Timber industry complex of the Soviet Union during the first five-year plans: problems of management, financing and forest management

Modernization processes between the late 1920s and the early 1940s cardinally changed the economic image of the Soviet Union. The forest industry became one of the significant sectors which underwent system transformation during this period. Studying its history is relevant in connection with the long-standing problems which arose during that critical era, and which still affect the current state of the industry. Referring to the experience of the forest industry development enables to reveal and investigate its positive and negative sides, which certainly can be used by the contemporaries as the basis for determining the industry’s development prospects and the ways of solving the problems. The article focuses on the Ural region, where forest industry has been given a major boost in development. The author studies the evolution of the management sphere, and the extreme situations arising during the operations of the enterprises, trusts, and head departments. The forest industry investment patterns are revealed with the priority given to facility construction and equipment acquisition over housing and social development. The article analyzes the changes in the approaches to forest exploitation: i.e., the transfer of forests to several large timber procurers, dissemination of clear-cutting method, fast development of available forest bases, suspension of solving the problem of forest resources complex processing, and the system mechanization of operations. It is noted that despite the financial backing the forest industry was not able to satisfactorily achieve the targeted goals and deliver high-quality forest products. The conclusion is drawn that by the late 1930s and the early 1040s the industry’s new and existing problems had not been solved.