The Five Year Plans

The First Five Year Plan:

The first five year plan was started in October 1928 amid the concerns of a stagnating communist economy. Stalin's plans were combined with the central planning agency Gosplan in order to generate a solution to these issues, particularly seen through the agencies use of Economic Targets. The targets in this five year plan were large, as Stalin wanted to overshadow western industrial output and show the speed with which an agricultural but communist society could outpace the speed of a capitalist western country that was industrialised. As such, many industrial units overstated their output rate in order to minimise the effect they would feel from failure to match the targets, culminating in the plan finishing a year early. During the plan, quality of living went down and not up, due to the deteriorating housing quality from the industrial focus of Gosplan whilst consumer prices stayed the same with lower wages. Futhermore, there was resistance from people. The Bourgeois Experts were industrialists who believed that Stalin's plans would not work. They were held in contempt as wreckers, an industrial form of the Kulak, and were tried at show…