Dekulakization (; ) was a campaign of repression in the Soviet Union directed against so-called kulaks, a loosely defined category of supposedly wealthy or exploitative peasants. The campaign involved mass arrests, executions, expropriation of property, and deportations of entire households to remote and inhospitable regions.
The campaign began following Joseph Stalin's announcement of the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" on December 27, 1929. It had two objectives: to eliminate potential resistance to the collectivization of agriculture, and to provide forced labor for the colonization and economic exploitation of Siberia, the Urals, Kazakhstan, and the Soviet North. Between 2.1 and 2.3 million people were deported to special settlements in remote regions between 1930 and 1933. Between 20,000 and 30,000 were executed by extrajudicial commissions (troiki). Historian Manfred Hildermeier estimates the death toll of dekulakization, excluding the subsequent famine, at between 530,000 and 600,000, including deaths in transit and in special settlements through 1953.
The definition of "kulak" was arbitrary and elastic; official criteria were vague, and in practice the label was applied to middle peasants (those of average means who were not considered exploiters), those who resisted collectivization, clergy, former tsarist officials, and others deemed politically unreliable. One 1930 OGPU (Soviet secret police) report found that only 55 percent of those classified as "kulaks" in one region were actually peasants who met even the nominal economic criteria.
The mass deportations provided the OGPU with a vast pool of forced labor that became the cornerstone of the Gulag system, along with contributing greatly to the collapse of Soviet agriculture that caused the Soviet famine of 1930–1933, including the Holodomor. Those classified as kulaks in 1930–1933 were again targeted during the Great Terror of 1937–1938 under NKVD Order No. 00447.
Background The Bolsheviks and the Peasantry Beginning in the spring of 1917, following the February Revolution, peasants across the former Russian Empire seized lands belonging to the state, nobility, church, and monasteries. The October Revolution and its Decree on Land legitimized these seizures, leaving redistribution to the traditional village commune. During the ensuing Russian Civil War, both Red and White armies requisitioned grain, though peasants generally regarded the Reds as the lesser evil due to fears that a White victory would restore the landlords. The increasing ruthlessness of Bolshevik requisitioning nevertheless alienated much of the peasantry, particularly in major grain-producing regions. Following the end of the civil war, peasant revolts broke out in Tambov and Ukraine, and in 1921–1922 the Volga region suffered a devastating famine that killed approximately five million people, caused in large part by years of excessive grain requisitioning.
The New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1921, replaced requisitions with taxes and permitted market exchange in agricultural goods. For the peasantry, who constituted approximately 85 percent of the Soviet population, the NEP years brought a period of relative prosperity and autonomy.
The Bolsheviks commanded little to no authority in rural villages. The Soviet regime remained alien to most peasants, and incoming party functionaries, hailing almost entirely from cities, found themselves in a hostile environment. Villages continued to govern themselves through the traditional assembly (skhod), while the Bolshevik-sponsored village soviets exercised little real influence. Lenin and the Bolsheviks viewed this persistence with suspicion, regarding the peasantry as potential restorers of capitalism.
Industrialization and collectivization
The Soviets' chief economic priority during the NEP was industrialization, to be financed through grain exports. In the mid-1920s, the party debated how heavily to tax the peasantry: Yevgeni Preobrazhensky of the Left Opposition argued that the state should pay low prices for grain while charging high prices for industrial goods, transferring wealth from the countryside to fund industrial growth, while Nikolai Bukharin of the Right Opposition warned that squeezing the peasantry too hard would destroy the smychka (alliance between workers and peasants) and destabilize the nascent regime.
Echoing Preobrazhensky, Stalin declared that the peasantry owed a "tribute" to pay for industrialization and to feed the cities and army, and he argued that collective farms were the best means of extracting such a tribute. On 7 November 1929, he proclaimed a "great turn," claiming that middle peasants were voluntarily joining collectives. Targets were revised sharply upward: full collectivization of major grain-producing regions was now expected by autumn 1930. By 1 January 1930, official figures showed 18.1 percent of peasant households collectivized nationwide, with far higher rates in grain-producing regions. In practice, most who joined were poor peasants, and regional campaigns had already resorted to coercion.
Grain procurement crisis
In 1927, despite a good harvest, the amount of grain reaching state purchasers dropped sharply. Peasants had multiple reasons to hold back grain: consumption levels had risen during the NEP years, a shortage of manufactured goods meant there was little worth buying, and the war scare of 1927 encouraged hoarding. The Stalinist faction attributed the shortfall to a "kulak grain strike."
In 1928 and 1929, the party implemented increasingly coercive procurement methods. Village assemblies were pressured to assign grain quotas to individual households, particularly targeting those labeled as kulaks. Peasants who failed to deliver grain faced fines of up to five times the value of the undelivered grain, prosecution under Article 107 of the criminal code for speculation and hoarding, and confiscation of property. In June 1929, new legislation made entire villages collectively responsible for meeting quotas.
Peasants resisted by burying grain, transferring stocks to relatives, selling to private traders, or simply consuming more themselves. Better-off peasants increasingly engaged in "self-dekulakization," selling their property and fleeing to cities before it could be confiscated.
Dekulakization in 1930s
Joseph Stalin announced the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" on 27 December 1929. Stalin had said: "Now we have the opportunity to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate them as a class and replace their production with the production of kolkhozes and sovkhozes."Robert Service: Stalin, a biography, p. 266. The Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) formalized the decision in a resolution titled "On measures for the elimination of kulak households in districts of comprehensive collectivization" on 30 January 1930. All kulaks were assigned to one of three categories: Those to be shot or imprisoned as decided by the local secret political police. Those to be sent to Siberia, the North, the Urals, or Kazakhstan, after confiscation of their property. Those to be evicted from their houses and used in labour colonies within their own districts. Those kulaks that were sent to Siberia and other unpopulated areas performed hard labor working in camps that would produce lumber, gold, coal and many other resources that the Soviet Union needed for its rapid industrialization plans. A high-ranking member of the OGPU (the secret police) shared Stalin's vision for a new penal system which would establish villages in the northern Soviet Union that could specialize in extracting natural resources.
An OGPU secret-police functionary, Yefim Yevdokimov, played a major role in organizing and supervising the round-up of peasants and mass executions as part of dekulakization.
Millions of people were arrested, deported, or executed in the process of dekulakization.
Stalin's adversary, Leon Trotsky, condemned the "liquidation of the kulaks" in 1930 as a "monstrosity" and had urged the Politbureau during the intra-party struggle to raise taxation on wealthier farmers and encourage farm labourers along with poor peasants to form collective farms on a voluntary basis with state resources allocated to agricultural machinery, fertilizers, credit and agronomic assistance.
Categorization of Kulaks The Politburo resolution of January 30, 1930 divided the kulaks into three categories based on their perceived threat to Soviet power.
Category I, the "counter-revolutionary aktiv": Those deemed to be actively engaged in counter-revolutionary activities. Their means of production and personal property would be confiscated. Heads of households were to be sentenced on the spot to imprisonment in a concentration camp, or, if deemed to be "organizers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary demonstrations and insurrectionary organisations," executed. Other members of the household would be placed into Category II. Category II, the "remaining elements of the kulak aktiv", especially the richest kulaks and semi-landowners: Those considered less actively opposed to collectivization. Their means of production and part of their property would be confiscated, and they would be exiled to remote regions of the Soviet Union or remote districts in their home region. Category III, the remainder, described as "reliable in their attitude to Soviet power": Part of their means of production would be confiscated, and they would be resettled outside of the boundaries of the collective farms but within the same administrative district.
The resolution of January 30, 1930 also established USSR-wide quotas distributed among the regions, determining how many peasants would be labelled kulaks: between 49,000–60,000 persons would be placed into Category I, and 129,000–154,000 households in Category II. No quota was set for Category III, but the total number of kulak households across all categories was to be capped at 3–5 percent of the population in grain-producing areas and 2–3 percent elsewhere. These quotas were quickly exceeded. By October 1930, 284,000 people had been arrested under Category I. By the end of 1930, approximately 330,000 households, encompassing over 1.5 million people, had been expropriated across all three categories.
Children during dekulakization
Children were among the millions of people who were impacted by the Soviet Union's 1930s dekulakization initiatives. Families in their entirety, including children of all ages, were frequently deported to distant parts of the nation or sent to camps for forced labor.
Children were "put into homes or orphanages and separated from their families as part of the dekulakization policies in the Soviet Union during the 1930s," according to historian Lynne Viola. These measures aimed to reduce kulak family resistance and enhance agricultural production under state supervision. Millions of individuals, including kids of all ages, were consequently subjected to forced labor, deportation, and other types of punishment.
Children from kulak families were seen by the Soviet authorities as a potential threat to the collectivization process, and they believed that separating children from their parents would weaken the kulaks' resistance. When children were committed to orphanages or other institutions, they were frequently taken away from their family, subjected to harsh living conditions, and frequently neglected or abused.
Women during dekulakization
The Soviet Union's 1930s dekulakization efforts had an impact on millions of individuals, including women. If they were married to or related to kulaks, women were seen as potential enemies of the state since they were assumed to be complicit with their husbands or male relatives. Because of this, they were frequently singled out by the government for arrest, deportation, and jail.