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The Volume of Soviet Munitions Output, 1937–1945: A Reevaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Mark Harrison
Mark Harrison
Affiliation:
senior lecturer in Economics at the University of Warwick, Coventry, England CV4 7AL.
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Abstract

The only official measure of overall Soviet munitions output in World War II, first published in 1965, was based on changes in values, not volumes, and grossly understates change in the level of real Soviet war production. Subsequently published official data on production of ground and air munitions in physical units, supplemented by information about real spending on naval munitions, provide foundations for a new index. During the war the USSR produced more munitions than Great Britain or Germany, but much less than the United States.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 569 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1990

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References

1 Voznesenskii, N. A., War Economy of the USSR in the Period of the Patriotic War (Moscow, 1948), p. 63.Google Scholar

2 See relevant sections of Istoriia Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny, 1939–1945 (hereafter IVMV) (Moscow, 1973–1982), vols. 1–12.Google Scholar Detailed series of physical output are brought together from this and other sources in Harrison, Mark, Soviet Planning in Peace and War, 1938–1945 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 250–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Previously I considered various possible explanations—that the Isroriia index was based on changes in values, not volumes, or that its behavior was seriously affected by changing boundaries in the administration of war production. See Harrison, Soviet Planning, pp. 119–21.Google Scholar

4 The entries of the total index for 1940 to 1943 can be taken as the right-hand sides of four simultaneous equations, with the four 1940 weights of the subindices as unknowns. In this case there is no set of nonnegative solutions which can satisfy the constraints. Moreover, the entry for total munitions output in 1944 of 251 cannot be matched by combining the subindices using weights imputed in this way. When the entries of the total index for 1940 and 1942–1944 are taken as the right-hand sides of the four simultaneous equations, again with the four 1940 weights of the subindices as unknowns, feasible and realistic weights result, but now the entry for total munitions output in 1941 is estimated at 130, not the 140 given. This might be consistent with a typographic or arithmetic error in the official index for 1941. The “feasible and realistic” 1940 weights are:aircraft—45 percent, tanks–23 percent, guns—23 percent, ammunition—9 percent.Google Scholar

5 This was drawn to my attention by Peter Wiles. I owe him special thanks for giving me access to the rare and invaluable Finansovaia sluzhba Vooruzhennykh Sil SSSR v period voiny [Financial service of the USSR Armed Forces in the period of the war] (Moscow, 1967), from which this and other evidence is derived.Google Scholar

6 The four subindices shown in Table 1 are not significantly associated with indices of current NKO expenditure on munitions under comparable headings, 1941–1945, based on budget outlays derived by Doe, Frank, “Understanding the Soviet view of Military Expenditures” (Washington, DC, 1982), table 4.Google Scholar

7 Reported munitions output (Q) and expenditure (E) could be expected to diverge because of defective products included in reported output but remaining unsold (DP), because of civilian products of defense factories counted in output of munitions branches of industry (CIV), and military products of civilian industries not counted in munitions output but purchased as munitions out of the defense budget (MIL), because of exports (EX) and imports (IM), and because of the lag between production and procurement:Google Scholar

8 Jasny, Naum, The Soviet Price System (Stanford, 1951), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

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10 Finansovaja sluzhba, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

11 Bergson, Abram, The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928 (Cambridge, MA, 1961), p. 74 and appendix E, reckoned 1944 munitions prices at above the 1942/43 level and only 20 percent below the 1940 level.Google Scholar This figure seems arbitrarily conservative. Also arbitrary, but in the other direction, is the estimate of Krylov, P., “Bor'ba za ekonomiiu v voennye gody” [The struggle for economy in the war years], Planovoe khoziaistvo, 3 (1985), p. 34; he suggests that during the war the wholesale prices of “the most important types of weapons and ammunition” fell by more than half.Google Scholar

12 Finansovaia sluzhba, p. 87.Google Scholar

13 This means the sum of [(E,n/P 1941) – En] in each year from 1942 to 1944, plus five-twelfths of [(E n/P1941)–En] for 1945 (for notation, see the Appendix).Google Scholar

14 Voznesenskii, War Economy, p. 102.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 108.

16 Independent estimates reported by Bergson, Real National Income, pp. 350, 367–68.Google Scholar

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18 Zaleski, Eugéne, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952 (London, 1980), p. 452 (table 118, row 22).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Jasny, The Soviet Price System, p. 107.Google Scholar

20 For reductions in labor requirements of Soviet weapons from 1941 to 1943, see Voznesenskii, War Economy, p. 92;Google Scholar according to Isoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1941–1945 [History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941–1945] (Moscow, 1965), vol. 5, p. 375, finished output per worker in Soviet defense industries rose by 121 percent between May 1942 and May 1945.Google Scholar

21 In the United States, contract prices for the War Department. Army Air Force, and Ordinance fell by 25 to 40 percent in three and a half years (January 1942–August 1945), despite a 50 percent increase in weekly earnings in manufacturing industry (data reported by Bergson, Real National Income, pp. 373–74). Behind this lay a doubling of output per worker in munitions in just two years, 1942–1944, with only a small increase in the length of the working week. (According to charts published in American Industry in War and Transition, 1940–50, Part II: The Effect of the War on the Industrial Economy [Washington, DC, 1945], p. 10. “productivity” [whether per worker or per hour worked is not specified] in munitions industries in 1944 stood at approximately two and one-half times the 1942 level, while average hours worked in durable goods manufacturing rose over the same two years from roughly 45 to 47 hours.) In Germany, too, output per munitions worker doubled between 1941 and 1944, without any increase in hours worked. German munitions output trebled between the end of 1941 and mid–1944;Google Scholar see Die deutsche Industrie im Kriege, 1939–1945 (Berlin, 1954), p. 191. Meanwhile, between mid–1941 and mid–1944 the German munitions work force grew by only 44 percent (from 2.7 to 3.9 milions), according toGoogle ScholarKlein, Burton H,Germany's Economic Preparatins for War (Cambridge MA, 1959), p. 217.Google Scholar

22 Sokolov, B. V.,“O sootnoshenii poter' v liudiakh i boevoi tekhnike na Sovetsko-Germanskom fronte v khode Velikoj Otechestvennoi voiny” [On the correlation of losses of people and combat equipment on the Soviet-German front in the course of the Great Patriotic war], Voprosy istorii, 9 (1988), p. 123. Define CSn, as the level of combat stocks at the end of period n, and assume that there are no other stocks held in the rear or in reserve; the number of units produced during each period is given by Qn, imported units by IMn, and the number of losses by Ln, Then the following would obtain:Google Scholar

23 Hidden assumptions are made about initial reserves and rear formations, and the change in their level in each period of account, and about noncombat losses. At the same time it is true that the possibility of bias introduced as a result of hidden assumptions may diminish with the length of the accounting period. In the long run both imports and changes in combat and reserve stocks were small relative to output, and it is output which therefore dominates (in an accounting sense) the determination of losses. Over the period of the war taken as a whole, these are unlikely to be significant sources of bias. The relative importance of combat and noncombat losses, however, will remain undetermined. For further discussion of this methodology, see Harrison, Soviet Planning, pp. 110–15, 256–66, where Soviet wartime losses of combat aircraft, armored fighting vehicles, and guns are similarly estimated.Google Scholar

24 Shlykov, Vitalii, “On the History of Tank Asymmetry in Europe,” International Affairs (Moscow), 10 (1988), pp. 112–13.Google Scholar My thanks to Julian Cooper for this reference. Shlykov's assessment that the Soviet Army possessed a numerical advantage in tanks over the Wehrmacht on the eve of war has been subjected to detailed criticism by Krikunov, V. P., “Prostaia arifmetika' V. V. Shlykova” [The ‘simple arithmetic’ of V. V. Shlykov], Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 4 (1989), pp. 41–44.Google Scholar The part of Shlykov's argument which is significant for this article rests in part on direct military estimates of average monthly permanent losses of aircraft, tanks, and guns on the front line, detailed in Voennaia strategiia [Military strategy] (Moscow, 1963), p. 427, as follows: aircraft—21 percent, tanks—19 percent, guns—9 percent. It is true that these are substantially lower than the equivalent rates implied by Sokolov and estimated by Harrison, Soviet Planning, p. 265, using the same methodology as Sokolov. It is possible, however, that the military estimates refer only to combat losses.Google Scholar

25 Galland, Adolf, The First and the Last (London, 1970), pp. 71, 91. My thanks to Robin Clifton for this and the following reference.Google Scholar

26 Murray, Williamson, Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat, 1933–1945 (London, 1988), p. 371.Google Scholar

27 Sokolov, “O sootnoshenli poter'”, p. 125.Google Scholar

28 IVMV, vol. 2, p. 189;Google ScholarCooper, Julian, “Defence Production and the Soviet Economy, 1929–1941”, Soviet Industrialisation Project Series no. 3 (University of Birmingham, 1976), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

29 Kovalev, A. P., “V Gosplane v to pamiatnoe vremia” [In Gosplan in that memorable time], EKO, 5 (1988), pp. 22–23, reports the case of a nonferrous metal works where, in the early months of the war, delays in military inspection of ammunition cases aggravated the already severe shell famine.Google Scholar

30 IVMV, vol. 4, pp. 150–51.Google Scholar

31 Kravchenko, G. S., Ekonomika SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (1941–1945gg.) [The economy of the USSR in the years of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945)] (Moscow, 1970), pp. 410–11.Google Scholar

32 See Kolotov, V. V., Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesenskii (2nd edn., Moscow, 1976), p. 267.Google Scholar

33 Dyker, David, review of Harrison, Soviet Planning, in Slavonic and East European Review, 75 (1987), p. 309.Google Scholar

34 Harrison, Soviet Planning, p. 259.Google Scholar

35 Bergson, Real National Income, p. 371, gave real Soviet munitions output in 1940 as 2.8 times the level of 1937. Bergson's estimate was based partly on official reports of production (measured in “1926/27 rubles”), partly on reported budgetary appropriations. Some understatement of prewar munitions output growth is likely in Table 7 because of the inclusion of civilian aircraft production, relatively more important than combat types in the earlier years, and the very large weight of aircraft production in prewar rearmament.Google Scholar