To what extent were Stalin’s five year plans a success?

First of all the question is asking you to define what success constitutes. In order to do this it is necessary to examine its aims. Stalin had three five year plans whose primary aim was to expand industrial production, with a focus on heavy industry (eg. coal, steel and electricity). That he set out to do this was to attempt to bring Russia alongside the advanced western economies. In his words he believed that Russia needed to make in five what the west had achieved in a hundred. That this was necessary was due to his belief that an undeveloped Russian economy would be no match for western capitalist powers and if they decided to invade, any communist progress would be lost. In order to examine success it is necessary to look at the targets and whether they were achieved. However when doing so it is crucial that we recognise that towns and states would often revise or exaggerate their successes in order to be in favour. Furthermore Stalin consistently revised upwards the different five year plans targets. Therefore though they might not have been successful in regards to the secondary targets, they were when we consider their primary aims. Finally, though this does not come into the success of the five year plans themselves, it is important to examine the human cost. Though the number of workers in soviet industry increased from 4.6 to 12.6 million over the period, the number of deaths and human suffering bring into question the extent to which this ‘success’ came at a cost.