Kulak

Kulak, a contemptuous term in the Russian language for a wealthy peasant, literally meaning “fist”. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, kulaks were prominent in the villages of Russia, owning their own livestock and homes, and often employing hired hands. They were sometimes accused of using these employees to bully others (hence the connotation with the “fist”).

The Bolsheviks, especially Joseph Stalin and his group, totally rejected the ideas of individual farming and a prosperous peasantry. As far as they were concerned this was the antithesis of collective production, the central tenet of socialist agriculture. When Stalin began his drive for collectivization in 1929, he made a deliberate effort to liquidate the kulaks as a class, confiscating their lands and property and transporting them to Siberia in vast numbers. But since in practice there was no reliable method of distinguishing kulaks from other peasants, the campaign only served to bring about the tragic deaths of millions of ordinary people, crippling and impoverishing Soviet agriculture for many decades thereafter.