ABSTRACT
When Stalin listed the priorities of the First Five Year Plan, improving the country's defense capabilities usually occupied either last place or second to last, just above "raising the cultural level" of society; that is, improving the standard of living. Stalin saw industrialization as a means of acquiring an economic base on which to advance technologically and thereby achieve political legitimacy for the socialist state. The cacophonous political tunes played by the press, at least initially, led to no consensus that the "war scare" embodied any imminent threat to the USSR's security. Throughout the 1920s-1930s there was agreement among Soviet military and civilian leaders that enhanced security for the Soviet state would be a natural and important by-product of economic and technological progress. Konstantin Mekhonoshin believed that the existence of separate defense industries was a waste of resources because armaments could be manufactured efficiently at civilian plants at much-reduced costs and thereby free up capital for the state's industrialization objectives.
