Plans for Stalin's war machine : Tukhachevskii and military-economic planning, 1925-1941

In the interwar period, Red Army commanders headed by Tukhachevskii developed a new doctrine of mobile warfare and 'deep operations'. The military requirements of armaments and industrial production in the event of war was a central parameter in Stalinist industrialization. Based on recently opened Russian archives, the book analyzes military dimensions of Soviet long-term economic and military reconstruction plans from the mid-1920s until 1941. It presents a new framework for estimating the Soviet war-economic preparations, drastically underestimated by contemporaries. Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Tables 9 Glossary of Russian Terms 11 Foreword 13 Acknowledgements 15 Introduction 17 An outline of the historiographical background 18 Archival sources 20 Analytical framework of military-economic preparedness 20 Key actors 22 Purpose and delimitation 24 1 Visions of Future War 26 Military and economic lessons of the First World War 27 Industrial mobilisation in Western Europe, the USA and Soviet Russia 31 Tukhachevskii and Future War 35 2 Organising for Modern Total War, 1921–8 45 Military reconstruction and long-term planning 45 Secret military-industrial cooperation with Germany in the 1920s 47 The 'war scare' and its defence implications, 1927 50 Defence policy in practice 52 Politburo decisions on defence policy in the spring of 1927 55 Integrating defence in the planning organisation 58 The defence industry plan for 1926/27–30/31 63 The formative stage of Gosplan's Defence Sector, 1927–8 66 Long-term plans for the Red Army's expansion, 1927–31 68 Conflict over defence industry targets in 1927? 70 A new explanation of Tukhachevskii's removal in 1928 71 The organisational framework for defence planning in 1928 76 Conclusions 78 3 Launching the First Five-Year Plan 80 The long-term economic plan takes shape 80 External threat assessments in 1928–30 87 The 'military dimension' of the first five-year plan 90 Military commissions and the making of the first five-year plan 93 The defence budget of the five-year plan 95 The Politburo review of Soviet defence policy, July 1929 98 The resolution on defence industry organisation 102 4 Radical Reconsiderations, 1930–1 106 Tukhachevskii's 'grand vision' of rearmament 108 Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov reviews Tukhachevskii's proposals 114 General Svechin's views on future war, 1930 116 Gosplan and the major European war 118 Stalin and Voroshilov denounce Tukhachevskii 124 Tukhachevskii clarifies his vision on military reconstruction 128 Tukhachevskii accused by OGPU 129 5 Changing Military Requirements, 1931–2 137 The 'war version' of a plan for 1931 139 Revising the Red Army mobilisation preparedness, 1931 142 The 'great defence programme' of 1931 145 The 'great tank programme' of 1932 146 New military mechanised formations 150 Production results in 1932 152 Official Soviet data and archival findings 156 Stalin rectifies his view of Tukhachevskii, May 1932 157 The results of the first five-year plan and industrial mobilisation 159 6 New Threat Assessments and War Plans, 1933–6 164 The military basis for the second five-year plan 164 Soviet progress in military doctrine and equipment 165 The threat from Japan in 1933 and proposed counter-measures 170 The Nazi-German menace and changing war perspectives 173 7 Plans for Red Army Expansion, 1933–7 178 Red Army mobilisation requirements 178 The industrial basis for modern warfare 180 The revised military mobilisation request of 1933 181 The planning procedure 184 Current defence orders, 1933–7 192 Defence production results of the second five-year plan 196 8 Economic Planning in Terror and War, 1937–41 200 The 'decapitation' of the Red Army 201 Long-term projects in military-industrial planning 204 What level of surprise caused the 1941 disaster? 212 Conclusion 216 Soviet economic war-preparedness in the interwar period 216 Appendix 1 Historiographical Notes on Tukhachevskiiin the early 1930s 222 Appendix 2 Military Involvement in Economic Planning and Mobilisation 226 Personalities 229 Notes 232 Sources and Literature 266 Index 278 Stalinist industrialisation concentrated on the heavy and machine-building sectors, with the frank aim of strengthening defence capacity. However, the precise nature of the defence industry and military-industrial aspirations remained unknown until recently. Using the opened archives in Russia, this is the first study of the involvement of Red Army officials in the central planning organ, Gosplan. It links the military's vision of future war, formulated by the leading military theoretician Mikhail Tukhachevskii (1893-1937) in the theory of 'deep operations', with the investment patterns of the 5-year plans. On a regular basis and parallel to peacetime plans, Gosplan's Defence Sector, with its many military experts, formulated alternative plans for the event of war. These plans and mobiliz-ation requirements as specified for branches and individual enterprises show a new dimension of the pre-war Soviet economy, and give a background to the wartime success of the Red Army despite its catastrophic setbacks in 1941 Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-9 Visions of Future War....Pages 10-28 Organising for Modern Total War, 1921–8....Pages 29-63 Launching the First Five-Year Plan....Pages 64-89 Radical Reconsiderations, 1930–1....Pages 90-120 Changing Military Requirements, 1931–2....Pages 121-147 New Threat Assessments and War Plans, 1933–6....Pages 148-161 Plans for Red Army Expansion, 1933–7....Pages 162-183 Economic Planning in Terror and War, 1937–41....Pages 184-199 Conclusion....Pages 200-205 Back Matter....Pages 206-267