Stalin had embarked on a radical and colossal gamble to industrialize Russia at breakneck speed, using American advisers and technology to collectivize agriculture in Ukraine and other regions, mercilessly collecting grain to pay for the industrialization. Initially the Bolsheviks had promoted Ukrainian culture, as part of their policy of korenizatsiia (indigenisation), providing Moscow was paramount. But when the peasants in Ukraine resisted, Stalin ‘broke their backs’ by repression and famine. Remembering the Polish invasion and fearing that ‘We may lose Ukraine’, he cracked down on
...more
