Dekulakization
Mass repression in the Soviet Union |
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Economic repression |
Political repression |
Ideological repression |
Ethnic repression |
Dekulakization (Russian: раскулачивание, raskulachivanie, Ukrainian: розкуркулення, rozkurkulennia) was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929–1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies. More than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931.[1][2][3] The stated purpose of the campaign was to fight the counter-revolution and build socialism in the countryside. This policy was accomplished simultaneously with collectivization in the USSR and effectively brought all agriculture and peasants in Soviet Russia under state control.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Away_With_Private_Peasants%21_%283273571261%29.jpg/220px-Away_With_Private_Peasants%21_%283273571261%29.jpg)
The "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" was announced by Joseph Stalin on 27 December 1929.[1] Stalin had said that "Now we have the opportunity to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate them as a class and replace their production with the production of kolkhozes and sovkhozes."[4] The decision was formalized in a resolution "On measures for the elimination of kulak households in districts of comprehensive collectivization" on 30 January 1930. All kulaks were divided into three categories: (I) to be shot or imprisoned as decided by the local secret political police; (II) to be sent to Siberia, North, the Urals or Kazakhstan, after confiscation of their property; and (III) to be evicted from their houses and used in labour colonies within their own districts.[1] OGPU secret police chief Efim Georgievich Evdokimov (1891–1939) organized and supervised the roundup of peasants and the mass executions.
A combination of dekulakization, collectivization, and other repressive policies led to mass starvation in many parts of the Soviet Union and the death of at least 14.5 million peasants in 1930–1937[citation needed], including five million who died in Ukraine during the Holodomor.[1] The results were soon known outside the Soviet Union. In 1941, the American journalist H. R. Knickerbocker wrote "It is a conservative estimate to say that some 5,000,000 [kulaks] ... died at once, or within a few years."[5]
References
- ^ a b c d Robert Conquest (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
- ^ Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7
- ^ Lynne Viola The Unknown Gulag. The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements Oxford University Press 2007, hardback, 320 pages ISBN 978-0-19-518769-4 ISBN 0195187695
- ^ Stalin, a biography by Robert Service, page 266
- ^ Knickerbocker, H.R. (1941). Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions On the Battle of Mankind. Reynal & Hitchcock. pp. 133–134.