Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

he argued, infamously, that the exploitation of the peasants was the key to the industrialization of the USSR: “You know that for hundreds of years England squeezed the juice out of all its colonies, from every continent, and thus injected extra investment into its industry.” The USSR could not take that same path, Stalin argued. Nor, he declared, could it rely on foreign loans. The only remaining solution was, in effect, for the country to “colonize” its own peasants: squeeze them harder and invest this “internal accumulation” into Soviet industry. To support this transformation, peasants would have to pay “a tribute” so that the Soviet Union could “further develop the rate of industrial growth”: This situation, one must say, is unpleasant. But we wouldn’t be Bolsheviks if we skated over this matter and closed our eyes to the fact that without this additional tax on the peasants, unfortunately, our industry and our country will not be able to manage. As for the “emergency methods” that were causing so much pain, these had already “saved the country from a general economic crisis…we would now have a serious crisis of the whole national economy, starvation in the cities, starvation in the army.” Those who opposed them “are dangerous people.” The once-lauded “tight link” between the peasants and the working class was no longer necessary: “the only class which holds power is the proletariat.”