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History’s Most Catastrophic Man-made Errors

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 34 min

Wanggongchang Explosion - Beijing — The Wanggongchang Explosion devastated Beijing. Pintrest

21. Peasant Protests Morphed Into Violence That Led to Disaster

Soviet guards seizing food from Ukrainian peasants in 1932. Pinterest

Soviet peasants protested collectivization peacefully at first, writing letters to the authorities. When their pleas were ignored, violence broke out, with some villagers lynching collectivization’s local enforcers. Others turned to sabotage, including the burning of crops, or slaughtering the livestock that was about to get seized from them and handed over to the collective farms.

While the peasant’s grievances and responses were understandable, their open defiance of Stalin brought disaster down upon their heads. The Soviet dictator responded with typical brutality, and deployed the machinery of state to crush and bring them to heel. The authorities’ wrath fell most heavily on the better-off kulak peasants, who were seen as collectivization’s most intransigent opponents.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.