Graham 3

1930s in US vs. Soviet Union

Key big projects: great Dnieper dam, steel plant in Magnitogorsk, White Sea canal

why weren't these projects done well:

• the engineers weren't listened to
• Soviets aren't selling much to the rest of the world, so they don't have much money to buy things from the west
• inside the USSR there is a lack of materials and technology
• labor was plentiful
• more about political boasting than about what was really needed
  

• advantages: reduce flooding, keep water flow steady, no fuel costs to make electricity
• people lose their houses and land because of the area flooded, silt builds up behind the dam, environmental damage, loss of agriculture
  

• flooded a large fertile farming area mostly for political boasting (it wasn't the best way to provide electricity)
  
• this earliest Five Year Plan big project used more modern equipment from Europe and the US
  
• workers needs were neglected
• blown up during WWII to slow the German invasion
• rebuilt after the war
  

• built at a site with very rich iron ore, but the supply had not been carefully studied and turned out to be limited
  
• but no local coal and no water transportation
• how do you decide where to site a factory?
  
• plan for an ideal worker city but it was never built
• "a social revolution with substantial support from below while being enslaved from above" (p. 59)
• health problems from pollution

White Sea Canal (Belomorstroi)

• almost all the workers were prisoners (including the engineers)
• had to design it to be built without mechanized equipment and concrete in 20 months
• it was not deep or sturdy enough to be very useful

Role of engineers trained before the revolution:

• not trusted--they might be purposely designing things badly
  
• political priorities came first, not the advice of experts
• national view of leaders was more important than local specifics
• why such focus on bigger is better?