During a scant five years, the entire industrial output of the Soviet Union would be increased by 50 percent. Russian national income rose from 24.4 to 96.3 Russian Rubles during this time as well. However, no matter what the short-term payout was, the cost of this great leap forward would be absolutely staggering when it came to human life, with hundreds of thousands of workers meeting their deaths from starvation, exhaustion, and abuse by their vicious state-sanctioned overseers.
