ABSTRACT
As far back as 1926, the year of the first “Control Figures”, Gosplan had been charged with the duty of drafting a Five Year Plan. The year 1926–7 had been designated as the first complete year of the so-called “reconstruction period”, when the work of restoring production on the basis of existing capital equipment had been completed, and the question of enlarging the capital equipment of industry by new construction appeared at the head of the agenda of economic policy. Five years was initially chosen to be this period for an initial “perspective plan”, on the ground that this was likely to be the construction-period of the more ambitious technical projects to be undertaken in the years ahead. The intention of the Five Year Plan had been to develop them to cover an area three times as large and to yield about 12 million tons of marketable grain, or some 17 per cent. of the total marketable grain surplus.
