Monday, May 03, 2004
Magnitogorsk experience
Magnitogorsk plant. This is the result of Stalins first 5 year plan. The original 5 year plan. The mother of all the other year plans, Hitlers 4 year plan, Icelandic 3 year plans and all the others.
Among the projects covered were ones such as Magnitogorsk, which was intended to be manned only partly by forced labor and was originally publicized as the greatest of steel works and a model city for prosperous proletarians. The steel works emerged, but the model city failed to follow. Economists pointed out that this “Largest Steel Mill in the World” would be located where fuel had to be delivered from afar, that the deposits might give out (as they did eventually), and so on. This ill-considered crash planning became a feature of the Gulag. Robert Conquest, The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag
The Soviet emphasis on steel is not surprising, given the governments agenda.