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He let the serfs "keep their farms"? Isn't communism about state ownership of the land? Private lands were confiscated for the use of the state Pat, so no personal property. What about the thousands of workers that died during the 5 year plans? Or the thousands of peasants who were sent to gulags for being unwilling to give up their land to create collective farms? Why do you respect someone for "experimenting" with communism if it led to the deaths of millions?
Actually Pat's partially right on this one. Stalin did allow, eventually, a small number of peasant kolektivs keep their farms. They were not individual ownerships, but the never were even prior to the Bolsheviks. They were originally run by the Mir, which is kind of a communal farming co-op. Stalin allowed a few of these to exist because they worked better than the sovkhozs farms and he didn't want violent uprisings during the war.

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