-
In 1928, the Soviet Union faced a choice. It could continue with the New Economic Policy (NEP), using market mechanisms to encourage peasants to grow grain, or it could return to the methods of the Civil War: force, requisitioning, and terror. Stalin chose the latter. In this week’s podcast, I continued my exploration of Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow, focusing on the pivotal moment when the Soviet leadership decided to declare war on the countryside.
-
History is often shaped not just by material conditions, but by how leaders interpret those conditions. In the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin looked at the Soviet countryside and saw an enemy that wasn’t there. In this week’s podcast, I explored the roots of the Soviet famine and collectivization, focusing on the critical period of 1928-1929. Using Robert Conquest’s classic study The Harvest of Sorrow as a guide, we stepped into the mindset of the Bolshevik leadership to understand why they declared war on their own peasantry.