The flipping Russian Empire produced steel. It was the 4th largest producer in the world in 1914 behind the US, Germany and the UK. The idea that Russia was totally unindustrialized before the revolution needs to die.
One, I don't think anyone claimed that. Two, I have stats.
| 1913 | 1921 | 1928 | 1939 |
Coal [Mil Tons] | 29.2 | 9.0 | 35.4 | 165.9** |
Electricity [Bil. Kwhs] | 2.0 | 0.5 | 5.0 | 48.3** |
Oil [Mil Tons] | 10.3 | 3.8 | 11.7 | 31.1 |
Pig Iron [Mil Tons] | 4.2 | 0.1 | 3.3 | 14.5 |
Steel [Mil Tons] | 4.3 | 0.2 | 4.0 | 17.6 |
Railway Tonnage [Mil] | 134.4 | 39.4 | 83.4* | 415** |
* - 1925, ** - 1940.
So, you can see here that generally speaking, the NEP managed to restore the production levels seen before WW1. This makes sense, as most of the capacity was not destroyed, but rendered inoperative due to fuel, raw materiels or food for the workers. But once the old plant was re-activated, any increase in capacity requires lots of capital plant. Which had to be imported from overseas.
Let us also recall, the situation in 1913 was not 'good'. Russia was primarily an exporter of raw materials and an importer of 'tech'. Much of the industry in Russia was foreign-owned. She was, for all intents and purposes a semi-colonial economy. And one of the promises of the Bolsheviks was to change all that.
What, to me, was the fatal flaw here is that at the time of the Revolution, the Bolsheviks repudiated all of Imperial Russia's debt.
The fact you've suggested that shows a fatal flaw in your understanding of who the Bolsheviks
were.
They are not 'just another Russian government'. They are
internationalist revolutionaries. They felt that Russia was just the first piece of 'a new civilisation', based on socialism [and ultimately ending with 'True Communism']. That shortly,
other peoples will join them as the international capitalist system shook itself apart from the Great War [which if you think of the various post-War revolutionary upsurge, they were not
completely stupid in expecting].
To 'accept' all of the old Czarist debt made no sense. First, they expected those creditors to fall anyway. Second, to accept the debt the next bit is to accept all the foreign ownership of capital within 'Red Russia'. Thirdly, the 'West' made zero moves to forgive, reduce or rechedule
any of the debt - it was pretty much stonewalling all the way. Lastly, the Bolsheviks saw no reason to pay [in their minds] another's debts - as in,
they gained nothing.
That is why, to me, the NEP period, even prolonging it, seems fascinating.
Yet it did not solve the fundamental issue - that of capital accumulation.
NEP restored most of the pre-War damage, but it was incapable of really pushing development any faster than a crawl. NEP farming was in fact less efficient than Czarist [due to the loss of the big landlords], massively undercapitalised and unable to produce the surpluses needed for industrialisation. The tiny industrial sector was too weak to take the brunt, and the USSR had no colonies etc to exploit for funds. [In fact, the USSR's industrial capacity was almost too small to make enough consumer goods to incentivise peasants to increase production anyway].
The peasantry either needed to really up their game
or learn the benefits of collectivisation [and economies of scale]. However, the first one was politically unnaceptable ['restoration of capitalism in the countryside!'] and the second required state investments in farming plant etc [which they could not afford]. It was a true Catch-22; which Stalin brutally solved - collectivisation, but simply make the peasants go hungry in lieu of higher production.
Simply continuing NEP indefinitely would not generate the level of capital required for anything approaching a rapid industrialisation. What's more, the onset of the Great Depression would have
seriously hurt the USSR's export income due to the massive deflationary jerk in prices for raw materials [think it was about -35%].
That fundamentally goes back to the allocation problem I mentioned in my post on page 2. There were a number of proposals issued, but I only know the specifics of two....
Having all the price-sets actually represent something approximating 'market prices' and giving plants etc orders to go for profit over sheer output should help here. Soviet design bureaus were actually, rather decent with coming up with new designs, models and so on [as many a foreign trade show testified] - they just sucked at getting them adopted. A USSR where a director could get in serious trouble if their plant was losing money by churning out unsellable tat, they'd have a much stronger motivation to listen to the bureaus more.
