Military-industrial policy of the bolsheviks in 1917—1941: achievements and performances

Abstract

The author proposes a periodization of industrial policy outlines the stages and presents a brief
analysis of their main content. The work considers a complex of management decisions taken by the
party regarding the military industry in the context of socio-economic and military-political events of
that era. The evaluation of the Bolshevik experiment on building a socialist, command-bureaucratic
model of economic management is given, and the reasons for its formation are examined. The article
shows the contradictory nature of the results of forced industrialization in the years of the first fiveyear
plans, and the quality of the military-technical potential received is estimated. The transformation
of the views of the Bolshevik party into the role of the military industry is shown: from a relatively
neutral one, conditioned by the need for stabilization, in anticipation of a «world revolution», to a
classical, Soviet approach that presupposed the paramount attention to the needs of military production
within the framework of building «socialism in a single country».