ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the crisis period, 1928–1932, as a continuation of the 1920 war with Poland and the “war” with the peasantry during the revolutionary era. In 1920 and 1921, Stalin was not in command, and he followed Lenin's lead to sign a treaty with Poland, the Riga treaty of 1920, and Lenin's concession to the peasantry by instituting the moderate agrarian policies of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. The Riga treaty ceded territory to the Poles that Stalin considered crucial to Soviet defense. NEP policies conceded agrarian control of the land to the peasants that many Bolsheviks likewise felt put the Bolshevik government at risk. Stalin regarded both “treaties” as temporary. By 1928, Stalin became convinced of Poland's intention to restart a war, and that triggered his sudden and dramatic turn against NEP. The chapter explores the role of Felix Dzerzhinsky in fostering Stalin's concern about war and argues that Stalin's turn toward harsh measures of rural collectivization was motivated by the urgent need to secure food supplies for the military. Like later crisis periods, the Polish-peasant crisis was characterized by harsh measures of repression, in this case against the peasantry, also by a massive campaign of industrial-military mobilization (the first five-year plan), and by intense diplomatic efforts, in this case to secure a non-aggression treaty with Poland. The latter was signed in late 1932. As a result, the regime began to deescalate levels of repression and mobilization in 1933, though not in time to prevent widespread famine. Stalin used the famine to punish Ukrainians, in particular, for supposed collaboration with the Poles.
