Official and unofficial biases

In World War II, industry supplied the means of warfare: not only guns, shells, tanks, ships, and planes, but also radios and radar, signalling equipment, vehicles, fuels, food rations, uniforms, and foot-wear. These things in turn required machinery, instruments, chemicals, metals, fibres, and electric power. By the mid-twentieth century Mechanisation had enhanced almost beyond measure not only the productive forces of modern societies, but also the forces of destruction. Two hundred years of scientific and technical revolution had stamped their influence on every aspect of warfare. The economic focus of this revolution was industry. It is with industry that the process of compiling a measure of Soviet wartime GNP by sector of origin begins.

In this chapter new measures of the scale and dynamic of wartime industrial production are presented. These are compared with the findings of previous authorities (the official TsSU figures, and subsequent estimates of Raymond Powell), together with the reasons for disagreement. Industrial employment and productivity trends are estimated. Defence industry output, productivity, and employment grew while civilian industry output, productivity, and employment fell.

The present chapter refers to ‘industry’ in the Soviet parlance, which corresponds roughly with the production industries on a western classification, so the main branches of extractive and manufacturing industries (including the fuel and power sectors) are included; construction and transport are treated separately in chapter 5.