Soviet authorities, who wanted to create Polish laborers, future citizens of the Polish Soviet Republic, built several factories as well as power plants and telephone lines. This also brought about improvement in the quality of life, but all efforts were destroyed in the early 1930s, when collectivization began (see collectivization in the Soviet Union). Polish peasants opposed it fiercely, and thousands of them perished in the Holodomor (Enforced famine).