DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2020.2.31947

Abstract: In the late 1920s - 1930s, according to official figures, the Soviet Union significantly increased its volume of timber industry production. However, the statistics did not include the private harvesting and procurement of wood by the population, that is, for household consumption, which until about the mid-1930s and its almost complete cutback, reached impressive quantities. Historiography formed an incomplete picture of timber management in the Soviet Union during the modernization period, and part of the official indexes are still today used by researchers to prove a significant increase in the volume of timber production in the country during the late 1920s - 1930s. This has made currently very relevant the task of studying changes in the structure of forest management and of determining the country's place in the global timber industry using estimates of the total volume of forestry resources and the value of the gross output of the wood industry. The author reveals that in the first decades of the 20th century the most actively developed areas of forestry were logging and mechanical processing of wood, while the proportion of deep wood processing in the value structure of forest management has changed little and remained at a low level. The author identifies the principal systemic problems in the forest industry of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s - 1930s, which became the causes of imbalances in its structure. Additionally, the author conducted a comparative analysis of the indexes of the Soviet state and of other countries and regions - leaders in the global wood industry. The study's conclusions include the highlighting of the persistence of imbalances in the timber industry in the late 1920s - 1930s and the lagging of the Soviet Union from other countries - industry leaders in the most important areas of timber production.

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0609.2019.4.30138

Abstract: In the Soviet Union during the late 1920s - early 1940s, significant transformations of the lumber industry took place, which makes it a current research topic for historical analysis in line with economic history. How did the industry develop in this pivotal era? Did the investments and the technical and economic conditions of this complex correspond to its real production capabilities? With the aim of understanding these issues, the author undertakes for the first time in historiography an analysis of the technical and economic indicators of the wood industry at the final stage of implementing the first five-year plan and the transition to the second five-year plan (1932-1934), which was accompanied by an adjustment in the state economic policy. The analysis is based on sources from the series of statistical collections the “Socialist Construction”. In addition to identifying the general dynamics in the development of the lumber industry complex and its individual sectors, indicators are calculated for one enterprise and one worker based on technical and economic parameters. The author carries out a comparative analysis of the results obtained in the lumber industry and in the Soviet industry in general. Data on the technical and economic conditions of the lumber industry complex are compared with the results of its production activities. The analysis revealed a number of significant problems and imbalances in the development of the industry: the better equipment of the paper industry, the direction of the main investments in the sphere of woodworking, and the lagging in the sphere of harvesting forest resources. The author draws conclusions regarding the industry's decline in 1932-1933 and the disparity of its technical, economic and production potentials. It consisted in solving the problems of economic development by party-state and economic bodies, primarily by increasing the number of labor resources. Investment of financial resources in the construction of enterprises and the acquisition of equipment in 1932-1934 did not provide the planned increase in labor efficiency of workers.