This book describes in detail the disastrous collectivization program of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Conquest estimates the loss of life through starvation and oppression was 14.5 million people, including some six million Ukrainian kulaks. Although boasting some of the most fertile soil on earth, the USSR system of collective farming never worked. Without ownership, the farmers had little incentive to be productive. Over the decades, massive quantities of grain had to be imported to provide bread for the people. This history is a telling indictment of Communism and Socialism as economic theory.
