`Dekulakization'

`Dekulakization'

For collectivization to succeed, the poor and middle peasants had to be convinced of the superiority of collective work of the soil, which would allow the wide-scale introduction of machinery. Furthermore, socialist industry had to be capable of producing the tractors and machines that would constitute the material support for collectivization. Finally, a correct attitude had to be defined for the kulaks, the irreconcilable adversaries of socialism in the countryside. This last problem led to significant discussions within the Party.

The question was posed as follows, just before the political changes in favor of the kolkhozy. Mikoyan said on March 1, 1929:

`In spite of the political authority of the party in the countryside the kulak in the economic sphere is more authoritative: his farm is better, his horse is better, his machines are better and he is listened to on economic matters .... the middle peasant leans towards the economic authority of the kulak. And his authority will be strong as long as we have no large kolkhozy.'

Davies, op. cit. , p. 62.

Kulak rumors and indoctrination

Kulak authority was based to a great extent on the cultural backwardness, illiteracy, superstition and medieval religious beliefs of the majority of peasants. Hence, the kulak's most powerful weapon, also the most difficult to confront, was rumor and indoctrination.


In 1928--1929, identical rumors were found throughout the Soviet territory. In the kolkhoz, women and children would be collectivized. In the kolkhoz, everyone would sleep under a single gigantic blanket. The Bolshevik government would force women to cut their hair so that it could be exported. The Bolsheviks would mark women on the forehead for identification. They would Russify local populations.

Viola, op. cit. , p. 154.

All sorts of other terrifying `information' was heard. In the kolkhozy, a special machine would burn the old so that they would not eat any more wheat. Children would be taken away from their parents and sent to crèches. Four thousand women would be sent to China to pay for the Chinese Eastern Railway. The kolkhozians would be the first ones sent in a war. Then a rumor announced that soon the White Armies would return. Believers were told about the next coming of the Anti-Christ and that the world would end in two years.

Viola, op. cit. , p. 154. Davies, op. cit. , pp. 212--213.

In the Tambov okrug, the kulaks carefully mixed rumor and political propaganda. They said that


`(S)etting up the kolkhozy is a kind of serf labour (barshchina) where the peasant will again have to work under the rod ...; the Soviet government should enrich the peasants first and then push through the establishment of kolkhozy, and not do what it is doing now, which is to try to make a rich farm out of ruined farms which have no grain.'

Davies, op. cit. , p. 221.

Here we see the budding alliance between the kulaks and Bukharin: the kulaks did not openly oppose Soviet power nor even the kolkhozy: but, the peasants should first be allowed to enrich themselves, and we can always see later about collectivization. Just as Bukharin spoke of the `feudal exploitation of the peasantry', the kulaks denounced `serfdom'.

What should be done with the kulaks?

How should the kulak be treated? In June 1929, Karpinsky, a senior member of the Party, wrote that the kulaks should be allowed to join kolkhozy when collectivization included the majority of families, if they put all their means of production into the indivisible fund. This position was upheld by Kaminsky, the president of the All-Union Kolkhoz Council. The same point of view was held by the leadership. But the majority of delegates, local Party leaders, were `categorically opposed' to the admission of kulaks into kolkhozy. A delegate stated:

`(I)f he gets into the kolkhoz somehow or other he will turn an association for the joint working of the land into an association for working over Soviet power.'

Ibid. , pp. 138--139.

In July 1929, the Secretary for the Central Volga Region, Khataevich, declared that

`(I)ndividual kulak elements may be admitted to collective associations if they completely renounce their personal ownership of means of production, if the kolkhozy have a solid poor-peasant and middle-peasant nucleus and if correct leadership is assured.'

Ibid. , p. 140.

However, there were already several cases that were going in the opposite direction. In Kazakhstan, in August 1928, 700 bai, semi-feudal lords, and their families, were exiled. Each family owned at least one hundred cattle, which were distributed to the already-constituted kolkhozy and to peasants who were being encouraged to join kolkhozy. In February 1929, a Siberian regional Party conference decided not to allow kulaks. In June, the North Caucasus made the same decision.

Ibid. , pp. 140--141.

The September 17 issue of Pravda presented a major report on the kolkhoz Red Land Improver in Lower Volga. Established in 1924, this model kolkhoz received 300,000 rubles, credit from the State. But in 1929, its socialized property amounted to only 1,800 rubles. The funds had been used for personal gain. The president of the kolkhoz was a Socialist Revolutionary; the leadership included former traders, the son of a priest and four other former Socialist Revolutionaries.

Ibid. , p. 144.

Molotov summarized the affair by; `kulak-SR elements will often hide behind the kolkhoz smokescreen'; a `merciless struggle' was necessary against the kulak, as was the improvement of the organization of the poor peasants and of the alliance between the poor and middle peasants.
Ibid. , p. 145.

In November 1929, Azizyan, a journalist specializing in agriculture, analyzed the motivations kulaks had for entering kolkhozy: they wanted to avoid being taxed and having to make obligatory shipments of wheat; to keep the best land; to keep their tools and machines; and to ensure the education of their children.

Ibid. , p. 183.

At the same time, another journalist reported that `the weak half of the human race' sympathized with the kulaks while collective farmers were quite uncompromising, saying `send them out of the village into the steppe' and `put them in quarantine for fifty years'.

Ibid. , p. 184.

The Central Committee resolution of January 5, 1930 drew conclusions from these debates and affirmed that it was now capable of `passing in its practical work from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class .... the inadmissibility of allowing kulaks to join kolkhozes (was presupposed).

McNeal, op. cit. , pp. 41--42.

Struggle to the end

After this resolution, which announced the end of capitalist relations in the countryside, the kulaks threw themselves into a struggle to the end. To sabotage collectivization, they burnt crops, set barns, houses and other buildings on fire and killed militant Bolsheviks.

Most importantly, the kulaks wanted to prevent collective farms from starting up, by killing an essential part of the productive forces in the countryside, horses and oxen. All the work on the land was done with draft animals. The kulaks killed half of them. Rather than cede their cattle to the collectives, they butchered them and incited the middle peasants to do the same.

Of the 34 million horses in the country in 1928, there remained only 15 million in 1932. A terse Bolshevik spoke of the liquidation of the horses as a class. Of the 70.5 million head of cattle, there only remained 40.7 million in 1932. Only 11.6 million pigs out of 26 million survived the collectivization period.

Charles Bettelheim. L'économie soviétique (Paris: Éditions Recueil Sirey, 1950), p. 87.

This destruction of the productive forces had, of course, disastrous consequences: in 1932, there was a great famine, caused in part by the sabotage and destruction done by the kulaks. But anti-Communists blame Stalin and the `forced collectivization' for the deaths caused by the criminal actions of the kulaks.

The resolution on dekulakization

In January 1930, a spontaneous movement to expropriate the kulaks began to take place. On January 28, 1930, Kosior described it as ` ``a broad mass movement of poor peasants, middle peasants and batraks'', called upon party organisations not to restrain it but to organise it to deliver ``a really crushing blow against the political influence, and particularly against the economic prospects, of the kulak stratum of the village.'' '

Davies, op. cit. , p. 228.

A few days before, Odintsev, vice-chairman of the Kolkhoztsentr of the Russian Republic, said: `We must deal with the kulak like we dealt with the bourgeoisie in 1918'.

Ibid. , pp. 232--233.

Krylenko admitted a month later that `a spontaneous movement to dekulakization took place locally; it was properly organized only in a few places'.

Ibid. , p. 231.

On January 30, 1930, the Central Committee took important decisions to lead the spontaneous dekulakization by publishing a resolution entitled, `On Measures for the Elimination of Kulak Households in Districts of Comprehensive Collectivisation'.

Ibid. , p. 233.

The total number of kulak families, divided into three categories, was at most 3--5 per cent in the grain-growing regions and 2--3 per cent in the other regions.
(I)

`The counter-revolutionary activ'. Whether a kulak belonged this category was to be determined by the OGPU (political police), and the resolution set a limit of 63,000 for the whole of the USSR. Their means of production and personal property were to be confiscated; the heads of families were to be sentenced on the spot to imprisonment or confinement in a concentration camp; those among them who were `organisers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary demonstrations and insurrectionary organisations' could be sentenced to death. Members of their families were to be exiled as for Category II.
(II)

`The remaining elements of the kulak aktiv', especially the richest kulaks, large-scale kulaks and former semi-landowners. They `manifested less active opposition to the Soviet state but were arch-exploiters and naturally supported the counter-revolutionaries'. Lists of kulak households in this category were to be prepared by district soviets and approved by okrug executive committees on the basis of decisions by meetings of collective farmers and of groups of poor peasants and batraks, guided by instructions from village soviets, within an upper limit for the whole USSR of 150,000 households. The means of production and part of the property of the families on these lists were to be confiscated; they could retain the most essential domestic goods, some means of production, a minimum amount of food and up to 500 rubles per family. They were then to be exiled to remote areas of the Northern region, Siberia, the Urals and Kazakhstan, or to remote districts of their own region.
(III)

The majority of kulaks were probably `reliable in their attitude to Soviet power'. They numbered between 396,000 and 852,000 households. Only part of the means of production were confiscated and they were installed in new land within the administrative district.

Ibid. , pp. 235--236.

The next day, on January 31, a Bolshevik editorial explained that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class was `the last decisive struggle with internal capitalism, which must be carried out to the end; nothing must stand in the way; the kulaks as a class will not leave the historical stage without the most savage opposition'.

Ibid. , p. 228.

The kulak offensive picks up strength

In Siberia, one thousand acts of terrorism by kulaks were recorded in the first six months of 1930. Between February 1 and March 10, 19 `insurrectionary counter-revolutionary organisations' and 465 `kulak anti-Soviet groupings', including more than 4,000 kulaks, were exposed. According to Soviet historians, `in the period from January to March 15, 1930, the kulaks organised in the whole country (excluding Ukraine) 1,678 armed demonstrations, accompanied by the murder of party and soviet officials and kolkhoz activists, and by the destruction of kolkhozy and collective farmers'. In the Sal'sk okrug in the North Caucausus, riots took place for one week in February 1930. Soviet and Party buildings were burnt down and collective stores were destroyed. The kulaks who were waiting to leave for exile put forward the slogan: `For Soviet power, without communists and kolkhozy'. Calls were made for the dissolution of Party cells and kolkhozy, as well as the liberation of arrested kulaks and the restitution of their confiscated property. Elsewhere, slogans of `Down with the kolkhoz' and `Long live Lenin and Soviet power' were shouted.

Ibid. , pp. 258--259.

By the end of 1930, in the three categories, 330,000 kulak families had been expropriated; most of this took place between February and April. We do not know the number of category I kulaks that were exiled, but it is likely that the 63,000 `criminal elements' were the first to be hit; the number of executions of this category is not known either. The exiled from category II numbered 77,975 at the end of 1930.

Ibid. , pp. 247--248.

The majority of the expropriations were in the third category; some were reinstalled in the same village, most in the same district.