ABSTRACT
Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) carried out a second major revolution, one that completely changed the configuration of Soviet society. Aspect of Stalin's economic revolution was collectivization, the transfer of all peasant land, whether managed by the commune or individuals, into new agricultural units called collective farms. Stalin and the CPSU used three basic instruments to ensure the Soviet people's all-out participation in industrialization and the Stalinist system: persuasion, incentive, and coercion. All three played a continuing role in Soviet society. The country was a federation of Soviet socialist republics, as Stalin's new constitution of 1936 confirmed. A huge bureaucracy and managerial class ran day-to-day life in the Soviet Union. The physical, financial, and emotional damage to the Soviet Union and its population was colossal, and the impact of the Second World War, known as the Great Patriotic War, continues to be felt in Russia, Ukraine, and the other former Soviet republics to this day.
