Stalin responded to the grain crisis by returning to the methods of the Civil War. Requisitioning was backed up by a series of ‘emergency measures’—including the notorious Article 107 of the Criminal Code which allowed the brigades to arrest any peasants and confiscate their property if they were suspected of withholding grain. Known as the ‘Urals-Siberian method’, the relative success of this 1928 campaign, albeit at the cost of many tens of thousands of ruined peasants’ farms, persuaded Stalin to press ahead with more coercive measures to break the ‘kulak grain strike’ and secure the
...more
