The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

* The term ‘kulak’, derived from the word for a ‘fist’, was originally used by the peasants to distinguish exploitative elements (usurers, sub-renters of land, wheeler-dealers and so on) from the farming peasantry. An entrepreneurial peasant farmer, in their view, could not be a ‘kulak’, even if he hired labour. The Bolsheviks, by contrast, misused the term in a Marxist sense to describe any rich peasant. They equated the ‘kulak’ with a ‘capitalist’ on the false assumption that the use of hired labour in peasant farming (which was extremely rare in most of Russia) was a form of ‘capitalism’ (as opposed to a way of making up for shortages of labour on the farm). During the Civil War the Bolsheviks attempted to stir up class war in the countryside and requisition grain by organizing the landless peasants (mainly urban types) into Committees of the Poor (kombedy) against the ‘kulaks’, who were accused of hoarding grain. During collectivization the term ‘kulak’ was employed against any peasant – whether rich or poor – who was opposed to entering the collective farms.