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4th Five-Year Plan - 1945-1950

The Fourth Five-Year Plan began in 1945. During the early years of the period, attention focused on repair and rebuilding, with minimal construction of new facilities. Repair work proceeded briskly, with spectacular results. The country received no substantial aid for postwar reconstruction, Stalin having refused to consider proposals for participation in the Marshall Plan in 1947. Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and especially defeated Germany made reparations payments to the Soviet Union, however, consisting in large part of equipment and industrial materials. Entire German factories and their workers were brought to the Soviet Union to train Soviet citizens in specialized work processes. Although the government never published definitive statistics, an authoritative Western assessment estimated the value of reparations at an average of 5 billion rubles per year between 1945 and 1956. The exertions of the country's inhabitants, however, coupled with ambitious economic strategies, proved most crucial for the recovery.

During the war years, the government had transferred substantial numbers of industrial enterprises from threatened western areas to Asian regions of the country. After the war, these facilities remained at their new sites as part of an effort to promote economic development. These locations had the advantage of being near raw materials and energy sources. The government also deemed it strategically sound to have the important installations of the country distributed among several regions.

The fourth five-year plan (1946-50) was developed, approved by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in March 1946. It envisaged as the main economic and political task the restoration of the destroyed regions of the country, achieving the pre-war level of development of industry and agriculture, and then exceeding this level in significant amounts and on this basis the growth of the material well-being of the Soviet people. The tasks of the plan were completed ahead of schedule. The country's production potential has been fully restored and significantly increased. In 1950, compared with 1940, the gross industrial output increased by 73%, the fixed assets of production by 24%, and the national income by 64%. Capital investments in the national economy amounted to 48 billion rubles. Mechanical engineering and the chemical industry, raw materials industries were further developed, and the material and technical base of agriculture was strengthened. The restoration of the economy of the liberated regions was combined with an improvement in the distribution of productive forces in the country.

Over the years of the five-year plan, 6200 large state industrial enterprises were built and rebuilt, destroyed during the war. The Nizhneturinskaya, Shchekinskaya regional thermal power plants, Farkhad and Khramskaya hydroelectric power plants, Niva-HPP III were commissioned; Transcaucasian Metallurgical Plant, Ust-Kamenogorsk Lead and Zinc Combine. The Kaluga Turbine Works, Kolomna Heavy Machine-Tool Building Plant, Ryazan Machine-Tool Building and Kutaisi Automobile Plants, and others gave their products. Gas pipelines Saratov - Moscow, Kohtla-Yarve - Leningrad, Dashava - Kiev were built and put into operation. The construction of the largest energy facilities, new irrigation canals and systems, the creation of forest belts in the steppe regions of the country has begun.

Great successes were achieved in the development of Soviet science, major discoveries and inventions were made in various fields of science and technology. Major measures have been taken to improve the living standards of the people. Restored and constructed in cities and towns houses a total (utility) area over 100 Mill. M 2 , and in rural areas - 2.7 million homes.. The rationing system for consumer goods was canceled (1947); the general level of prices for these goods has dropped by almost 2 times. The transition to compulsory 7-year education was started everywhere.

Like earlier plans, the Fourth Five-Year Plan stressed heavy industry and transportation. The economy met most of the targets in heavy industry. The performance of agriculture again lagged behind industry. Western observers believed that factors in agriculture's poor performance included a paucity of investment, enforcement of a strict quota system for delivery of agricultural products to the state, and tenuous linkage between wages and production, which deprived farmers of incentives. Housing construction, community services, and other consumer items also lagged noticeably.

During the final years of the plan, Stalin launched several grandiose projects, including building canals and hydroelectric plants and establishing tree plantations in the Armenian, Azerbaydzhan, Georgian, and Ukrainian republics and in the Volga River area of the Russian Republic to shield land from drying winds. Collectively, these efforts were referred to as ' 'the Stalin plan for the transformation of nature."

Throughout the Stalin era, the pace of industrial growth was forced. On those occasions when shortages developed in heavy industry and endangered plan fulfillment, the government simply shifted resources from agriculture, light industry, and other sectors. The situation of the consumer improved little during the Stalin years as a whole. Major declines in real household consumption occurred during the early 1930s and in the war years. Although living standards had rebounded after reaching a low point at the end of World War II, by 1950 real household consumption had climbed to a level only one-tenth higher than that of 1928. Judged by modern West European standards, the clothing, housing, social services, and diet of the people left much to be desired.