Historical educational program. Who is this fist? (1 photo). Dispossession of peasants in the USSR: who are the kulaks? Who are the kulaks in the early 20s?

Historians’ cousins, physicists, begin any discussion with the words “let’s agree on terms.” Historians get along just fine without this. It's a pity. Sometimes it would be worth it. For example, who is a kulak? Well, there’s nothing to think about here: this is a “helpful”, hardworking owner, mercilessly ruined and destroyed by the Stalinist collectivization machine. Yes, but why would the collectivization machine want to destroy a “good” owner who is neither a competitor nor a hindrance to it? He manages his ten to twenty dessiatines on the side of the collective farm - and let him farm for himself, but if he wants, he goes to the collective farm. Why ruin it?

Nothing other than out of infernal malice - for there is no economic answer here. It won’t happen, because in the directives the USSR authorities constantly repeated: do not confuse kulaks and wealthy peasants! Therefore, there was a difference between them, visible to the naked eye.

So what did the naked eye of a semi-literate district secretary see that is not visible to the modern historian? Let's remember school Marxism - those who still managed to study in a Soviet school. How is a class determined? And the memory automatically gives out: attitude to the means of production. How does the attitude of a good owner towards the means of production differ from that of the average peasant? Nothing! And the fist?

Well, since they were going to destroy him “as a class,” it follows that he was a class, and this attitude was somehow different.

These townspeople are always making a mess!

So who are the kulaks?

This issue was also of concern to the Soviet leadership. For example, Kamenev in 1925 argued that any farm with more than 10 acres of crops is kulak. But 10 acres in the Pskov region and in Siberia are completely different areas. In addition, 10 tithes for a family of five and for a family of fifteen are also two big differences.

Molotov, who was responsible for work in the countryside in the Central Committee, in 1927 classified peasants who rent land and hire temporary (as opposed to seasonal) workers as kulaks. But even the middle peasant could rent land and hire workers - especially the first.

Pre-Soviet People's Commissar Rykov classified well-to-do farms that use hired labor and owners of rural industrial establishments as kulak. It's getting closer, but somehow everything is vague. Why shouldn’t a strong working owner have, for example, a mill or an oil mill?

What unites Kamenev, Molotov and Rykov? Only one thing: all three are born city dwellers. But the “all-Union elder” Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, a peasant by origin, gives a completely different definition. At a Politburo meeting on cooperation, he said: “A kulak is not the owner of property in general, but the one who uses this property kulically, i.e. usuriously exploiting the local population, giving away capital for growth, using funds at usurious interest rates.”

An unexpected turn, isn't it? And Kalinin is not alone in this approach. People's Commissar of Agriculture A.P. Smirnov wrote in Pravda back in 1925, which served as the main practical, corrective guide for local leaders: “We must clearly distinguish between two types of farming in the wealthy part of the village. The first type of prosperous economy is purely usurious, engaged in the exploitation of low-power farms not only in the production process (farm labor), but mainly through all kinds of enslaving transactions, through village petty trade and mediation, all types of “friendly” credit with “divine” interest. The second type of prosperous economy is a strong labor economy, striving to strengthen itself as much as possible in production terms...”

Now this is a completely different matter! Not only and not so much an exploiter of farm laborers, but a village petty trader, an intermediary in transactions and, most importantly, a moneylender.

Rural usury is a completely special phenomenon. There was practically no money for growth in the countryside. A system of natural usury was adopted there - payments for loans were made with bread, one’s own labor or any services. (Looking ahead: this is why the so-called “sub-kulak members” - the “influence group” of the kulak - are mainly the poor.) And in any village, all the residents knew very well who was simply lending money (even at interest, if necessary), and whoever made it a trade in which he gets rich.

World-eating technology

A vivid picture of such a trade is painted in a letter to the magazine “Red Village” by a certain peasant Philip Ovseenko. He begins, however, in such a way that you can’t undermine him.

“...They shout about the kulak that he is this and that, but no matter how you turn around, the kulak always turns out to be thrifty and diligent, and pays taxes more than others. They shout that peasants should not use other people's labor or hire workers. But to this I must object that this is completely wrong. After all, in order to improve agriculture in our state, to increase peasant wealth, we need to increase sowings. And only wealthy owners can do this... And the fact that the peasant has a worker is only of benefit to the state, and therefore it must first of all support such wealthy people, because they are the support of the state. And I also feel sorry for the worker, because if you don’t give him a job, he won’t be able to find one, and there are already so many unemployed. And he feels good about farming. Who will give work to the unemployed in the village, or who will feed a neighbor and his family in the spring?” .

Do you recognize the reasoning? The rhetoric of “social partnership” has hardly changed in 90 years. But this, however, is only a saying, but the fairy tale has begun - about how exactly a kind man feeds his neighbor and his family...

“There are many other unfortunate peasants: either there is no horse, or there is nothing to sow. And we help them out too, because it is said that love your neighbors as brothers. You will give one a horse for a day, either to plow or go to the forest, and to the other you will pour seeds. But you can’t give for free, because good things don’t fall from heaven for us. It was acquired by one's own labor. Another time I would be glad not to give it, but he will come and just wail: help me out, they say, there is hope for you. Well, you give the seeds, and then you take off half of them - this is for your own seeds. Moreover, at the gathering they will call you a kulak or an exploiter (that’s also a word). This is for doing a good Christian deed...”

Ispolu is for half the harvest. With a yield of 50 poods per tithe, it turns out that the “benefactor” lends seeds to his neighbor at the rate of 100% for three months, for 35 poods - 50%. Balzac's Gobsek would have strangled himself with envy. By the way, he has not yet mentioned what he charges for the horse. And for the horse, work was due - sometimes for three days, sometimes for a week in a day. Christ, if my memory serves me right, seemed to teach differently...

“It turns out differently: the other one fights, fights and gives up the land, or rents it out. It can't be processed every year. Either he eats the seeds, then there is no plow, or something else. He comes and asks for bread. Of course, you will take the land for yourself, your neighbors will work it for your debts and you will reap the harvest from it. And what about the old owner? What you sow is what you reap. He who does not work does not eat. And, moreover, he voluntarily leased the land in a sober state. After all, if you hadn’t rented it again, it wouldn’t have been developed and it would be a direct loss to the state. And so I helped out again - I sowed it, so they should be grateful to me for this. Yes, just where there! For such work they also defame me... Let everyone know that the kulak lives by his labor, runs his own farm, helps out his neighbors and, one might say, the state rests on him. Let there not be the name “kulak” in the village, because a kulak is the most hardworking peasant, from whom there is no harm but benefit, and this benefit is received by both the district peasants and the state itself.”

From this heartbreaking letter it is clear why the peasants call the kulak a world-eater. It, like a textbook, describes almost the entire scheme of intra-village exploitation. In the spring, when there is no bread left in poor households, the time of the moneylender comes. For a bag of grain to feed a starving family, a poor man will give two bags in August. For seed grain - half the harvest. A horse for a day - several days (up to a week) of work. In the spring, in exchange for debts or for a couple of bags of grain, the kulak takes his allotment from a horseless neighbor, other neighbors cultivate this field for debts, and the entire harvest goes to the “good owner.” Economic power over neighbors comes with political power: at a village gathering, the kulak can automatically count on the support of all his debtors, he goes to the village council himself or leads his people there, and so he becomes the true owner of the village, over whom there is no longer any government.

Well, this is a completely different matter. This is already a class that uses its means of production completely differently from the middle peasant. And here’s the question: will such a “benefactor” remain indifferent to the collective farm, which cooperates with the poor part of the village, thereby knocking out the food supply from under it?

Greed ruined

Another “class” sign of a kulak is its specific participation in the grain trade. While accumulating large quantities of grain, the kulaks did not release them to the market at all, deliberately inflating prices. In those conditions, it was actually work to organize hunger, so Article 107 simply cried for such citizens.

...In January 1928, at the height of the “grain war,” members of the Politburo scattered around the country to manage grain procurements. On January 15, Stalin went to Siberia. This is what he said in speeches to party and Soviet workers: “You say that the grain procurement plan is tense, that it is impossible to implement. Why is it impossible, where did you get this from? Isn’t it a fact that your harvest this year is truly unprecedented? Isn’t it a fact that this year’s grain procurement plan for Siberia is almost the same as last year?”

Please note: the complaint about the impracticability of plans seems to be the leitmotif of all grain procurement campaigns. The reason is clear: if you complain, maybe the plan will be ruined.

“...You say that the kulaks do not want to hand over grain, that they are waiting for prices to rise and prefer to conduct unbridled speculation. It's right. But the kulaks are not just expecting a price increase, but are demanding a price increase three times higher than government prices. Do you think it is possible to satisfy the kulaks? The poor and a significant part of the middle peasants have already handed over grain to the state at state prices. Is it possible to allow the state to pay three times more for bread to the kulaks than to the poor and middle peasants?”

Now such actions are punishable in accordance with antimonopoly legislation, and for some reason no one complains. Maybe it's an allergy to terms?

“...If the kulaks are conducting unbridled speculation on grain prices, why don’t you charge them for speculation? Don’t you know that there is a law against profiteering - Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, by virtue of which those guilty of profiteering are brought to justice, and the goods are confiscated in favor of the state? Why don't you enforce this law against grain speculators? Are you really afraid of disturbing the peace of the master kulaks?!..

You say that your prosecutorial and judicial authorities are not ready for this matter... I have seen several dozen representatives of your prosecutorial and judicial authorities. Almost all of them live with the kulaks, are parasites of the kulaks and, of course, try to live in peace with the kulaks. To my question they answered that the kulaks’ apartment was cleaner and the food was better. It is clear that one cannot expect anything worthwhile and useful for the Soviet state from such representatives of the prosecutorial and judicial authorities...”

For some reason it seems so to us too...

“I propose:

a) demand from the kulaks the immediate surrender of all surplus grain at state prices;

b) if the kulaks refuse to obey the law - bring them to justice under Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and confiscate their grain surpluses in favor of the state so that 25% of the confiscated grain is distributed among the poor and weak middle peasants at low state prices or in procedure for a long-term loan."

Then, in January, the Siberian Regional Committee decided: cases under Art. 107 to investigate on an emergency basis, by mobile sessions of people's courts within 24 hours, to pass sentences within three days without the participation of the defense. At the same meeting, it was decided to issue a circular from the regional court, the regional prosecutor and the OGPU plenipotentiary representative, which, in particular, prohibited judges from issuing acquittals or suspended sentences under Article 107.

Only the level of corruption can serve as a certain “mitigating circumstance” for the authorities - without the circular, well-fed law enforcement officers would not have done anything at all. In addition, Article 107 began to apply when the size of the commodity surplus on the farm exceeded 2,000 poods. It is somehow difficult to imagine the possibility of an investigative or judicial error if the owner has 32 tons of bread in his barn. What, they piled it up grain by grain and didn’t notice how much it accumulated? Even taking into account the fact that this amount was subsequently reduced - the average confiscation amounted to 886 poods (14.5 tons) - it is still difficult.

However, taking into account the trivial term of imprisonment under Article 107 - up to one year (actually up to three, but this is in the case of an agreement between traders, and try to prove this agreement), the main measure of punishment was precisely the confiscation of surpluses. If you didn't want to sell bread, give it away for free.

Where does so much bread come from?

As you can see, there is nothing unusual about this. In emergency situations, even the most market-oriented of market states step on the throat of their own song and introduce laws against profiteering - if they do not want their population to starve en masse. In practice, the problem is solved simply: if the government loves bribes more than it is afraid of food riots, laws are not introduced, if they give little or are scary, they are introduced. Even the Provisional Government, corrupt to the last limit, tried to implement a grain monopoly - however, it failed. But the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars succeeded - in fact, this is the whole difference and hence all the resentment of the “socialist brothers” against them regarding agrarian policy.

But let's return to our fists. Let's do some math. With a yield of 50 poods per dessiatine, 800 poods is 18 dessiatinas. Plus, the owners’ own consumption, feeding farm laborers and livestock, the seed fund - which, on a large-scale farm, would amount to, say, seven dessiatines. Total - 25 acres. In 1928, only 34 thousand farms had plots of 25 acres or more - less than one per village. And about 3% of farms were recognized as kulak, i.e. 750 thousand. And after all, many had not 800 pounds, but thousands, or even tens of thousands. Where, I wonder, did Stalin get the figure he mentioned in Siberia? “Look at the kulak farms: there the barns and sheds are full of grain, the grain lies under sheds due to a lack of storage space, the kulak farms have a grain surplus of 50-60 thousand poods for each farm, not counting reserves for seeds, food, and livestock feed. ..”Where did he find farms with such reserves? On the Don, in the Terek region, in the Kuban? Or is this a poetic exaggeration? But even if you reduce the figure he announced by an order of magnitude, you still get 5-6 thousand poods each.

But another question is more important here. Even if we are talking about 800 pounds, where does so much bread come from? From your own field? There were not so many such fields in the USSR. So where?

The answer, in general, lies on the surface. Firstly, do not forget about natural usury, which was entangled in the village. All these “gratitudes,” paying off debts “on share,” renting land and working off debts, sack after sack, went into barns in the hundreds and thousands of poods. And secondly, let's think about it: how did grain sales take place in the village? It’s good if the fair is located on the edge of the village, so you can carry your few bags there on your hump. And if not? And there’s no horse either, so there’s nothing to take it out with? However, even if there is a sivka, is there any desire to drive it tens of miles and ten pounds? Meanwhile, money is needed - to pay taxes, and to buy at least something, but it is necessary.

Between the weak peasant and the market there must be a village grain buyer - one who, in turn, will deal with the city wholesaler. Depending on the combination of greed and efficiency, he can give fellow villagers either a little more or a little less than the state price - so that this penny does not force the poor peasant to go to the market or to the dumping station.

The village kulak simply could not help but be a buyer of bread - how could one miss such an income? However, that's what he was. Let us quote again the report of the OGPU - the all-seeing eye of the Soviet government: « Lower Volga region. In the Lysogorsky district of the Saratov district, the kulaks and the wealthy are engaged in systematic speculation in grain. Fists in the village B.-Kopny buys grain from peasants and exports it in large quantities to the city of Saratov. In order to grind bread out of turn, the kulaks solder the workers and the mill manager.

North Caucasus region. In a number of places in the Kushchevsky and Myasnikovsky districts (Don Okrug), there is a massive grinding of grain into flour. Some grain growers are engaged in the systematic export and sale of flour at the city market... Prices for wheat reach 3 rubles. per pood. Prosperous and strong kulaks, buying up 200-300 pounds on the spot. bread, grind it into flour and take it away on carts to other areas, where they sell it for 6–7 rubles. per pood.

Ukraine . Hoot fist. Novoselovki (Romensky district) buys bread through three poor people, who, under the guise of buying bread for personal consumption, prepare grain for him. Kulak grinds the purchased grain into flour and sells it at the market.

Belotserkovsky district. In the Fastovsky and Mironovsky districts, the kulaks organized their own grain buying agents, which procure grain for them in the surrounding villages and nearby areas.”

As we see, at the village level, the private wholesaler and the kulak are one and the same character, a natural intermediary between the manufacturer and the market. In fact, the kulak and the nepman are two links in the same chain, and their interests are exactly the same: to grab the market for themselves, not to let other players in, and first of all, the state.

The trouble was not only that the kulaks themselves played to increase prices, but even more that they led other peasants with them. Everyone who brought anything to the market was interested in high grain prices, and the middle peasants joined the boycott of state supplies, who cannot be attracted under Article 107 - if it is applied to those who have not a thousand, but a hundred poods in their barn, then why Why not immediately start a wholesale requisition?

At the same time, almost half of the farms in the country were so weak that they could not feed themselves with their own grain until the new harvest. High prices completely ruined these peasants, and they hung around the neck of the state. Thus, in a free market, the state sponsored traders twice - first buying bread from them at high prices set by them, and then supplying cheap bread to the poor people ruined by these same grain merchants. If there is a powerful trade lobby in the country that pays politicians, this pumping can continue forever, but the Nepmen were hard pressed to buy Politburo members. It's easier to kill...

All these problems - both worldism and price gouging - were solved economically in the course of the agrarian reform conceived by the Bolsheviks, and quite quickly. If we take into account the vector of development, it becomes clear that collective farms, provided with state benefits and state support, have every chance in a matter of years to turn into fairly cultivated farms with quite decent marketability (already in the early 30s, the grain procurement plan for them was set at approximately 30-35% of gross collection). And what follows from this? What follows from this is that if not 5%, but 50% of farms are collectivized, then private owners will simply lose the opportunity not only to play in the market, but to influence it in general - state supplies to collective farms will cover all the needs of the country. And taking into account the fact that in the USSR bread was sold to the population at very low prices, the point of engaging in grain trading will be completely lost.

The kulak, deprived, on the one hand, of the bread siphoned from the poor for debts, and, on the other, of the opportunity to influence prices, can trade the products of his farm as he wants and where he wants. Placed in the position of not a large, but a small rural owner, he will not be able to determine or decide anything from his economic niche.

A purely rhetorical question: will the NEPman and the kulak meekly resign themselves to such plans of the authorities?

Notes

G. F. Dobronozhenko “Who is a fist: interpretation of the concept “fist”!”
G.F. Dobronozhenko “Who is a fist: interpretation of the concept “fist””
Engelhardt A.N. Letters from the village. 1872-1887 M., 1987 P. 521 - 522.
Postnikov V. E. Southern Russian peasantry. M., 1891
Gvozdev R. “Kulaks - usury and its socio-economic significance. St. Petersburg", 1899
Ermolov A. S. Crop failure and national disaster. St. Petersburg, 1892.
Great October Socialist Revolution. Encyclopedia. 3rd ed., add. M., 1987. P. 262; Brief political dictionary. 2nd ed., add. M., 1980. P. 207; Trapeznikov S.P. Leninism and the agrarian-peasant question: In 2 vols. M., 1967. T.2. “Historical experience of the CPSU in the implementation of Lenin’s cooperative plan. P. 174.
Smirnov A.P. “Our main tasks for raising and organizing the peasant economy.” M., 1925. P. 22; Pershin A. Two main sources of stratification of the peasantry // Life of Siberia. 1925. No. 3(31). S. 3.
Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 36. P. 447, 501, 59.
Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 38.
Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 41. P. 58.

Fist- before the revolution of 1917 - reseller, broker, prasol, pimp, especially in the grain trade, at bazaars and piers, himself penniless, lives by deception, accounting, measuring; lighthouse eagle eagle, tarkhan tamb. Varangian Moscow a trader with small money, travels around the villages, buying linen, yarn, flax, hemp, fleece, bristles, oil, etc. prasol, ashes, money dealer, herd driver, buyer and cattle driver; peddler, peddler.

After the Revolution of 1917, this term acquired a different semantic connotation; the meaning of the concept of “kulaks” changes depending on the direction of the course of the CPSU (b), in fact, either bringing the kulaks closer to the class middle peasants, positioning the kulaks as a separate post-capitalist transitional phenomenon - the class of farmers, or limiting it to a separate category of the rural elite, the class of exploiters, which widely uses wage labor, which will be discussed in detail in the relevant sections of this article.

The assessment of the kulaks in the legislative framework of the Soviet state is also ambiguous; the terminology adopted at the Plenums of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and used by individual leaders of the RSFSR is different. Also characteristic is the ambiguity in the attitude of the Soviet government towards the Russian kulaks: the initial course towards dispossession of kulaks, then the Thaw - “course against the kulaks” and the most stringent course towards the elimination of the kulaks as a class, where the “kulak” finally becomes a class enemy and adversary of Soviet power.

History of the kulaks

In the period before collectivization, land was owned by landowners, peasants, and was bought up by kulaks. Peasant land- This is community land. Typically, peasants did not have enough land, so gradually the hayfields were plowed under grain.

The peasants ate accordingly meagerly. According to the calculations of the military department in 1905: 40% of conscripts, and almost all of them came from the countryside, tried meat for the first time in the army. Underfed conscripts were fed to military condition. Peasant land was not the private property of peasants, which is why it was constantly divided. The earth was a community (peace), from here the kulak most often received the title “ world eater", that is, living at the expense of the world.

Those peasants who were engaged in usurious activities were called kulaks, that is, they gave grain, money at interest, rented a horse for a lot of money, and then they “squeezed” it all back using methods that gave the name to this subclass of peasants.

In part, the process of the emergence of the kulaks in Rus' in the middle and at the end of the 19th century was economically justified - in order to mechanize agriculture and make it more marketable, it was necessary to enlarge rural land plots. The peasantry was land-poor, that is, you can cultivate from morning to evening, sow, but figuratively, even if you crack, you cannot collect a ton of potatoes from 6 acres.

In this regard, no matter how hard the peasant worked, he could not become rich, because you cannot grow much from such a piece of land, you still need to pay taxes to the state - and all that was left was for food. Those who did not work very well could not even pay redemption payments for liberation from serfdom, which were abolished only after the 1905 revolution.

Next First World War, revolution and Decree on land Bolsheviks. The Decree on Land partly solved the problem of the peasantry's lack of land, because at the time of the revolution a quarter of all land belonged to landowners. This land was taken from them and divided according to the number of eaters, that is, they were tied to the community.

Since then, all agricultural land was given to the peasants by the Bolsheviks, as they had promised. But at the same time, the land was not given into private ownership, but given for use. The land had to be divided according to the number of eaters; it could not be bought or sold.

The exploitation of man by man was prohibited in the Soviet state - the use of farm laborers contradicted this. In addition, usurious activities by private individuals in the USSR in the 20s were, again, prohibited. These were the reasons the Bolsheviks primarily cited during dispossession.

Dispossession policy

Ideologically, “dekulakization” is a scholastic concept; in post-Soviet historiography, the term “de-peasantization” is also used, since very soon any peasant who, for one reason or another, was disliked by the authorities, could fall under the definition of “kulak.” The number of victims was also greatly increased by the notorious “spikelet law” (August 7, 1932), as well as the mass famine in the Volga region, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in 1932-1933.

The period of “total collectivization” (1930-1932) put an end to the “kulak” both in the terminological and literal sense. The authorities in the USSR destroyed the traditional peasant way of life along with its bearers. By the end of 1931, about 2.5 million people were resettled to the northern regions of the USSR (including members of the families of “kulaks” convicted under the first paragraph of the decree “on the liquidation of the kulaks as a class,” i.e., executed). The new agriculture in the country of socialism was supposed to be exclusively collective farm.

“The liquidation of the kulaks as a class” not only became a prototype of future ethnic cleansing of the regime, but also reflected the deep essence of the Bolshevik understanding of Marxism. Dissident V. Bukovsky gives an example from the field of psychiatry: “I remember during a psychiatric examination there was such a test to identify idiocy. The subject was asked the following task: “Imagine a train wreck. It is known that during such a crash the last carriage suffers the most. What needs to be done so that he doesn’t get hurt?” A normal idiot is expected to offer to unhook the last carriage. This seems funny, but think about it: are the ideas and practices of socialism much smarter? In society, socialists say, there are rich and poor. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer - what to do? Uncoupling the last carriage means destroying the richest, depriving them of their wealth and distributing it to the poor. And they begin to uncouple the cars. But every time it turns out that some carriage is still the last.”

When did dispossession begin?

On November 8, 1918, at a meeting of delegates of the committees of the poor, Lenin announced a decisive line to eliminate the kulaks: “... if the kulaks remain intact, if we do not defeat the world-eaters, then there will inevitably be a tsar and a capitalist again.” By decree of June 11, 1918, committees of the poor were created, which played a major role in the fight against the kulaks, led the process of redistribution of confiscated lands locally and the distribution of confiscated equipment and food surpluses confiscated from the kulaks.

The “great crusade against grain speculators, kulaks, world-eaters, ... the last and decisive battle for all kulaks - exploiters” has already marked its beginning. 50 million hectares of kulak land were confiscated and transferred to the poor and middle peasants, and a significant part of the means of production was confiscated from the kulaks for the benefit of the poor.

Thus, the mechanism of dispossession stopped the development of individual farms and called into question the very prospect of their existence. Soon, temporary emergency measures turned into a line of “liquidation of the kulaks as a class.”

What was the scale of dispossession?

Of course, a lot of peasants were dispossessed. In total, more than 2 million people were subjected to dispossession – that’s almost half a million families. At the same time, dispossession took place in three categories: the first category included those who resisted Soviet power with arms in hand, that is, organizers and participants in uprisings and terrorist acts. The second category is other kulak activists, that is, people who opposed Soviet power, fought against it, but passively, that is, without using weapons. And finally, the third category is just fists.

What were the differences between the categories?

The kulaks belonging to the first category were dealt with by the “OGPU troikas,” that is, some of these kulaks were shot, some of these kulaks were sent to camps. The second category is the families of kulaks of the first category, and kulaks and their families of the second category. They were deported to remote places in the Soviet Union. The third category was also subject to deportation, but deportation within the region where they lived. This is how, for example, in the Moscow region, people are evicted from the outskirts of Moscow to the outskirts of the region. All these three categories included more than 2 million people with family members.

Is it a lot or a little? In fact, statistically, this amounts to about one kulak family per village, that is, one village - one kulak. In some villages, of course, several families of kulaks were evicted, but this only means that in other villages there were no kulaks at all, there were none.

Where were they evicted? There is an opinion that they were deported to Siberia, thrown out almost into the snow, without property, without food, without anything, to certain death. More often it happened this way, but it also happened differently, for example, in Siberia, kulaks were used as so-called labor settlers - they built new cities. For example, when we talk about the heroic builders of Magnitogorsk and we talk about dispossessed kulaks evicted to Siberia, we are often talking about the same people.

Results

According to Soviet textbooks, the goal of collectivization was to increase agricultural production through the transition to large-scale machine farming. In reality, there has been a catastrophic decline in the agricultural sector, especially in livestock farming. The number of cows from 1928 to 1934 decreased from 29 million to 19 million, horses - from 36 million to 14 million, pigs - by half, goats and sheep - three times. Even the war did not cause such damage.

“Dekulakization” itself also turned out to be an unprofitable business. The average cost of property received by the treasury was on average 564 rubles per family, and the cost of deporting the same family was about a thousand rubles. In 1937, only about 350 thousand special settlers worked in the national economy, the rest were self-sufficient.

Nevertheless, there was logic in the actions of the Bolsheviks. Firstly, they ideologically did not like independent owners who did not fit into their plans to transform the country into a single factory. Marx wrote about “possessive swinishness” and “the idiocy of village life.” Lenin publicly promised to “lie with bones,” but not to allow free trade in grain, and called wealthy peasants “bloodsuckers,” “spiders,” “leeches,” and “vampires.”

Secondly, the state, which launched accelerated industrialization, or rather, militarization of the economy, needed to receive bread to supply cities and the army at extremely low prices, or even for nothing. Stalin believed that peasants were obliged to forever pay the Soviet government for the land transferred to them by the landowners, without hesitating to use the medieval word “tribute.”

Shortly before his death, on October 16, 1952, he spoke at the plenum of the Central Committee: “The peasant is our debtor. We assigned the land to the collective farms forever. They must repay their due debt to the state.”

The final abandonment of the policy of dispossession is recorded by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of August 13, 1954 No. 1738–789ss “On the lifting of restrictions on special settlements from former kulaks,” thanks to which many of the kulaks-special settlers received freedom.

Law Russian Federation“On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression” of October 18, 1991 declared dispossession illegal. Article 16.1 of the Law provides for the right of victims and their descendants to property compensation, but such cases are not described in the literature.

The article is extremely useful from the point of view of understanding why fists in the localities often began to denote the wrong person, and why everything turned out this way.

G.F. Dobronozhenko

Denial of the existence of the kulaks in the villages of the 1920s was widespread among local leaders, which was often associated with their interpretation of the term “kulak”. Local leaders, considering only the moneylender and merchant to be a kulak, “looked for the world-eating fist, the moneylender in the village and did not find it in this form,” “the old, obvious fist, as the peasantry knew it, was not found”66..
There was also the exact opposite interpretation: “a merchant who does not have agriculture (does not exploit hired labor in agricultural operations, etc.) is not a kulak, but simply a merchant, or simply a speculator, looter, usurer, or anything else”67.
The term "kulak" was used as a synonym for the "rural bourgeoisie" in the mid-20s. mainly left-wing Marxist agrarians. One can get an idea of their views from Yu. Larin’s interpretation of the concept “kulak”: “the kulak economy is integral, complex in terms of the composition of sources of income, but united in the exploitative nature of its parts”68. Yu. Larin identifies four types of fists. The first type is the “kulak-producer, who, with the help of hired workers, runs a production economy on a scale exceeding the full use of the labor forces of the peasant families themselves,” with an entrepreneurial goal, i.e. for selling on the market goods created by someone else's labor. Y. Larin considers the second typical type to be “kulak-buyers” - the most hated type of kulaks for the ordinary peasant. The “third type - the fist-merchant” trades in urban goods and purchased or handicraft products. And the fourth type is the kulak-usurer, who rents a plow, horse, etc. to his neighbor."69

Marxist agrarians, who interpret the concept of “fist” in a broad sense as the rural bourgeoisie, preferred not to use the term “fist” in their research due to the fact that it is “not entirely scientific.” To designate the class of rural exploiters in the 1920s, the terms “small-capitalist farms”, “capitalist entrepreneurs”, “private capitalist farms”, “entrepreneurial group”, “farms of the kulak-entrepreneurial type” were used.
Since the 1930s, scientific literature has exclusively used the term "kulak" to refer to the rural bourgeoisie.
[*] Grant from the Moscow Public Science Foundation (project No. 99-1996); RGNF grant, No. 99-01-003516.
* See for more details: G.F. Dobronozhenko. Class opponent of the dictatorship of the proletariat: peasant bourgeoisie or petty-bourgeois peasantry (ideology and practice of Bolshevism 1917-1921) // Rubezh. Almanac of Social Research. 1997. N 10-11. pp. 144-152.
* Peasant Committees of Public Mutual Assistance.
1 Great October Socialist Revolution. Encyclopedia. 3rd ed., add. M., 1987. P. 262; Brief political dictionary. 2nd ed., add. M., 1980. P. 207; Trapeznikov S.P. Leninism and the agrarian-peasant question: In 2 vols. M., 1967. T.2. "Historical experience of the CPSU in the implementation of Lenin's cooperative plan. P. 174.
2 Smirnov A.P. Our main tasks are to raise and organize the peasant economy. M., 1925. P. 22; Pershin A. Two main sources of stratification of the peasantry // Life of Siberia. 1925. No. 3(31). S. 3.
3 Village under the NEP. Some were considered a fist, some were considered a worker. What do the peasants say about this? M., 1924. S. 21, 29, 30.
4. Dal V.I. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language: In 4 volumes. M., 1989. T. 2. P. 215.
5 Encyclopedic Dictionary Br. A. and I. Garnet and Co. 7th ed. M., 1991. T. 26. P. 165.
6 Sazonov G.P. Usury is kulaks. Observations and research. St. Petersburg, 1894. P. 86.
7 Engelgard A.N. Letters from the village. 1872-1887 M., 1987. S. 521 - 522.
8 Garin-Mikhailovsky N.G. Essays. M., 1986. P. 17; N. Uspensky. From far and near. Favorite stories and stories. M., 1986. S. 14, 18; Zlotovratsky N.N. Village everyday life. Sketches of the peasant community // Letters from the village. Essays on the peasantry in Russia, the second half. XIX century M., 1987. S. 279, 355.
9 Sazonov G.P. Decree. op. P. 149.
10 Engelhard A.N.. Decree. op. pp. 521,522.
11 Postnikov V.E. Southern Russian peasantry. M., 1891. P. ХVII.
12 Ibid. pp. 114, 117, 144.
13 Postnikov V.E. Decree. op. P. XVII.
14 Gvozdev R. Kulaks - usury and its socio-economic significance. St. Petersburg, 1899. S. 148, 160.
15 Ibid. pp. 147, 154, 157, 158.
16 Lenin V.I. Full collection cit.. T. 3. P. 383.
17 Ibid. T.S. 178 - 179.
18 Ibid. T. 1. P. 507.
19 Ibid. T. 3. P. 179.
20 Ibid. T. 1. P. 110.
21 Ibid. T. 3. P. 178.
22 Ibid. T. 3. P. 169, 178; T. 17. pp. 88 - 89, 93.
23 Ibid. T. 3. P. 69, 177; T. 4. P. 55.
24 Ibid. T. 3. P. 69 - 70.
25 Ibid. T. 3. P. 169.
26 Ibid. T. 16. P. 405, 424; T. 17. P. 124, 128, 130, etc.
27 Ibid. T. 34. P. 285.
28 Ibid. T. 35. P. 324, 326, 331.
29 Ibid. T. 36. P. 361 - 363; T. 37. P. 144.
30 Ibid. T. 36. P. 447, 501, 59.
32 Ibid. T. 36, P. 510; T. 37. P. 16, 416.
33 Decrees of the Soviet government. T. II. pp. 262 - 265.
34 Ibid. T. II. pp. 352 - 354.
35 Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 38. P. 146, 196, 200.
36 Ibid. T. 38. P. 236.
37 Ibid. T. 38. P. 256.
38 Ibid. T. 38. P. 14.
39 Directives of the CPSU on economic issues. T. 1. 1917-1928. M. 1957. S. 130-131.
40 Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 41. P. 58.
41 Ibid. T. 37. P. 46.
42 Ibid. T. 31. pp. 189-220.
43 Ibid. T. 37. P. 94.
44 Ibid. T. 39. pp. 312, 315.
45 of the CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee. 8th ed. M., 1970. T. 2. P. 472.
46 Thirteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Transcript. report. M., 1963. S. 442-443.

47 CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee. T. 3. P. 341.

48 Trotsky L. About our tasks. Report at the citywide meeting of the party organization in Zaporozhye. September 1, 1925 M.; L., 1926. P. 4.

49 Antselovich N. Workers' and Peasants' Union and farm laborers (to raise the issue) // On the agrarian front. 1925. No. 5-6. P. 84.

50 SU RSFSR. 1926. No. 75. Art. 889.

51 Directives of the CPSU and the Soviet State on economic issues... T. 1. P. 458; Lurie G.I. Cooperative legislation. 2nd ed. M., 1930. S. 22-23.

52 Land Code of the RSFSR. M., 1923. P. 118; SU RSFSR. 1922. No. 45. Art. 426.

53 NW USSR. 1925. No. 26. Art. 183; SU RSFSR. 1925. No. 54. Art. 414.

54 NW USSR. 1927. No. 60. Art. 609.

55 Collection of documents on land legislation of the USSR and RSFSR 1917-1954. M., 1954. P. 300-302.

56 NW USSR. 1929. No. 14. Art. 117.
57 Documents testify: From the history of the village on the eve and during collectivization. 1927-1932 / Ed. V.P. Danilova, N.A. Ivnitsky. M., 1989. S. 211-212.
58 Chayanov A.V. Peasant farming. M., 1989.
59 Khryashcheva A.I. Groups and classes in the peasantry. 2nd ed. M., 1926. S. 109-112; Socialist economy. 1924. Book. II. P. 59.; Conditions for the rise of the village and differentiation of the peasantry // Bolshevik. 1925. No. 5-6 (21-22). pp. 24-25.
60 Gorokhov V. On the issue of stratification of the peasantry (from the experience of one survey) // Economic construction. Organ of the Moscow Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan and CD. 1925. No. 9-10. P.54.
61 Smirnov A.P. Our main tasks... P. 5,6.
62 Smirnov A.P. The policy of Soviet power in the countryside and the stratification of the peasantry (kulak, poor peasant and middle peasant). M.; L., 1926. P. 33.; It's him. On the issue of differentiation of the peasantry. Is it true. 1925. April 7; It's him. About a strong working peasantry. Is it true. 1925. February 31; It's him. Once again about the strong working peasantry. Is it true. 1925. April 5; 1925. April 7
64 Bogushevsky V. About the village fist or the role of tradition in terminology // Bolshevik. 1925. No. 9-10. pp. 59-64.
65 Ibid. pp. 62, 63, 64.
66 Soskina A.N. History of social surveys of a Siberian village in the 20s. Novosibirsk, 1976. pp. 184-185.
67 How the village lives: Materials from a sample survey of the Yemetskaya volost. Arkhangelsk. 1925. P. 98.
68 Larin Yu. Agricultural proletariat of the USSR. M., 1927. P. 7.
69 Larin Yu. Soviet village. M., 1925. P. 56.

The real conversation will be about fists and such a phenomenon as kulaks.
Where does the word “fist” come from? There are many versions. One of the most common versions today is a fist, this is a strong business executive who holds his entire household in his fist. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, another version was more widespread.
One of the main ways to enrich a kulak is to give money or grain at interest. That is: the kulak gives money to his fellow villagers, or gives grain, seed fund to poor fellow villagers. Gives with interest, quite decent. Due to this, he ruins these fellow villagers, due to this he becomes richer.
How did this fist get his money or grain back? So he gave, for example, grain in growth - this happens, for example, in the Soviet Union in the 20s, that is, before dispossession. According to the law, the kulak does not have the right to engage in such activities, that is, no usury for individuals, no credit practices were envisaged. It turns out that he was engaged in activities that, in fact, were illegal. One can, of course, assume that he applied to the Soviet court with a request to collect his debt from the debtor. But most likely, it happened differently, that is, there was a banal knocking out of what the debtor owed. It was the extremely tough policy of collecting debts that gave the kulaks their name.
So, who are the kulaks?
It is a common belief that these are the most hardworking peasants who began to live more richly due to their heroic labor, due to their greater skill and hard work. However, those who are richer and who live more satisfyingly are not called kulaks. Kulaks were those who used the labor of farm laborers, that is, hired labor, and those who were engaged in usury in the village. That is, a kulak is a person who gives money in interest, buys up the lands of his fellow villagers, and gradually dispossesses them of land, using them as hired labor.
The kulaks appeared long before the revolution, and in principle it was a fairly objective process. That is, with the improvement of the land cultivation system, the most normal objective phenomenon is an increase in land plots. A larger field is easier to process and is cheaper to process. Large fields can be processed using machinery - processing each individual dessiatine is cheaper, and accordingly such farms are more competitive.
All countries that moved from the agricultural to the industrial phase went through an increase in the size of land plots. This is clearly seen in the example of American farmers, who are few in the United States today, but whose fields extend far beyond the horizons. This refers to the fields of each individual farmer. Therefore, the consolidation of land plots is not only natural, but even necessary. In Europe, this process was called pauperization: peasants with little land were driven off the land, land was bought up and passed into the possession of landlords or rich peasants.
What happened to the poor peasants? Usually they were forced out to cities, where they either joined the army, the navy, in the same England, or got a job in enterprises; or they begged, robbed, or starved. To combat this phenomenon, laws against the poor were introduced in England at one time.
And a similar process began in the Soviet Union. It began after the civil war, when the land was redistributed according to the number of eaters, but at the same time the land was in full use of the peasants, that is, the peasant could sell the land, mortgage it, or donate it. The kulaks took advantage of this. For the Soviet Union, the very situation with the transfer of land to the kulaks was hardly acceptable, since it was associated exclusively with the exploitation of some peasants by other peasants.
There is an opinion that kulaks were dispossessed according to the principle: if you have a horse, then you are prosperous, so you are a kulak. This is wrong. The fact is that the presence of means of production also implies that someone must work for them. Let’s say if there are 1-2 horses on the farm, which are used as traction power, it is clear that the peasant can work himself. If the farm has 5-10 horses as a traction force, it is clear that the peasant himself cannot work on this, that he must hire someone who will use these horses.
There were only two criteria for determining a fist. As I already said, this is the practice of usury and the use of hired labor. Another thing is that indirect signs- for example, the presence of a large number of horses or a large amount of equipment - it could be determined that this fist actually uses hired labor.
And the need arose to determine what the future path of development of the village would be. It was absolutely obvious that it was necessary to consolidate farms. However, the path that goes through pauperization (through the ruin of poor peasants and forcing them out of the village, or turning them into hired labor), it was actually very painful and very long and promised really great sacrifices; example from England.
The second way that was considered was to get rid of the kulaks and collectivize agriculture. Although there were supporters of both options in the leadership of the Soviet Union, those who advocated collectivization won. Accordingly, the kulaks, which were precisely competition to the collective farms, had to be eliminated. It was decided to dispossess the kulaks, as socially alien elements, and transfer their property to the newly created collective farms.

What was the scale of this dispossession? Of course, a lot of peasants were dispossessed. In total, more than 2 million people were subjected to dispossession – that’s almost half a million families. At the same time, dispossession took place in three categories: the first category included those who resisted Soviet power with arms in hand, that is, organizers and participants in uprisings and terrorist acts. The second category is other kulak activists, that is, people who opposed Soviet power, fought against it, but passively, that is, without using weapons. And finally, the third category is just fists.
What were the differences between the categories? The kulaks belonging to the first category were dealt with by the “OGPU troikas,” that is, some of these kulaks were shot, some of these kulaks were sent to camps. The second category is the families of kulaks of the first category, and kulaks and their families of the second category. They were deported to remote places in the Soviet Union. The third category was also subject to deportation, but deportation within the region where they lived. This is how, for example, in the Moscow region, people are evicted from the outskirts of Moscow to the outskirts of the region. All these three categories included more than 2 million people with family members.
Is it a lot or a little? In fact, statistically, this amounts to about one kulak family per village, that is, one village - one kulak. In some villages, of course, several families of kulaks were evicted, but this only means that in other villages there were no kulaks at all, there were none.
And now more than 2 million kulaks were evicted. Where were they evicted? There is an opinion that they were deported to Siberia, thrown out almost into the snow, without property, without food, without anything, to certain death. In fact, this is also not true. Indeed, most of the kulaks who were deported to other regions of the country were deported to Siberia. But they were used as so-called labor settlers - they built new cities. For example, when we talk about the heroic builders of Magnitogorsk and we talk about dispossessed kulaks evicted to Siberia, we are often talking about the same people. And the best example of this is the family of the first president of the Russian Federation. The fact is that his father was dispossessed, and his further career took shape in Sverdlovsk, as a foreman.
What terrible repressions were used against the kulaks? But here it is quite obvious, since he became a foreman among the workers, then probably the repressions were not very cruel. Defeat in rights, too, how can I say, considering that the son of a kulak later became the First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee.
Of course, during dispossession there were quite a lot of distortions, that is, sometimes there really was a situation where they tried to declare the middle peasants to be kulaks. There were times when envious neighbors managed to slander someone, but such cases were isolated. Actually, the villagers themselves determined who was the kulak in their village and who needed to be gotten rid of. It is clear that justice did not always triumph here, but the decision about who the kulaks were was not made from above, not by the Soviet authorities, it was made by the fellow villagers themselves. It was determined from the lists submitted by the committees of the poor, that is, the residents of this very village, and it was decided who exactly the kulak was and what to do with him next. The villagers also determined the category to which the fist would be classified: a malicious fist or, let’s just say, a world-eater.
Moreover, the problem of kulaks also existed in the Russian Empire, where rich peasants managed to crush the village under themselves. Although the rural community itself partly protected from the growth of kulak land ownership, and kulaks began to emerge mainly after the Stolypin reform, when some became rich, actually bought up all the lands of their fellow villagers, forced their fellow villagers to work for themselves, became large sellers of grain, in fact, became already the bourgeoisie.
There was another picture when the same fellow villagers, having declared the kulak a world eater, safely drowned him in the nearest pond, because in fact, all the wealth of the kulak was built on what he was able to take from his fellow villagers. The point is that no matter how well the people in the countryside work... why can’t we allow the hardworking middle peasant to become a kulak? His wealth is limited by the size of his land holding. While he uses the land that his family received according to the principle of division according to the number of eaters, this peasant will not be able to get much wealth, because the yield in the fields is quite limited. It works well, it works poorly, a relatively small field leads to the fact that the peasant remains quite poor. In order for a peasant to become rich, he must take something from other peasants, that is, this is precisely the displacement and dispossession of his fellow villagers.
If we talk about the terrible repressions against the kulaks and their children, then there is a very good resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which says: “Children of special settlers and exiles, when they reach the age of sixteen, if they have not been discredited in any way, should be issued passports on a general basis and not repaired.” there are obstacles for them to travel to study or work.” The date of this resolution is October 22, 1938.
In fact, collectivization turned out to be an alternative way to the gradual consolidation of farms through pauperization. The peasants in those villages where there were no longer any kulaks left were gradually brought together into collective farms (by the way, most often, quite voluntarily) and it turned out that for one village there was a common field, quite extensive, to which the equipment with the help of which it was allocated was allocated. the field was processed. In fact, the only victims of collectivization were the kulaks. And the kulaks, no matter how numerous the victims were, made up less than 2% of the entire rural population of the Soviet Union. As I said earlier, this is about one family in one fairly large village.