Abstract
This chapter summarises the developments of industrial and war production in 1939 under the impact of the additional measures for war mobilisation taken at the time. With little overall expansion of the economy, the main burden would have fallen on consumers, but the pressure on living standards was softened as consumers were able to reap the last of the benefit from the record harvest of 1937. The second half of 1939 was dominated by the sudden warming of Soviet-German relations and the opening of the Soviet economy to German trade as the Second World War began.
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Notes
- 1.
New oil wells: Industrializatsiya, 1938–1941 (1973): 127–145 (Gosplan report to Sovnarkom on the results of the third five-year plan, October 4, 1940).
- 2.
Industrializatsiya 1938–41 (1973): 135–136.
- 3.
Ibid.: 136–137.
- 4.
Ibid.: 138.
- 5.
Ibid.: 138–139.
- 6.
Ibid.: 139–141.
- 7.
Ibid.: 248–251 (report of Gosplan department of labour, August 1940).
- 8.
Ibid.: 237–240.
- 9.
Istoriya OPK Rossii, 4 (2015): 338–342 (M. M. Kaganovich to Stalin, July 15, 1939).
- 10.
OPK, 4, 464–485 (Malenkov to Stalin, January 23, 1940).
- 11.
Samoletostroenie, 1: 162–165.
- 12.
OPK, 4, 447–459 (January 17, 1940).
- 13.
Baryatinskii (2007): 78.
- 14.
Ibid.: 119–120.
- 15.
Ibid.: 52
- 16.
Ibid.: 160.
- 17.
Ibid.: 271.
- 18.
Ibid.: 272.
- 19.
Harrison (1985): 250.
- 20.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 12–16.
- 21.
RGASPI, 17/3/1008.
- 22.
RGASPI, 17/3/1008.
- 23.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 53.
- 24.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 78.
- 25.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 81.
- 26.
RGASPI, 17/3/1014: 19–20.
- 27.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 26–27.
- 28.
The document (previous footnote) refers to ‘7 shtuk “BS-35”’, most likely a typographical error.
- 29.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 52–54.
- 30.
GARF, 9414/1/1155: 2.
- 31.
RGASPI, 17/162/24: 80, 97; GARF, R-9401/1а/32: 12–13; see also Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga, 3: 443–444. V. A. Kravchenko was appointed chief of the Ostekhbyuro on November 11, 1939 (RGASPI, 17/3/1016: 5).
- 32.
Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga, 3 (2004): 445–450 (report of work of the Ostekhbyuro, 1939–1944).
- 33.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 4–5. The decision was formalised by the Sovnarkom defence committee (GARF, 8418/28/65: 100).
- 34.
GARF, 8131/32/4002: 32–34; Ozerov (1971).
- 35.
GARF, 9414/1/1140: 118.
- 36.
GARF, 9414/1/1140: 38–41; Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga, 3 (2004): 158.
- 37.
Decrees of Sovnarkom and the Central Committee in GARF, 5446/1v/503: 27–28 (March 2, 1939), and 5446/1/152: 344–346 (March 4, 1939).
- 38.
GARF, 5446/1v/503: 73–78. The Politburo approved the decree on March 30 (RGASPI, 17/162/25: 4, 12–16). See also Elantseva (1995).
- 39.
GARF, 5446/23а/76: 6.
- 40.
GARF, 5446/23a/121: 6–9; Khlevniuk (2004): 201–203.
- 41.
GARF, 5446/23a/76: 7–9; also Khlevniuk (2004): 203–204.
- 42.
GARF, 5446/23а/70: 29–30.
- 43.
GARF, 5446/23а/121: 2–5.
- 44.
GARF, 5446/23а/121: 1.
- 45.
GARF, 7523/67/1: 5.
- 46.
RGASPI, 17/162/25: 54–55; Getty and Naumov, eds. (1999): 549–550.
- 47.
GARF, 5446/23a/70: 31–41, 64–65. For the decree of the NKVD of August 14, 1939, establishing new nutritional and clothing norms, see Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei (2000): 476–489.
- 48.
GARF, 5446/1/503: 4–6.
- 49.
GARF, 5446/24а/18: 73.
- 50.
RGASPI, 17/3/1018: 20.
- 51.
GARF, 9414/1/2989: 84–85.
- 52.
GARF, 9414/1/2989: 101–104.
- 53.
GARF, 5446/23а/70: 77.
- 54.
GARF, 9414/1/24: 195.
- 55.
GARF, 5446/24а/49: 52.
- 56.
Shirokov (2014): 152, 156.
- 57.
GARF, 5446/24а/18: 71–73.
- 58.
RGAE, 7733/36с/220: 30.
- 59.
Malafeev (1964): 407.
- 60.
Chapman (1963): 81 (prices of services in Moscow); 87 (cost of living, urban USSR and all markets); 97 (collective farm market prices); 157 (state and cooperative trade). The figures that we give are those based on quantity weights of 1940, which are slightly more favourable to the trend of real wages. Chapman’s figure for the increase of nominal earnings (1963: 109) was the same as that of Malafeev (1964): 107.
- 61.
This proportion was close to those observed in British working-class households in 1904, when 1904 skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled British households spent 40, 38, and 34% of their household incomes on food (Economic History Review, 68(1) (2015): 106 (I. Gazeley and A. Newall)). There are many uncontrolled variations in the settings of British and Soviet households, however, not limited to differences in relative prices of commodities. Soviet household preferences differed from those of British households for both cultural and climatic reasons. Soviet households also faced multiple prices of commodities and some commodities were unavailable at official prices, or at any price.
- 62.
The decree is published in Istoriya tsenoobrazovaniya (1973): 84–85. See also Malafeev (1967): 213–216, and Kondrashev (1956): 122, 130.
- 63.
SP (1939), no. 15: art. 89 (February 1).
- 64.
SP (1939), no. 25: art. 159 (March 5).
- 65.
Istoriya tsenoobrazovaniya, 1 (1973): 578.
- 66.
The decree was preceded by a lengthy memorandum from the Economic Council to Sovnarkom and the Central Committee explaining the reasons for the decree and its consequences (Istoriya tsenoobrazovaniya (1973), 1: 567–573); we estimate the value of the price increases from this memorandum.
- 67.
Osokina (1998): 228. The pattern of decline in consumer supplies is supported by much statistical and personal description of growing shortages at the time; see also Osokina (1998): 206–218 and Hessler (2004): 240–243.
- 68.
Osokina (1998): 231.
- 69.
Man’kov (2001): 225.
- 70.
See also Istoriya tsenoobrazovaniya, 1 (1973): 579–580.
- 71.
Hill (2010): 48–84.
- 72.
Haslam (1984): 224; for the negotiations in detail, see pages 215–226.
- 73.
Pravda, June 29, 1939.
- 74.
Maiolo (1998): 126–132.
- 75.
Haslam (1984): 226–227.
- 76.
Weinberg, Foreign policy, 2 (1980), 578–583.
- 77.
Gorodetsky (1999): 4.
- 78.
Dimitrov (2003): 116.
- 79.
Cited by Weinberg (1994): 25.
- 80.
Carley (2000); Europe-Asia Studies, 52 (2000): 695–722 (Watson).
- 81.
Pons (2002); Biskupski, ed. (2003) (A. Cienciala); Otechestvennaya istoriya (2005), no. 1 (S. Z. Sluch).
- 82.
Gorodetsky, ed. (1994): 58 (J. Haslam).
- 83.
Documents on German Foreign Policy, D-7 (1956): 245–246 (Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, August 23, 1939) and 246–247 (Secret Additional Protocol, the same day).
- 84.
On the implementation and revision of the secret protocols, see Kasekamp (2010).
- 85.
This declaration greatly upset Western sympathisers with the Soviet Union, including one of the present authors, then a strongly antifascist and pro-Soviet fourteen-year old …
- 86.
For the texts of these agreements see Ericson (1999): 227–240.
- 87.
Ericson (1999): 112–113.
- 88.
Kotkin, Stalin, 1 (2017): 768.
- 89.
Harrison (1996): 199 (black coal), 264 (grain).
- 90.
Ericson (1999): 109.
- 91.
Paine (2012): 146–148.
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Davies, R.W., Harrison, M., Khlevniuk, O., Wheatcroft, S.G. (2018). The Economy in 1939: Further Moves to a War Economy. In: The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 7: The Soviet Economy and the Approach of War, 1937–1939. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36238-4_9
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