How sucessful were the five year plans?

It can be argued that the five year plans were extremely successful in transforming the Russian economy up to the years 1941 in terms of heavy industry, rearmament and labour productivity. However, this came at a human cost.

Firstly, regarding heavy industry, the give year plans aced in turning the Russian economy into an industrial one. Under the first five year plan, production of iron, coal and oil almost doubled. During the second five year plan, the production of steel trebled   and the amount of coal doubled. Although production increased which can be used to argue that the Russian economy was completely transformed, it did hold out limitation because there was a problem with quality. All of Gosplan’s plans included audacious targets thus the production mainly focused on quantity rather than quality. This meant that most of what was being produced was useless as they did not bother about the quality of goods meaning that that the economy was not completely transformed as it was producing useless…