CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

First five-year plan (Soviet Union)

major centralised economic plan in the USSR

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ1661958
Source-derived summary

The first five-year plan (Russian: I пятилетний план, первая пятилетка) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, implemented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in one country. Leon Trotsky had delivered a joint report to the April Plenum of the Central Committee in 1926 which proposed a program for national industrialisation and the replacement of annual plans with five-year plans. His proposals were rejected by the Central Committee majority which was controlled by the troika and derided by Stalin at the time. Stalin's version of the five-year plan was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932.

The Soviet Union entered a series of five-year plans which began in 1928 under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Stalin launched what would later be referred to as a "revolution from above" to improve the Soviet Union's domestic policy. The policies were centered around rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin desired to remove and replace the mixed-economy policies of the New Economic Policy. Some scholars have argued that the programme of mass industrialisation advocated by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition was co-opted after Trotsky's exile to serve as the basis of Stalin's first five-year plan. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “First five-year plan (Soviet Union)” as major centralised economic plan in the USSR. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 1928, 1932—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where First, five-year and plan can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as major centralised economic plan in the USSR. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1661958. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1928 and 1932.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “First five-year plan (Soviet Union)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow First five-year plan (Soviet Union) primary sources, First five-year plan (Soviet Union) archive and First research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “First five-year plan (Soviet Union)”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from First five-year plan (Soviet Union)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.