ABSTRACT
The great task set by the five-year plan for the development of the productive forces of the Soviet Union, through rapid industrialization and steady strengthening of the socialist elements in national economy, is that of attaining and surpassing the economic level of the advanced capitalist countries in the approaching historical period, and of thus assuring the triumph of the socialist economic system. Accordingly, the scope and the rate of economic development in the Soviet Union must be measured not by a comparison with the miserable economic condition of Czarist Russia, but by the standards of economic and cultural progress which obtain in the most advanced countries of the modern world. The five-year economic plan has been drawn up at a time when the economic development of the Soviet Union has reached a decisive turning point. Reconstruction problems of immense scope and of enormous difficulty have to be faced.
