The Command Economy and the Formation of Regional Policy 1945–53

Abstract

One of the most important spheres of post-war economic policy for the Soviet leadership was concerned with priorities in the regional distribution of industrial growth. Some of Russia’s earliest industries had based themselves in the eastern part of the country in the Urals and Siberia. Industrial development in nineteenth-century Russia was, however, almost entirely centred on the large cities of European Russia, notably Leningrad in the north-west, Moscow in the centre, and the Ukraine in the west. This pattern of regional growth continued largely unaltered throughout the first decade of Soviet industrialisation, with two notable exceptions. These were the building of the giant Urals-Kuznetsk iron and steel complex from 1930 and a decree of the following year severely limiting further industrial expansion within the confines of the overcrowded cities of Moscow and Leningrad. In spite of these the eastern areas of the USSR accounted for a smaller proportion of Soviet industrial output in 1940 than they had in 1917.¹ However, the regional policy issue really came to a head in 1939 when a firm policy favouring more development in the east was adopted in the Third Five-Year Plan. The Nazi occupation of much of European Russia during the war forced the leadership to concentrate even more industry east of the Ural mountains.