There are many arguments about whether the published figures for that year—and indeed subsequent years—were real, falsified, or simply mistaken. But there is no question that the state claimed, and Stalin appears to have believed, that 1930 was a high point. The official statistics decreed that 83.5 million tonnes of grain had been collected in 1930, a notable rise over 1929—a year of famine and bad weather—when the comparable figure was 71.7 million tonnes.9 Convinced that collectivization was now on the path to success, the Kremlin made what would turn out to be a disastrous and callous
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