking your uploads, there does not seem to be a part 2, as this is already part 3....

Thanks Brain

Exellent history.

Great guest, just wish he'd had more time to talk.

Any chance of a transcription? Thanks

"On June 23rd 41 mobilisation production plans went into force. On June 24th the Evacuation Council was set up and on the 30th the State Defense Committee was organised with Stalin as its head. In July 41 300,000 railway wagons were in operation in August 185,000 in September 140,000 in October 175,000 in November 123,000. In the July November period 1,503 industrial enterprises were evacuated to the east. It took two and a half years to erect a blast furnace before the war but furnaces No. 5 and 8 were erected in eight monthes at Magnitogorsk. In October tank building plant No.183 was working in November it was evacuated and in December it resumed production. Tank production went from 4,177 in the second half of 41 to 11,021 in the first half of 42. Military production increased 180% in the Urals in 1942 compared to 41 200% in the Volga area and 140% in Western Siberia. In 1942 4.4 million industrial workers were trained or re-educated. The number of women operating for example forging and press machines rose from 11% 1941 to 50% end of 42. The Germans siezed or put out of action 31,850 big and small industrial enterprises. German industrial capacity in 41 including conquered countries was :- 31.8 million tons of steel against the Soviets 18.3 rolled stock 22.5 m.tons against Soviets 13.1 coal 506mt against Soviets 165.9mt stock of metal cutting machines 1694 thousand Soviet 58.4 thousand From an article by Colonell G.S. Kravchenko 1967 forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=22442

The ends justify the means

“The Soviet Labour force underwent an exceptional transformation from the late 1920s onwards. The 3.1 million industrial workers of 1928 had become 8.3 million by 1940; the non-agricultural workforce as a whole grew over the same period from 6.8 million to 20 million….The new workforce predominated in the more modern industrial sectors. In the motor and aviation industries 57% of the 1932 workforce had entered employment in the previous four years, in iron and steel 50 per cent, in the electro-technical industry 48 per cent. Around three quarters of the newcomers had never had regular paid employment before, either coming straight from the farms, or from military service, or schooling. The number of women in the workforce increased from 2.4 million in 1928 to 7 million in 1933, when women made up exactly one-third of the industrial labour force; by 1937 they were 41 per cent of it. Much of the new workforce, both male and female, was very young: in 1930 a quarter of workers in heavy industry were under twenty-three, by 1933 over one-third. In the 1,500 factories under the First Five-Year Plan the proportions were yet higher: 43 per cent at the iron works in Magnitogorsk, 60 per cent in the giant ‘Stalin’ chemical works at Stalinogorsk.” THE DICTATORS: HITLER’S GERMANY, STALIN’S RUSSIA BY Richard Overly, .W. Norton and Company, New York, 2004. pages 317-318.

Soviet Union had the abundance of resource wealth as well as numerous production bases but proportionally small population to the massive territory nearly 4 times the size of US, which means Soviet Union had the absolute opportunity to build itself to the fullest potential. It's no wonder that they could collectivize and industrialize at rapid pace, they simply had the material advantage and the highest resource potential compared to other emerging socialist countries later on.

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But wait a minute. I thought Poland was invaded by both Russia and Germany and that starts the war

The world economics is not really based onpolitical system but the world strength is lninked to whst US has been doing since their collapse their module of regime change and increase in non US compliant nations. US hate nations that stand up to US such as DRK, Iran, Russia, and now China. US has a number of approach such as instilling fear or threats, regime change and sponsoring rebellions and coups. Effective US olerates with people with compromised regimes and lately army stations are the Boka Haram are a recent swords such as Solomon Island, Cambodia and sanctions.

The is a problem with the timescale involved with Carlos' explanation about the reason for collectivisation in the USSR. The adoption of the ultra left, social fascist, class against class line of the Comintern began in 1927 two years before the Great Depression. The new line was immediately reflected in the UK with the decision of the CPGB in 1927 to close down the National Left Wing Movement which had involved an increasingly popular coalition between the Communists and many local left-wing Labour Parties. From then on the British communists isolated themselves from the organised Labour and trade union movement, preferring to orientate towards the unemployed etc. More importantly, the ultraleft foreign policy of the Communist International adopted in the late 1920s was not a result of a change in the international class struggle but was a reflection of a change of policy inside the Soviet Union - namely Stalin's decision to break with Bukharin and the New Economic Policy, and go over to a policy of state repression of the peasantry which quickly led onto collectivisation, and for super-industrialisation of the economy.

The whole Soviet economy is subject to the global blockade, so the USSR has no access to the produce of the global south, both foods and raw materials, which are acting as a subsidy to the economies of western Europe and the USA from imperialism and control of terms of international trade, and allowing faster development and economic growth in those capitalist countries than they would be achieving otherwise. Arguably the erstwhile Russian Empire provides an internal colony analogous to the USA's internal colony of former native American land and the raw materials under them, especially with the use of the countryside to provide surplus to fund urban development at the expense of the peasants. I find it hard to argue with the argument in Red Plenty that the forced collectivisation effected a re-enserfment of the Soviet peasantry, who then became alienated, landless employees of state farms, effectively working for a landlord again, this time the one big absentee landlord of the state and the planning system which dictated work requirements and delivery quotas on pain of denunciation but held down pay to generate financial surplus for industrial investment. I have no way of judging the official claims of Soviet statistics, and little other data exists. But Alec Nove told a similar tale in his Economic History of the Soviet Union, that before Krushchev's reforms agricultural workers got paid the same miserable pittance no matter how hard they worked, and that after his reforms they had a reasonable income no matter how hard they worked and either way no sense of ownership or pride in the success or otherwise of the Kholkoz as the countryside in general fell far behind in development.

While I have the deepest respect for Walter Rodney and the fantastic role he played in Africa, the Caribbean and Guyana, he is not the best of authorities to base one's assessment of collectivisation in the Soviet Union. Walter was forced to rely on stalinist accounts of collectivisation. However, once Gorbachev began his reforms and subsequently, an avalanche of testimonies emerged from peasants and gulag prisoners about what really happened in the process of collectivisation. For one thing virtually none of the peasants welcomed collectivisation. For one thing, it came hard on the heels of two years of squads searching the farms for grain to cart off to feed the towns and cities. This caused great resentment in the countryside. When collectivisation came it involved confiscation of peasants land, tools, grain and livestock. Why would even the poor peasants welcome such losses? They didn't. Collectivisation turned into a disaster leading to a massive fall in food production, and the slaughter of a large section of livestock by the peasants rather than yield them up to the collective farms. As a result, on many collective farms the farm workers had to pull the ploughs themselves! Even when tractors began to arrive a large majority were of such poor quality they soon began to break down without any practical way to repair them. Meanwhile, inevitably very serious famines broke out which led to the deaths of many millions. Just as it had done in 1920-22 as a result of similar policies under War Communism. The continuation of the collective farm system became the achilles heel of Soviet agriculture up until the 1980s which is why Russia from being the fabled breadbasket ended up importing increasing quanties of grain etc. from the US and elsewhere. This became an increasing drain on state finances. Incidentally, the copying of collectivisation proved an economic disaster wherever it has been tried such as in the Great Leap Forward in China and in Africa in the Post-Colonial period. Time and again it is followed by a massive fall in productivity and output and mass famine. The experience of the end of collectivisation in the post Mao period and the huge increase in output that resulted which finally ended hunger in China has surely settled the question. Why does collectivisation not work? Because it is an attempt to artificially leap from feudalism to socialism overnight. Last but not least, there was an alternative to collectivisation that was put forward by both Bukharin and Lenin: agricultural cooperatives. This was the way to voluntarily enhance individual farm ownership with collective coordination between the farmers and then with the state. One small addendum, the damaging role of the "kulaks" was a myth. There had not been sufficient time within the NEP for a rich farming class to emerge as the requisition and then collectivisation squads discovered. A common complaint in reports in the archives from the police and communist youth sent into the countryside was that there were virtually no kulaks to be found in the villages. It became a farcical exercise of 'find the kulak'. Instead, those identified as being kulaks and sent to the prison camps were often neighbours accused by others in order to settle local grievances and feuds. Or farmers who because of better quality land, more children or some other advantage were marginally more successful than others in a village. In the latter case, the result of the arrests was often to imprison the most industrious farmers in the USSR!

After the non aggression pact it wasn’t just Germany invading countries it was also the Soviet Union.They invade parts of Poland after Germany went in, they tried to invade Finland and they invaded the Baltic states.

We need Socialism. Democracy is the perfect combination with Socialism.

seems to have forgotten that before hitler invaded russia they were allies then stalin joined the west and started attacking europe ie finland etc

This big change that is needed concerns the Americans first, and foremost. When they vote for a reckless, and wanton president like Trump to stay in power even after proving time and again that he is incapable mentally of grasping actions, and their implications is in itself a reckless attitude.

:))) Westerners should not be allowed to speak about communism. The non aggression pact was not only about Germany invading other countries, but also about Soviet Union invading the Baltics, Romania and Poland.

"“Stalin shopped the great capitalist department store. Starting with the American companies Freyn Engineering and Arthur McKee, Moscow signed “technical assistance” contracts to import the new American wide-strip steel mills and heavy blooming mills with which to build brand-new integrated steel plants at Magnitogorsk (Urals) equivalent in size to the flagship U.S. Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, as well as others in Kuznetsk (Ukraine). Additionally, the Soviets contracted with the Ford Motor Company to build an integrated mass-production facility in Nizhny Novograd for cars and trucks, on the basis of recent Ford patents and its famed River Rouge plant. Caterpillar was engaged to re-equip factories in Kharkov and Leningrad to mass-produce tractors and harvesters, while giant tractor plants were contracted for Stalingrad and, very soon, Chelyabinsk, intended to be the largest in the world. Contracts would be signed with DuPont and Nitrogen Engineering to manufacture ammonia, nitric acid, and synthetic nitrogen, and Westvaco for chlorine. There would be ball-bearings technology from Sweden and Italy, advanced plastics and aircraft from France, turbines and electrical technology from Britain. “ STALIN:WAITING FOR HITLER, 1929-1941 BY Stephen Kotkin Penguin Books. New York, NY 2017

You present life as a Kolkhosnik as being something desireable. It wasn't. Health care, secured income independent of harvest succes ... what a bullshit.

American Phd babble.

I had such high hopes for this program... but what should I expect from Stalinist types... nothing but disappointment... Had to stop watching at the 20 minute mark... when the Stalinist said Socialism In One Country was defacto by the mid 1920s. Yeah, after Stalin murdered thousands of Left Opposition.... I could go on but I won't... I'll let an expert on the subject speak for me... From a speech given by David North at a public meeting on Sunday, August 23, 1987, in Detroit. """Examining the reports that are now emerging from Moscow, it seems that there are powerful forces in the Soviet bureaucracy which would, if possible, have the same fate befall Trotsky. Forty-seven years after his assassination, there are signs that the political heirs of those who murdered Trotsky, his children, his closest political associates and thousands of his followers are now, little by little, “rehabilitating” him. For decades after his death, the ruling bureaucracy in the Soviet Union never permitted any public reference to the name of Leon Trotsky except in the context of slander and denunciation. Now, reports are emerging from Moscow that the problem of how to deal with the historical legacy of Leon Trotsky is a matter of increasingly heated debate within the highest political circles of the USSR."" You can read the full text here... and then make your own judgement... www.wsws.org/en/special/library/trotskyism-versus-stalinism/speech.html

I like history, I like your clip, but people looking for an alternative have been deprived of any knowledge of socialism and they are politically unsophisticated. People don't want intellectual theory, they need simple and basic. Both parties have the same interests and they are playing a game by distracting, misinformed and dividing the American public. Start with grass roots and revitalize labor. Socialism has its share of idologues and that approach will just make ordinary people angry. Housing, Healthcare and Higher education! (Keep it Simple!)

You are miss informed please do not talk about subject you know nothing about … focus on the USA

Chapter 5 takes us to the Soviet Union and its rapid and difficult industrialization. Soviet leaders were desperate to catch up with the West and sought out the builders of twentieth-century American factories to advise them. Ford engineers, the industrial architect Albert Kahn, and many more had a direct hand in the creation of Soviet factories. When American advisors visited Soviet plants they found the slogan “To catch up with and surpass America” (p. 170); the giant factory provided the path to progress, civilization, and modernity. The author asks important questions about the adoption of the American factory: How did the direct transfer of American capitalist production strategies fit into a workers’ state? Did the dehumanizing assembly of the auto industry fit into a workplace theoretically run by workers? Did the tools of capitalism even belong in the Soviet Union? Despite seeming contradictions, the Soviet Union embraced Taylorism (scientific management) and Fordism, both defended by Leon Trotsky when he said that the main goal was to abolish poverty and that “the monotony of labor is compensated for by its reduced duration and its increased easiness” (p. 182). networks.h-net.org/node/9782/reviews/4244376/biggs-freeman-behemoth-history-factory-and-making-modern-world Joshua B. Freeman. Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.