* collectivitzation leading to the Holodomor in Ukraine, mass famine in Kazakhstan, and hunger throughout the USSR, killing millions upon millions through starvation. All the act of a single, paranoid, murderous tyrant.
* Kruschev's love affair with corn, that ended up being a crop failure after a few lucky years in smaller trials. This is actually the more level-headed play than Stalin's, but such a large shift, even with a trial, was a gigantic failure.
Lately I've been completely enamored with the book How Asia Works lately, and in detailing the success and failure of many different Asian nations development in the 20th century, it homes in on agricultural independence as a corner stone for further economic development to industrialization. Without a broad base of independent small farmers, that have small farms that they can directly profit from, a large base of a middle class can never develop. Large industrial farms, favored both by capitalists and Marxists concentrate power into too few hands and are also far less productive in total agricultural output, even if they they are more profitable. It doesn't talk much about Sri Lanka, focusing more on north east Asia, but I would be quite curious about how and if Sri Lanka's land reforms from the 70s were effective.