The years of pre-war five-years-old are an era of enormous transformation in the economy of the Soviet country. In a short historical period, the country has transformed from an agrarian, backward, sprawling, low-margin, individual peasant economy into an industrial power based on a powerful socialist industry and collective-activated agriculture. The first phase of communism - a socialist society - was built.
In this new environment, characterized by the growth of the working class, the increase in the share of the urban population, the improvement of the material well-being of the people, the increase in the wages of workers and employees and the growth of incomes of peasants, the demand for food industry products was constantly increasing. It, in turn, put in order of the day the requirement on the transition to wide industrial production of foodstuffs.
In Directives of XV Congress of All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on drawing up of the first five-year plan (December 1927) it was specified: "The industry making subjects of consumption, should bring quantity and quality of the production up to such limit that significant increase in per capita norm of consumption of workers was provided. Special attention should be paid to the development of textile, leather and food industries, which, ensuring the growth of agricultural raw materials, especially contributes to the growth of industrialization of agriculture and the resorption of agricultural overpopulation".
- The way of industrialization of our country consisted of faster growth rates of heavy industry and development of means of consumption production on this basis. Therefore, the bulk of capital investment was directed to the heavy industry. Out of the total capital investments in the industry, 2.9 billion rubles were invested in the heavy industry during the first five-year period. Investments in the food industry amounted to only 234 million rubles. 1 (in prices as of 1 /VII 1955 on a new scale).
- Only based on achievements of the heavy industry, it became possible to start the solution of a problem of development of a material and technical base of the food-processing industry. New in the construction of the socialist industry was that there was an opportunity to develop at an accelerated pace and heavy and light industry.
- Some special decisions of the Party and the Government were given to the development of the food industry. In July 1930, the party and the government made several special decisions on the development of the food industry. The Soviet People's Commissar of the USSR decided to relocate the fish caught from the internal waters to the open seas and oceans based on the introduction of new techniques in fish production and processing and to increase the fish catch according to the plan of the first five-year plan by 3.7 times against 1929.
Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) and the Soviet People's Commissariat of Science of the USSR dated 20/XII, 1929 and the appeal of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) and the Soviet People's Commissariat of Science of the USSR dated 29/IX, 1931 gave a concrete program of creation of the meat and canning industry. In this appeal in quality of the major economic and political installation the task of creation of the large food-processing industry is put forward: "Just as the bread problem could not be solved on the basis of small technically out-of-date peasant economy, the same task of radical and resolute improvement of supply of working masses cannot be solved on the basis of the small, technically backward enterprises of the food-processing industry... Underestimation of the task of creating a new large food industry is the same manifestation of opportunism as was an underestimation of the role of large agricultural production based on state farms and collective farms in the solution of the bread problem".
Plan.
Emphasizing the importance of the rapid deployment of powerful meat and canning industry, the party and the government regarded it as a key to solving the problem of radical improvement of working supply, the way to increase labor productivity, proper organization of the labor force and overcoming its turnover. In these and other decisions of the party and the government in the large food, sectors have established the tasks of production volumes, approved the ways and rates of construction of the enterprises equipped with modern for that period technology. This period is fairly considered the beginning of the wide development of the large food industry in the USSR.
For years of the first five-year plan, the basic funds of the food industry have increased in 1,6 times in comparison with the level of 1928, and gross production of the food-processing industry in 1932 has made 226 % concerning this indicator in 1927/28. Such high rates of growth of manufacture at the extremely limited capital investments into the food-processing industry have been possible thanks to the use of an available industrial-technical base of the old or updated enterprises.
At the same time, years of the first five-year plan were for the food industry the period of the gathering of the sprayed branches in a uniform economic organism. All of them (not including the food enterprises of industrial cooperation and the local industry) consistently included in system b. People's Commissariat of the food industry was separated from which in 1934 the People's Commissariat of the food industry was separated.
The rapid growth of the purchasing power of the population caused all increasing requirements on foodstuffs of the industry, and the necessity of an increase in their manufacture demanded the strengthening of copy-tag investments for the forced building of the new enterprises. In these conditions the program of new building in the second five-year plan of development of national economy of the USSR provided special attention to concentrate on the termination of building of 17 meat-packing complexes begun in the first five-year plan, building of 23 new industrial complexes, a considerable quantity of sugar factories, increase in fleet in a fish industry, building of canning, oil-making factories, confectionery factories and other enterprises of the food-processing industry.