Beginning with the so-called Emancipation Act of 1861, the peasant farmers of the northern and central Ukraine developed a reasonably successful agrarian program based largely on private ownership of land and its resources. The people who lived in this region a hundred years ago were prosperous, independent farmers.  With the revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war, the economic situation changed.  At first, the central government merely requisitioned agricultural surpluses.  In 1920, the government nationalized major industries including certain agricultural industries such as sugar.  The immediate result of these polices was a drastic decline in productivity.  In 1924, Lenin instituted what has become known as the New Economic Policy (or NEP).  NEP was an attempt to combine market economics and socialism and in the Ukraine this period marked a period of Ukrainization of culture.  Many industries were denationalized and Soviet agricultural  output increased under NEP.  The economic well being of many central Ukrainian residents improved greatly during this period.  Lenin died in 1926 and was replaced by Stalin.  Originally a supporter or NEP, Stalin came to view it as an unwelcome compromise with socialism’s enemies--the middle class.  In response to the peasantry’s refusal to sell their surplus goods to the state as a rate set by the state, Stalin, in 1929, instituted forced collectivization.  In many areas, especially the Ukraine, collectivization was resisted with force of arms.  The forced collectivization process resulted in the destruction of an entire class of people:  the upper middle class peasantry called the Kulaks.  Millions of people died during collectivization.