By 1927, precisely as the Opposition had warned, the kulaks were indeed holding a gun to the head of the regime. To force prices up they withheld their grain from the market, and hoarded gold and arms in preparation for a showdown. The cities were threatened with hunger. The threat of capitalist restoration suddenly became real. The bureaucracy reacted in panic, attempting to stamp out the danger by administrative decree and, where that failed, by force. They imposed compulsory requisitions of grain. The kulaks resisted; the bureaucracy responded with an all-out attack.

The Left Opposition had called for the voluntary collectivisation of land through, as Lenin had envisaged, providing tools, tractors, and electricity to the model farms in order to persuade the poor peasants of its advantages over individual smallholdings. But, having previously opposed it, Stalin now decided to force through rapid collectivisation by decree. Stalin’s declaration of war of the peasantry had nothing in common with Marxism; it was a blind reflex action, with disastrous results.

From the proportion of collective farms being under 2%, by 1932 it was already over 60%, by 1936 nearly 90%. But this collectivisation was forced through on the basis of existing equipment suited for small-scale farming, not modern large-scale agriculture.

Rural Russia was convulsed by civil war. Famine broke out as the peasants slaughtered their animals sooner than give them to the regime. An estimated ten million people perished as a direct consequence of these bureaucratic excesses. Whole peasant communities and even whole national groups were murdered or deported. In the cities, bread rationing returned.

These events shattered NEP, ended Stalin’s alliance with Bukharin and the party right wing, and formed the real basis for his plunge into violent ultra-leftism between 1927 and 1934.

Industrialization had also long been argued for by the Opposition and scornfully rejected under pressure from the right. Now Stalin could see no alternative to industrialization – but as a panic measure, under ruthless compulsion from above. Having half-heartedly adopted a five-year plan of economic development in 1928, the order now went out to complete the plan in four years!

Vast projects were launched – dams, power stations, steel plants, mines – which transformed the Soviet Union within the space of a decade. While the capitalist world was plunged into the Depression of the 1930s, Soviet industrial production leaped ahead. Under capitalism, such concerted development would have been impossible. Russia would have continued to languish in hopeless poverty like most of the third world to this day. In that sense at least, “Socialism”, said Trotsky, “has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital… but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.” (The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 1)

However, under bureaucratic rule, this development took place at a terrible cost. Orders, often wildly unrealistic, were issued from bureaucrats’ offices. Failure to execute them was treated as sabotage. Forced labour was used on a vast scale. Up to 15 million Soviet citizens – peasants who opposed collectivization and, later, opponents of every description, were herded into slave labour camps. Countless numbers perished.

The working class swelled from 11 million in 1928 to 23 million in 1932. Passes, called “Labour Books”, were introduced in 1931 to chain workers to their jobs. While the bureaucracy cultivated a labour aristocracy, the value of workers’ wages dropped by two-thirds between 1928 and 1935. While milk and meat consumption dropped for the population as a whole, the bureaucracy became entrenched in their privileged lifestyle.

But in spite of the workers’ superhuman sacrifices, the Soviet Union continued to lag far behind the industrialized capitalist countries in almost every aspect. Its cultural backwardness could not be overcome by bureaucratic dictat. Sophisticated new industries, requiring a high technical level, could not be built like railway lines. To enforce industrialization on this basis, driving millions of workers to the limit and crushing all opposition, the most ruthless centralisation of power was needed. The bureaucratic regime degenerated into out-and-out police dictatorship.