Was communism really necessary to industrialize Russia/USSR?

by Qbccd

I've heard this argument a good number of times, that communism was necessary to industrialize Russia, that it couldn't have realistically happened otherwise, that despite the horrors of the first few decades of it, it was necessary to develop the country, prepare it for WW2, etc.

Is this really true? What about... Britain? The US? Western Europe? Japan? How did they industrialize without communism... Seems like if anything, communism hindered the development of Russia. If they'd followed the British model, they could have produced and innovated much more.

jayrocksd

Your question is hard to answer, as it requires comparing actual Soviet Russia to an alternate history that never existed. A much safer argument is that Soviet industry could never have reached the level of industrialization that it did without a healthy dose of western capitalism.

The first attempts to industrialize in the decade after the revolution were not successful. They had tried to reverse engineer a Fordson tractor and began manufacturing it in the Krasny Pulitovets factory in Leningrad, but were only able to manufacture around 20 tractors per month. In 1927 the Soviets had approached Henry Ford with the opportunity to purchase a concession in a tractor factory in Stalingrad, but after visiting Russia, his team felt, among other factors, that a factory in a country that had a history of nationalizing industry was too risky.

In order to jumpstart their industry the Soviets created a trading corporation in the United States called Amtorg, headed by Saul Bron. By 1929 they had signed dozens of contracts with US firms including DuPont, General Electric, and Ford. The most important contract was with the Michigan architectural firm of Albert Kahn, Inc. As important as these contracts were for the Soviets, they were equally important to US firms as the Great Depression was just beginning.

Albert Kahn was born in Rhaunen Germany in 1869, the eldest son of a Rabbi. The family would emigrate to Luxembourg and eventually Detroit when Albert was eleven. He started as an office boy in a local architectural firm to help the family, but would eventually rise to become the leading industrial architect of the era. By the time he signed the contract with the Soviets, he had designed and built factories for Packard, Ford, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Hudson, Cadillac, DeSoto, and Chrysler. The most famous factories he had designed were the Packard Plant, the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant, and the Ford River Rouge Plant. Albert also had the help of three of his brothers; Julius, Louis, and Moritz. Julius was especially notable as he was a civil engineer that had developed a design for reinforced concrete that made the open-air, large factories that Kahn was noted for possible.

Kahn's first contract with the Soviets in May of 1929 was to design and build a tractor factory in a town called Stalingrad along the river Volga. Kahn's firm was unique not only because they could design a large factory in a month, but also because they employed engineers that would select machine tools, and create a process flow for the manufacturing floor as well as supply foremen to oversee construction. It also didn't hurt that despite being Jewish, Kahn had the trust of Henry Ford who offered Kahn to supply the steel formulas used in his plants which numbered in the dozens for a single tractor.

The Stalingrad plant was so successful that Kahn would be signed to a contract to oversee the construction of all factories in the first Five Year Plan, eventually building around 500 large factories as well as training nearly 4000 Soviet architects and engineers. By 1933 the Soviets could no longer raise the capital to continue the contract due to the Great Depression and the drop in world grain prices, but there were enough Soviet architects and engineers trained on how to develop the American style of industry to continue Soviet industrialization.

The tractor factories built by Kahn in Stalingrad, Kharkov, and Chelyabinsk would end up being the heart of Soviet tank production during WW2. It is hard to imagine that the Soviets could have built the heavy industry they did without contracting for the aid of Albert Kahn and Henry Ford in the early 1930s.

Albert Kahn died in December of 1942, but his firm would also go on to design hundreds of industrial plants in the US for the war including Willow Run for Henry Ford. While Albert Kahn Associates still exists, Albert himself is mostly known for designing a number of buildings in Michigan such as the Fisher Building in Detroit as well as a number of buildings at the University of Michigan.

Edit: forgot sources.

Melnikova-Raich, Sonia: The Soviet Problem with Two "Unknowns": How an American Architect and a Soviet Negotiator Jump-Started the Industrialization of Russia, Part I: Albert Kahn

Hodges, Michael H. Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit.