ABSTRACT
The description of Joseph Stalin’s role in the second revolution would be incomplete without a mention of the new social policy which he inspired perhaps more directly than any other part of the ‘great change’. Stalin aimed at securing by decree the reserve of manpower for industry which in most countries had been created by the chronic and spontaneous flight of impoverished peasants to the towns. Stalin’s call for industrialization at first fired the imagination of the urban working classes. Stalin tenaciously pressed on with the development of new gigantic and modern iron- and coal-mines in the Urals and in Siberia, paying little or no heed to obstacles. Stalin’s view on the role of political force, reflected in his deeds rather than his words, oozes the atmosphere of twentieth-century totalitarianism. The tour de force in farming impelled Stalin to attempt a similar tour de force in industry.
