Soviet industrialization - THE definitive thread

[K. A. Pital]

A recollection of all the good stuff I previous posted on the subject, that is now buried almost a year ago in the OffTopic archives of this forum, as well as a little new stuff.

Since the moderatorial issue of moving prior OT threads did not resolve itself, I thought it would be appropriate to put the collected references in one single thread.

Stephen Kotkin: Magnetic Mountain, Stalinism as a Civilization

Contrary to what the header of this Google book says in the page itself this is not "Steeltown, USSR", but a much more interesting study - a study of the birth of the great Soviet industrial city - the famous "Magnitka" - in Stalin's times, done with the use of much archival evidence and rigorous analysis (apparently Kotkin did a lot of work collecting all this data and facts in the perestroika times in Magnitogorsk).

Suffice to say it's simply brilliant as it only territorially takes a microcosm of the country-wide industrialization but depicts both larger Soviet phenomena through this single city history and the everyday life of individual citizens in that small city - both a micro- and macroview. It is an indictment of the bureaucracy of Stalin's rule and the creation of a "Party quasi-religion", and also a realistic depiction of everyday life, worker competitions, and the ever-looming competition between Soviet power structures. The depiction of how the general population was involved in the purges, how the rationalization of the purges ran through the entire bureaucracy, how being a communist put you under greater risk of being purged due to increased surveillance and the administrative tasks; the book carefully deduces the disastrous effects on Soviet bureaucracy and the Soviet people in general that Stalin's "cultism" had, and how the Soviet administrative appartus turned against the countrymen, factory administrators and even it's own "apparatchiki" people.

It's a story about industry, people and power.

I can't recommend a better study whether you're left, right or center. In my view this is the best work on Stalinism, Soviet industrialization and 1930s Soviet life, so far produced.

John Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel

Another book, with Kotkin writing the preface. Another very good account but this time it's a contemporary memorial (especially important as it was written in 1942 (first edition) to 1944-1945 (expanded), and the actual being of Scott in the USSR was from 1931 to 1939/

John Scott (1912-1976), was an American writer who worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The OSS was the predecessor organization to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Scott was alleged to be working for Soviet intelligence.

Scott was the son of conservationist and peace activist Scott Nearing. Scott migrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 and worked for many years in Magnitogorsk. Scott married Mariya Ivanovna Dikareva and the two came to the United States in 1942. [Stas Bush - Scott loved Masha quite a lot apparently - he dedicated his book to her]

Scott wrote Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel about his experiences in Magnitogorsk, presenting the Stalinist enterprise of building a huge steel producing plant and city as an awe-inspiring triumph of collectivism.

Scott also wrote about the painful human price of industrial accidents, overwork, and the inefficiency of the hyperindustrialization program, the wretched condition of peasants driven from the land in the collectivization program and forced into becoming industrial laborers, and the harshness of the ideological purges.

These experiences, however, did not disillusion him with Soviet communism. Scott indicated he shared a belief with the Soviet people that “it was worthwhile to shed blood, sweat, and tears’’ to lay “the foundations for a new society farther along the road of human progress than anything in the West; a society which would guarantee its people not only personal freedom but absolute economic security.”

Whittaker Chambers claims Scott tried to influence Time Magazine publisher Henry Luce to remove Chambers as foreign news editor because of Chambers' anti-communist and anti-Soviet views.

Reportedly, Scott was identified as an agent by the Venona project by NSA/FBI analysts, under the code name "Ivanov".

Venona

John Scott is allegedly referenced in the following Venona project decrypts:

* 726–729 KGB New York to Moscow, 22 May 1942
* 1681 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 October 1943
* 207 KGB Moscow to New York, 8 March 1945

Another set of very good works by Robert C. Allen of a leading north American economic department, of the University of British Columbia, Canada.

The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928-1940
A Multi-Sector Simulation Model of Soviet Economic Development
Capital Accumulation, the Soft Budget Constraint and Soviet Industrialization

The following works laid the groundwork for Allen's massive monography on the Soviet industrialization:

Robert C. Allen. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (2003)

Both deep, investigating the industrial disparities and the pace of individual events, and very broad, giving a comparison of economic and industrial devleopment in the USSR and other world countries, First, Second and Third World.

Some interesting graphs and tables from the book:
Urbanization

USSR comp.to other world
USSR comp.to Latn America
USSR comp.to East Asia
USSR comp.to Europe/offshoots

Soviet consumption in 1928-40

Agricultural marketings, 1913, 1928 and 1937
Peasant's Consumption of Agricultural Output

Heavy industry: targets and their fulfillment
Light industry: targets and their fulfillment

GDP growth by sector

Calorie consumption per citizen per day in Russia and USSR, 1900-2000

Yet another good work about Soviet industrialization.

By Angus Maddison, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Economics, University of Groningen.

USSR: Assessing the Performance of a Communist Economy, a lot of analysis of CIA economic models of the USSR, etc.

Check his page out, it has very good macroeconomic works based on solid stats, on such subjects as: Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run and such.

Soon to follow: a few Soviet War Industry posts and some more about Soviet industrial objects which I haven't mentioned before

[K. A. Pital]

Decided to start off with this monumental work:

(click on the link, the book is fully available in PDF).

And here's the Stanislav Bush review.

First of all, "The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag" is marked by an extremely powerful research team: Gregory, Lazarev, Khlevniuk. Second, it's noted for extremely sound use of statistical data about camp labout.

Third, this book demonstrates finally that the nature of Soviet labour camps were not driven by economic, but instead by ideological considerations. By the 1940s and yet later 1950s the Gulag has proven itself to be bankrupt and a colossal financial black hole on the Soviet economy; in essence laying to rest the claim that the Gulag was behind the USSR's industrial achievments - if anything, the brutality was a hindrance to faster growth.

Next, the book examines the nature of the Gulag and finds quite a few reasons why the labour camps were a penal-corrective institution quite unlike both the modern prisons (ideological punishment) but also unlike the German extermination camps (the goal of the GULAG itself was punitive and labour combined, and the GULAG chiefs tried to improve the survival rates of inmates in extremely harsh circumstances and lose as less lives as possible during the heavy works - however morbid this sounds - whereas an extermination camp was destined for killing as many people as possible).

This also means that the GULAG as a system is inseparable from Stalinism, since the evaluation of financial performance of GULAG by even the NKVD chiefs, including L.P. Beria, resulted in GULAG's bankrupcy and it's abolishment as a system. As soon as the pragmatics took over, they understood that Stalin's paranoia created a forced labour institution which was lossy, not profitable.

It also shows that the GULAG, despite it's involvement in several high-profile industrial projects, as a whole remained a minor part of the overall Soviet economy, which utilized far less harsh forms of labour coercion. An interesting note is the reform of the GULAG to include monetary compensation for inmate labour, this has profound implications on the understanding that the GULAG chiefs did not see it in the same light as Stalin saw, they had an economic machine while he saw it as a tool of repression.

This difference was demonstrated several times in historical records.

This book also evaluates the problem which the GULAG created for the Soviet society - hardcore criminals and more or less innocent people accuse of political opposition were thrown together and a lot of inter-victimization, violence arose. Amnesties for hardcore criminals were a byproduct of Stalin's system casually mixing and mating the forced labour of political and ordinary criminals.

Another important issue is the location of GULAG camps. A proposition that they were moved into remote areas initially to reduce the finanical strain imposed by guarding prisoners, but later due to short-sightedness this resulted in ballooning costs of transporting supplies and millions of people into the far North seems to hold value.

People who think that the GULAG labour was "free" or that it succeeded at all projects where free labour failed will be surprised by the amount of collosal failures of the GULAG projects, including even the arguably economically valid Trans-Polar magistral.

The definitive work on economics of forced labour under Stalin, in my view.

[Thanas]

Decided to start off with this monumental work:

(click on the link, the book is fully available in PDF).

And here's the Stanislav Bush review.

First of all, "The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag" is marked by an extremely powerful research team: Gregory, Lazarev, Khlevniuk. Second, it's noted for extremely sound use of statistical data about camp labout.

Third, this book demonstrates finally that the nature of Soviet labour camps were not driven by economic, but instead by ideological considerations. By the 1940s and yet later 1950s the Gulag has proven itself to be bankrupt and a colossal financial black hole on the Soviet economy; in essence laying to rest the claim that the Gulag was behind the USSR's industrial achievments - if anything, the brutality was a hindrance to faster growth.

Has anyone of a good reputation in the field ever made that claim? Because to be honest I never have heard of that theory before.

Could you also post the survival rate for the harshest and for the least harsh of the gulags? Justs so I have some ammunition against Nazis.

[K. A. Pital]

Has anyone of a good reputation in the field ever made that claim?

Many sovietologists made this admittedly ridiculous in hindsight claim, when they were cut off from the data in the USSR. Good reputation in Soviet history is hard-earned now, with the numerous archival works and a very large body of evidence, but there was a time in the Cold War when any whackaloon or CIA hackjob could claim supreme authority on anything relating to Soviet history.

Could you also post the survival rate for the harshest and for the least harsh of the gulags?

A very good point to start would be:
Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years:A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence

Not only were the large populations of Gulags, unlike the German camps, far from being the final destination for a prisoner - only some 1,5 to 3 million yearly were in penal institutions inside the USSR, but the body of people was in flow, meaning some prisoners were released and amnestied, and new ones took their place - but the death rates were substantially less than what one would think they were.

Large numbers of persons were constantly entering and leaving the system. During the 1934-1953 period, in any given year, 20-40 percent of the inmates were released, many times more than died in the same year. Even in the terrible year of 1937, 44.4 percent of the GULAG labor camp population on January 1 was freed during the course of the year.

In fact, the death rate for peace-time Gulag in the 1950s was reduced to the level of death rate comparable to normal penal institutions (prisons) in other nations at the time - 6 to 3 men per 1000 per year.

Also, the GULAG is singular - it's the entier system, the Control Commitee on Corrective Labour Camps, while individual camps and facilities within the GULAG also had wildly different policies, as well as careless/more careful attitude towards prisoners.

And "survival rate" is going to be between 83% (worst war year, 1942-1943) and 99,4% (best peace years, 1952-1953).

[Thanas]

And "survival rate" is going to be between 83% (worst war year, 1942-1943) and 99,4% (best peace years, 1952-1953).

Yeah, but in total, how many percent of the immates died? Because I very much would like to argue against the claim of "Gulags were as worse as Dachau" (17.5 % mortality rate of total inmates). Sadly I can't seem to find any hard numbers of the total gulag population and the total number of inmate deaths.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, but in total, how many percent of the immates died?

In total?

That's by year mortality in percent to total inmate numbers.

As for total number of those who died,

Turning to executions and custodial deaths in the entire Stalin period, we know that, between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 persons died in the camps of the GULAG. We have data to the effect that some 86,582 people perished in prisons between 1939 and 1951.

As a percentage of total population transferred through the Gulag throughout all of Stalin's time (~10 million), the deaths therefore would be around ~10% (50% of these deaths are the deaths of 1942-1943 as the worst war years). The political inmates constituted at various years 10 to 30% of inmates, the death rates between their category were not different from the general camp death rate.

All in all, during the War mortality in the Gulags was exceptionally high, but during peacetime it was substantially less, under 5%. Only the camp-hunger year of 1933 is evidenly out of this proportion.

[Thanas]

Thank you, Stas. That will definitely come in handy. Truly, threads like this are what the History forum is for.

[Elfdart]

Yeah, but in total, how many percent of the immates died?

In total?

That's by year mortality in percent to total inmate numbers.

As for total number of those who died,

Turning to executions and custodial deaths in the entire Stalin period, we know that, between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 persons died in the camps of the GULAG. We have data to the effect that some 86,582 people perished in prisons between 1939 and 1951.

As a percentage of total population transferred through the Gulag throughout all of Stalin's time (~10 million), the deaths therefore would be around ~10% (50% of these deaths are the deaths of 1942-1943 as the worst war years). The political inmates constituted at various years 10 to 30% of inmates, the death rates between their category were not different from the general camp death rate.

All in all, during the War mortality in the Gulags was exceptionally high, but during peacetime it was substantially less, under 5%. Only the camp-hunger year of 1933 is evidenly out of this proportion.

What were the penal death rates before 1933?

[K. A. Pital]

What were the penal death rates before 1933?

1930 - 4,2%
1931 - 2,9%
1932 - 4,8%

On the average for the entire period, 1930-1953, the death rate in the GULAG penal organizations was ~5%.

[Elfdart]

What were the penal death rates before 1933?

1930 - 4,2%
1931 - 2,9%
1932 - 4,8%

On the average for the entire period, 1930-1953, the death rate in the GULAG penal organizations was ~5%.

So how many ended up dead?

[K. A. Pital]

1,606,748 total dead in all GULAG units from 1930 to 1956, including wartime and peacetime. Partly this is natural mortality; but natural mortality would be a smaller part of this figure, since the natural mortality was many times lower in the USSR in peacetime (a natural mortality for the GULAG's age groups in the USSR proper would suggest mortality around 1%, while the GULAG had a 3-4% higher average mortality).

In 1930-1940, i.e. pre-war industrialization period to the moment when the German attack caused supply disruptions in the USSR, a total of 403 308 people died.

In the early peacetime years of the GULAG (1930 to 1932, pre-hunger and pre-1935, when the repressions started in earnest) a total of 28 460 people died - however the number of imprisoned was not outstandingly large, so this still represents a fairly large percent.

891 626 people died in wartime years of 1941-1944, which saw heavy supply difficulties.

353083 people died in the years 1945-1956, with most of these (327 091) dying in 1945-1952. Since 1953, the death rate in prisons was not remarkably different from a natural death rate.

Source: "Note of death rates in the GULAG, 1930-1956". Prepared on the records of the OURZ GULAG, GARF. F. 9414.

[Thanas]

EDIT: No need for this post, Stas got there first.

[K. A. Pital]

Happy New Year reading hehehe!

Guns and Rubles: the Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, Harrison M.
Yale University Press.



Author: Professor Mark Harrison

A well-known researcher of Russian and Soviet economic development, and the First Wave of the Soviet Industrialization brings this most awesome monography with big names like Davies, Markevich, etc. participating. It's very recent - 2008!

Don't be offset by the really uninspring cover - this is not some sort of entertainment book, but another serious historical work. It's interesting primarily for offering a good glimpse into the Soviet industrialization, evacuation and Soviet re-orientation to war industry during the Great Patriotic War, the military aspect of major events which are of interest to serious history lovers I believe. A pretty good general overview of the evacuation and military industrial development is offered; a good place to start your research into Soviet wartime industrialism would be this book.

This is a review which lays out a summary.

Of course, I wouldn't put out something that is not easily and freely available to read: and this book has many of it's chapters available here:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econo ... son/public

# The Dictator and Defense. In Guns and Rubles: the Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, pp. 1-30. Edited by Mark Harrison. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
# Hierarchies and Markets: the Defense Industry Under Stalin (with Andrei Markevich). In Guns and Rubles: the Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, pp. 50-77. Edited by Mark Harrison. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
# The Soviet Market for Weapons (with Andrei Markevich). In Guns and Rubles: the Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, p. 156-179. Edited by Mark Harrison. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
# The Market for Inventions Under Stalin: Experimental Aircraft Engines. In Guns and Rubles: the Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, pp. 180-209. Edited by Mark Harrison. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
# Secrecy. In Guns and Rubles: the Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, pp. 230-254. Edited by Mark Harrison. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

The articles are so solidly awesome that I really wait until the whole book becomes old enough to be put on the web publically.

I also advise everyone to read Harrison's other historical articles on his page, most of them are very solid historical works. His earlier books like:

Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden
The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945
The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison
Soviet Planning in Peace and War 1938-1945

are available for viewing on Google Books and offer a ridiculous wealth of hi-grade statistical information and historical facts. And by facts I mean documentable facts, not rubbish extrapolations of "what might have been".

And somewhat unrelated but also important for an overall understanding (and a good comparison companion )
The Economics of World War I

And, also somewhat unrelated, but noteworthy for rigor: a good article on demography behind the Soviet losses (military and civilian) during World War II: it offers a short and concise explanation why the demographic corridor of Soviet wartime losses hovers around 25,000,000 people: Counting Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War

I hope all readers and fans of History already know how to get the maximum of worthy stuff from Google Books page-by-page, so no instructions will be given.

Yeah, I know it's a lot of books. Pick the newest first, since they offer the best data sets (2008 is preferrable to 1990), then, if you don't have time to spare

Stanislav's very subjective rating of historical professionals in Russian history gives A grade to Mark Harrison's work.

If you appreciate his research into Russia, Soviet Union, industrialization and war, be sure to check out his blog as well.

[TheKwas]

*BUMP*

I was wondering if anyone could provide some insights as to why authors like John Heidenrich (How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001)) and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)), despite writing after the release of Soviet records, still claim that the GULAG was responsible for 12 million or more deaths.

Both authors are mentioned at this site

Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.

...

John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.

* Kulaks: 7M
* Gulag: 12M
* Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)

[K. A. Pital]

You are asking why Cold War propagandists are still claiming it? *shakes head* The answer should be self evident. Also, the guy at the website makes a critical error. History does not operate by taking deathtoll averages, or using obsolete data and "averaging" it out with new data. History operates by checking up evidence and then coming to conclusions, not taking two sets of conclusions by various people and finding a Golden Mean (TM). Basically, there's from 12 to 18 million people who passed through the penal system (including the GULAG) 1927-1953, but the number of dead was from 1,2 million to 2 million depending on which categories you count, include or exclude "missing" prisoners as dead and so forth.

My advice is looking at the reports from the GULAG, GUVPI, etc. themselves, because the primary documents are always the source.

[TheKwas]

Well I could guess at their motives, but I was more curious as to what methodologies, if any, they were using to come up with such (seemingly outrageous) figures. I'm guessing right now that the estimates are basically off-the-cuff "throw out a big number" estimates that have little basis in evidence, but I was hoping that someone could call out this BS better than me.

[K. A. Pital]

How are these estimates arrived upon? Well that's easy:
1) take some old book where a demographer/historian/journalist X writes this number as an "estimate", which is obviously sucked out of his ass since he had no access to archives - and "estimate" really means "guesstimate"
2) copy paste into your book with a reference
3) mission accomplished
If the underlying reference is to another book which is not a documentary monography, I always view such "references" with extreme suspicion. And indeed, a cursory investigation into this practice yielded very unwelcome results so many times I'm already not even looking into books which don't have clear archival references in their pages.

[PeZook]

Also, the guy at the website makes a critical error. History does not operate by taking deathtoll averages, or using obsolete data and "averaging" it out with new data.

The guy is a fucking idiot. I laughed out loud when I read that he tried to seriously sell that ridiculous methodology to anyone.

Seriously, did he think about it at all? How would it work? "Oh, I've got one guy who's wrong, and another who's even more wrong, if I average the two figures this should be close to the truth".

The fuck?

[Sea Skimmer]

Say, are any good books around about the expansion of the Soviet railway system under Stalin and during WW2? All that expansion is pretty much what let Russia exploit all its resources for the first time, and without them industrialization couldn’t occur, and yet at so far as western publicans seem concerned Russia has all of three railways, the Trans-Caspian, the Trans Siberian and that original line between Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is very annoying for someone like me who wouldn’t mind a history listing every spur siding and logging line in the Donbas

[K. A. Pital]

Rees E. "Stalinism and the Soviet Rail Transport".

I'm not sure whether this monography is good enough for you or not, but it's one of the few things available on the railways during the first wave of industrialization period in English. The statistical tables are in the Appendices, there are investment and expansion stats to boot, as well as employment stats. The list of lines completed is also there somewhere (I don't quite recall where everything in the book is).

Welcome.

[Sea Skimmer]

Thanks, it’s not quite everything I hoped for (course everything I hoped for would include a map of secret rail spurs laid to support wartime pontoon bridging…you can see one in Poland on Google) but that book is much better then anything else I’ve encountered.

[K. A. Pital]

Map of all railways in the f.USSR, including closed, military and other lines
Geneaological tree of all Russian Empire, USSR and post-Soviet Russia and CIS railways

The site also has a list of closed and unfinished roads, although not in a map form. Regrettably the large map doesn't have by-age breakdown of when a certain line was completed or built...

[Surlethe]

Hey, Stas, would you know where I could find more information about the efficiency of the industrialization of the USSR? My wife, for her Soviet history class (you wouldn't happen to know of Sergei Zhuk, would you?) read excerpts from Behind the Urals, and during the course of it she mentioned how Scott related various anecdotes about how inefficient the industrialization process was - e.g., poor concrete, goods arriving when they weren't needed and not being there when they were, etc. - but she couldn't recall any statistics.

I figured I'd ask here since this is the industrialization thread, and the efficiency of hyperfast industrialization seems to be a relevant topic, especially if a country is going to try to emulate the USSR.

[K. A. Pital]

Hey, Stas, would you know where I could find more information about the efficiency of the industrialization of the USSR?

I'd advise reading "Farm to Factory" (and "Magnetic Mountain" as a supplemental to see a singular example of industrialization) to get some clues, both are already noted in the thread.

There's another fundamental work here, by Paul Gregory "The Political Economy of Stalinism". It takes a more critical approach to the Soviet industrialization [Hayek, Mises, market WIN!!! can be found in the book, but in fact these statements don't really eclipse Gregory's judgement as a professional], and it's all based on hard achive data. Some efficiency measurements are there on page 250 and in other places as well.

Oh and of course, the The Economic transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945 (Robert William Davies, Mark Harrison, S. G. Wheatcroft) already linked to earlier in the thread. Despite being older than either "Farm to Factory" or "Political Economy of Stalinism", that work still stands on it's feet in my view.

Oh, and most definetely: Stephen Kotkin. Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjuncture (that article is freely available in Russian, but in English, I didn't manage to find it). Kotkin's interview "Yanks for Stalin" sheds some light on Kotkin's concept of USSR's "industrial Fordism" (i.e. Ford's large 1930's industrial process taken as a basis for the entire Soviet industrial model and continued to be used in the 1970 still), something I do agree with him on.

I'd say those are basic works for understanding the Soviet economy and especially the first industrialization wave, and the underlying principles of organization.

...you wouldn't happen to know of Sergei Zhuk, would you?

Zhuk, Sergey Yakovlevich? I know of him, but... is there anything particular about him that interests you?

Anyway, to be more precise I'd ask which figures you need to evaluate efficiency? The anecdotes were of course often true - the "crash" part of "crash industrialization" often led to excessively poor raw materials quality, or assembly faults and thus breakdowns of entire factory units (like the mill breakdown at Magnitogorsk, off-hand). As to how prevalent such practices were, I'd say they were pretty prevalent from what I gathered from the archival notes and various factory mail archives. It's hard to judge how severely the problem of slack and errors really impacted the overall output of industrial goods in the USSR.

Perhaps percentage of output considered waste? But that gauge is only available for select factories and select years. Of course, especially during the first 5-year plan, there was a lot of waste at the largest factory complexes and such; probably you could do some sort of data assembly. There's not much known about the problem of waste output basically; outside of select examples and notes that say, one of the factories in Moscow had up to 65% waste output. But those aren't indicative of the overall picture; though I'd be fairly certain that waste output during the First Five-Year Plan was between 10 and 30% at most factories; this is my offhand judgement, so don't take it as if it were statistically supported.