‘Lukashenko is absolutely right’. Historian makes case for developing national economy with unexpected example

MINSK, 11 January (BelTA) – Aleksandr Lukashenko is right: it is necessary to develop the national economy and accelerate the growth of labor productivity by reducing the cost of finished goods, historian Yevgeny Spitsyn said in the latest episode of the V Teme [On Point] project on BelTA’s YouTube channel.

Speaking about the priorities in the development of modern countries, the expert emphasized how important it is to support the state’s national economy. He gave a historical example of Tsarist Russia, which lost World War I, and explained why it happened.

“Russia lost World War I, really lost it. There was the giant retreat of 1915, then the short-lived success (heavily promoted, by the way) of the Brusilov Offensive on a very narrow section of the front. And then again a series of continuous defeats, especially in 1917, both in the Baltics and in Galicia. So, why did Russia lose the war? First, because the tsarist bureaucracy and our patriotic bourgeoisie failed to provide the fighting army, the front, with everything necessary, primarily artillery and shells. They inflated the prices for cartridges, shells, rifles to simply unimaginable levels. They profited from everything. There are hundreds of studies that clearly show what the Military-Industrial Commission did, including the Central Military-Industrial Committee. Look at how the Soviet leadership approached the production of our weapons [during the Great Patriotic War]. The direct task was set to reduce the production cost of all military output. And if you look at the cost of the T-34 tank and the PPSh (the most common submachine gun of the Great Patriotic War), you’ll simply, as they say, be shocked at how much that tank and that submachine gun cost in 1941 and how much it cost in 1945. The reduction in cost was several-fold. In cost! This is exactly what allowed us to produce significantly more weapons and equipment than all of united Europe, which was working for Nazi Germany. It is universally recognized that we produced more tanks, planes, artillery pieces, and shells. And we buried Hitler’s forces and their military allies not with corpses, but we buried them with our metal, our shells, our grenades. Therefore, Lukashenko is absolutely right. We must not just develop the national economy, we must accelerate the growth of labor productivity. But by what means? By reducing the cost of finished goods, to make them cheaper,” Yevgeny Spitsyn said.