dekulakization

Dekulakization was a policy implemented by the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s and early 1930s, aimed at destroying the kulaks as a class. The campaign targeted wealthier peasants, confiscating their land, livestock, and tools, and expelling or deporting those identified as kulaks as part of the drive to accelerate agricultural collectivization. The term appears in party and security documents and refers to both the removal of perceived class enemies and their displacement from rural communities.

Background and aims: Following the New Economic Policy, the Soviet leadership sought rapid collectivization to consolidate agriculture under state and collective farms and to finance industrialization. Kulaks were designated by local authorities and security organs as a class enemy whose resistance to collectivization justified drastic measures.

Implementation: Local party cadres, police, and security services identified individuals, confiscated property, and organized deportations to remote areas or labor camps. Families were often uprooted and resettled in distant regions, with harsh conditions and limited opportunities for return.

Scale and effects: Estimates of the number affected vary widely, ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million deportees and repressed individuals. The campaign disrupted rural life, contributed to social dislocation, and occurred alongside the broader forced collectivization and state control of agriculture in the early 1930s. In some areas, it overlapped with or fed into the famines of the period.

Historical assessment: Dekulakization is regarded as a component of Stalin's repressive policy during the early Soviet era and as part of the larger project of forced collectivization. It remains a topic of scholarly debate concerning its scale, methods, and impact, as well as its ethical and human toll.

See also: Collectivization of agriculture, Great Purge, Gula