A manifest of intentions (towards the centenary of the GOELRO plan)

Electrification of Russia (GOELRO). A great number of works devoted to the Plan have been published over the past century. These sometimes mutually contradictory works discussed different aspects of this plan but mostly focused on the success of its implementation.This paper analyses the history of the creation and implementation of the GOELRO Plan, based on a thorough historico-technical study of the entire body of available archive documents. The authors were determined to avoid biased interpretation of the Plan's content and implementation, to maintain a balance in acknowledging positive sides of the electrification programme and the shady aspects of its implementation, and to take into account the overall technical and sociopolitical context of the period in question.As a result of our studies, the following conclusions are for the first time submitted to the judgment of the scientific community. The GOELRO Plan was a purely national programme. It had not been a product of the October Revolution but, rather, had clearly discernable pre-Revolutionary roots. It is not easy to provide a correct answer to the question of its implementation because of the following circumstances. Rather than being a complete, self-contained programme, GOELRO was, according to V.I. Lenin, only the “first step” on the path of Russia's industrial development. Due to the difficult political and economic situation, the implementation of the Plan only began in December 1921, one year after its approval by the Congress of Soviets. The fact that all power facilities whose construction began before 1920 were included in the GOELRO Plan should also be taken into account. The contours and content of the Plan were revised and updated throughout the 1920s in accordance with the changing economic situation in the country. With the beginning of the industrialisation, i.e. before the results of its implementation were summarised and evaluated, the working out of the first Plan for the Development of National Economy of the USSR (1928-1932) was drawing upon the GOELRO Plan. Nevertheless it has been the GOELRO Plan that made it into history as a programme that laid the foundations for the systemic development of Soviet power engineering and industry as a whole.