How Belarus was restored after the war

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

When at the end of July 1944 the territory of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was completely liberated by the Red Army from the invaders, the question of the prospects for the further development of the region arose at the union level. There were two options - to focus on agriculture in the development of Belarus, as it was four years ago, or to completely redesign the republic, making it an engineering cluster. As you know, we stopped at the second one.

And here's why: before the war, the BSSR was a border region adjacent to an extremely hostile state - Poland. The border of the BSSR passed 30 kilometers from Minsk. Because of this, it was believed that in the event of Polish aggression, the advanced bridgehead would either be quickly captured by the Poles, or would become the site of fierce battles - and therefore there was no point in developing heavy engineering in the republic.

However, by 1944, the situation had changed radically. Since 1939, the territory of the BSSR has enlarged at the expense of Western Belarus, and Poland was an ally state. Belarus automatically found itself "in the rear", but not deep, but average. This is what led to the fact that the territory of the republic began to rapidly transform in an industrial way.

Naturally, the project required huge financial investments. And they appeared. In 1944, the subsidy from the all-Union budget to the Belarusian one amounted to 327 million rubles, i.e. almost 94 percent of the entire budget of the BSSR. In 1945, 1 billion 200 million rubles were allocated from the all-Union budget to the Belarusian one.

Only Ukraine was more subsidized (1 billion 500 million). Other Soviet republics received much less: the Moldavian and Estonian SSR - 300 million each, the Lithuanian and Latvian SSR - 200 million each, the Karelo-Finnish SSR - 80 million. If we take into account the difference in the size of Ukraine and Belarus, it turns out that it was the BSSR that received the largest subsidies from the union budget.

This is not surprising - after all, the damage suffered by the BSSR during the war years was colossal. In ruins lay 209 of 270 cities and regional centers, 9200 villages and villages, over 10 thousand enterprises. In 1944, the economy was at the level of 1928, and in the field of industry and energy - at the level of 1913.

The restoration of Belarus began even before its complete liberation, in September 1943. First of all, enterprises of defense significance and those that supplied the population with basic necessities were restored. In May 1944, the Gomel steam locomotive and brick factories were put into operation, in August - the Gomselmash plant.

A month after the liberation of Minsk, 13 enterprises in the capital were providing products. By this time, 72 power plants were already operating in the republic. By May 1945, 8,000 factories and 4,000 artels and workshops were operating in the BSSR.

The question of whose hands the old factories were raised from the ruins and new factories were built is superfluous - of course, these were the hands of local residents, who, often malnourished, staggering from lack of sleep, selflessly worked on restoration work. For example, since October 1944, by order of the Minsk City Council, every Minsk citizen had to work on weekends and free time 30 hours a month to rebuild the city. And no one shied away from these works - on the contrary, they went with joy.

But we must not forget about the colossal assistance rendered to the BSSR by the entire Soviet Union, and first of all by the largest and richest republic - the RSFSR. After all, Belarus lacked everything, and first of all people. In 1945, only 45 percent of the workers and employees of their pre-war number worked in the industry of the republic.

The remaining 55 percent were just those who went to the BSSR for labor recruitment. And of course, they did not perceive the Belarusian land as a kind of “alien” republic, which, for some reason, needed to be revived. These were Soviet people, and they selflessly worked to revive the Soviet land.

Of the enterprises, priority was given to the construction of large industrial plants - automobile and tractor.

After all, their products were needed for restoration work. That is why MAZ-205 dump trucks became the first MAZ products in November 1947 - after all, it is a dump truck that is most needed at a construction site. The MAZ-200 flatbed truck will go into production only in 1950.

MAZ-205

Of course, it was unrealistic to master automobile production in the destroyed Minsk from scratch. That is why Yaroslavl became the birthplace of Minsk cars. The Yaroslavl Automobile Plant developed a fundamentally new model, the first Soviet diesel dump truck YaAZ-205 (only 103 of these machines were produced in Yaroslavl), and transferred its production to Minsk.

Externally, Russian YaAZ and Belarusian MAZ differed only in emblems (the Yaroslavl bear and the Belovezhskiy bison) and the radiator grill (the YaAZ had a horizontal one, and the MAZ had a vertical one). Naturally, Yaroslavl specialists actively helped their Belarusian colleagues in mastering the new model. And the conveyor at MAZ was assembled by Gorky residents.

At first, the assembly of machines was carried out on adapted "goats". This did not allow to provide the required rates. A group of workers and specialists who arrived soon from the Gorky Automobile Plant took up the assembly of the conveyor. With its launch, the daily production of cars quadrupled, up to 30 cars began to roll off the assembly line, and by the end of 1945 - up to 60 and more (then MAZ also assembled Studebakers from American car sets).

Construction of MTZ 1947

A similar story is with the Minsk Tractor Plant. The decision to create it was made in 1946, and a year later MTZ was declared an all-Union shock construction project. Among the suppliers of machinery and equipment, the leading place was occupied by the factories of Moscow.

They have manufactured an automatic line, semi-automatic machines, the latest machine tools, and many other types of equipment. The suppliers were also enterprises of Kiev, Gorky, Kuibyshev, Izhevsk and other industrial centers. Leningraders created the main electrical equipment for the plant's CHP.

In the first two years of the 4th five-year plan MTZ received 1,675 pieces of equipment. In addition, two thousand Belarusian boys and girls were sent to study at the enterprises of Stalingrad, Chelyabinsk, Zlatoust, Kharkov, Rubtsovsk. “Dear comrades! Come to us, - invited the Stalingraders. - You will be provided with comprehensive assistance in the rapid acquisition of qualifications.

We will help you master the technique, put at your disposal machines, tools and materials, and share our experience. " Locksmith LM Skorobogatov, who traveled to Stalingrad, shared his impressions with his fellow countrymen: “As sons, we, Belarusians, were received by the old masters of the Stalingrad tractor. They teach us a specialty, teach us advanced labor methods."

Many Belarusian factories were fully equipped with equipment imported from the RSFSR. Thus, complete sets of equipment were supplied for the Minsk bicycle and tool factories, the Minsk, Vitebsk and Gomel glass factories, the Mogilev artificial fiber factory and the Orsha flax factory.

Beginning with the first Belarusian five-year plan (1951-55), the course of development of the national economic complex was changed towards the production of consumer goods, an increase in investment in the light industry, food industry, and the agricultural sector.

This made it possible to almost double the output of consumer goods. In 1951-1955, 150 large industrial enterprises and more than 200 medium and small enterprises were commissioned in Belarus. Among them were the Minsk Bearing and Watch Plants, a radio plant, a heating equipment plant, a worsted factory, a sewing machine plant in Orsha, a sugar plant in Skidel, Vitebsk silk-weaving factory and others.

During the years of the five-year plan, the gross volume of industrial production more than doubled, while the predominant growth of heavy industry continued. The production of trucks increased by 5, 4 times, metal-working machines - by 2, 4 times, electricity - by 2, 5 times. In the production of peat, linen fabrics, flax fiber, plywood, the BSSR took 2nd place in the Soviet Union.

After the war, the social infrastructure began to actively improve. By 1949, the network of health care institutions was fully restored, which were provided with the necessary medical equipment. In a short time, 252 orphanages were created, about 27 thousand children were brought up in them.

They were provided with hot meals, clothes and shoes were given free of charge. In 1947, food ration cards were abolished in the republic, active construction of housing began, and by the beginning of the 1950s, most of the people who lost their roof over their heads during the war were able to move from the dugouts to at least temporary barracks.

After the war, not only cities and villages lay in ruins, but also education, culture, science. All this was being restored at a colossal pace. By 1951, 12,700 schools operated in the BSSR, including 230 schools for workers and 714 schools for rural youth. The Soviet republics also actively helped in the restoration of the school economy, providing Belarus with equipment and helping qualified personnel.

Of the 25 pre-war universities of the BSSR by 1945, 22 worked. New higher educational institutions also appeared. Theatrical and forestry institutes, a pedagogical institute of foreign languages were opened in Minsk.

The Brest Pedagogical Institute, the Grodno Pedagogical Institute, the Grodno Agricultural Institute, and the Belarusian Institute of Railway Engineers in Gomel were also founded. Needless to say, a huge number of specialists with higher education came to the BSSR from the RSFSR and other union republics.

In conclusion, we note that the restoration of the industry and agriculture of the BSSR, without a doubt, was one of the most ambitious Soviet projects of the post-war era - and a project that was successfully completed in the shortest possible time.

In fact, in 1944-54, a fundamentally new republic was built on the site of the former BSSR, and the acceleration impulse given to it was so powerful that it continued to operate until the 1980s.

The very fact of the transformation of the pre-war BSSR into a powerful industrial republic is undoubtedly the merit of the Soviet leadership. As well as hundreds of thousands of assistants from all over the USSR, who spared no effort for the speedy restoration of the national economy of the BSSR.