The Structure of Forest Management and the Role of the Soviet Union in the World Wood Industry During the Modernization Era at the End of the 1920s - 1930s

Abstract

In the late 1920s - 1930s, according to official figures, the Soviet Union significantly increased its volume of timber industry production. However, the statistics did not include the private harvesting and procurement of wood by the population, that is, for household consumption, which until about the mid-1930s and its almost complete cutback, reached impressive quantities. Historiography formed an incomplete picture of timber management in the Soviet Union during the modernization period, and part of the official indexes are still today used by researchers to prove a significant increase in the volume of timber production in the country during the late 1920s - 1930s. This has made currently very relevant the task of studying changes in the structure of forest management and of determining the country's place in the global timber industry using estimates of the total volume of forestry resources and the value of the gross output of the wood industry. The author reveals that in the first decades of the 20th century the most actively developed areas of forestry were logging and mechanical processing of wood, while the proportion of deep wood processing in the value structure of forest management has changed little and remained at a low level. The author identifies the principal systemic problems in the forest industry of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s - 1930s, which became the causes of imbalances in its structure. Additionally, the author conducted a comparative analysis of the indexes of the Soviet state and of other countries and regions - leaders in the global wood industry. The study's conclusions include the highlighting of the persistence of imbalances in the timber industry in the late 1920s - 1930s and the lagging of the Soviet Union from other countries - industry leaders in the most important areas of timber production.