GOELRO

GOELRO (Russian: ГОЭЛРО) was the first of

The Commission and Plan were initiated and supervised by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's belief in the central importance of electrification to the achievement of communism is represented by his statement:^[1]

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

— Vladimir Lenin

Foundation

The commission was established by the Presidium of the

The Plan represented a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. Lenin's stated goal for it was "...the organization of industry on the basis of modern, advanced technology, on electrification which will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism."[6]

Foreign authors about the plan

In 1920, British writer Herbert George Wells visited Soviet Russia and met with Vladimir Lenin. Wells believed that it was impossible to realise the Russian revolutionary’s plan, as he wrote in his book Russia in the Shadows:

For Lenin, who like a good orthodox Marxist denounces all "Utopians," has succumbed at last to a Utopia, the Utopia of the electricians. He is throwing all his weight into a scheme for the development of great power stations in Russia to serve whole provinces with light, with transport, and industrial power. Two experimental districts he said had already been electrified. Can one imagine a more courageous project in a vast flat land of forests and illiterate peasants, with no water power, with no technical skill available, and with trade and industry at the last gasp? Projects for such an electrification are in process of development in Holland and they have been discussed in England, and in those densely-populated and industrially highly-developed centres one can imagine them as successful, economical, and altogether beneficial. But their application to Russia is an altogether greater strain upon the constructive imagination. I cannot see anything of the sort happening in this dark crystal of Russia, but this little man at the Kremlin can; he sees the decaying railways replaced by a new electric transport, sees new roadways spreading throughout the land, sees a new and happier Communist industrialism arising again. While I talked to him he almost persuaded me to share his vision.

— H. G. Wells^[7]

Implementation

The GOELRO Plan was implemented during a 10- to 15-year period. According to the Plan, the territory of the

Ivan Alexandrov later directed the Regionalisation Commission of Gosplan which divided the Soviet Union into thirteen European and eight Asiatic economic regions, using rational economic planning rather than "the vestiges of lost sovereign rights".^[14]

The term "Ilyich's lamp" (лампочка Ильича) for an electric bulb, a reference to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is a reminder of the Plan period.^{[citation needed]}

• 
  The GOELRO plan title page, 1920
• 
  Poster #742 "Rosta Windows" dedicated to Russia's electrification by Vladimir Mayakovsky
• 
  A map depicting Russia's electrification (1973)
• 
  "GOELRO Plan" poster by Alexander Lemeshchenko (1967)
• 
  The electrification of the Southern District according to the GOELRO plan

Legacy

In 1963, Che Guevara cited the GOELRO plan as a model for the development of revolutionary Cuba.^[15]: 33 Guevara's view was that electrification provided a crucial basis for advancing to a higher stage of development, although Guevara stated that in hindsight Lenin had overemphasized the importance of electrification in and of itself.^[15]: 33

References