The Ambitious 1936 Plan

Abstract

The discussions about the plan for 1936 were launched in July 1935, at a time when the successful results of the first six months of 1935 were already available. Gosplan and Narkomfin again advocated an extremely cautious investment plan. On July 19, 1935, Mezhlauk proposed that investment in 1936 should amount to only 17,700 million rubles, a reduction of 25 per cent as compared with the revised plan for 1935! In his memorandum to Stalin and Chubar’ (who was responsible for Sovnarkom during Molotov’s vacation) Mezhlauk stated that this level of investment would make it possible to achieve a budget surplus of 2,000 million rubles, and to set aside a reserve of about 10,000 million rubles for price reduction. Mezhlauk justified his proposal by reference to central committee policy:

The policy of further increasing real wages and gradually reducing unified [retail] prices, which has been firmly established by the central committee … requires a reserve of approximately 8000 million rubles for price reduction.¹