Dekulakization

Dekulakization
Part of collectivization in the Soviet Union
A parade under the banners "We will liquidate the kulaks as a class" and "All to the struggle against the wreckers of agriculture"
LocationSoviet Union
Date1917–1933, official dekulakization campaign began in 1929
Attack type
Mass murder, deportation, starvation
Deaths390,000 or 530,000–600,000[1] to 5,000,000[2]
PerpetratorsSecret police of the Soviet Union

Dekulakization (Russian: раскулачивание, romanized: raskulachivaniye; Ukrainian: розкуркулення, romanized: rozkurkulennya)[3] was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of supposed kulaks (wealthy peasants) and their families. Redistribution of farmland started in 1917 and lasted until 1933, but was most active in the 1929–1932 period of the first five-year plan. To facilitate the expropriations of farmland, the Soviet government announced the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" on 27 December 1929, portraying kulaks as class enemies of the Soviet Union.

More than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931.[4][5][6] The campaign had the stated purpose of fighting counter-revolution and of building socialism in the countryside. This policy, carried out simultaneously with collectivization in the Soviet Union, effectively brought all agriculture and all the labourers in Soviet Russia under state control.

  1. ^ Hildermeier, Die Sowjetunion, pp. 38ff.
  2. ^ Robert Conquest (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  3. ^ Pivovarov, Alexey (2021-09-16). "How Russian villages were destroyed (Куда пропали русские деревни?)". 100tv.eu (in Russian). Narva (Estonia).
  4. ^ Robert Conquest (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ 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