27. Roots of a Man-made Disaster: Stalin’s Obsession With Industrializing the USSR
Stalin’s main objective when he rose to power in the 1920s – aside from hanging on to power and crushing all who stood in the way – was to rapidly industrialize and modernize the backward USSR. He reasoned that unless his country caught up to the capitalist West, communism was doomed. As he put it in a 1931 speech: “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this difference in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed“.
Stalin was prescient. Ten years later, Nazi Germany launched a massive onslaught that came within a hair’s breadth of snuffing out the communist state. By then, however, Stalin had forced industrialization down his country’s throat, and the USSR had the industrial capacity to match, and then exceed the Germans in arms and armaments. Between that, stubborn tenacity, and astonishing sacrifices, the Soviets managed to claw their way out of the abyss and on to ultimate victory. By 1945, the USSR was a superpower and an industrial giant second only to America.
