In an oddly worded statement, the Council of Ministers denounced the irregular methods of food collection that had been used all across the country—the plans, the plan failures, the supplementary plans—and called, instead, for peasants to pay a tax, in the form of a fixed percentage of their production. But there was one caveat: the tax was to take effect only in the summer of 1933. Until then the deadly requisitions would continue.29 In other words, Stalin knew that the methods being used were damaging, and he knew they would fail. But he allowed them to continue for several fatal months,
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