1) Soviet brutality and violence are often blamed on very difficult conditions in Russia. Yes, conditions were very difficult. But this was a consequence, at least in part, of mistakes made by communists. Russia was a monarchy before WWI. The first post-tsarist government, with its duma, etc., was a promising democratic initiative, resulting from the 1917 February Revolution. But several months later the new social structure was crushed by communists, led by Lenin. That was a big mistake; the ensuing civil war would probably not have taken place without the October Revolution.
2) And what was Stalin’s biggest mistake, after Lenin’s death? It was the policy of forced collectivization of agriculture, resulting in millions of deaths. I am not an economist but I worked in several Soviet collective farms (as a hired 12-year-old worker, during WWII). For every basket of potatoes, collected behind the plow, they paid us with one basket to take home. Here is what I remember about this problem.
a) As in other European countries, peasants in Russia were serfs, until the feudal system was abolished. In the 19th century they became rural proletariat (working for landlords).
b) Peasants supported Lenin’s revolution because it promised redistribution of land. After the revolution they became land owners.
c) The revolution, the civil war that followed, and nationalization of factories created a deplorable food situation in towns. The policy known as “War Communism” was established at that time. It consisted of military-like assaults on peasants (large scale confiscation of grain and farm animals).
d) Disastrous consequences of War Communism were recognized by Bolsheviks. The New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced by Lenin, saved the country from immediate collapse. It was a state-controlled market economy. Differentiation among peasants developed, some of them becoming more productive than others. Prosperous peasants were called kulaks. Some city dwellers also benefitted from the NEP trade; they were called Nepmen.
e) Stalin decided to eliminate NEP. The policy of rapid industrialization (the first 5-year plan) was introduced at essentially the same time as forced collectivization of agriculture.
Collective farms were not sufficiently productive. I think that Soviet economy would have been in much better shape without forced collectivization, and without sending kulaks to gulag camps. Let me repeat, forced collectivization, resulting in millions of deaths, was one of Stalin’s doctrinal mistakes. Even in 1979 about 28% of the Soviet agricultural production was from small private plots of private citizens. These plots represented less than 1% of the cultivated land.
