The Xvii Party Congress and the Second Five-Year Plan

Abstract

The XVII party congress met in Moscow from January 26 to February 10, 1934. This was the end, or almost the end, of three years of severe economic and political crisis and disastrous famine, associated with rapid industrialisation; this crisis is discussed in volumes 4 and 5 of the present work. Though famine conditions continued in certain areas in the first six months of 1934 (see vol. 5, pp. 266–7, 411–12), the reasonable harvest of 1933, and the more moderate economic policies pursued in industry and elsewhere since the summer of 1932, brought to an end the worst of the famine. The currency was stabilised, and from the spring of 1933 industry began to develop more rapidly.