Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

‘The unmasking of the true face of the village rich is the foremost task of criminal proceedings . . . Non-deliveries and non-fulfillment of the [agricultural] production plan must be severely punished as sabotage.’ As this faithful echo of Soviet rhetoric from the 1930s suggests, antipathy towards the peasant, and successful implementation of rural collectivization, were one of the chief tests of Stalinist orthodoxy. In the short run, implementation of Soviet-inspired plans for industry was not so obviously a disaster: there are some things that command economies can manage quite well. Collectivisation of land and the destruction of small businesses released an abundant supply of men and women for work in mines and factories; the single-minded Communist emphasis upon investment in heavy goods production at the expense of consumer products and services ensured unprecedented increases in output.