"Dizzy With Success"
The price of collectivization was so high that the March 2, 1930, issue of Pravda contained Stalin's article Dizzy with success, in which he called for a temporary halt to the process:
"It is a fact that by February 20 of this year 50 percent of the peasant farms throughout the U.S.S.R. had been collectivized. That means that by February 20, 1930, we had overfulfilled the five-year plan of collectivization by more than 100 per cent.... some of our comrades have become dizzy with success and for the moment have lost clearness of mind and sobriety of vision."
After the publication of the article, the pressure for collectivization temporarily abated and peasants started leaving collective farms. According to Martin Kitchen, the number of members of collective farms dropped by 50% in 1930. But soon collectivization was intensified again, and by 1936, about 90% of Soviet agriculture was collectivized.
Read more about this topic: Collectivization In The Soviet Union
Famous quotes containing the words dizzy and/or success:
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Life overflows without ambitious pains;
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And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It’s not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can’t live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn’t describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that ... the ghosts you chase you never catch.”
—John Malkovich (b. 1953)