Kulaks

[Gustav HK]

Who were the kulaks under the first years of the Soviet Union (to the collectivization)?

Some say they were capitalist exploiters, other say they were labourous peasants who was more wealthier than other peasants because they worked harder.

[LOLseph Stalin]

The Kulaks were the wealthy peasants who employed other peasants to work their land. Yes, most owned their own plots of land and were strongly opposed to Stalin's collectivisation policies for this reason. They didn't want to give up their produce so destroyed much of it instead.

[Agrippa]

Privileged peasants were not the only ones opposed to Stalinist "collectivization", for good reason....

[LeninKobaMao]

They were stubborn rich peasants called by most other Russians during Lenin's reign "NEPmen."

[Ismail]

Lenin sums up the socialist view on the kulaks nicely:
"We all know who that internal enemy is. It is the capitalists, the landowners, the kulaks, and their offspring, who hate the government of the workers and working peasants-the peasants who do not suck the blood of their fellow-villagers.

A wave of kulak revolts is sweeping across Russia. The kulak hates the Soviet government like poison and is prepared to strangle and massacre hundreds of thousands of workers. We know very well that if the kulaks were to gain the upper hand they would ruthlessly slaughter hundreds of thousands of workers, in alliance with the landowners and capitalists, restore back-breaking conditions for the workers, abolish the eight-hour day and hand back the mills and factories to the capitalists.

That was the case in all earlier European revolutions when, as a result of the weakness of the workers, the kulaks succeeded in turning back from a republic to a monarchy, from a working people’s government to the despotism of the exploiters, the rich and the parasites. This happened before our very eyes in Latvia, Finland, the Ukraine and Georgia. Everywhere the avaricious, bloated and bestial kulaks joined hands with the landowners and capitalists against the workers and against the poor generally. Everywhere the kulaks wreaked their vengeance on the working class with incredible ferocity...

There is no doubt about it. The kulaks are rabid foes of the Soviet government. Either the kulaks massacre vast numbers of workers, or the workers ruthlessly suppress the revolts of the predatory kulak minority of the people against the working people’s government. There can be no middle course. Peace is out of the question: even if they have quarrelled, the kulak can easily come to terms with the landowner, the tsar and the priest, but with the working class never.

That is why we call the fight against the kulaks the last, decisive fight. That does not mean there may not be many more kulak revolts, or that there may not be many more attacks on the Soviet government by foreign capitalism. The words, the last fight, imply that the last and most numerous of the exploiting classes has revolted against us in our country.

The kulaks are the most brutal, callous and savage exploiters, who in the history of other countries have time and again restored the power of the landowners, tsars, priests and capitalists. The kulaks are more numerous than the landowners and capitalists. Nevertheless, they are a minority...

Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! Hatred and contempt for the parties which defend them-the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and today's Left Socialist-Revolutionaries! The workers must crush the revolts of the kulaks with an iron hand, the kulaks who are forming an alliance with the foreign capitalists against the working people of their own country."
("Comrade Workers, Forward To The Last, Decisive Fight!" August 1918, in Lenin, V.I. Collected Works. Vol. 28. Moscow: 1965., pp. 53-57.)

Another View of Stalin talks about the kulaks and the collectivization campaign from a pro-Stalin perspective: http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node19.html#SECTION00700000000000000000

[Gustav HK]

Thank you.

But weren´t the kulaks a sort of petite bourgeoisie, and didn´t the biggest part of their wealth come from their own work?

Moreover the wikipedia article on kulaks states the following: Grigory Zinoviev (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Grigory_Zinoviev), a well-known Soviet politician, said in 1924, "We are fond of describing any peasant who has enough to eat as a kulak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#Definitions

I know that the kulaks committed a lot of atrocities in their struggle against collectivization (put their own and kolkhoz animals to death, burned their own and the kolkhoz grain, and killed kolkhoz and party members), but were they really class enemies before that?

[Bankotsu]

Stalin's view:


Concerning the Policy of Eliminating of the Kulaks as a Class

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1930/01/21.htm

[Gustav HK]

But what should the answer be, to those who state that the kulaks was more industrious than the other peasants, and that was their main source of income?

Moreover I have heard two etymological explanaitions of the word "kulak", one is that the kulaks held the village tight in their fist (kulak is also the russian word for fist), and the second is that they worked so hard so their hands was tighten in a fist, and they even slept with their hands in that position.

[ComradeOm]

Moreover the wikipedia article on kulaks states the following: Grigory Zinoviev (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Grigory_Zinoviev), a well-known Soviet politician, said in 1924, "We are fond of describing any peasant who has enough to eat as a kulak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#DefinitionsA moment of honesty from Zinoviev

The original kulaks were the product of the Stolypin reforms of Tsarist Russia. They were peasants who had separated from the communal mir* and possessed substantial private plots. They therefore constituted a rich stratum amongst the peasantry and were reliant on hired labour. Which is a fair enough definition

The problem is that this peasant caste was almost entirely liquidated as a class (to use the Stalinist expression) during the peasant revolution of 1917. Their lands were seized and forcibly reintegrated back into the peasant commune. Further pressure came from the urban centres and Soviet grain detachments. Generally the kulaks, according to the pre-war definition, did not survive this twin offensive of 1917. Which renders the offensives against the kulaks in the following decade problematic at best

The later definitions as to just what comprised a kulak varied considerably and tended to be very vague. Certainly they were not Marxist in character, although this was partly due to the relative ignorance of the Bolsheviks as to peasant matters. Some of the figures used in later years (Stalin estimated that there were upwards of 2.5 million kulaks) are pure fantasy and bear no relation to reality. So what emerged was that kulak simply became a slur used in the campaigns against the peasantry as a whole. In reality most of the state campaigns in the 1930s tended to direct violence against the 'middle stratum' of peasants, the serednyaki

*Except of course in those areas (largely the west of the country) where the communal structures were weak or non-existent