Who are kulaks and why Stalin did not like them. Historical educational program

The real conversation will be about the kulaks and about such a phenomenon as the kulaks.

Where did the word "fist" come from? There are many versions. One of the most common versions today is a fist, a strong business executive who keeps his entire household in a fist. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, another version was more common.

One of the main ways to enrich the kulak is to give money or grain on interest. That is: the kulak gives money to his fellow villagers, or gives grain, seed fund to poor fellow villagers. Gives with interest, pretty 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? Here he gave, for example, grain in growth - this happens, for example, in the Soviet Union in the 20s, that is, before dispossession. Under the law, the kulak does not have the right to engage in such activities, that is, no usury for private individuals, no credit practice was envisaged. It turns out that he was engaged in activities that, in fact, were illegal. It can of course be assumed that he applied to the Soviet court with a request that his debt be collected from the debtor. But most likely, it happened differently, that is, there was a banal knocking out of what the debtor owes. It was the extremely tough policy of knocking out debts that gave the kulaks their name.

So who are the kulaks?

Those who used the labor of farm laborers, that is, hired labor, and those who were engaged in usury in the countryside, were called kulaks. That is, a kulak is a person who gives money on interest, buys up the lands of his fellow villagers, and gradually dispossessing them of land, uses them as hired labor.

Fists appeared long before the revolution, and in principle it was enough 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, it turns out to be cheaper to process. Large fields can be cultivated with machinery - the processing of each individual tithe is cheaper, and, accordingly, such farms are more competitive.

All countries that moved from the agrarian to the industrial phase went through an increase in the size of land allotments. This is clearly seen in the example of American farmers, who today are few in the United States, but whose fields stretch far beyond the horizon. This refers to the fields of each individual farmer. Therefore, the enlargement of land plots is not only a natural fact, but even a necessary one. In Europe, this process was called pauperization: small-land peasants were driven off the land, the 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 the cities, where they either went to the army, the navy, in the same England, or got a job at enterprises; or begged, robbed, starved to death. To combat this phenomenon in England, laws against the poor were introduced at one time.

And a similar process began in the Soviet Union. It started after 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, mortgage, donate the land. This is what the kulaks took advantage of. For 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, which means you are a fist. This is not true.

The fact is that the presence of means of production also implies that someone must work for them. For example, if the farm has 1-2 horses that are used as traction, 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 definitely hire someone who will use these horses.

There were only two criteria for determining a fist. As I have already said, this is usurious activity and the use of hired labor.

Another thing is that, according to indirect signs - for example, the presence a large number horses or a large amount of equipment - it was possible to determine that this fist was really using hired labor.

And there was a need to determine what the future path of development of the village would be. It was quite obvious that it was necessary to enlarge the farms. However, the path through pauperization (through the ruin of the poor peasants and ousting them from the village, or turning them into hired labor), it was actually very painful, very long and promised really big sacrifices; example from England.

The second way that was considered was to get rid of the kulaks and carry out collectivization 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 the competition to the collective farms, had to be liquidated. It was decided to carry out the dispossession of kulaks as socially alien elements, and to 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 dispossessed - this is almost half a million families. At the same time, dispossession took place in three categories: the first category is those who resisted the Soviet regime with weapons in their hands, that is, the organizers and participants in uprisings and terrorist acts. The second category is other kulak activists, that is, people who opposed the Soviet regime, fought against it, but passively, that is, without using weapons. And finally, the third category is just fists.

What was the difference between the categories?

The fists belonging to the first category were dealt with by the “troikas of the OGPU”, that is, some of these fists were shot, some of these fists were sent to camps. The second category is 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 - were also subject to deportation, but deportation within the region where they lived. It's like, let's say in the Moscow region, to evict from the vicinity of Moscow to the outskirts of the region. All these three categories recruited more than 2 million people with family members.

Is it a lot or a little? In fact, statistically, it turns out to be about one kulak family per village, that is, one village - one fist. 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 evicted to Siberia, thrown almost into the snow, without property, without food, without anything, to certain death. In fact, this is also not true. Most of the kulaks, indeed, who were evicted to other regions of the country, they were evicted to Siberia. But they were used as so-called labor settlers - they built new cities. For example, when we are talking about the heroic builders of Magnitogorsk and we are talking about dispossessed evicted to Siberia, we are often talking about the same people. And the best example of this is the family of the first president Russian Federation. The fact is that his father was just dispossessed, and his further career developed 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 to say, given 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 few distortions, that is, sometimes there really was a situation when they tried to declare the middle peasants to be kulaks. There were moments when envious neighbors managed to slander someone, but such cases were isolated. Actually, the villagers themselves determined who was their kulak in the village and who should be got rid of. It is clear that justice did not always triumph here, but the decision on who the kulaks were was not made from above, not by the Soviet authorities, it was made by the villagers themselves. It was determined according to the lists presented by the committees, that is, the inhabitants 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 assigned: a malicious fist or, let's just say, a world-eater.

Moreover, the problem of kulaks also existed in Russian Empire where rich peasants managed to crush the village under them. Although the rural community itself partly protected against the growth of kulak landownership, and kulaks began to appear mainly after the Stolypin reform, when some became rich, actually bought up all the lands of their fellow villagers, forced fellow villagers to work for themselves, became large sellers of bread, in fact, became already 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 is based on what he managed to take away from his fellow villagers. The point is that no matter how well people work in the countryside... why can't we let the hard-working middle peasant become a kulak? His wealth is limited by the size of his land. As long as 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. Works well, 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 terrible repressions against kulaks and their children, then there is a very good decision of the Council People's Commissars USSR, where it is said: “Children of special settlers and exiles, when they reach the age of sixteen, if they are not discredited by anything, issue passports on a general basis and do not put obstacles in their way to study or work.” The date of this decree is October 22, 1938.

Actually, collectivization turned out to be an alternative way to the gradual enlargement of farms due to pauperization. The peasants in those villages where there were no longer any kulaks were gradually reduced to collective farms (by the way, most often, quite voluntarily for themselves) and it turned out that for one village there was a common field, quite extensive, for which the equipment was allocated, with the help of which this field and processed. In fact, only kulaks were the victims of collectivization. And the kulaks, no matter how numerous the victims, made up less than 2% of the entire rural population of the Soviet Union. As I said earlier, this is somewhere around one family per fairly large village.

Fist - a popular name, the word was in the 19th century, is in the dictionaries of the Russian Empire. Means a truly prosperous peasant, but is not defined by wealth.

HISTORY OF THE KULAKS

In the period before collectivization, the land was landlord, peasant, and the one that was bought by the kulaks.
Peasant land is the land of the community. Usually, the peasants did not have enough land, so gradually the hayfields were plowed up for grain.
Peasants ate accordingly poorly. According to the calculations of the military department in 1905: 40% of the conscripts, and almost all of them came from the village, the meat was first tasted in the army. Underfed conscripts were fed up to military standards.
Peasant land was not privately owned by peasants, which is why it was constantly divided. The earth was a community (of the world), hence most often the kulak received the title of "world-eater", that is, he lived at the expense of the world.
Kulaks were those peasants who were engaged in usurious activities, that is, they gave grain, money at interest, rented a horse for a lot of money, and then “squeezed” it all back by the methods that gave the name to this subclass of peasants.
The second thing the kulaks did was to use hired labor. They bought part of the land from bankrupt landlords, and, in fact, “squeezed” part of the land from the community for debts. If they were impudent and took too much, then the peasants could gather for a gathering, take their fists and drown them in the nearest pond - which was always called lynching. After that, the gendarmes came to identify the criminals, but as a rule they did not find them - the villagers did not betray anyone, and after the gendarmes left, grace without a fist attacked the village.
The fist itself could not “hold” the village in submission, therefore, assistants (podkulakniks) began to be used - natives of the peasants, who were allowed to part of the “pie” because they would carry out punitive orders to debtors.

The most important thing in usurious activity is not the availability of funds and the ability to lend them, but the ability to withdraw money, and preferably with their own interest.

That is, in fact, a fist is the head of a village organized criminal group (an organized criminal group), a fist is an accomplice and fighter of the organization. The fists beat someone, rape someone, maim someone and keep the neighborhood in fear. At the same time, all Orthodox go to church and everything is so godlessly organized.
Usually the kulaks were not the most industrious peasants, but with an impressive (terrifying) appearance.
In part, the process of the emergence of the kulaks in Russia in the middle and at the end of the 19th century was economically justified - in order to mechanize agriculture, to make it more marketable, it was necessary to enlarge rural land plots. The peasantry was land-poor, that is, you can work from morning to evening, sow, but figuratively, even if you crack, you can’t 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 can’t grow much from such a piece of land, you still need to pay taxes to the state - and all that remained was for food. Those who did not work very well could not even pay the ransom payments for liberation from serfdom, which were abolished only after the 1905 revolution.

When they say that "the kulaks worked well, and therefore became prosperous" - it does not correspond to the truth, for the simple reason that there was little land, only for their own food.

Because the kulaks were economically profitable, because when Stolypin's reform was carried out, the emphasis was on the kulaks. That is, it is necessary to break the community, the people to be evicted to settlements, to farmsteads, so that communal ties are broken, some of them are sent as settlers to Siberia, so that the process of pauperization (impoverishment) takes place.
In this case, the impoverished peasants became either farm laborers or squeezed out into the city (those who were lucky enough not to die of hunger), and those who were prosperous - they will already raise the profitability of agricultural goods: buy winnowing machines, seeders in order to grow profit. The rate was on such capitalist development, but the peasantry did not accept it. Most of the peasants sent to settlements beyond the Urals returned back very embittered, because Stolypin was strongly hated in the village.
Next First World War, revolution and the Decree on the land of the Bolsheviks. The Decree on Land partly solved the problem of the lack of land of the peasantry, because a quarter of all land belonged to the landowners by the time of the revolution. This land was taken from them and divided according to the number of eaters, that is, tied to the community.

Since then, all agricultural land has been given to the peasants by the Bolsheviks, as promised by them.

But at the same time, the land was given not to private ownership, but to use. The land had to be divided according to the number of eaters; it could not be bought or sold. But the peasants did not begin to live better over time, and here's why.
From the time of the tsarist regime, the kulaks and subkulakists remained and again began usurious activity, and in a short period of time the land again began to belong to the kulaks, and part of the peasants again became farm laborers. The land began to belong to the kulaks completely against the law, even thanks to selection for debts.
The exploitation of man by man was prohibited in the Soviet state - the use of farm laborers contradicted this. In addition, the usurious activity of private individuals in the USSR in the 20s was, again, prohibited, but here it is at full speed. Whatever one may say, the kulaks violated all the laws of the Soviet Union available to them.
When the question of collectivization arose, it was the kulaks who were the main opponents, because the kulak does not fit into the collective farm at all, he loses everything on the collective farm. The main resistance to collectivization was the kulaks, since the people were rich, they had a serious influence on the minds in their village, and the kulaks helped them in this. They formed public opinion and armed groups that killed policemen, chairmen of collective farms, often together with their families.
When the question of dispossession arose, namely the liberation of the peasants from the kulaks, the government did not take anything from the kulaks for itself and did not enrich itself, as is commonly believed in liberal circles.

FIST CATEGORIES

Category 1 - counter-revolutionary activists, organizers of terrorist acts and uprisings, the most dangerous enemies of Soviet power - armed, they killed representatives of collective farms, policemen, incited people to revolt against Soviet power.
Category 2 - a traditional asset of rich kulaks and semi-landlords who "crushed" the entire village. This part of the counter-revolutionary activists did not suit the uprising, they did not kill the policemen, but at the same time severely robbed the peasants.
Category 3 - the rest of the kulaks, people who were engaged in usurious activities and used the labor of farm laborers.

An interesting point. Judging by the films and books, they begin to say: they came to our grandfather, he had only 5 horses and for this he was dispossessed ...
The fact is that 5 horses are not 5 pigs that are needed for food, while a horse is a means of cultivating the land, as well as a vehicle. Not a single peasant will keep an extra horse, it needs to be fed and maintained, and a working peasant does not need more than 1 horse for farming.
The presence of several horses for a peasant meant that he used hired labor. And if he uses it, then he obviously has not only his own land, but also illegal.
Accordingly, the question of dispossession arises, and if there are no other indications, then the peasant was assigned to the 3rd category.

WHAT THEY DID WITH EACH CATEGORY OF FISTS

Favorite myth of the liberals: hanged, shot and sent to Siberia to certain death!
1st category - the kulaks themselves and their families were expelled, but those who were involved in the murder of government officials were shot, but the family was not touched. In the first category, kulaks were subject to deportation beyond the Urals, Kazakhstan (as under Stolypin). Deported with families.
2nd category - the richest kulaks and semi-landowners who did not directly resist the Soviet regime - the kulaks themselves were deported without a family.
3rd category - kulaks with their families were subject to deportation, but within their own county. That is, they were expelled from the village itself to the neighboring one in order to break the connection between the kulak and the sub-kulaks.

HOW MANY WERE EVICTED

According to the dubious data of the writer of exclusively artistic word Solzhenitsyn, 15 million peasants were deported to distant lands.
In total, according to the OGPU (a clear accounting of the costs of resettlement was kept), a total of 1 million 800 thousand people (with their families) underwent dispossession. The men themselves - 450-500 thousand.
For comparison, there were about 500 thousand settlements in the Soviet Union, that is, it turns out that a little less than 1 family per 1 village was dispossessed, which means that they did not even find kulaks everywhere.
Falsification: there were no situations when the whole village was exiled, since according to the system it turned out that 1 fist per village.
Sometimes, for especially serious crimes, they could additionally punish the kulaks, in such cases 2-3 families could suffer in the village.
There were 120 million peasants at that time, about 1/70 of them were dispossessed.
To the frequent opinion that dispossession took place unfairly, one can answer that there were those who were unfairly convicted, slandered, settling scores, but these were few.
Speaking of the Soviet, and then the liberal myth - the famous Pavlik Morozov in the village. Gerasimovka was not the son of a kulak, there were no kulaks at all, there were only exiles.

DISKULAKIZATION STATISTICS:

By order of the OGPU, it is noted that, according to the head of the OGPU siblag, from the echelon of immigrants from North Caucasus to Novosibirsk, numbering 10,185 people, 341 people (3.3%) died on the way, including a significant number from exhaustion.
Then there was a trial because of the high percentage of mortality (this is a multiple excess of the norm), the results of which lay on the table of Yagoda (Yezhov's predecessor), in this case those guilty of high mortality were severely punished, up to and including execution.
Therefore, the myth that a significant part of the kulaks died on the way is not tenable.
It should be noted that it was mainly the elderly and the sick who died, that is, those categories of people who had health problems. They died from exhaustion.
After that, there was a separate order from Yagoda, stating that children under 10 years old should be left with relatives and not transported by those families of kulaks where there were no able-bodied men and elderly people who could not withstand a long transportation.
In our country, almost the entire population considers themselves descendants of nobles and kulaks who suffered terrible hardships, but for some reason their lineage continued.
Falsification: they threw kulaks with their families into the bare steppe. In fact, only kulaks of the 1st category were taken to labor settlements.
There were special decrees saying that the children of kulaks, who are not themselves involved in any crimes, should not be prevented from obtaining a passport upon reaching the age of 16 and leaving the place of settlement for study or work (even for kulaks of the 1st category).
Interesting fact! A well-known personality from the fists - a certain Nikolai Yeltsin! Nikolai Yeltsin was dispossessed and sent to Sverdlovsk as a punishment, where he participated in the construction of an enterprise, where he later worked as a foreman. His son Boris Yeltsin became the head of the Sverdlovsk City Committee of the Communist Party, later becoming President of the Russian Federation. That is, Nikolai Yeltsin worked as a leader despite the fact that he was dispossessed.
About 200,000 kulaks eventually fled from the places of forced evictions, many returned to their lands, where no one had ever touched them.

RESULTS OF DISKULAKIZATION

Of course, there were people to whom dispossession brought pain and grief, but those who received fair social benefits from this were ten times more, therefore it is not objective to present dispossession in an extremely negative light.
Dispossession contributed to the construction of a system of efficient collective farms, helped to feed a hungry country and gave literally"food" for the industrialization of the state.
In fact, collectivization made it possible, in contrast to pauperization, which was based on kulaks, to preserve what the decree on land gave - land to the peasants. If the land belongs to the kulaks, then the overwhelming majority of the peasants will never have it. The collective farms were the same peasants, but the land remained with the collective farms, that is, the collective farms, in the same way, owned the land on the rights of use and could not buy and sell land. No one built dachas on the land of the collective farm, did not grow non-agricultural crops.
That is, the land belonged to the peasants, only in the variant of collective use under the legislation on the activities of the agricultural artel.
At the same time, the version is being actively promoted that collectivization and dispossession are when the land was taken away from the peasants. Draw your own conclusions.

FIST - MIROYED

The conversation will be about the kulaks and such a phenomenon as the kulaks. Where did the word "fist" come from? There are many versions. One of the most common versions today is a fist, a strong business executive who keeps his entire household in a fist. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, another version was more common.

So who are the kulaks?

It is widely believed that these are the most industrious peasants, who began to live more richly due to their heroic labor, due to greater skill and diligence. However, kulaks were not called those who are richer, who live more satisfyingly. Those who used the labor of farm laborers, that is, hired labor, and those who were engaged in usury in the countryside, were called kulaks. That is, a kulak is a person who gives money on interest, buys up the lands of his fellow villagers, and gradually dispossessing them of land, uses them as hired labor.

Fists 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, it turns out to be cheaper to process. Large fields can be cultivated with machinery - the processing of each individual tithe is cheaper, and, accordingly, such farms are more competitive.

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, mortgage, donate the land. This is what the kulaks took advantage of. 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, which means you are a fist. This is not true. The fact is that the presence of means of production also implies that someone must work for them. For example, if the farm has 1-2 horses that are used as traction, 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 definitely hire someone who will use these horses.

There were only two criteria for determining a fist. As I have already said, this is usurious activity and the use of hired labor. Another thing is that by 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 was really using hired labor.

The second way that was considered was to get rid of the kulaks and carry out the collectivization of 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 the competition to the collective farms, had to be liquidated. It was decided to carry out the dispossession of kulaks as socially alien elements, and to 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 dispossessed - this is almost half a million families. At the same time, dispossession took place in three categories: the first category is those who resisted the Soviet regime with weapons in their hands, that is, the organizers and participants in uprisings and terrorist acts. The second category is other kulak activists, that is, people who opposed the Soviet regime, fought against it, but passively, that is, without using weapons. And finally, the third category is just fists.

What was the difference between the categories? The fists belonging to the first category were dealt with by the “troikas of the OGPU”, that is, some of these fists were shot, some of these fists were sent to camps. The second category is 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 - were also subject to deportation, but deportation within the region where they lived. It's like, let's say in the Moscow region, to evict from the vicinity of Moscow to the outskirts of the region. All these three categories recruited more than 2 million people with family members.

And now more than 2 million kulaks were evicted. Where were they evicted? There is an opinion that they were evicted to Siberia, thrown almost into the snow, without property, without food, without anything, to certain death. In fact, this is also not true. Most of the kulaks, indeed, who were evicted to other regions of the country, they were evicted to Siberia. But they were used as so-called labor settlers - they built new cities. For example, when we are talking about the heroic builders of Magnitogorsk and we are talking about dispossessed 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 just dispossessed, and his further career developed in Sverdlovsk, as a foreman.

It is clear that justice did not always triumph here, but the decision on who the kulaks were was not made from above, not by the Soviet authorities, it was made by the villagers themselves. It was determined according to the lists presented by the committees, that is, the inhabitants 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 assigned: 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 subdue the village for themselves. Although the rural community itself partly protected against the growth of kulak landownership, and kulaks began to appear mainly after the Stolypin reform, when some became rich, actually bought up all the lands of their fellow villagers, forced fellow villagers to work for themselves, became large sellers of bread, in fact, became already bourgeoisie.

If we talk about terrible repressions against 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 are not discredited in any way, issue passports on a general basis and do not put obstacles in their way to travel to study or work.”

Actually, collectivization turned out to be an alternative way to the gradual enlargement of farms due to pauperization. The peasants in those villages where there were no longer any kulaks were gradually reduced to collective farms (by the way, most often, quite voluntarily for themselves) and it turned out that for one village there was a common field, quite extensive, for which the equipment was allocated, with the help of which this field and processed. In fact, only kulaks were the victims of collectivization. And the kulaks, no matter how numerous the victims, made up less than 2% of the entire rural population of the Soviet Union. As I said earlier, this is somewhere around one family per fairly large village.

The struggle of the Bolsheviks against the kulaks and the formation of Soviet power are shown in x/f Nakhalyonok. USSR.

About the terrible ulcer of the Russian peasantry. The tsarist minister on kulaks and kulaks -"The pernicious influence of the development of usury and the kulaks in rural life."

Tsarist Minister of the Kulaks

The text below was published in 1892. Its author, Aleksey Sergeevich Yermolov, is by no means a revolutionary; two years later he will become the Minister of Agriculture and State Property.

The pernicious influence of the development of usury and the kulaks in rural life

AT close connection With the question of collecting state, zemstvo, and public taxes that fall on the peasant population, and, one might say, mainly on the basis of these penalties, a terrible ulcer of our rural life has developed, which, at the end of it, corrupts and takes away the people's well-being - this is the so-called kulaks and usury. With the urgent need for money that the peasants have - to pay duties, to equip after a fire, to buy a horse after it was stolen, or cattle after a death, these ulcers find the widest field for their development. With the existing, established with the best aims and perhaps quite necessary restrictions on the sale for state and private collections of the basic needs of the peasant economy, as well as allotment land, there is no correct credit available to the peasants at all.

Only the rural usurer, who provides himself with enormous interest, which rewards him for the frequent loss of capital itself, comes to his aid in cases of such extreme need, but this aid, of course, is costly to those who once turn to it. Once indebted to such a usurer, the peasant is almost never able to get out of the loop with which he is entangled and which for the most part leads him to complete ruin. Quite often the peasant already plows and sows and gathers grain only for the kulak.

It is known that when recovering from peasants, according to writ of execution, for unauthorized leaving work, for failure to fulfill obligations assumed, etc., in the vast majority of cases it turns out to be completely impossible for a landowner to get anything from them - many consider it even superfluous to go to court in such cases. But the rural usurer, even without a trial, will always more than return his own, not by these, but by other means, not by money, but by kind, grain, cattle, land, work, etc.

Incidentally, rural usurers know how to frame their operations in such a way that even the court, at least the former world civil court, which stood on the basis of formal evidence, usually came to the aid of the rural usurer in his predatory activity of ruining the peasantry. It is quite natural that a peasant, unfamiliar with the ritual side of legal proceedings, entangled with various kinds of obligations, mostly incomprehensible to himself, turned out to be powerless to prove his rightness in court, if not formally, then factually, and the court often imposed a penalty on him, in 5- 10 times the amount actually due to them.

Acting with promissory notes carelessly issued to him and armed with writ of execution, which are very often the court has no right to refuse, the rural usurer at the same time corrupts, solders the weak members of wealthy families, entangles them with fictitious debt obligations issued for an amount 10-20 times greater than the real debt, and ruins the masses of peasants in the very full sense this word. It is hard to believe to what extent the interest is collected from the peasants for the money lent to them, and which depends mainly on the degree of the people's needs. So, in the summer, especially in view of a favorable harvest, a loan is given no more than 45-50% per annum, in autumn the same creditors demand no less than 120%, and sometimes up to 240%, and very often the pledge of peasant shower allotments, which the owners themselves then rent from their own lenders. Sometimes the land selected by the lender for a debt at the rate of 3-4 r. for a tithe, it is leased back to its owner for 10-12 rubles.

However, even such percentages in most cases are still considered insufficient, since, in addition, various works, services, payments in kind, in addition to cash, etc., are negotiated. When borrowing bread - for a pood in winter or spring, two are returned in autumn. It is very difficult to evaluate all this for money, especially since the accounts of the debtor with his creditor are usually so confused (mostly deliberately confused by the latter) that it is almost impossible to sort them out.

AT last years a loan secured by property is especially widespread, and the usurer does not disdain anything - agricultural implements, and wearing clothes, and standing bread, and even a working horse and cattle are used. When the time comes for retribution and the peasant has nothing to pay the debt with, then all this goes on sale, and more often it is conceded to the same creditor, and he also sets the price at which the pledged thing is accepted by him in payment of the debt, so that often, having given the pledge, the peasant remains still in debt, sometimes in an amount no less than the original figure of the debt. In some places, the obligatory work of debtor peasants for the creditor kulak takes on the character of a perfect corvee, even much more difficult than the former master's, because in former times the landowners were interested in preserving the well-being of their peasants, but now the creditor kulak has nothing to do with them.

Usually, these rural usurers begin their activities in the wine trade, which provides so many convenient ways to get rich at the expense of the peasants. Here, of course, there are also, from the side of the law, very expedient, in our opinion, restrictions - it is forbidden to sell wine on credit, on the security of bread or things, against future work, - it is forbidden to pay with wine for work performed, etc. But it is hardly necessary to say that all these beneficent restrictions remain a dead letter, since it is very difficult to keep track of their fulfillment, and there is no one. Moreover, the court very often recovers the money that the peasants owe to the innkeeper - in fact for wine - but on paper, for various goods or products allegedly bought from him.

It is known that for the most part a tavern keeper is at the same time a shopkeeper, and a tenant of land, and a sack of bread, and a prasol, i.e. a buyer of livestock and various other peasant goods, since the wine trade alone, especially the correct one, without all these, so to speak, supportive branches of it, is far from sufficient to satisfy his desire for profit. It is also known that many now large fortunes owe their origin to just such a tavern trade, and some later eminent merchants began as indentured servants or so-called carriers in a tavern or tavern. In county towns and large villages, almost all best houses now belong to wine merchants, or persons who laid the foundation for their fortune in the wine trade in connection with the kulaks. For a person who stops at nothing, not much money is needed to start his activity, but, of course, a certain kind of intelligence, dexterity, resourcefulness are needed, especially at first, while the situation is still precarious and the fist has not fledged, has not taken strength. , did not enlist the right connections. These ties are most easily established and these forces are most strengthened when such a fist finds it possible to take power into his own hands. Because of this, many of them, especially from among the beginners, in every possible way strive to get into a place that would give them strength and influence - for example, to get elected to the volost foremen, which sometimes, especially in the old days, before the introduction of zemstvo chiefs, - they succeeded. And once power fell into the hands, the wings were untied and it was possible to go far, the field ahead opened wide.

It is hardly necessary to dwell on what a corrupting influence on rural life the appearance of such a figure in the position of chief brought, and what results could be obtained from this. For the impossibility of getting into the foreman, you can make peace with another position, not even associated with actual power, such as the position of a church elder, or the so-called ktitor, just to get out of general level and stand in a more conspicuous place, from where it is easier to do all sorts of things. And we must do justice to some of these businessmen - sometimes very good, caring elders came out of them, who took care of the church and contributed to the best of its splendor, not stopping even at rather large donations from their own funds. Perhaps this was partly influenced by the desire to at least a little pray before the Lord for those sins that were involuntarily felt in the soul, and, however, these donations and these prayers sometimes did not stop the further worldly activity of such a guardian in the same direction, but this was usually explained by them by the fact that that the enemy of the human race is strong ...

The same rural kulaks, as has been said, are for the most part local merchants; they also buy up or take from the peasants for a debt their grain, tobacco, wool, flax, hemp and other products. The nature of their activities in this regard is also well known. Not to mention those low prices, according to which they accept their works from the peasants, then all the usual methods of such buyers are used - measuring, hanging, luring into yards, with incorrect calculations later, buying on the road, at the entrance to the city, at a roadside tavern, with appropriate treats etc.

Often, peasants who come to the market with their products are given a price that is much lower than the existing one - during the usual strikes between buyers in such cases; - then, at the reception, - in addition to the frequent establishment of a completely arbitrary unit of measure, such as a quarter of nine measures, a Berkovets of 14 poods or a pood of fifty pounds - the measurement itself is carried out with incorrect measures, false weights, etc. It is known that often even branded measures of scales are incorrect. In cities where measures are checked, special measures for purchase and special measures for sale can be ordered and presented to the city government for stamping. And since there is an established brand on a measure or weight, it is almost impossible to prove its infidelity and, of course, not a single peasant will even think about it, only wondering why such a big difference came out when pouring bread, against his own measurement, at home, and often, in simplicity of soul, ascribes this difference to his own fault. These methods of deceiving the peasants when buying grain from them are largely supported by the custom, which still exists in many places in Russia, of buying bread not by weight, but by measure. Probably, this custom is preserved by grain buyers, especially when buying from peasants, because when buying by measure it is much easier to measure the seller without him noticing it.

It is known that here great importance have different methods of filling - in the same measure you can put more or less bread, depending on how you pour it, besides, sometimes they pour it not under the rowing, but with a top, a mountain, as much as it can hold, and even with raking, you can row a certain amount of bread to the extent possible. The measure, for the most part, for the convenience of filling, is hung on a rope, and here, by a certain kind of tapping techniques, you can make the bread lie down more densely. Many grain merchants have special clerks for shoveling grain from the peasants - real virtuosos in this field. It is remarkable that the methods of activity of village grain buyers are extremely varied and very often vary in such a way as to further confuse and lure the peasant.

So, there are times when buyers buy peasant bread expensive existing prices - more expensive than they buy it from the landlords - more expensive than they later sell it themselves. In this case, the calculation turns out to be different - sometimes this is done in order to attract a mass of sellers and then, when many peasants with bread come together, at once drop the price by half; sometimes the goal is to use the method of measuring even more widely, counting on the fact that the peasant, delighted with the high price, will follow the acceptance less closely. In a word, various ways very many, but all of them, of course, to the obvious disadvantage of the peasant and to the great profit of the sacker, who, having bought peasant bread, then bypasses the landowners' parties, sometimes bluntly declaring that although the landowners' bread is better in quality, but he not handy to buy it.

The same methods of measuring and deceiving peasants are practiced on a large scale in mills, when grinding peasant grain. In addition to the appointment of a completely arbitrary remuneration for grinding, which is usually received in kind - grain or flour, the bread entering the grinding is very often not measured at all, but directly from the cart under the millstone, and then the peasant is given as much flour as the owner of the mill pleases, yes and from this amount, the grinding fee is deducted.

In order to eliminate such artificial and almost imperceptible methods of deceiving the peasants, it would be highly desirable to introduce everywhere the obligatory sale and purchase of grain, as well as taking it to the mills, only by weight, and, at the same time, to prohibit all other arbitrary units of weight, other than those prescribed by law. It would also be useful in the sense of eliminating the current customs, which are different in this regard in different places, which only obscure the matter in the eyes of not only the peasants, but even the landowners, for whom, due to this, the terminology of different markets is incomprehensible. . It is known that even in St. Petersburg, bread is still sold on the stock exchange and is quoted either by measure or by weight, which seems extremely inconvenient.

At the same time, it is urgently necessary to streamline the matter of checking weights and measures, taking this matter out of the hands of City Administrations, which cannot decisively cope with this purely technical task, which requires attention and accuracy. In administrations, as is known, some kind of watchman, often illiterate, is usually involved in checking and branding measures and weights, who will brand anything.

It is known that from the time of the emancipation of the peasants, and as the old nobility element weakened and became impoverished, a mass of landlord estates and lands passed into the hands of merchants, philistines, and all sorts of raznochintsy in general. Far from putting the question on the basis of estates and not denying the fact that among these new landowners there are persons who have seriously taken up the economy, possessing solid capitals and therefore are able to put the matter on the most correct ground, one cannot, however, hide from oneself the fact that such persons are, unfortunately, a relatively rare exception.

In most cases, the buyers or tenants of the landlords’ or tenants of state lands are the same kulaks, already more or less prosperous, having in mind nothing more than the same goals of speculation or further profit at the expense of, first, the natural wealth of the purchased or leased estates, and then at the expense of the surrounding rural population, which, at the same time, even more quickly and more surely enters into bondage to them. Such a landowner or tenant begins - unless he is bound by too strict a contract and is not followed stubbornly - by destroying the estate, which is being sold for demolition, by cutting down the garden and the vault of forests, and in this way the entire amount paid for the estate is often covered and the land goes to the new owner - for free.

At the same time, livestock and household implements are being sold, because the new owner usually does not intend to run farms or at all, or has in mind to hire plowing and harvesting at a cheaper price, counting on the forced labor for him of his former debtors, the peasants. If there is virgin steppe or centuries-old fallow land on the estate, it is plowed up; the same is done with the land from under a cut down forest or garden; if there are ponds, they descend to sow hemp or millet in their place. But this is only, so to speak, a start to business, the beginning of work - this is the removal of foam from the acquired estate, which is sometimes so profitable, especially when it comes to a leased estate, that then it can be abandoned or returned to the owner, allegedly due to the unprofitability of the lease , even with the payment of the contractual penalty, if the owner was so careful that he included it in the condition at the conclusion of the contract. But if the land remains with the new owner, if the rent price in itself is not high, then for the most part the distribution of land by the tithe to the peasants begins, and the prices are, of course, the higher, the more the peasants need the land.

Thus, in this respect, those estates are considered to be the most advantageous, which are located in a locality where the majority of the peasants sit on a free allotment and where they sometimes have nowhere to drive out a cow or release a chicken, without it falling onto someone else's land. Under such conditions, all the ability to "manage" lies in the ability to exploit the need and poverty of the surrounding population. It is not for nothing that a cynical saying has developed between such masters-kulaks, which well characterizes their view of the matter and their mode of action. Praising before each other the field of their activity and drawing the benefits of the possessions they have acquired - “our side is rich,” they say, “because the people around are poor” ...

Along with the tithe surrender of land to the peasants - of course, with the payment of money "to the sheaf", i.e. before the grain is brought from the fields, and if without deposits, then sometimes with a deposit from the tenant peasants - at least in the form of winter coats, which are folded in the barn at the deliverer until autumn - sometimes a literal struggle begins with neighbors because of losses, from - for peasant cattle, a struggle that sometimes takes on the character of a real persecution. The hiring for work, if not all the land, is sorted out by the peasants, is, of course, carried out from the winter, and the issuance of deposits - and sometimes, it must be told the truth - and all the money in advance, is usually adjusted to the time when taxes are collected from the peasants and when, hence, it is possible to hire cheaper.

When the peasants leave in the summer for work, which for the most part are paid by piece, from tithes, special, arbitrary measures of tithes are invented, which are sometimes deliberately cut into such bizarre forms, such “Babylons”, that the peasants absolutely cannot figure out exactly how much land is allotted to them. under work. When hiring peasants for work with payment from a tithe, the tithe is usually considered to be the fortieth, economic; when renting the same land to the same peasants, a tithing of the state measure, thirty is accepted.

In many places, this is already a custom that is known to everyone and in which, at least, there is no deceit, because the matter is conducted frankly. But here is what is not good, and what many do not disdain: for measuring the land, either measuring chains are usually used, or more often fathoms. One chain, or sazhen, economic, is ordered more authentically - in order to capture more land - this is when the land is measured out to the peasants for work. Another chain, or sazhen, - shorter - is used when the land is allotted to the peasants who have rented it for plowing and sowing. In both cases, the benefits of the “owner” are thus fully observed, but the peasant, of course, is unaware, and even if he guesses that something is not right, then for the most part he will not argue, because “you can’t keep up with every little thing, you know, it's the master's business."

But it also happens worse. It also happens, for example, that during hot working hours, especially when God sends the harvest, and there are few people and the prices for cleaning are rising, some one such owner suddenly announces when hiring in the market, where there are a lot of all kinds of newcomers, the price is so inconsistent - high and tempting for the peasants, that the people will tumble down to him. Following this, all others are forced to raise the price of the work, so as not to be completely without workers, despite the fact that the price is sometimes completely impossible in its height. When the time comes for the calculation, the first owner to raise the price, who, of course, had the bread removed and brought before everyone else, asks to wait a little, to wait with the calculation, since he now has no money. The workers will make some noise at first, and then willy-nilly agree. A week passes, another - they come for money, but there is still no money, they ask to wait until the bread is sold.

Finally, the bread is sold, but there is still no calculation - and so time goes by until the workers are offered - a sin in half, to take half the money and knock off the rest - and the owner would be happy to give everything, but there is no money, times are hard , bread is cheap, there is a hitch in trade. The workers will again make some noise here, and remind God of God, but in the end they agree to this, except sometimes they bargain some more increase from the owner, and with that they leave, until next year, when they again fall for the same bait. The neighbors of such a master-kulak, who are doing business according to God, hired workers at a price raised to an impossible level as a result of the described trick, and having paid them off as agreed, they reduce the economic year to a deficit, because the low sales prices for bread really do not pay for the increased job prices.

These are the methods and these are the results. economic activity kulak landowners or tenants who replaced the former landowners, who are often accused of being impoverished because they failed to adapt to the "new conditions of landownership." On the other hand, where the noble element has survived more strongly, where there are fewer estates that have passed into the hands of merchants and kulaks, there the peasant lives easier, there is less scope for the predation of usurers, there are correct, humane and normal relations between landowners and peasants, between employers and workers, the conviction is still firmly preserved there that the wealth and strength of the country lies in the wealth and strength of the people, and not vice versa. As the root element of the nobility is ruined and disappears, the peasant population is weakening and exhausted, finding neither support nor protection in the motley elements that replace it. This is a fact confirmed by many researchers of our rural life, even from among those who may be willing to see the matter in a different light.

This is yet another dark side of our modern rural life, in which, along with the growing poverty of the peasants, the greedy aspirations of the predators described above are gaining more and more scope, most of which - it must be told the truth - came from among the same peasants, but who, as they say their former fellow villagers "forgot God." The above facts are sufficient to show how important it would be to regulate this side of the matter, to put an end to the harmful activities of rural usurers, kulaks and buyers, although this task is extremely difficult, especially given the ignorance of the rural population and the complete economic insecurity that these most dangerous elements are now making use of it, like leeches sucking out the last juices of the people's well-being and finding themselves all the more expanse and bounty, the poorer and more destitute the peasants are.

Ermolov A.S. Crop failure and national disaster. SPb., 1892. S.179–190

Fist- before the revolution of 1917 - dealer, maklak, prasol, matchmaker, esp. in the grain trade, in the bazaars and marinas, he himself is penniless, he lives by deceit, calculation, measurement; lighthouse eagle. eagle, tarkhan tamb. Varangian Mosk. a merchant with little money, travels around the villages, buying up canvas, yarn, flax, hemp, lambskin, bristles, oil, etc., prasol, dust, a money-hunter, a farmer, a buyer and a cattle driver; peddler, peddler. (V. I. Dal's dictionary)

Pre-revolutionary terminology

Initially, the term "fist" had an exclusively negative connotation, representing an assessment of a dishonest person, which was then reflected in the elements of Soviet propaganda. Back in the 1870s, A. N. Engelhardt, who studied the Russian peasantry, wrote:

“The petty bourgeoisie can now be pushed into such a framework that together with us it will participate in socialist construction ... Our policy towards the countryside must develop in such a direction that the restrictions that hinder the growth of a prosperous and kulak economy are moved apart and partly eliminated. To the peasants, to all the peasants, I must say: get rich, develop your economy and do not worry that you will be squeezed.

At the same time, nevertheless, “the authorities imposed an increased tax on the kulak, demanded the sale of grain to the state at fixed prices, limited the kulak land use, limited the size of the kulak economy [...[but has not yet pursued a policy of liquidating the kulaks” . However, already in 1928, the course towards the kulak was curtailed, giving way to the course towards the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

However, this phenomenon was only temporary in the life of the term "fist" and is associated with the active support of the peasantry during the New Economic Policy and a little earlier.

hired labor is systematically applied;
the presence of a mill, oil mill, grain mill, drying ..., the use of a mechanical engine ...;
rent in hiring complex agricultural machines with mechanical engines;
engaging in trade, usury, mediation, the presence of unearned incomes (for example, clergymen).

The Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of October 13, 1930, which followed the article by I.V. Stalin, “Dizziness from successes”, changed the criteria for classifying peasant farms as kulak ones, in particular, the farms of clergymen were no longer considered kulak ones.

In the course of the forced collectivization of agriculture, carried out in the USSR in public policy was the suppression of anti-Soviet speeches of the peasants and the associated “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” - “dispossession”, which involved the forcible and extrajudicial deprivation of wealthy peasants using hired labor, all means of production, land, civil rights, and eviction to remote regions of the country, and sometimes - shooting.

On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a Resolution. According to this decree, kulaks were divided into three categories:

the first category is a counter-revolutionary asset, organizers of terrorist acts and uprisings,
the second category - the rest of the counter-revolutionary asset of the richest kulaks and semi-landlords,
the third category is the rest of the fists.

The heads of kulak families of the 1st category were arrested, and cases of their actions were referred to special construction units consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (krai committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor's office. Family members of kulaks of the 1st category and kulaks of the 2nd category were subject to eviction to remote areas of the USSR or remote areas of a given region (krai, republic) to a special settlement. The kulaks, assigned to the 3rd category, settled within the district on new lands specially allocated for them outside the collective farms.

It was decided to “eliminate the counter-revolutionary kulak asset by imprisonment in concentration camps, stopping against the organizers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary actions and insurgent organizations before using the highest measure of repression” (Article 3, paragraph a).

As repressive measures, the OGPU was proposed in relation to the first and second categories:

send 60,000 kulaks to concentration camps, deport 150,000 kulaks (Section II, Art. 1);
to exile to uninhabited and sparsely populated areas with the expectation of the following regions: Northern Territory 70 thousand families, Siberia - 50 thousand families, Urals - 20 - 25 thousand families, Kazakhstan - 20 - 25 thousand families with "the use of those expelled for agricultural work or crafts » (section II, art. 4). The property of the deportees was confiscated, the limit of funds was up to 500 rubles per family.

The joint Decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated August 7, 1932 "" ("law from the seventh-eighth", "law on ears") provides for the most stringent measures of "judicial repression" for theft of collective farm and cooperative property - execution with confiscation of property, in as a "measure of judicial repression in cases of protecting collective farms and collective farmers from violence and threats from kulak elements" provided for imprisonment for a term of 5 to 10 years with imprisonment in concentration camps without the right to amnesty.

The Russian village "fist" was most often called a prosperous peasant who received wealth from the "enslavement" of his fellow villagers and kept the whole "world" (rural community) "in a fist" (depending on himself). The nickname "fist" was given to rural peasants who had unclean, unearned income, in their opinion, usurers, buyers and merchants. The consciousness of the peasants has always been based on the idea that the only honest source of wealth is hard physical labor. The origin of the wealth of usurers and merchants was associated primarily with their dishonesty - a merchant, for example, was considered "a parasite of society, making a profit on objects obtained by the labor of others", because, according to the peasants engaged in direct production, "you can't deceive - you can't sell"

R. Gvozdev, in his monograph “Kulaks-usury and its socio-economic significance”, writes back in 1899 about the proximity of the concepts of a good owner and a good owner and a peasant-kulak, stating that “it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the sphere of kulak-usurious operations from enterprises of a purely economic nature”, “the kulak is the legitimate offspring of the process of primitive accumulation”.

Here is the original text: "Now the situation is such that every peasant who calls himself, perhaps, a working peasant - some people love this word very much - but if you call a working peasant one who has collected hundreds of poods of grain by his own labor and even without any hired labor, but now he sees that perhaps if he keeps these hundreds of pounds, he can sell them not at 6 rubles, but sell them to speculators or sell them to an exhausted, starving urban worker who came with a hungry family, who will give 200 rubles per pood - such a peasant who hides hundreds of poods, who endures them in order to raise the price and get even 100 rubles per pood, turns into an exploiter - worse than a robber. Now let's compare it with what was said above. This is called pulling phrases out of context, turning the meaning of what was said, and not quoting.

At the same time, there are many contradictions and ambiguities in the distinction between the terms "middle peasant" and "kulak", which are found in the works of V. I. Lenin, which determined the ideology of Soviet power for many years, the very course of the policy of dispossession. Sometimes Vladimir Ilyich nevertheless points to a certain sign of the kulaks - the exploitation of labor, delimiting it from the middle peasant:

“The middle peasant is a peasant who does not exploit the labor of others, does not live by the labor of others, does not in any way use the fruits of the labor of others, but works himself, lives by his own labor ... The middle peasant is one who does not exploit and he himself is not exploited, who lives on small farms, on his own labor ... the middle peasant does not resort to the exploitation of other people's labor ..., lives on his own farms "

As a result, the complexity of this terminology is supplemented by the fact that a little later, V. I. Lenin also allows the exploitation of labor power by middle-class peasants and even the accumulation of capital:

In the economic sense, the middle peasantry should be understood as small landowners who own or lease small plots of land, but who, firstly, provide ... not only a meager maintenance of the family and household, but also the opportunity to receive a certain surplus, able, at least best years, turn into capital, and which, secondly, quite often (for example, in one farm out of two or out of three) resort to hiring someone else's labor force

The petty bourgeoisie can now be pushed into such a framework that it will participate with us in socialist construction ... Our policy towards the countryside must develop in such a direction that the restrictions that hinder the growth of a prosperous and kulak economy are moved apart and partly abolished. The peasants, all the peasants, must be told: get rich, develop your economy, and don't worry about being squeezed.

At the same time, nevertheless, “the authorities imposed an increased tax on the kulaks, demanded the sale of grain to the state at fixed prices, limited kulak land use, limited the size of the kulak economy .. but had not yet pursued a policy of liquidating the kulaks” . However, already in 1928, the course towards the kulak was curtailed, giving way to the course towards the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

However, this phenomenon was only temporary in the life of the term "fist" and is associated with the active support of the peasantry during the New Economic Policy and a little earlier.

hired labor is systematically applied;
the presence of a mill, oil mill, grain mill, drying ..., the use of a mechanical engine ...,
rental of complex agricultural machines with mechanical engines
rental of premises
engaging in trade, usury, mediation, the presence of unearned income (for example, clergymen)

In the course of the forced collectivization of agriculture carried out in the USSR in the 1990s, one of the directions of state policy was the suppression of anti-Soviet speeches by the peasants and the associated “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” - “dispossession”, which implied the forcible and extrajudicial deprivation of wealthy peasants using wage labor. labor, all means of production, land, civil rights, and eviction to remote areas of the country, and sometimes - execution.

On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a Resolution. According to this decree, kulaks were divided into three categories:

the first category is a counter-revolutionary asset, organizers of terrorist acts and uprisings,
the second category - the rest of the counter-revolutionary asset of the richest kulaks and semi-landlords,
the third category is the rest of the fists.

It was decided to “eliminate the counter-revolutionary kulak asset by imprisonment in concentration camps, stopping against the organizers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary actions and insurgent organizations before applying the highest measure of repression” (Article 3, paragraph a)

As repressive measures, the OGPU was proposed in relation to the first and second categories:

send 60,000 to concentration camps, deport 150,000 kulaks (Section II, Art. 1)
exile to uninhabited and sparsely populated areas with the expectation of the following regions: Northern Territory 70 thousand families, Siberia - 50 thousand families, Urals - 20 - 25 thousand families, Kazakhstan - 20 - 25 thousand families with "the use of those expelled for agricultural work or crafts ”(section II, art. 4). The property of the deportees was confiscated, the limit of funds was up to 500 rubles per family.

The special summary of the OGPU dated February 15 contained the following report on the operation:

The joint Decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of August 7, 1932 "" ("law from the seventh to eighth", "law on spikelets") provides for the most stringent measures of "judicial repression" for theft of collective farm and cooperative property - execution with confiscation of property, in as a "measure of judicial repression in cases of protecting collective farms and collective farmers from violence and threats from kulak elements" provided for imprisonment for a term of 5 to 10 years with imprisonment in concentration camps without the right to amnesty.

On May 24, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopts the Decree “On the Procedure for the Restoration of Civil Rights of Former Kulaks”, according to which kulaks-special settlers who were previously deprived of a number of civil rights are individually restored.

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

Rehabilitation of persons subjected to dispossession and members of their families is carried out in general order in accordance with the Law of the Russian Federation "" dated 10/18/1991 N 1761-1.

Notes

G. F. Dobronozhenko "Who is a fist: interpretation of the concept" fist "!"
G.F. Dobronozhenko "Who is a fist: interpretation of the concept of" fist ""
Engelgardt A.N. Letters from the village. 1872-1887 M., 1987 S. 521 - 522.
Postnikov V.E. South Russian peasantry. M., 1891
Gvozdev R. “Kulaks - usury and its social and economic significance. St. Petersburg, 1899
Yermolov A.S. Harvest failure and national disaster. SPb., 1892.
Great October Socialist Revolution. Encyclopedia. 3rd ed., add. M., 1987. S. 262; Brief political dictionary. 2nd ed., add. M., 1980. S. 207; Trapeznikov S.P. Leninism and the agrarian-peasant question: In 2 vols. M., 1967. V.2. " historical experience The CPSU in the implementation of the Leninist cooperative plan. S. 174.
Smirnov A. P. "Our main tasks for the development and organization of the peasant economy." M., 1925. S. 22; Pershin A. Two main sources of stratification of the peasantry // Life of Siberia. 1925. No. 3(31). C. 3.
Lenin V.I. Full coll. op. T. 36. S. 447, 501, 59.
Lenin V.I. Full coll. op. T. 38.
Lenin V.I. Full coll. op. T. 41. S. 58.