What should be done about this? Stalin’s ideology would not let him conclude that successful farmers should be allowed to accumulate more land and build up major estates, as had happened in every other society in history. It was impossible, unimaginable, that a communist state could contain major landowners, or even wealthy farmers. But Stalin also understood that persecution of successful peasants would not lead to higher grain production either. His conclusion: collective farming was the only solution. “Unification of small and tiny peasant household farms into large collective farms…for us
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