In the Soviet Union agriculture still remains a problem. The country that first launched
a man into space still finds it difficult to feed all its people year in and year out.
Some Soviets trace this relative backwardness all the way back to the Stalin era. The
forced collectivization of farming-forcing the peasants to give up their own land to work on
state farms from which most of the produce was taken by the State, was bitterly resented by
the peasants. Stalin's aim was to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union. "We must catch
up with the West in ten years or they will crush us", he said in 1930. He may have been right.
But the upheavals to the population, the slaughter of animals, and the emphasis on industry
have left the Soviet Union with the legacy of a weak agricultural sector.