"Stalin's economic achievements were remarkable form a purely material point of view... but occurred...with absolute disregard for the welfare and wishes of its subjects."
             During Stalin's command of the USSR, his economic achievements were nothing short of remarkable. Rapid industrialisation and restructuring of agricultural arrangements was the basis of his own economic revolution for the Soviet Union in which the formerly technologically backward and economically inefficient nation would become a world superpower. However, during the quarter of a century of Stalin's dictatorial rule (between 1928 and 1953), the hundreds of millions of people whose lives he dominated in the Soviet Union were forced to suffer the many dire consequences of this success: famine in the Ukraine; squalid living conditions accompanied overcrowded urban centres; and an effectively complete lack of freedom (in terms of migration and in terms of private ownership of land) was in place for almost all of the population.
             In 1928, following a turbulent decade of revolution, war and the instigation of a completely new political and economic system, Joseph Stalin came to power. He was forced to contemplate how to create a strong, self-reliant Russia. His answer was the policy of "Socialism in one country", that is the development of socialism within and the strengthening of Russia before advancing to other countries (Cowie: 1993, 159). The main emphasis being on the development of a self-sufficient state, that is independence of international factors and an equal level of technological advancement. The Soviet Union was to achieve this through rapid expansion of industry, particularly heavy industry, and increased efficiency of agricultural enterprises.
             The reason for rapid industrialisation was that Russia, according to Stalin, (quoted by Bucklow: 1991, 233), was "...fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced countries...