Stalin did a complete 180 on his indigenization policies. Because Western Europe became more of a threat to the communist project in the USSR, Stalin began to see Ukraine and Belarus as potential bridge heads that the west could use in a war to take down Soviet Russia. Stalin began to feel that the nationalization/indigenization of Belarus and Ukraine was counterproductive, and blamed the initiative gone wrong on foreign agents. Stolen now began to arrest and execute leaders of the indigenization experiment in Ukraine and Belarus. This was all happening in the late 1920s early 1930s, Stalin began to act more authoritarian. It was around this time that the Ukrainian famine also happene.
