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the soviet union was a major exporter of grains and the purchase of industrial machinery from foreign countries was to be funded by an increase in soviet exports 

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the soviet union was a major exporter of grains and the purchase of industrial machinery from foreign countries was to be funded by an increase in soviet exports 

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the success of his program would demonstrate the superiority of socialism as farmers warning together proceed more found and as the soviet union

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in some respects this was an attempt to reproduce what had happened in western Europe,

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this explanation justified the state's continuing procurement of large amounts of grain

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since the most productive farmers were most likely to object to collectivization

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Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms

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Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms

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Stalin decides that collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but could also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans.

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Many Ukrainian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries. Stalin introduces a policy of “class warfare” in the countryside in order to break down resistance to collectivization.

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The successful farmers, or kurkuls, (kulaks, in Russian) are branded as the class enemy, and brutal enforcement by regular troops and secret police is used to “liquidate them as a class.”

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1.5 million Ukrainians fall victim to Stalin’s “dekulakization” policies, Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock and other property, and evict entire families.

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Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter.

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. No longer the monster of the gulags and purges that killed millions, Stalin now looms in the national consciousness as the giant who defeated the Nazis in World War II

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Meanwhile, not only has Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine’s eastern regions

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looks determined to avenge the humiliations of Russia’s post-Soviet implosion. Integral to this endeavor is not just to flex the country’s geopolitical might in the present but to re-write its past.

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its military adventurism has also extended to Syria. Putin, who once described the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century

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At least 5 million people died from starvation in the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1934—including 3.9 million Ukrainians.

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despite the contentions of certain historians of the Soviet Union, Applebaum argues that these deaths were no accident.

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He wanted to feed the important party officials and to export its grain abroad to fund his vast industrialization projects. It was an unmitigated disaster. Farmers were no longer paid for their produce but worked according to a ration system based on their productivity.