Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"This culminated in a secret speech Khrushchev gave to the Communist Party Congress in 1956, in which he denounced Stalin, a man he had slavishly served for 30 years, as a murderer and a criminal." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "Between the wars, and especially during the 1930s, the rate of growth of the Soviet economy outpaced all other countries except Japan . . ." [Hobsbawm: Extremes, p. 377]". . . compulsory collectivization in cooperative or state farms, was and remained disastrous. Its immediate effect was to lower grain output and almost halve livestock, thus producing a major famine in 1932-33." [Hobsbawm: Extremes, p. 383] "It was at this point that the system became an autocracy under Stalin, and one seeking to impose total control over all aspects of its citizens' lives and thoughts, all their existence being, so far as possible, subordinated to the achievement of the system's objectives as defined and specified by the supreme authority. This was certainly not envisaged by Marx and Engels." [Hobsbawm: Extremes, p, 387]