THE CAUSES OF FAMINE IN RUSSIA 35
structed at enormous financial sacrifice, was built on so much
too large a scale that even to-day, many years after its com-
pletion, there is no economic possibility of employing a great
part of its capacity.
Even the first five-year plan, with its "giants" stamped out
of the earth, could not be realized. It was shown that monster
concerns, whose output had been estimated on a titanic scale,
had in many cases not yet reached the productive stage or had
actually not been completed. Thus the Novo-Sibirsk corre-
spondent of Pravda reported on March n, 1934, that the
monster mill at Barnaul, whose output of manufactured goods
had been calculated at 1,300,000 metres for the current year,
was not even approaching completion. "If a classical example
of funkzionalka"—i.e. general irresponsibility in the economic
field—"with all its disastrous phenomena and consequences had
been needed, there could be no better example than the erection
of the Barnaul works. Every part, every building, every hole and
every scaffolding was handed over for completion to a special
organization. But there is no unity of control. There is no
supervisor to give an independent decision. The leading
'functionaries5 who direct the construction of the various parts
of the works are solely occupied in quarrelling about their
"privileges-" The correspondent goes on to describe how the
highest authorities in charge of the building sit in Moscow and
thence send telegrams, wired decrees and instructions to the
builders at Barnaul, thousands of miles away. As a result the
Barnaul works are far from completion: yet the Moscow
economic plan shows it even for the current year as actually
turning out the vast quantities of material which it is to produce
according to programme. Vast capital sums were invested in
this and other giant concerns, of which only a part has actually
reached the stage of economic exploitation. Even where the
undertaking was completed punctually according to the plan,
only a part can be put to real economic use.
To show that occurrences of this kind in the erection of