the 'great leap forward' was a result of the policy of forcing all the peasants into big collective farms (aka collectivization); it has been a tragedy in all f

the 'great leap forward' was a result of the policy of forcing all the peasants into big collective farms (aka collectivization); it has been a tragedy in all former communist countries that adopted this policy (Poland didn't adopt it). In the Soviet Union it led to the famine of 1932-1933; this one killed seven millions. Now the collective farms were supposed to press money out of agriculture, money that was needed for developing heavy industry; they did that, but it cost millions of lives, In China they also had strange notions of backyard steel furnaces in agricultural communes and the four pests campaign. In Russia they had the great terror - but that came later than collectivization.