ON THIS DAY ·
Stalin publishes “Dizzy with Success”
Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success” blames local officials for forcing peasants into collective farms — and millions walk out of them within weeks.
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The moment in context
The state’s need for grain lay at the center of the Great Turn. Under Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1921, peasants could sell on a free market and hold grain back when prices did not suit them. To Stalin, the grain crisis of 1927–28 showed that a government dependent on those decisions could not supply rapid industrialization. He sought a system in which the state could take grain without bargaining for it.
From Collectivisation in the USSR, chapter 2 of The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953 (1930).
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The grain crisis convinced Stalin the market had failed. Low fixed prices and scarce goods gave peasants little incentive to sell; some held grain back or fed it to livestock. State purchases fell sharply…
- The turn — Tulchyn and “Dizzy with Success”, March 1930. Revolt in February and March 1930, especially in the Ukrainian border districts around Tulchyn, forced Stalin’s only retreat from collectivization.…
- What it changed — The famines of 1930–33. Moscow’s compulsory quotas claimed grain regardless of the harvest, while slaughtered livestock could no longer serve as a reserve. Harvests fell in…
Then ask the room: Was collectivisation above all an economic policy or a political one? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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