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Kulak opposition to collectivization had been anticipated, and was confronted by force. Peasants — by no means all of them kulaks — slaughtered their livestock rather than let the collectives have them, precipitating a meat shortage that was to last for decades. They and anyone else who impeded the imposition of the programme were carted off in droves to detention camps. Worse still were the grain-procurement quotas and the punitive ways in which they were enforced. Peasants had long been used to hiding grain from requisitioning squads, but things had reached such a point where there was virtually nothing left to hide; and the quotas demanded were set unrealistically high. The impetus to what turned out to be a major human disaster was the regime’s attitude.

It was interested in industry-building, in infrastructural development and in resettlement. It was not interested in agriculture except as a means of dredging up resources to realize its ambitions. Peasants not prepared to work under direction in a collective should find jobs in towns. If they opposed the new system in any way they should be arrested and forced to work on government projects. But the combination of ideology, bureaucracy and enthusiasm created havoc in Ukraine. The Communist agronomist who had initiated the tractor-station programme described the consequences of the policy to create gigantic collective farms:

The policy … was implemented in an exceptionally bureaucratic and senseless manner. Collective farms of 55 to 100 hectares were suddenly transformed, without adequate technical preparation, into collectives covering tens of thousands of hectares … In some cases, ‘to simplify matters’, a whole region containing hundreds of villages was to declared to be a single collective. All boundaries between village lands were eliminated; and the entire expanse … [was] divided into farms of several thousand hectares each — without any regard to where the villages were actually situated. [Hence] cattle and agricultural machinery were scattered about over scores of kilometres. ²⁴

Many of the planners, as well as those charged with implementation, were raw recruits to their allotted specialisms. Furthermore, behind them loomed authority demanding results. In these circumstances, what enthusiasm could not achieve desperation often did. Inevitably things went wrong, but scapegoats were readily found to take the blame. Hundreds of thousands of peasant families were uprooted from their ancestral villages along with various others who had run foul of authority. Many of them were transported to distant and unpleasant places which were short of labour. As chaos mounted, reports arrived in the Kremlin of a growing death toll, and of crowds of destitute and starving peasants clogging the roads. In 1932 the cities were also on the brink of starvation. The worst year of all was 1933, when it has been calculated that deaths exceeded births by almost 6 million. ²⁵ Then the crisis turned. The chaos subsided; conditions began to ease. Meanwhile a combination of censorship, propaganda and clever public relations muted concern about what had happened and diverted attention from where responsibility lay

The mood of urban Russia in the 1930s was surprisingly optimistic. The focus was on youth and hope and the building of a socialist paradise. Living conditions verged on the impossible. There were huge shortages and lengthy waiting-lines outside the shops. Many goods that were obtainable were shoddy. Only the black market, patronage networks and protektsiia, the deployment of friendships and favours, made life tolerable for many people. But for the young migrants there was hope and a sense of purpose. Mundane labour suddenly became heroic. A burly miner called Stakhanov, who cut more coal in a shift than others, was lauded like an heroic knight of old. It became possible for young people to rise, to exercise authority, to wield power. They were building a new and better world. As in Mussolini’s Italy, there was a sense of creating a new kind of man - in this case Homo sovieticus. ²⁶