Atlas shrugs, Atlas starves. The End. The most fatal flaw in Ayn Rand's book.

[Fool Count]

71. Most exercises in "what if" alternative history end up being baseless,

if fun, belletristic. But this is one of those rare cases when the answer is very clear and unambiguous:
No, there was no other way to modernize the USSR, and yes, it would have been inevitably destroyed
by the Nazis should it fail to modernize. It was clear to anyone in the late 20s that Hitler would come to
power in Germany and attack USSR - it was literally written into his program. It was also clear that
Russia had only about a decade for that and had to rely exclusively on internal sources of capital.
Did Chinese modernization happen in 10 years? Was it not based almost entirely on foreign investment?
Was China under any kind of external existential threat while doing it?

Who would have invested in the lone socialist country in the 1930-s when the capitalist world was
consumed by the Great Depression? That is even an easier question to answer - no one would.
Stalin had to extract the capital (and do it at an unconscionable rate) from the only productive sector
of Soviet economy - agriculture. That's why collectivization became a necessity. That's why it faced
real and stiff opposition both within the Party and in the society overall. That's why this opposition had
to be suppressed so violently and undemocratically. There was simply no time for any other nonsense.
The cold war liberal critics of "Stalinism" either don't understand the history or simply hate socialism so
much that they would really prefer Nazi victory in WWII. I suggest they consider another alternative history -
pre-industrial but "democratic" USSR falling to Hitler's Germany with all its resources and Lebensraum.
Sure, you may not care about consequences of that for the Soviet people, but think about how different
your own history would have been then.