Yes it can both be true. Farmers when left alone don't unify build an army and attack you. The simply can not do that for essentially logistical reasons. Howev

Yes it can both be true. Farmers when left alone don't unify build an army and attack you. The simply can not do that for essentially logistical reasons. However, when you try to completely change a whole society, destroying a very large quantity of its economic assets, while also doing massive internal reforms, both in the state and the party, you put yourself in a dangerous situation. Not primary because of the farmers but rather that the very political system you build your power on starts to collapse. > Stalin was able to blame the farmers for trying to hoard grain and eliminate their leaders Not sure what you mean by 'he was able to blame', of course he was, he controlled virtually ever channel of information. Most of the population, and certainty the farmers did not 'buy' this propaganda. > And as we can't see the future, it wasn't obvious beforehand how bad of an idea collectivization would turn out to be, so I presume he felt it was a gamble worth taking. Literally every single expert, including communist from his own party knew it was a horrible idea. Its not like this was the first time they tried to get the farmers to do things they did not want to do. During the initial (1917-1921) attempted to claim the farmers property they learned that it was not at all an easy thing to do. The hole regime almost collapsed in 1921 and they had to bring back markets even when they hated the concept. He had to replace lots of people and use every political tool in the book to actually manage it. Its a true testimony of Stalin political control that he was able to pull this off.