capable of continuing at its previous pace of
growth, after the first five years, given the low
base from which it had started? Would the Soviet
Union not merely catch up with tsarist pre-war
production but decisively move beyond it? Then
how could NEP enable the Soviet Union to
acquire the sinews of the modern industrial state
with an iron and steel industry, machinery and
armaments, improved transportation and ade-
quate power? A vast network of electric power
stations was one of Lenin’s pet dreams. With a
‘mixed’ economy would too many resources be
swallowed up in providing the consumer with
their needs rather than investing for the future?
Had the essentially tsarist agricultural methods
reached the limit of their productive capacity? On
purely economic grounds, leaving aside ideologi-
cal considerations, there were powerful arguments
for a change of policy at the point when NEP
failed to provide for the economic growth desired
by the Bolshevik leadership.
During the winter of 1927 and 1928 the peas-
ants reacted to increased taxes, low official prices,
threats against the offence of hoarding and simply
a lack of goods to buy by hanging on to their
grain. Industrial investment had already speeded
up industrialisation, the ‘selfishness’ and ‘petty-
bourgeois’ behaviour of the kulaks, in Stalin’s
judgement, threatened the whole economy.
Violence against the peasant to extract the grain
needed to feed the towns was again resorted to
in ‘emergency’ measures. The peasantry from rich
to poor were hard hit in 1928 and alienated from
the Soviet regime, though it was obviously the
kulaks and better-off peasants who had most grain
and so suffered the most. After the summer of
1928 Stalin faced the prospect of annual crises to
purchase sufficient grain unless some fundamen-
tal changes were effected in dealing with the peas-
antry and agricultural productivity. Stalin had
little love for the Russian peasantry, which he
believed was holding the country to ransom.
Industrial expansion was jeopardised by the
crisis in agriculture. If the peasantry were to be
appeased, more goods would need to be released
for their consumption. This was in contradiction
to a policy of catching up rapidly with the
advanced capitalist countries. No Soviet leader
ever lost sight of Russia’s comparative weakness,
which was believed to offer a temptation to the
capitalist nations to attack it. The more relaxed
attitudes of the mid-1920s, which also affected
foreign policy – the slogan here used to describe
Soviet aims was ‘peaceful coexistence’ – came to
an end in 1927 and 1928. The Soviet leadership
was beset by acute new fears that some concerted
onslaught on the Soviet Union was imminent.
The Soviet policy in China of supporting the
nationalist revolution of Chiang Kai-shek had col-
lapsed when Chiang turned on his former com-
munist partners. Relations with Britain had
deteriorated, and Britain, France and Poland were
credited with plans to launch an offensive against
the Soviet Union. There was a sense that the
breathing space in Europe and the Far East could
be short. The worldwide depression added a new
element of uncertainty.
We have little indication of Stalin’s thinking
during this or any other period. One can plausibly
surmise that in 1928 and 1929 he was still much
concerned with rivals and criticisms of his policies
and economic developments, which were certainly
not going well. The problem of the change of
course of the economic and social policies of the
Soviet state has been debated by historians and we
may never be able to fathom what perceptions
and plans were Stalin’s at any precise moment.
Certainly a vociferous group of his supporters was
calling for rapid industrialisation and Stalin leant
on them in his struggle with opponents of the pol-
icy. At what point in particular did he regard NEP
as an obstacle to be cleared away if the pace of
Russian industrialisation and its direction were to
conform to his own objectives? If industrialisation
were to be pushed ahead rapidly, the necessary
investment would not significantly come from for-
eign loans, or even significantly from exports of
grain, but from the higher productivity of workers
and peasants and a holding back of consumption
by them. In plain English, the industrial advance
was achieved at the sacrifice of their own living
standards, the work being rewarded with only low
real wages. Long-term state planning by the State
Planning Commission was certainly well under
way and resources were increasingly transferred
to large-scale industrial projects. By 1926 the