Which leader implemented rapid industrialization in the USSR resulting in famine and millions of deaths?

• A. Joseph Stalin
• B. Vladimir Lenin
• C. Nikita Khrushchev
• D. Mikhail Gorbachev

Answer: (A)

Rapid industrialization in the USSR and the severe human cost that came with it were driven by Joseph Stalin. He pushed the country to modernize through centralized planning, most famously the First Five-Year Plan starting in 1928, which targeted heavy industry and military production to quickly transform the economy. To fund this push, agriculture was reorganized into collective farms and peasants were pressured to surrender a large share of their crops, leading to enormous disruption in food production and distribution. The result was devastating famine in the early 1930s, with millions dying, most tragically in Ukraine but across several regions. Lenin laid the groundwork with the New Economic Policy, which allowed some private enterprise, but it was Stalin who launched the relentless, coercive drive to industrialize, not Khrushchev or Gorbachev, who pursued reforms in later decades.