Basic Variant and Optimal Variant (of the First Five-Year Plan)

Drafting: Three Sets of Drafts, Then Two Variants

The two variants were not the starting point of planning but the product of its third stage. Gosplan prepared three successive drafts of the First Five-Year Plan in 1926–1927, and only the third was drawn up in two readings, minimum and maximum. The basic/optimal pair is therefore a distinct matter, to be kept apart from the earlier drafts.

The proposal came from Gosplan chairman Gleb Krzhizhanovsky. He saw the minimum variant as an early warning of problems in the national economy and the maximum as a calculation that took all favorable factors into account. On 3 November 1928 Gosplan was tasked with completing the basic variant by 15 December and then beginning work on the optimal variant. The basic variant was adopted 'as a basis' by the Gosplan presidium on 12 February 1929, and on 23 March both variants were endorsed together, with the caveat that parts of the optimal plan were not yet balanced.

From Two Variants to One Plan

The decision at government level went against Krzhizhanovsky. On 23 January 1929 the optimal variant was adopted under the title 'Five-Year Plan of the National Economy for 1928/29–1931/32.' On the eve of adoption Krzhizhanovsky still argued that the basic variant should be the main plan, and was overruled. The optimal variant was then endorsed by the Sixteenth Party Conference in late April 1929, after reports by Rykov, Krzhizhanovsky and Kuibyshev, and finally approved by the Fifth All-Union Congress of Soviets on 20–28 May 1929. At these meetings Rykov and Krzhizhanovsky warned of the plan's strain; only Kuibyshev argued that the high targets were feasible.

The plan period ran from 1 October 1928 to 1 October 1933. Until 1931 Soviet statistics used 'economic years' beginning in October, and after 1929/30 a special quarter (October–December 1930) was added. Some reference works state the plan as adopted for 1929–1933, which shows a documented variation in how the years are given.

The 'Revised Variant': A Third Version

Adoption did not end the upward revisions. From July–August 1929 the Central Committee passed decree after decree forcing growth in heavy industry, and in November 1929 an 'updated variant' (уточнённый вариант) set oil at 41.4 million tons against 21.7, coal at 120 million against 75, pig iron at 16 million against 10, steel at 19 million against 10.4, and tractors at 201,000 against 55,000. This third variant, far above even the optimal one, must be distinguished as well.

The Gap in Figures

A 1929 Gosplan table sets the two variants' targets side by side: oil 19.0 against 21.7 million tons; coal 68.0 against 75.0; pig iron 8.0 against 10.0; steel 8.3 against 10.4; rolled steel 6.3 against 8.0; locomotives 700 against 825; tractors 50,000 against 55,000; power-station capacity 4,800 against 5,500 thousand kW; electricity output 17,000 against 22,000 million kWh. The roughly 20 percent gap appears here as concrete figures.

Two different '20 percent' figures must not be merged. In the Gosplan debates the VSNKh directives envisaged 134.6 percent growth in gross output, which concerned the degree of over-target ambition, not the gap between variants. Official statistics, meanwhile, reported the plan complete 'in all its sections' in four and a quarter years, while the same document shows most indicators missed and approaching only the basic variant's targets rather than the optimal ones. Another reference work holds that unacknowledged price increases and statistical biases accounted for most of the officially reported income rise, that consumption collapsed, and that the plan must therefore be counted a failure against its targets. The distinction between variant targets and actual outcomes belongs here.