What is a 'kulak' and did Lenin actually hang any of them?

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I kind of already know some of this, but I wanted to field this question out to some who are a bit more knowledgeable on the subject than I am....


Now, I might be wrong, but from what I've read a 'kulak' was essentially a landlord who was a part of the peasant class that exploited landless peasants and bled them dry with taxes.

Now, did Lenin actually have any of these individuals hanged? I've read that there's a great deal of controversy involving the memo known as 'Lenin's hanging order', whether this memo actually was sent out and anything was done to the kulaks on Lenin's orders.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Kulaks were a kind of peasant bourgeoisie which developed with the large scale (privatized) redistribution of land done by the early Bolsheviks and the NEP pursued by the party right before the death of Lenin. As far as I know it was Stalin who really went after the Kulaks on a large scale, as the NEP was still state policy when Lenin died.

[TheYoungCommie]

They did not start out rich though they grew somewhat wealthy after the stolypin reform.

[Geiseric]

Lenin was a proponent of the war communist phase. The nep was a backwards step taken by necessity due to the capitalists inside the country continuing to wage civil war, resulting economically in grain withdrawls by the 1% of peasants who at the time owned 60% of the farmland. They were the counter revolutionaries who wanted to profit off starving the cities while not advancing the overall havest due to the gap between the countryside and the modern industries.

Kulaks had similar economic intrest as aristocrats before the revolution. The way stalin dealt with this was by using the red army to loot every peasant during the short harvest. Which was stupid since they saw this kind of catastrophe as a famine as a possibility in 1925.

[Brutus]

Why shouldn't he hang them? They sided with the bourgeoisie.

[Brutus]

"Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.

1. Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.
2. Publish their names.
3. Seize all their grain from them.
4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks".
Telegraph receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
Find tougher people"

[ComradeOm]

Now, I might be wrong, but from what I've read a 'kulak' was essentially a landlord who was a part of the peasant class that exploited landless peasants and bled them dry with taxes.Nope. To elaborate:

Pre-Revolution:

Prior to 1917 (and particularly post-1906) a kulak was a peasant farmer who had left the commune to strike out on their own individual plots. 'Independent farmer' is probably the most accurate translation of this pre-war kulak, the intention being to replicate the small private farmers of Western Europe. What they were not were landlords, an aristocracy or even particularly rich. By 1916 approx 10% of peasant households lived apart from the commune, with 10% of the total sown area (note: not the same things) belonging to actual landlords.

(At which point it's worth briefly noting that Lenin's conception of the peasantry bore little relation to reality. Class divisions within the peasantry were never significant. That the Committees of Village Poor strategy was abandoned as soon as 1918 was recognition of this)

Of course all the above is slightly academic given that the kulaks, as a class of independent producers, was effectively wiped out in 1917. The Black Repartition saw almost all independent producers reabsorbed into he communes, their wealth and land redivided amongst their fellow peasants. It was an immense act of redistribution and effectively erased any divisions that did exist within the peasantry.

Post-Revolution

All of which leaves the obvious question: who were those pesky NEP kulaks? How is this apparently malignant class to be defined? According to Sovnarkom's 1929 "Indices of Kulak Farms" a peasant could be considered a kulak if he met even one of the below criteria:

1) Hiring of permanent workers for agricultural or artisan work
2) Ownership of an "industrial enterprise"
3) The hiring out of mechanised agricultural equipment
4) The hiring out of premises or buildings for business purposes
5) Presence in the family of those who have sources of income not derived from labour

This was just one of many definitions that was used throughout the first decades of the Soviet Union with others emphasising arbitrary plot sizes, livestock numbers, etc. Interpretation of each criteria was also left to local authorities. What should be clear is that from a Marxist perspective this is all far too vague to be satisfactory; indeed one Soviet contemporary researcher (A. Gaister) concluded at the time that the term had "no class content" and that there was no real difference between the supposed kulaks and the serednyaks (middle peasants). Indeed the latter were actually the greatest employers of hired labour (some two thirds of the total)

By the 1930s the Soviet categorisation of the peasantry, flawed to begin with, was little more than a propaganda tool that bore little relation to reality. This is before we even touch on absurdities such as 'ideological kulaks' or 'kulak choirboys', ie terms applied to non-kulaks who were supposedly acting in kulak interests. 'Kulak' indicated little more than an opponent of Stalinist collectivisation

The reality is that class distinctions within the peasant milieu were no where near as sharply defined as the Soviet state liked to think. The categories and numbers that Stalin occasionally liked to roll out were fantasy. Insofar as stratum did exist, there was very little difference in any objective sense or class between the middle and top stratum. Alternatively, to quote Carr (Foundations of a Planned Economy 1): "The degree of solidarity between peasants of all categories, and of their mistrust of a party and government based primarily on the towns and insensitive to peasant concerns, was seriously underestimated."

Yet kulaks were a fiction needed to maintain the pretence of the smychka between worker and peasant. The alternative (ie the reality) was that the collectivisation offensive was not aimed at a simple obstinate minority of rich peasants but was instead directed against the entire peasantry as a class.


resulting economically in grain withdrawls by the 1% of peasants who at the time owned 60% of the farmlandI specifically pulled you up on this in another thread, yet you still regurgitate this nonsense. Disappointing. The reality is that in 1926-27 some 6% of the grain was obtained from state/collective farms, 20% from those classified as kulaks and the remaining 74% from middle and poor peasants

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

Lenin? Meh, more Stalin.

*Aboutface* Wait a sec, what's this about hanging rich people? Holy shit, where's the fucking "Follow Thread" button?!

[Taters]

Lenin? Meh, more Stalin.

*Aboutface* Wait a sec, what's this about hanging rich people? Holy shit, where's the fucking "Follow Thread" button?!

Do you really have to shit up every thread you're in with your anti-social tendencies?

[Brutus]

It is not about hanging rich people, it is about hanging counter-revolutionaries.

[Broviet Union]

It is not about hanging rich people, it is about hanging counter-revolutionaries.

Which is kind of like saying misogyny isn't about hating women, but hating people with vaginas. :laugh:

[Geiseric]

Which is kind of like saying misogyny isn't about hating women, but hating people with vaginas. :laugh:

It's a choice to be counter revolutionary though. Kulaks were in a position of power and abused it resulting in many deaths, however had they not been given the time to accumulate capital by starting collectivization earlier, the famines may of been slightly avoided.

[Brutus]

Which is kind of like saying misogyny isn't about hating women, but hating people with vaginas. :laugh:

Ha. Let's use good ol' Frederick as an example, shall we? Rich- yes, the man owned 20% of a factory. A counter revolutionary- no, he devoted his life to the proletarian struggle. Well done for calling Engels a counter-revolutionary.
Try not to talk utter shit next time.

[Brutus]

And OP, there is no record of whether the order was followed.

[ComradeOm]

It's a choice to be counter revolutionary though. Kulaks were in a position of power and abused it resulting in many deaths, however had they not been given the time to accumulate capital by starting collectivization earlier, the famines may of been slightly avoided.You've just done it again, proving Broviet Union's point. The automatic assumption that 'kulak' means 'counter-revolutionary' is nonsense. It's dangerous nonsense that you've used to shift the blame for millions of deaths from the Soviet state to its very victims, on the basis of some ill-defined fantasy social category


Ha. Let's use good ol' Frederick as an example, shall we? Rich- yes, the man owned 20% of a factory. A counter revolutionary- no, he devoted his life to the proletarian struggle. Well done for calling Engels a counter-revolutionary. And that is exactly the point (that I assume Broviet Union was making). You cannot assume that a class background is an indication of an individual's guilt or reactionarism. Calls for the deaths on a quota basis (whether through Lenin's telegram or Stalinist mass operations) deny this, deny the possibility of individual innocence. Where in that telegram that you posted does Lenin use the term 'counter-revolutionary' or 'White Guard' or call for trials to ascertain the guilt of the "known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers" to be killed?

This was a problem throughout the early decades of the USSR and particularly so in the case of kulaks. Here the Soviet state was operating under a set of assumptions (there is a shadowy fifth column of kulaks that are oppressing the peasantry and wrecking the economy) that just was not true. And, under Stalin, hundreds of thousands (of peasants alone) were executed by the Soviet state based on these delusional charges.

If Engels had lived in Stalinist Russia then he would have almost certainly been executed, or at the very least marginalised, based on his class background. And not just because he was a communist

[Brutus]

Here's a bit of historical background on the matter.

During the Summer of 1918, many of Russia's central cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, were cut off from the grain producing regions of Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, and Siberia by the civil war. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people were on the brink of starvation. The Penza Gubernia was critical in providing food to the cities, but some drastic measures, such as prodrazvyorstka (forcing peasants to give up food the government deemed surplus), were used to collect the grain. The Central Committee sent Yevgenia Bosch to supervise grain collection.

Caused by the forceful requisitioning of grain, a peasant revolt erupted in the Kuchkino Volost of Penza Uyezd on 5 August 1918, and soon spread to neighbouring regions. While Penza Soviet chairman Kurayev opposed the use of military force and argued that propaganda efforts would be sufficient, Bosch insisted on using the military and mass executions. By 8 August 1918, Soviet military forces had crushed the revolt, but the situation in the gubernia remained tense and a revolt led by members of Socialist-Revolutionary Party erupted in the town of Chembar on 18 August. Lenin sent several telegrams to Penza demanding tougher measures in fighting these kulak, peasant, and Left SR insurrectionists.

The 11 August 1918 cable

In particular, one telegram (dated 11 August 1918) instructed the Communists operating in the Penza area to publicly hang at least one hundred kulaks; publicize their names; confiscate their grain, and designate a number of hostages. Whether anyone was actually hanged according to this order remains unknown. On 19 August 1918, Lenin sent another telegram to Penza expressing exasperation and modifying his previous instructions.

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

Do you really have to shit up every thread you're in with your anti-social tendencies?
Wait, I thought this whole forum was technically anti-social.
PS- Nah, I'm done with it. I had gotten the appropriate responses, so I'm good for now.