Kulak

For the Belgian university, see KULAK.

Kulaks (Russian: кула́к, kulak, "fist", literally meaning tight-fisted; , kurkul) is a pejorative term extensively used in Soviet political language, originally referring to relatively wealthy peasants in the Russian Empire who owned larger farms and used hired labour, as a result of the Stolypin reform introduced since 1906. Among Peter Stolypin's intentions was the creation of a group of prosperous farmers who would support the Tsar's government. In 1912, 16 per cent (11% in 1903) of Russian farmers had over 8 acres (32,000 m²) per male family member (a threshold used to distinguish middle-class and prosperous farmers in statistics).

The peasantry was tentatively divided into three broad categories: bednyaks, or poor peasants, seredniaks, or medium-prosperity ones, and kulaks, the rich farmers. In addition, there was a category of batraks, or landless agriculture workers for hire (farm hands).

After the Russian Revolution, Bolsheviks considered only batraks and bednyaks as true allies of the proletariat. Serednyaks were considered unreliable, "hesitating" allies, and kulaks were seen as class enemies by definition. However, often those declared to be kulaks were not especially prosperous. Both peasants and Soviet officials were often uncertain as to what constituted a kulak, and the term was often used to label anyone who used hired labour or had more property than was considered "normal" according to some criteria. At first, being a kulak carried no penalties, other than occasional mistrust from the Soviet authorities. During the height of Stalinism, however, people identified as kulaks were subjected to particularly harsh measures.

In May 1929 the Sovnarkom issued a decree that formalised the notion of "kulak household" (кулацкое хозяйство). Any of the following characteristics defined a kulak:

regular usage of hired labour;
ownership of a mill, a creamery (маслобойня, butter-making rig), or other complex equipment, or a complex machine with mechanical motor;
systematic letting of agricultural equipment or facilities for rent;
involving in commerce, money-lending, commercial brokerage, or "other types of non-labour occupation".

By the last item, any peasant who sold his surplus on the market could be automatically classified as kulak. In 1930 this list was extended by including those who were letting industrial plants, e.g., sawmills, and who rented land to other farmers. Gregory Zinoviev, a well-known Soviet politician, said in 1924, “We are fond of describing any peasant who has enough to eat as a kulak.” At the same time, ispolkoms (executive committees of local Soviets) of republics, oblasts and krais were given rights to add other criteria, depending on local conditions.

In 1928, there was a food shortage in the cities and in the army. The Soviet government encouraged the formation of collective farms and, in 1929, introduced a policy of forced collectivisation. Some peasants were attracted to collectivisation by the idea that they would be in a position to afford tractors and would enjoy increased production.

Whether peasants were resisting expropriation and exile or collectivisation and servitude they often retaliated against the state by smashing implements and killing animals. Live animals would have to be handed over to the collectives whereas meat and hides could respectively be consumed and concealed or sold. Many peasants chose to slaughter livestock, even horses, rather than to pass it into common property. In the first two months of 1930 millions of cattle, horses, pigs, sheep and goats were slaughtered. Through this and bad weather a quarter of the entire nation’s livestock perished, a greater loss than had been sustained during the Civil War and a loss that was not compensated for until the 1960s.

This huge slaughtering caused Sovnarkom to issue a series of decrees to prosecute "the malicious slaughtering of livestock" (хищнический убой скота) Many peasants also attempted to sabotage the collectives by attacking members and government officials.

Stalin requested harsh measures to put an end to the kulak resistance. In a speech given at a Marxist agrarian conference, he stated that, "From a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks, we have gone over to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class." The party agreed to the use of force in the collectivisation and ‘dekulakization’ efforts. The kulaks were to be liquidated as a class and subject to one of three fates: death sentence, labour settlements (not to be confused with labor camps, although the former were also managed by the GULAG), or deportation "out of regions of total collectivisation of the agriculture". Tens of thousands of alleged kulaks were summarily executed, property was confiscated to form collective farms, and many families were deported to unpopulated areas of Siberia and Soviet Central Asia.

Often local officials were assigned minimum quotas of kulaks to identify, and were forced to use their discretionary powers to find kulaks wherever they could. This led to many cases where a farmer who only employed his sons, or any family with a metal roof on their house were labelled kulaks and deported.

The same fate met those labelled "kulak helpers" (подкулачник), those who sided with kulaks in their opposition to collectivisation.

A new wave of repressions, this time against "ex-kulaks", was started in 1937, as part of the Great Purge, after the NKVD Order no. 00447. Those deemed ex-kulaks had only two options: death sentence or labour camps.

According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931. Books say that 1,317,022 reached the destination. The remaining 486,370 must have died or escaped. Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521.

It is difficult to determine how many people died because of the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class". The data from the Soviet archives do not tell us exactly how many people escaped and survived and what number of deaths would have been if there had been no deportation. These data do not include people who were executed or died in prisons and gulags rather than died in labour colonies. Many historians consider the great famine a result of the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" and therefore they estimate the death toll at about 7 million. A collection of estimates is available at this site.

The majority of "kulaks" were hard workers. This sometimes led to situations hard to believe. When resettled to Siberia and Kazakhstan, after some time many "kulaks" gained prosperity again. This fact served as a base of repressions against some sections of NKVD that were in charge of the "labour settlements" (трудовые поселения) in 1938-1939, which permitted "kulakization" (окулачивание) of the "labour settlers" (трудопоселенцев). The fact that new settlers became more prosperous than the neighbouring kolkhozes was explained by "wreckage" and "criminal negligence".

A less often expressed view on the "kulaks" defines them as community leaders of the non-Russian populations. They were families that were respected as they served, often since generations, their communities by providing advise, negotiate deals, played an important role in conflict management etc. The removal of the "kulaks" evened the path for the "russification" of those communities: Russian party members were to put upon society a centrally directed structure (The Bolshevik Party in Moscow) that would systematically (Five Year Plans, reform of the educational system, e.g., the introduction of the Cyrillic writing in stead of the Arabic alphabet,...) work to dissolve the traditional communities in "the current of populations"; assimilation into the Russian culture.

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Kulak

See also