But is this simply part of the order of Nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep—and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Which event in Russian history does the sentiment of this passage most point to? the crowning of Nicholas II, and the bourgeois’ enjoyment of luxuries the start of World War I, and Russia’s hopes of benefitting from it the beginning of collectivization, and the idea that all should share in wealth the Soviet famine, in which so many people died due to poorly planned policies.