In the late 1920s Stalin faced a seemingly unsolvable economic dilemma. How did the USSR industrialise, build defence industries and protect itself from a hostile world when its weak agriculture could not provide enough grain surpluses for export or to create cheap food to feed the cities? The NEP had produced a social class that, in Marxist Leninist discourse, was hostile to the Soviet regime, the Kulaks (though in reality, they posed no threat at all). Therefore, in order deal with the problems of food shortages, and the threat of an enemy class emerging, Stalin chose collectivisation, the forceful transfer of food resources from the peasantry to the workers, facilitated by the state using violence. Check out my quick video for students on Stalin and Collectivisation here:
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