Last week, I discussed breaking the 40-Year Plan into eight five-year plans. One friend said to me, "Who do you think you are with a Five-Year Plan, Stalin?"

"What?" I said. To cure my ignorance, I found "Utopia in Power: A History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1986" by Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nekrich.

"In 1927, Soviet economists began drafting the first Five Year Plan - a comprehensive plan providing for the development of every region, using every resource for the industrialization of the country. It was supposed to go into effect in October 1928, but it was not even submitted for approval until the 16th Party Conference in April 1929."

Sounds like government to me. Stalin sought to transform the agricultural basis of the Soviet economy and create a modern industrial state at any cost. Stalin foresaw Germany's military aggression, and wanted to prepare his country, as well as challenge capitalism's economic might.

"If in 10 years we do not cover the distance that other countries took 50 or 100 years to traverse, we will be crushed," Stalin said.

He prepared his country for his Five Year plan by eliminating any opposition. In April 1929, he purged all government agencies of disloyal party members. We should feel lucky that Stalin's purge meant death or forced labor, while new CIA chief Porter Goss's purge only meant loss of job.

Stalin's yes-men economists set two targets for every worker, industry and region, an initial variant, and an optimal variant. By 1930, even Party stalwart Leon Trotsky's figures were too low, so Stalin called Trotsky a "wrecker." Stalin set his own impossible goals, and shortened the Five Year Plan to four years.

The new propaganda read "Five in Four." Whereas the initial variant written in 1928 called for workers to mine 35 million tons of coal, and the optimal variant called for 75 million tons by 1932, Stalin demanded 105 million.

The numbers either intoxicated people as propaganda, Heller and Nekrich tell us, or Stalin motivated with fear. In September 1930, he had 48 prominent figures in the food industry executed. Playwrite Aleksandr Afinogenov, a Stalin contemporary, wrote "[Workers] strive constantly to catch up and surpass, and gasping for breath in this endless race, the mind loses its sanity and slowly becomes degraded."

Come 1932, Stalin's economists massaged the figures to enhance the accomplishments. The new cities, factories, energy plants and farms, though, came through "ruthless exploitation of the population." As well, Stalin's relied on foreign companies like American and British architects to design buildings. These companies were not immune to prosecution, either.

And as stunning as the achievements were, the effort was poorly organized. Stalin's crew lacked the informational and statistical capacity to coordinate the economy centrally.

Stalin introduced a second Five Year plan for 1933. The use of the five-year plan continued until Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled the 12th Five Year Plan in 1986, which ran until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1990. Gorby included an ambitious 15-year addendum.

Next week: What can the 40-Year Plan learn from Stalin's failures and successes?

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"I serve the country."

"Gorbachev unveiled the 12th Five Year Plan in 1986, which ran until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1990"

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"Gorbachev unveiled the 12th Five Year Plan in 1986, which ran until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1990"