Do you think that Stalin had an overall plan for Soviet economic policy?

In regard to Soviet economic policy, I do believe that Stalin had an overall plan. His overall vision was, albeit an audacious agenda, to industrialise Russia at the speed of 100 years but in 10 years. I think the changing priorities are evidence that he had to be pragmatic (just as Lenin had had to be when he switched from War Communism to the NEP) and address problems which occured at the time. The USSR's triumph over Nazism would later be claimed as the ultimate proof of Stalin's planning through his enforced industrialisation programme. I see it as a 'rough and ready system', which did work and by 1941 it had succeeded in creating an industrial base for a powerful arms industry.

The industrial policies Stalin enforced, i.e: the 5 year plans, were his economic models. But I do think it could be interpreted as simply putting one foot in front of the other as he went along rather than having a vision. Yes, Soviet policy did bully and cajole the workers into ever greater productions, but despite the claims from Gosplan etc, planning was not at a national level. The majority of planning actually took place at a local level whereby regional and site managers who were struggling desperately to make sense of instructions they were given from the top, had to formulate schemes to reach their (usually impossible) production quotas. So perhaps his plans for Soviet economic policy could be seen as a far sighted aim  but with no means of how to get there, and so each ammendment of his plans was simply a case of hobbling along and getting by.

I guess in a sense you could argue that his industrial policies do not deserve the title 'plans' at all. Specifically the 1st 5YP, which made no attempts to match raw materials to production, and production to consumption. It's as if the government just demanded production but had no clear idea of how it was to be achieved or what was to be done with the materials produced - this shows the extent they went to, to portray Stalin as a great leader. Quantity took precedence over quality, since many workers were not skilled in the fields they had been forced to work in. Stalin's economy was more like a command economy based on a series of central orders which had little insight into the real everyday lives of the factories, rather than a planned economy. Perhaps this could show Stalin's eagerness to make Russia an industrial giant - again, he had a vision but had no planning of how to reach it. The unrealistic targets Stalin set were yes, impossible to reach, but they were designed to drive people forward to try and achieve the impossible. Could it be argued that the 5YPs were trying to function in an incredibly backwards Russia and the type of command economy which existed with clearly set priorties was well suited to the backwardness of the USSR in the 1930s? Perhaps there was not much planning to reach his vision, but clear priorities were set (yes, without ways to reach them), but it did the set the Soviet industrial force moving did it not?

I don't know, just my opinion! What do you think?