Soviet terror produced famine and depopulation, not industrialization.

Evidence

Finally, all doubts one still might have nourished about the amount of truth in the current theory, according to which the terror of the late twenties and thirties was “the high price in suffering” exacted by industrialization and economic progress, are laid at rest by this first glimpse into the actual state of affairs and the course of events in one particular region. Terror produced nothing of the sort. The best documented resuit of dekulakization, collectivization, and the Great Purge was neither progress nor rapid industrialization but famine, chaotic conditions in the production of food, and depopulation. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 47

Categorization

• XREF: Directly refutes the modernization-apology for Soviet terror — a claim pattern that recurs in later debates about whether repressive regimes ‘deliver’ development.