Something that goes unsaid a lot of the time, or even gets buried in conversation, is the fact that the USSR was fighting a civil war until 1928! It only ever arguably ended, as the USSR was constantly pushed into a corner by reactionary forces international and domestic, be they merely bourgeois, monarchist or full-blown comprador, for its entire existence start-to-finish. This is not some situation where the totalitarian Soviet government imposed its brutal, indestructible will upon poor villagers because they wanted their wheat and were willing to kill them for it. Quite the opposite wherein reactionary kulaks would rather have burned their homesteads to the ground and commit murder than cooperate with the people’s state in its redistribution efforts. Wherein monarchist sympathies held sway over large regions of the nation, and Monarchist sympathizers were armed.
Something that goes unsaid a lot of the time, or even gets buried in conversation, is the fact that the USSR was fighting a civil war until 1928! It only ever arguably ended, as the USSR was constantly pushed into a corner by reactionary forces international and domestic, be they merely bourgeois, monarchist or full-blown comprador, for its entire existence start-to-finish. This is not some situation where the totalitarian Soviet government imposed its brutal, indestructible will upon poor villagers because they wanted their wheat and were willing to kill them for it. Quite the opposite wherein reactionary kulaks would rather have burned their homesteads to the ground and commit murder than cooperate with the people’s state in its redistribution efforts. Wherein monarchist sympathies held sway over large regions of the nation, and Monarchist sympathizers were armed.
Agree 100%, just commenting as it seemed related.