Office of the Historian

861.00 Conferences All Union Communist Party/25: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, February 22, 1941—1 p.m.
[Received 5:05 p.m.]

341. Pravda this morning publishes an announcement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and of the Soviet of People’s [Page 607] Commissars of the U. S. S. R. to the effect that on the basis of the decisions of the Eighteenth Party Congress the State Planning Commission has been entrusted with the task of compiling a general economic plan for the Soviet Union to extend over a period of 15 years. The basic purpose of this plan will be to enable the Soviet Union to surpass the leading capitalist countries in per capita production of iron, steel, fuel, electric energy, machines and other means of production as well as consumer’s goods.

While the editorials and other articles in Pravda and Izvestiya deal at length with the history of the State Planning Commission, today being the 20th anniversary of its foundation, and refer to the announcement described above they provide no details concerning the new program. An Izvestiya article remarks that the new task set for the State Planning Commission is designed to ensure the increased economic independence and defensive strength of the country which become of primary importance in the light of the existing international situation.28

Steinhardt
  1. In telegram No. 478, March 11, 1941, the Ambassador reported that Nikolay Alexeyevich Voznesensky had been replaced by Maxim Zakharovich Saburov as Chairman of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Voznesensky was appointed First Vice President, and Saburov a Vice President, of the Council of People’s Commissars. The Department of State was further informed in a memorandum enclosed in despatch No. 1239, March 29, 1941, that “the 1941 plan for the development of Soviet industry and transport may be in general characterized as a wartime program, and it is the most ambitious in the history of the Soviet state. The execution of the plan will require enormous expenditures which can be met only by a reduction of consumption on the part of the population and by increasing labor productivity at all costs.” (861.00 Conferences All Union Communist Party/30)↩