After the launch of the Five-Year Plan, the economic policy of the USSR and its regime changed. Overturning the Marxist theses, Stalin theorized the escalation of the class struggle as the full realization of socialism was approaching. This policy shift and ideological revision triggered the repression of the prosperous peasantry, kwown as kulaks. Forced industrialization required the mobilization of the workforce and new economic resources for the purchase of machinery on the international market. Both these problems were faced and partly resolved through the colonization of Siberia, which was very rich in raw materials for export, and the use of the forced labor of prisoners, locked up in special labor camps. The city of Magadan, built in the Siberian Far East, responded to all these needs.
