ABSTRACT
The development of Russian industry had been so slight that growth starting from such low levels naturally was very rapid. According to Premier Molotov, in the thirteen years from 1900 to 1913 the growth of the national income of Russia averaged 2.6 per cent per annum. But this growth was not concentrated along definite lines as in the Five-Year Plan, nor was the population rationed and made to dispense with many necessities of life. When the plan was finished, the commission turned its attention to the next undertaking and in 1923 it outlined the first draft of a five-year plan "for developing a metallurgical industry between 1923 and 1927". The capitalist countries really forced the development of the idea of the Five-Year Plan because they threw Soviet Russia back on its own resources. The Five-Year Plan is also an excuse to justify the privation resulting from the cumbersome methods of state capitalism.
