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PIATAKOV: A MIRROR OF SOVIET HISTORY 165In the intermediate ran, the ability of Soviet industry to remain competitivewith Western industry in some key sectors for several decades (untilthe West made a new technological jump forward) bears evidence of thefact that "the latest word" in Western technology had indeed been introducedin the 1930s and, thus, of Piatakov's seriousness and competence(among other things, it was he who drew up the investment plan for thesecond half of the decade, implemented after his death). In the light of otherstate efforts in the industrial field in other countries, this result is not at all apoor one; indeed, there is no doubt that, together with the territorial expansionof the following years, it constitutes one of the objective bases thatensured the survival of fragments of the Stalinist myth.But in the long ran, the limitations of the building of the 1920s and1930s emerged and the success we have spoken of was transformed into adisaster, even from the standpoint of the most privileged sector, that ofheavy industry. It was a disaster that compromised the very survival of theregime. The reasons for this are naturally complex, and I will mention onlyone of them, linked to the type of building carried on at that time.Despite the fact that it was "things"—factories, dams, roads, schools,canals, that is, the material aspects of building—that were privileged, itwould be a mistake to believe that only "things" were being built. Sovietindustrialization was not a "simple industrialization" (if such a thing exists)but something more and something different. Along with factories, a systemwas being built, that "first system of state industry in history" of which Piatakovhad dreamt (recently, in the USSR, this system has been termed"administrativnaia sistema"; this expression is acceptable, but to distinguishthe Soviet situation I would add the adjective "industrial," as history is richin examples of administrative systems based on agriculture).Like all systems, the Soviet one, too, was able to do certain things betterthan others. As we have seen, some of its abilities and some of its limitationsincluded the mobilization of short-term available resources in emergencysituations, the imitation of models already in existence elsewhere andtheir introduction in forced stages; or troubles with the organization of suppliesand with productivity.There were other things it was unable to do. Some, such as the inabilityto take into account, at least partially, the impact of industrialization on theenvironment, were not disastrous for the regime, except, perhaps, in thevery long term. But others were, among them the inability to get underwayan independent development of the "intensive" type that would allow spontaneousinnovation on a large scale, without relying upon imported models(one thinks immediately of the lack of understanding shown by Lenin in1918 of what capitalism was all about, and of what Hirschman has written