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126-414: Poland suffered heavy losses during World War II . In addition to significant population losses, it suffered catastrophic damage to its infrastructure during the war; the losses in national resources and infrastructure amounted to over 30% percent of pre-war potential. Rebuilding of the economy was also made more difficult by the major territorial changes of Poland after World War II . The Three-Year Plan

252-589: A complex system of planning arrangements had developed since the introduction of the first five-year plan in 1928. Preceding this, Leon Trotsky had delivered a joint report to the April Plenum of the Central Committee in 1926 which proposed a program for national industrialisation and the replacement of annual plans with five-year plans. His proposals were rejected by the Central Committee majority which

378-451: A growing pile of $ 66 billion in external debt and with barely a few billion dollars in net gold and foreign exchange reserves. The complex demands of the modern economy somewhat constrained the central planners. Data fiddling became common practice among the bureaucracy by reporting fulfilled targets and quotas, thus entrenching the crisis. From the Stalin-era to the early Brezhnev-era ,

504-567: A negative amount (a negative balance) Source of figures: Kazimierz Piesowicz, Demograficzne skutki II wojny swiatowej Studia Demograficzne, No. 1/87, 1987. 103-36 pp. Warsaw Legend: Franciszek Proch was a Polish lawyer and journalist. During the war he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp. In the post war era he resided in Germany and the United States. Proch published Poland's Way of

630-640: A report of the Central Committee to the Congress of the CPSU to be approved there. After the approval at the Congress, the list of priorities for the five-year plan was processed by the Council of Ministers , which constituted the government of the Soviet Union. The Council of Ministers was composed of industrial ministers, chairmen of various state committees and chairmen of agencies with ministerial status. This committee stood at

756-403: A result, some goods tended to be underproduced and led to shortages while other goods were overproduced and accumulated in storage. Low-level managers often did not report such problems to their superiors, relying instead on each other for support. Some factories developed a system of barter and either exchanged or shared raw materials and parts without the knowledge of the authorities and outside

882-677: A study to investigate and detail Poland's war losses in order to document claims for war reparations from Germany. This study was to remain secret and not published until after the collapse of communism in Poland. The Ministry of Finance estimated actual losses at 5,085,000 persons, 943,000 less than the Polish government Bureau of War Damages(BOW) report of 1947. According to Ministry of Finance figures losses were 5,085,000 persons (1,706,700 Poles and 3,378,000) Jews According to Assessments and Estimates: an Outline by Mateusz Gniazdowski : "This discrepancy

1008-467: A success and the only efficient economic plan in the history of People's Republic of Poland . It succeeded in its primary aim: mostly rebuilding Poland from the devastation of the war, as well as in increasing output of Polish industry and agriculture. World War II casualties of Poland Around 6 million Polish citizens perished during World War II : about one fifth of the entire pre-war population of Poland. Most of them were civilian victims of

1134-459: A summary of the causes of them. According to the Polish government's official report on war damages which was published in 1947, the total number of Poland's war dead was 6,028,000; 3.0 million ethnic Poles and 3.0 million Jews, excluding the losses of Polish citizens who were members of the Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic groups. When the communist system collapsed , this figure was disputed by

1260-658: A system of state ownership, the Soviet economy was managed through Gosplan (the State Planning Commission), Gosbank (the State Bank) and the Gossnab (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply). Beginning in 1928, the economy was directed by a series of five-year plans , with a brief attempt at seven-year planning. For every enterprise, planning ministries (also known as the "fund holders" or fondoderzhateli ) defined

1386-530: Is a Professor of Sociology in the Social Science Division of the University of New Hampshire at Manchester . Piotrowski's assessment in 1998 of Polish war losses is that "Jewish wartime losses in Poland are estimated to be in the 2.7-2.9 million range. (Many Polish Jews found refuge in the Soviet Union and other countries.) Ethnic Polish losses are currently estimated in the range of 2 million. (The number

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1512-409: Is estimated at 2,830,000; including 1,860,000 Polish Jews: 490,000 killed at Belzec ; 60,000 at Sobibor ; 800,000 at Treblinka ; 150,000 at Chełmno ; 300,000 at Auschwitz ; and 60,000 at Majdanek . An additional 660,000 Jews from other countries, were transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Over a million Jews deported from Western countries to camps and ghettos set up in occupied Poland perished in

1638-576: Is probably higher if we add all those who died at the hands of the Ukrainian Nationalists.)" Comparative Poland's War Dead estimated by Tadeusz Piotrowski in 2005 presented on the Project in Posterum website, Causes of Poland's War Dead estimated by Tadeusz Piotrowski in 2005 on Project in Posterum website, An analysis of Poland's war losses by Kazimierz Bajer was published in the journal of

1764-691: The łapanka policy which the German occupiers utilized to indiscriminately round up civilians off the street to be sent as forced laborers to Germany. In Warsaw, between 1942 and 1944, there were approximately 400 daily victims of łapankas . Poles in rural areas and small towns were also conscripted for forced labor by the German occupiers. According to research by the Institute of National Remembrance between 1939 and 1945, 1,897,000 Polish citizens were taken to Germany as forced laborers under inhuman conditions, which resulted in many deaths. However, Czesław Łuczak put

1890-507: The Cold War , until 1990 when Japan's economy exceeded $ 3 trillion in nominal value. The Soviet Union's relatively medium consumer sector accounted for just 60% of the country's GDP in 1990 while the industrial and agricultural sectors contributed 22% and 20% respectively in 1991. Agriculture was the predominant occupation in the Soviet Union before the massive industrialization under Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin . The service sector

2016-571: The Ford Model A in 1929, industrialization came with the extension of medical services, which improved labor productivity . Campaigns were carried out against typhus , cholera and malaria ; the number of physicians increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily decreased. In 1947 politburo announced a monetary reform (1947) that basically intended to confiscate "excessive" amount of money in order to weaken rampant illegal trade (which

2142-464: The State National Council (KRN), a Polish communist -dominated unelected Polish parliament accepted the plan for the Polish economy up to 1949. On 2 July 1947 the newly elected Sejm declared that: "The primary goal of the national economy in the years 1947-1949 is to raise the living conditions of working classes to above the pre-war levels." The plan as described by the above bodies

2268-454: The United States described the continuing growth as a "proven ability to carry backward countries speedily through the crisis of modernization and industrialization", and the impoverished base upon which the five-year plans sought to build meant that at the commencement of Operation Barbarossa in 1941 the country was still poor. Even so, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy in

2394-563: The Volga-Ural region . The Soviet government changed its previous course and allowed international relief to come in from abroad, and established a special committee chaired by prominent communists and non-communists alike. Despite this, an estimated five million people died in the famine. The Soviet-era republic's centralized economy forbade private ownership of property with an income. Privately owned farms in Armenia were collectivized and put under

2520-532: The craftmanship sector. Already in 1949 the stress was moved from consumer goods to producer goods , and light industry development was slowed. The next plan in the Polish communist economy was the Six-Year Plan (1950–1956), much more critically assessed by modern historians and economists, as by 1950 the CUP and Polish government were dominated by Stalinist hardliners, and PPS economists responsible for creation of

2646-516: The war crimes and the crimes against humanity which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union committed during their occupation of Poland . Approximately half of them were Polish Jews who were killed in The Holocaust . Statistics for Polish casualties during World War II are divergent and contradictory. This article provides a summary of the estimates of Poland's human losses in the war as well as

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2772-408: The "exchange rate" was set and published regularly. Buying or selling foreign currency on a black market was a serious crime until the late 1980s. Individuals who were paid from abroad (for example writers whose books were published abroad) normally had to spend their currency in a foreign-currency-only chain of state-owned Beryozka ("Birch-tree") stores. Once a free conversion of currency was allowed,

2898-453: The 1,230,000 human losses in Sept. 1939 were Poles. (Total 849,000: Killed 296,000; Prisoners of War 449,000; emigrated from Poland (Sept./Oct 1939) 104,000). The IPN put the 1939 war dead at 360,000. E. Population Not Capable of Resistance(100% ages 1–14; 50% ages 15–19; 30% women 20-39; 100% over 70 years and 632,000 disabled) Soviet economy The economy of the Soviet Union

3024-415: The 1920s infers a positive supply response to increases in the terms of trade. Farmers increased grain sales to urban areas when the price of grain increased. However, at the time, agricultural production was limited by technology, as the whole of Soviet Agriculture relied heavily on animal powered tilling. In the 1930s due to massive famines and animal die offs, the number of remaining animals doing farm work

3150-502: The 1930s such as the underdeveloped consumer base along with the priority focus on heavy industry were due to a number of avoidable problems. He argued that the industrial drive had been enacted under more severe circumstances, several years later and in a less rational manner than proposal originally conceived by the Left Opposition. Led by the creation of NAMI and by the GAZ copy of

3276-519: The 1931 Polish census based on the mother tongue put the percentage of ethnic Poles at 68.9%, Jews 8.6% and other minority groups 22.5%., Tadeusz Piotrowski maintains that the adjusted census figures(taking religious affiliation into account) put the percentage of ethnic Poles at 64.7%, Jews 9.8% and other minority groups 25.5% of Poland's population. Based on the analysis by Tadeusz Piotrowski roughly 1.0 million Ukrainians and Belarusians and 400,000 Polish speaking Jews were misclassified as Poles in

3402-513: The 1980s, trade with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) member states accounted for about half the country's volume of trade. The Soviet rouble was non-convertible after 1932 (when trade in gold-convertible chervonets , introduced by Lenin in the New Economic Policy years, was suspended) until the late 1980s. It was impossible (both for citizens and state-owned businesses) to freely buy or sell foreign currency even though

3528-526: The 19th century and Japan 's earlier in the 20th century. After the reconstruction of the economy in the wake of the destruction caused by the Russian Civil War was completed and after the initial plans of further industrialization were fulfilled, the explosive growth slowed down until the period of Brezhnev stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s. Trotsky maintained that the disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in

3654-577: The Bolsheviks that forced requisitioning of grain had resulted in low agricultural production and widespread opposition. As a result, the decision was made by Lenin and the Politburo to try an alternative approach. The so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) was approved at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) . Everything except "the commanding heights", as Lenin put it, of

3780-579: The Cross in 1987 in which he estimated Poland's war dead. The estimates of Franciszek Proch were cited by Tadeusz Piotrowski in his book Poland's Holocaust Source of figures: Franciszek Proch, Poland's Way of the Cross , New York 1987 Pages 143-144 Details provided by Franciszek Proch: Czesław Łuczak was a Polish historian, and Rector of the Adam Mickiewicz University from 1965 to 1972, from 1969 to 1981 and from 1987 to 1991; director

3906-679: The Holocaust . In 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) put the total of Jewish deaths at 2.7 to 2.9 million. Polish researchers estimate that 1,860,000 Polish Jews were murdered in the Nazi death camps, the remainder perished inside the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland , aboard Holocaust trains , and in mass shooting actions. The Nazi extermination camp overall death toll

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4032-576: The Holocaust. The Nazi death camps located in Poland are sometimes incorrectly described as Polish death camps . According to the figures published by the Polish government in exile in 1941 the ethnic Polish population was 24,388,000 at the beginning of the war in September 1939. The IPN puts the death toll of ethnic Poles under the German occupation at 2,770,000 and 150,000 due to Soviet repression The main causes of these losses are as follows. During

4158-481: The Polish academic journal Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik, titled Szanse i trudnosci bilansu demograficznego Polski w latach 1939–1945 ( Possibilities and Difficulties of the Demographic Balance in Poland 1939-1945 ), pages 9–14: Source: Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami. Thaddeus Piotrowski is a Polish-American sociologist . He

4284-460: The Polish government made a reassessment of war losses that put actual losses at 5.1 million ethnic Poles and Jews; this study was to remain secret until the communist government collapsed. In a 2009 study by the Polish government affiliated Institute of National Remembrance the total deaths of ethnic Poles and Jews were estimated at 5.6 to 5.8 million persons including 150,000 in Soviet captivity. The Polish government estimate of war dead in 1947

4410-533: The Polish historian Czesław Łuczak who estimated that the total number of losses was 6.0 million; 3.0 million Jews, 2.0 million ethnic Poles, and 1.0 million Polish citizens who were members of the other ethnic groups whose losses were not included in the 1947 report on war damages. In 2009 the Polish government-affiliated Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) published the study "Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami" (Poland 1939-1945. Human Losses and Victims of Repression Under

4536-459: The Soviet Armed forces and 200,000 were conscripted as forced laborers in the interior of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet forces returned to Poland in 1944-1945 there was a new wave of repression of Polish citizens from all ethnic groups including 188,000 deported, 50,000 conscripted as forced labor and 50,000 arrested. The Institute of National Remembrance puts the confirmed death toll due to

4662-676: The Soviet Union Both the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and later the Soviet Union were countries in the process of industrialization . For both, this development occurred slowly and from a low initial starting-point. Because of World War I (1914–1918), the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War (1917–1922), industrial production had only managed to barely recover its 1913 level by 1926. By this time, about 18% of

4788-566: The Soviet Union with Soviet war dead. Most Polish citizens who perished in the war were civilian victims of the war crimes and crimes against humanity during the occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union . The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) estimates total deaths under the German occupation at 5,470,000 to 5,670,000 Jews and Poles , 2,770,000 Poles , 2.7 to 2.9 million Polish Jews According to IPN research there were also 150,000 victims of Soviet repression. Approximately three million Polish Jews were victims of

4914-497: The Soviet agricultural industry suffered as a result. An example of this can be seen in the analysis published in 1929 by soviet economist Lev Gatovsky regarding government intervention on the grain market. Leon Trotsky and the Opposition bloc had advocated a programme of industrialization which also proposed agricultural cooperatives and the formation of collective farms on a voluntary basis. Several scholars have argued that

5040-429: The Soviet agricultural sector, such as the shortage of workers, lag in technology, or natural factors such as drought or frosts. Although the Soviet Union aimed to establish a mechanized agricultural giant, the shortcomings of Soviet agriculture put the sector behind other countries from the beginning. Soviet agriculture had the inability to meet basic consumer demands and expectations, requiring policy change culminating in

5166-487: The Soviet economy grew slower than Japan and faster than the United States . GDP levels in 1950 (in billion 1990 dollars) were 510 (100%) in the Soviet Union, 161 (100%) in Japan and 1,456 (100%) in the United States. By 1965, the corresponding values were 1,011 (198%), 587 (365%) and 2,607 (179%). The Soviet Union maintained itself as the world's second largest economy in both nominal and purchasing power parity values throughout

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5292-480: The Soviet occupation at 150,000 persons including 22,000 murdered Polish military officers and government officials in the Katyn massacre . They pointed out that Czesław Łuczak estimated the total population loss at 500,000 ethnic Poles in the Soviet occupied regions. Andrzej Paczkowski puts the number of Polish deaths due to Soviet repression at 90,000–100,000 of the 1.0 million persons deported and 30,000 executed by

5418-547: The Soviet occupiers from 1939 to 1941; including about 200,000 Polish military personnel held as prisoners of war; 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested and imprisoned by the Soviets, including civic officials, military personnel and other "enemies of the people" like the clergy and Polish educators; 475,000 Poles who were considered "enemies of the people" were deported to remote regions of the USSR; 76,000 Polish citizens were conscripted into

5544-422: The Soviet organizational structure. When the planning goals had been established by Gosplan, economic ministries drafted plans within their jurisdictions and disseminated planning data to the subordinate enterprises. The planning data were sent downward through the planning hierarchy for progressively more detailed elaboration. The ministry received its control targets, which were then disaggregated by branches within

5670-410: The Soviet worker was increasing, but still well below average for a developed country. Problems such as a scarcity of educated workers, saturation of unskilled workers and jobs made obsolete by technology, and poorly trained and educated farmers brought costs up and drove production down. These issues prevented the Soviet Union from producing enough food, as a lack of administration and management led to

5796-563: The Soviets. According to Zbigniew S. Siemaszko the total of those deported was 1,646,000 of whom 1,450,000 were residents and refugees (excluding POWs). According to Franciszek Proch the total of those deported was 1,800,000 of whom 1,050,000 perished. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed in an ethnic cleansing operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) beginning in March 1943 and lasting until

5922-538: The Third Reich. By 1950 670,000 ethnic Germans from prewar Poland had fled or were expelled and about 40,000 remained in Poland; about 200,000 Polish citizens who were on Volksliste groups 1 and 2 during the war were rehabilitated as Polish citizens. In 1947 the communist dominated government in Poland estimated war losses at 6.0 million ethnic Poles and Jews, they did not include the losses of Polish citizens from other minorities - Ukrainians and Belarusians . In 1951

6048-645: The Three-Year Plan were no longer influencing government policy. The Six-Year Plan, designed to bring the economy of Poland in line with the Soviet economy , concentrated on heavy industrialization , with projects such as Nowa Huta . Rebuilding of the Polish economy was also slowed in 1947, as Soviet influence caused the Polish government to reject the American-sponsored Marshall Plan , designed to aid European economies in post-war rebuilding. With

6174-470: The Two Occupations) that estimated Poland's war dead at between 5.6 and 5.8 million Poles and Jews, including 150,000 during the Soviet occupation. Poland's losses by geographic area include about 3.5 million within the borders of present-day Poland, and about two million in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union . Contemporary Russian sources include Poland's losses in the Polish areas annexed by

6300-711: The University's Institute of History. He was a member of the Polish United Workers' Party in communist Poland. Łuczak authored Polska i Polacy w drugiej wojnie światowej ( Poland and Poles in the Second World War ). In a section on the demographic losses he presented estimated losses with some brief observations. The figures are Łuczak's estimates. Sourced from: Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami . Czesław Łuczak also authored an article in

6426-528: The Volksliste in order to avoid Nazi reprisals. About 1 million persons were on Volksliste groups 1 and 2 that included Polish citizens of German descent; Volksliste groups 3 and 4 included 1.7 Polish citizens that were subject to future Germanisation. In addition 61,000 . ethnic Germans were living in the General Government . During the war 522,149 ethnic Germans from other nations were settled in Poland by

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6552-531: The apex of the vast economic administration, including the state planning apparatus, the industrial ministries, the trusts (the intermediate level between the ministries and the enterprises) and finally the state enterprises. The Council of Ministers elaborated on Politburo plan targets and sent them to Gosplan, which gathered data on plan fulfillment. Combining the broad goals laid out by the Council of Ministers with data supplied by lower administrative levels regarding

6678-424: The approval of the most authoritative body of the country's leading political institution. The Central Committee of the CPSU and more specifically its Politburo set basic guidelines for planning. The Politburo determined the general direction of the economy via control figures (preliminary plan targets), major investment projects (capacity creation) and general economic policies. These guidelines were submitted as

6804-470: The basis of the republic's economy. The legislation authorizes small private ventures of individual peasants and craftsmen based on their own labor and forbids the exploitation of the labor of others, in addition to the socialist system of economy, which is the major type of economy in the Republic. The official economic plan sets and directs the Republic's economic course. By 1935, the gross product of agriculture

6930-409: The control of the state starting in the late 1920s, however this was frequently met with vigorous opposition by the peasantry. During the same period (1929–1936), Armenia's industrialization process was also launched by the government. The socialist economic system and socialist ownership of the means of production, which come in two forms: state property and cooperative and collective-farm property, form

7056-482: The country, droughts in the south and acidic soils in the north. However, according to Dyker, the Soviet economy did have "extremely good" potential in the area of raw materials and mineral extraction, for example in the oil fields in Transcaucasia , and this, along with a small but growing manufacturing base, helped the Soviet Union avoid any kind of balance of payments problems. By early 1921, it became apparent to

7182-454: The course of the economy of the Soviet Union was guided by a series of five-year plans . By the 1950s, the Soviet Union had rapidly evolved from a mainly agrarian society into a major industrial power. Its transformative capacity meant communism consistently appealed to the intellectuals of developing countries in Asia. In fact, Soviet economic authors like Lev Gatovsky (who participated in

7308-518: The crop which was best suited for growing in their region, and surplus could be transported throughout the USSR to satisfy quotas and distribute to people who needed the food. Khrushchev himself tended to suggest his favorite crops such as corn for planters. Paired with a need to proselytize mechanized agriculture to nearby countries, the Khrushchev administration began a campaign for an optimistic future of mechanized Soviet agriculture. However, Khrushchev

7434-444: The current state of the economy, Gosplan worked out through trial and error a set of preliminary plan targets. Among more than twenty state committees, Gosplan headed the government's planning apparatus and was by far the most important agency in the economic administration. The task of planners was to balance resources and requirements to ensure that the necessary inputs were provided for the planned output. The planning apparatus alone

7560-461: The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, consumer goods (group B goods) received somewhat more emphasis due to the efforts of Georgy Malenkov . However, when Nikita Khrushchev consolidated his power by sacking Malenkov, one of the accusations against him was that he permitted "theoretically incorrect and politically harmful opposition to the rate of development of heavy industry in favor of the rate of development of light and food industry". Since 1955,

7686-540: The desired goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Although the five-year plan was enacted into law, it contained a series of guidelines rather than a set of direct orders. Periods covered by the five-year plans coincided with those covered by the gatherings of the CPSU Party Congress . At each CPSU Congress, the party leadership presented the targets for the next five-year plan, therefore each plan had

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7812-406: The dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Largely self-sufficient, the Soviet Union traded little in comparison to its economic strength. However, trade with non-communist countries increased in the 1970s as the government sought to compensate gaps in domestic production with imports. In general, fuels , metals and timber were exported, while consumer goods and sometimes grain were imported. In

7938-426: The drafting of economic plans (as detailed below), but the political climate was such that few people ever provided negative input or criticism of the plan and thus Soviet planners had very little reliable feedback that they could use to determine the success of their plans. This meant that economic planning was often done based on faulty or outdated information, particularly in sectors with large numbers of consumers. As

8064-443: The economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forced policy of collectivisation implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement. Stalin's first Five year Plan (1929–1933) was a colossal failure. Soviet population declined after 1933, and would see modest growth until 1936. The figures suggest a gap of about 15 million people between anticipated population and those that survived

8190-515: The economy would be privatized . The commanding heights included foreign trade , heavy industry , communication and transport among others. In practice this limited the private sector to artisan and agricultural production/trade. The NEP encountered strong resistance within the Bolshevik party. Lenin had to persuade communist skeptics that " state capitalism " was a necessary step in achieving communism , while he himself harbored suspicions that

8316-518: The economy. After Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and came to power in 1985, he began a process of economic liberalization by dismantling the command economy and moving towards a mixed economy modeled after Lenin's New Economic Policy . At its dissolution at the end of 1991 , the Soviet Union began a Russian Federation with

8442-453: The economy. Implementation began at this point and was largely the responsibility of enterprise managers. The national state budget was prepared by the Ministry of Finance of the Soviet Union by negotiating with its all-Union local organizations. If the state budget was accepted by the Soviet Union, it was then adopted. According to a number of scholars both inside and outside of USSR, it

8568-629: The elaboration of the first and second five-year plans) frequently used their economic analysis of this period to praise the effectiveness of the October Revolution. The impressive growth rates during the first three five-year plans (1928–1940) are particularly notable given that this period is nearly congruent with the Great Depression . During this period, the Soviet Union saw rapid industrial growth while other regions were suffering from crisis. The White House National Security Council of

8694-493: The end of 1944 in the Nazi occupied Volhynia and Eastern Galicia . The Institute of National Remembrance maintains that 7,500 ethnic Ukrainians were also killed during this interethnic conflict The figure of 5.6 to 5.8 million war dead estimated by the IPN was for only the Jewish and ethnic Polish population. They did not provide figures for the death toll of Polish citizens from

8820-715: The end of a short period of the New Economic Policy and with collectivization completed, all industrial property and virtually all land were collective. Land in rural areas was allotted for housing and some sustenance farming, and persons had certain rights to it, but it was not their property in full. In particular, in kolkhozes and sovkhozes there was a practice to rotate individual farming lots with collective lots. This resulted in situations where people would ameliorate , till and cultivate their lots carefully, adapting them to small-scale farming and in 5–7 years those lots would be swapped for kolkhoz ones, typically with exhausted soil due to intensive, large-scale agriculture. There

8946-421: The ethnic minorities were deported into the interior of the Soviet Union and were conscripted into the Soviet armed forces. During the German occupation Polish citizens from ethnic minorities were deported to Germany for forced labor. In prewar Poland about 800,000 persons were identified as ethnic Germans. According to the IPN 5,437 ethnic Germans were killed in the 1939 military campaign. The IPN also puts

9072-432: The exception of a brief experiment with regional planning during the Khrushchev era in the 1950s, Soviet planning was done on a sectoral basis rather than on a regional basis. The departments of the state planning agency aided the agency's development of a full set of plan targets along with input requirements, a process involving bargaining between the ministries and their superiors. Economic ministries performed key roles in

9198-698: The exchange rate plummeted from its official values by almost a factor of 10. Overall, the banking system was highly centralized and fully controlled by a single state-owned Gosbank , responsive to the fulfillment of the government's economic plans. Soviet banks furnished short-term credit to state-owned enterprises. There were two basic forms of property in the Soviet Union: individual property and collective property. These differed greatly in their content and legal status. According to communist theory, capital ( means of production ) should not be individually owned, with certain negligible exceptions. In particular, after

9324-477: The five-year plan. Systemic inefficiencies plagued Soviet agriculture, such as obsolete technology, waste of fuel resources, and depreciating capital stock. These inefficiencies clogged the Soviet agricultural machine and reduced output. Additionally, climate greatly affected Soviet agricultural output. Many regions throughout the USSR had little rainfall, short growing seasons, low temperatures, and general extremes unsuitable for optimal agricultural production. This

9450-429: The five-year plans began building a heavy industrial base at once in an underdeveloped economy without waiting years for capital to accumulate through the expansion of light industry, and without reliance on external financing. The New Economic Policy was rapidly abandoned and replaced by Stalinism . The country now became industrialized at a hitherto unprecedented pace, surpassing Germany 's pace of industrialization in

9576-518: The inability to acquire capital from abroad. This in turn, resulted from the repudiation of the debts of the Russian Empire by the Bolsheviks in 1918 as well as from the worldwide financial troubles. Consequently, any kind of economic growth had to be financed by domestic savings. The economic problems in agriculture were further exacerbated by natural conditions, such as long cold winters across

9702-830: The language criterion led to an overestimation of Poles. In April 1947 the Polish government Bureau of War Damages (BOW) published an analysis of Poland's war losses. This study was prepared for a conference on war reparations from Germany. Their figure of 6,028,000 Polish war dead has been cited in historical literature since then. Notes provided in the report: A. Population of 27,007,000 includes only ethnic Poles & Jews; Polish citizens of national minorities ( Ukrainians , Belarusians ) and Germans are not included. B. Figure of 644,000 deaths caused by direct war operations includes 123,000 military casualties. C. Total deaths of 6,028,000 includes about 3,000,000 Jews. Criticism of 1947 Report of Polish Bureau of War Damages The Polish government Ministry of Finance in 1951 prepared

9828-480: The latter described everything else in a person's possession. There were several forms of collective ownership, the most significant being state property, kolkhoz property and cooperative property. The most common forms of cooperative property were housing cooperatives (жилищные кооперативы) in urban areas, consumer cooperatives (потребительская кооперация, потребкооперация) and rural consumer societies (сельские потребительские общества, сельпо). See also History of

9954-422: The market, consumers routinely had to stand in long lines (queues) to buy them. A black market developed for goods such as cigarettes that were particularly sought after, but it constantly underproduced. People were developing unique social "networks of favors" between people having access to sought after goods (for example, working in particular shops or factories). Under Joseph Stalin 's close supervision,

10080-426: The ministry, then by lower units, eventually until each enterprise received its own control figures (production targets). Enterprises were called upon to develop in the final period of state planning in the late 1980s and early 1990s (even though such participation was mostly limited to a rubber-stamping of prepared statements during huge pre-staged meetings). The enterprises' draft plans were then sent back up through

10206-465: The mismanagement of farms and reduced worker productivity. From 1972 to 1986, the Soviet Union failed to produce more wheat than the Western European average. This failure to produce resulted in forced Soviet imports of food. Between 1961 and 1985, Soviet food imports from foreign producers cost a total of nearly 152 billion dollars. The root of this expense can be identified in the inefficiencies of

10332-430: The mix of economic inputs (e.g. labor and raw materials), a schedule for completion, all wholesale prices and almost all retail prices . The planning process was based around material balances —balancing economic inputs with planned output targets for the planning period. From 1930 until the late 1950s, the range of mathematics used to assist economic decision-making was, for ideological reasons, extremely restricted. On

10458-405: The number of Poles deported to Germany at 2,826,500 Although Germany also used forced laborers from all over Europe, Slavs (and especially Poles and Russians) who were viewed as racially inferior, were subjected to intensified discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple tags with "P"s sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew, and banned from public transportation. While

10584-553: The number of Polish citizens conscripted into the German armed forces at 250,000 of whom 60,000 were killed in action. Tens of thousands of ethnic Germans were killed during the Nazi evacuation from Poland in 1944 and 1945, and as a result of repression NKVD and Red Army or died in post war internment camps. During the war the Nazi occupiers instituted the Volksliste in the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany to register ethnic Germans in Poland. Many Polish citizens were pressured to sign

10710-581: The occupation many Non-Jewish ethnic Poles were killed in mass executions, including an estimated 37,000 Poles at the Pawiak prison complex run by the Gestapo . Polish researchers of the Institute of National Remembrance have estimate about roughly 800,000 ethnic Polish victims during the German occupation including 400,000 in prisons, 148,000 killed in executions and 240,000 deaths among those deported to concentration camps, including 70-75,000 at Auschwitz . During

10836-569: The occupation, communities were held collectively responsible for Polish attacks against German troops and mass executions were conducted in reprisal. Many mass executions took place outside prisons and camps such as the Mass murders in Piaśnica . Psychiatric patients were executed in Action T4 . Farmers were murdered during pacifications of villages . Non-Jewish ethnic Poles in large cities were targeted by

10962-438: The official figures for the 1939 population. Polish demographer Piotr Eberhardt maintains that it is commonly agreed that the criterion of declared language to classify ethnic groups led to an overestimation of the number of Poles in pre-war Poland. He notes that in general, the numbers declaring a particular language do not mesh with the numbers declaring the corresponding nationality. Members of ethnic minority groups believe that

11088-631: The other ethnic minorities. According to the figures published by the Polish government in exile in 1941 there were about 7.0 million Polish citizens from ethnic minorities at the beginning of the war in September 1939, mostly Ukrainians , Belarusians , Polishchuks and Lithuanians living in the eastern regions of Poland annexed by the USSR. The IPN did not estimate the death toll of Polish citizens from these ethnic minorities. The IPN maintains that accurate figures for these losses are not available because of border changes and population transfers, according to their figures 308,000 Polish citizens from

11214-516: The others remained in post war Germany. In the aftermath of the September 1939 German and Soviet invasion of Poland , the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR). The Soviet occupied territories of Poland, with total population of 13.0 million, was subjected to a reign of terror. According to research published in 2009 by the Institute of National Remembrance about 1.0 million Polish citizens from all ethnic groups were arrested, conscripted or deported by

11340-399: The parameters of the economic plan. Heavy industry was always the focus of the Soviet economy even in its later years. The fact that it received special attention from the planners, combined with the fact that industrial production was relatively easy to plan even without minute feedback, led to significant growth in that sector. The Soviet Union became one of the leading industrial nations of

11466-485: The plan to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Central Committee submitted the plan to the party congress, both for rubber stamp approval. By this time, the process had been completed and the plan became law. The review, revision and approval of the five-year plan were followed by another downward flow of information, this time with the amended and final plans containing the specific targets for each sector of

11592-454: The planning ministries for review. This process entailed intensive bargaining, with all parties seeking the target levels and input figures that best suited their interests. After this bargaining process, Gosplan received the revised estimates and re-aggregated them as it saw fit. The redrafted plan was then sent to the Council of Ministers and the party's Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat for approval. The Council of Ministers submitted

11718-443: The policy could be abused by private businessmen (" NEPmen "). As novelist Andrei Platonov , among others, noted, the improvements were immediate. Rationing cards and queues, which had become hallmarks of war communism , had disappeared. However, due to prolonged war, low harvests, and several natural disasters the Soviet economy was still in trouble, particularly its agricultural sector. In 1921, widespread famine broke out in

11844-430: The population lived in non-rural areas, although only about 7.5% were employed in the non-agricultural sector. The remainder remained stuck in low-productivity agriculture. David A. Dyker sees the Soviet Union of circa 1930 as in some ways a typical developing country, characterized by low capital-investment and with most of its population residing in the countryside. Part of the reason for low investment-rates lay in

11970-570: The population within the Government General depended on outside relief aid. Richard C. Lukas points out “To be sure, the Poles would have starved to death if they had to depend on the food rationed to them." To supplement the meager rations allocated by the Germans, Poles depended on the black market in order to survive. During the war 80% of the population’s needs were met by the black market. During

12096-451: The priorities were again given to capital goods, which was expressed in the decisions of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956. Economist Naum Jasny says that while many of the official statistics were correctly reported: Most information in the Soviet economy flowed from the top down. There were several mechanisms in place for producers and consumers to provide input and information that would help in

12222-543: The purpose of Germanization , or indoctrination into becoming culturally German. The aim of the project was to acquire and " Germanize " children with purportedly Aryan traits who were considered by Nazi officials to be descendants of German settlers in Poland. The Institute of National Remembrance cited a source published in the People's Republic of Poland in 1960 that put the number of children kidnapped in Poland at 200,000 of whom only 30,000 were eventually returned to Poland,

12348-464: The rebuilding of the old ones (unless they were over 50% destroyed). Due to the dedication of substantial resources to industrial rebuilding, and the successful adoption of the Stakhanovite movement (the communist propaganda of that time created a new "hero of the working class", Wincenty Pstrowski ), where workers were encouraged to work above their quota, the expected increase in industrial output

12474-401: The simultaneous rebuilding of the cities, substantial migration from rural areas to urban centers occurred, increasing urbanization . Warsaw and other ruined cities were cleared of rubble and rebuilt with great speed during those years. In 1939, 60% of Poles worked in agriculture and 13% in industry; in 1949, the figures were 47% and 21%, respectively. The three-year plan is widely considered

12600-518: The societal system to succeed. As a result, peasants unwilling to join kolkhozy were forced off of their land, which was then redistributed to other peasants. Following previous agricultural failures, Khrushchev abandoned Stalin's agricultural model. He instead looked comparatively at American agriculture through Soviet observers. He noticed that American agriculture flourished due to its specialization and interdependence on other farmers for goods and services. Similarly, Soviet farms could specialize in

12726-450: The traditional system (see perestroika ), the allocation of resources was directed by a planning apparatus rather than through the interplay of market forces. From the Stalin era through the late 1980s, the five-year plan integrated short-range planning into a longer time frame. It delineated the chief thrust of the country's economic development and specified the way the economy could meet

12852-446: The treatment of factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, most Polish laborers were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than Western Europeans. In many cities, they were forced to live in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden, and sexual relations (" racial defilement ") were considered a capital crime punishable by death. Prior to

12978-963: The veterans of the Armia Krajowa . Bajer calculated the estimated population losses of the 12 million ethnic Poles over the age of 15 who were capable of resistance during the German and Soviet occupation. Bajer's figures were used by Polish government affiliated Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) to estimate the war dead of the ethnic Polish population. Source of figures: Bajer, Kazimierz Zakres udziału Polaków w walce o niepodległość na obszarze państwa polskiego w latach 1939–1945, "Zeszyty Historyczne Stowarzyszenia Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej", (Kraków) 1996 Pages 10–13 A. Population of 35.339 million includes about 240,000 in Polish annexed Trans-Olza area around Český Těšín . B. Population not ethnic Polish includes 2,916,000 Jews. C. Ethnic Polish population includes 435,000 Polish speaking Jews. D. Population Losses 1939 Campaign- Bajer estimated that 69% of

13104-561: The war the area which became the General Government was not self sufficient in agricultural production and was a net importer of food from other regions of Poland. Despite this food deficit the German occupiers confiscated 27% of the agricultural output in the General Government, thus reducing the food available for the civilian population. This Nazi policy caused a humanitarian crisis in Poland’s urban areas. By 1940, between 20 and 25% of

13230-550: The war there was an increase in infectious diseases caused by the general malnutrition among the Polish population. In 1940 the tuberculosis rate among Poles, not including Jews, was 420 per 100,000 compared to 136 per 100,000 prior to the war. During the occupation the natural death rate in the General Government increased to 1.7% per annum compared to the prewar level of 1.4% Part of the Generalplan Ost involved taking children from Poland and moving them to Nazi Germany for

13356-411: The whole, the plans were overoptimistic and plagued by falsified reporting. The industry was long concentrated after 1928 on the production of capital goods through metallurgy , machine manufacture, and chemical industry. In Soviet terminology, goods were known as capital . This emphasis was based on the perceived necessity for very fast industrialization and modernization of the Soviet Union. After

13482-445: The world from the end of World War II until the mid-1980s. A major strength of the Soviet economy was its enormous supply of oil and gas, which became much more valuable as exports after the world price of oil skyrocketed in the 1970s . As Daniel Yergin notes, the Soviet economy in its final decades was "heavily dependent on vast natural resources–oil and gas in particular". World oil prices collapsed in 1986, putting heavy pressure on

13608-483: The world. Industrial production was disproportionately high in the Soviet Union compared to Western economies. By the 60s calorie consumption per person in the Soviet Union was at levels similar to the United States. However, the production of consumer goods was disproportionately low. Economic planners made little effort to determine the wishes of household consumers, resulting in severe shortages of many consumer goods. Whenever these consumer goods would become available on

13734-425: Was 132% higher than that of 1928, and the gross product of industry was 650% more than that of 1928. However, the 1930s economic revolution came at a high price: it destroyed the conventional peasant family and village institution and caused many people who lived in the remote countryside to relocate to cities. As private enterprise was essentially brought under government control, it came to an end. Starting in 1928,

13860-409: Was 30% lower (compared to the 1934-38 period). The battle for trade, pushed for by Stalinist hardliners like Hilary Minc , suggested that both the cooperative and private sectors should be eliminated and the public sector should be dominant, assumptions contrary to the foundations of the three-year plan which stated that all three sectors are equal. The battle for trade also resulted in a decrease of

13986-406: Was a vast organizational arrangement consisting of councils, commissions, governmental officials, specialists and so on charged with executing and monitoring economic policy. The state planning agency was subdivided into its own industrial departments, such as coal, iron and machine building. It also had summary departments such as finance, dealing with issues that crossed functional boundaries. With

14112-574: Was an extremely small number of remaining individual farmsteads ( khutors ; хутор), located in isolated rural areas in the Baltic states , Ukraine , Siberia and cossack lands. To distinguish "capitalist" and "socialist" types of property ownership further, two different forms of individual property were recognized: private property (частная собственность, chastnaya sobstvennost ) and personal property (личная собственность, lichnaya sobstvennost ). The former encompassed capital (means of production) while

14238-542: Was based on state ownership of the means of production , collective farming , and industrial manufacturing . An administrative-command system managed a distinctive form of central planning . The Soviet economy was second only to the United States and was characterized by state control of investment , prices , a dependence on natural resources , lack of consumer goods , little foreign trade , public ownership of industrial assets, macroeconomic stability , low unemployment and high job security . Beginning in 1930,

14364-466: Was based on the results of the 1931 Polish census using the criterion of language spoken to breakout the various ethnic groups. The classification of the ethnic groups in Poland during the Second Polish Republic is a disputed topic, Tadeusz Piotrowski called the 1931 Polish census "unreliable", noting that it had underestimated the number of non-Poles The official figures for nationality from

14490-553: Was controlled by the troika and derided by Stalin at the time. Stalin's version of the five-year plan was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick , the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation . Until the late 1980s and early 1990s, when economic reforms backed by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced significant changes in

14616-453: Was designed to develop industry and service sectors, foreign trade and ensure the supply of basic consumer items. The plan specified the size of industrial and agricultural production to be achieved in the following years. In 1949 both the industrial and agricultural productions were to be above the pre-war levels. The industrial output was also to be higher than agricultural output. The plan did not involve creation of new industrial centers, only

14742-417: Was detrimental to agricultural output and prevented cost minimization. When harvests fell short of production quotas due to a sudden frost or long drought, Soviet output could not make up the difference. Consequently, when agriculture was not producing as promised, some peasants refused to work over fear of starvation. However, since Soviet farms were collectivized, no individual grievances could be tolerated for

14868-467: Was developed and monitored by the Central Planning Office ( Centralny Urząd Planowania ), a body of the government tasked with creation of economic policy , and in the early years dominated by a more liberal Polish Socialist Party (PPS) faction. Among the economists involved in its development was the then CUP director, Czesław Bobrowski . CUP centralized planning for the entire Polish economy

14994-624: Was explained by demographers who maintained that that the (BOW) included the "missing" category in the total population loss figure, based on the statistics of the end of 1945, while many people believed to have been dead either returned to the country, or remained abroad as emigres. It was not until 1950 that the war – or war related – population migrations were over, in demographic terms." Source: Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami. Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) Warszawa 2009 ISBN   978-83-7629-067-6 Page 15 (There

15120-517: Was no explanation given for the difference of 9,300 between this schedule and the total losses of 5,085,000 persons in the description of the Ministry of Finance Report, see above) In 1987 the Polish Academy of Science journal Studia Demograficzne published an article by Kazimierz Piesowicz that analyzed the demographic balance from Poland from 1939-1950. Note: The number in parentheses indicates

15246-410: Was not able to fulfill his promises, and this contributed to his rising unpopularity which culminated in his removal from power. Following Khrushchev's leadership, Soviet agriculture's legacy was defined by patchwork that attempted to fix the mistakes of the previous administrations. Crop harvests, tractors, fertilizer, and capital investment were all increasing since 1955.   By 1965, the output of

15372-404: Was of low importance in the Soviet Union, with the majority of the labor force employed in the industrial sector . The labor force totaled 152.3 million people. Though its GDP crossed $ 1 trillion in the 1970s and $ 2 trillion in the 1980s, the effects of central planning were progressively distorted due to the growth of the black market informal second economy in the Soviet Union . Based on

15498-445: Was previously broken into separate bodies working on planning for separate branches. The plan, significantly influenced by the PPS, was designed to create a balance between the private sector , the public sector and the cooperatives . Instead of ideology , commonly stressed by later communist plans, it concentrated on the realistic problems and ways to address them. On 21 September 1946

15624-418: Was reached ahead of schedule. However, the agricultural output did not increase as much as predicted, partially due to bad weather in 1947, partially due to inefficiencies involved in collectivization of farming and finally, partially due to side-effects of the battle for trade , which damaged traditional supply chains . In 1948 industrial production was 30% higher compared to 1939, but agricultural production

15750-509: Was reduced by half. This indicated the dire need of additional production outputs, which administrators predicted could be supplied by mechanical harvesters. The planning of Soviet leadership emphasized a mechanical agricultural industry, whereby technology and ideology met to create a booming agricultural industry. This way, the technological evolution of Soviet agricultural production could be linked to urban industry. Yet in reality, Soviet planners were more invested in industry than farmers, and

15876-461: Was specifically Soviet-type economic planning combined with political dogmatism which led to gradual degradation of Soviet economy and its collapse. In the USSR, agriculture was organized into a system of collective farms ( kolkhozes ) and state farms ( sovkhozes ). These farms were collectivized distributed amongst the peasantry and yearly production quotas were set by administrators. Before Stalin, Soviet agriculture held its own. Data from

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