The resolution on dekulakization

In January 1930, a spontaneous movement to expropriate the kulaks began to take place. On January 28, 1930, Kosior described it as ` ``a broad mass movement of poor peasants, middle peasants and batraks'', called upon party organisations not to restrain it but to organise it to deliver ``a really crushing blow against the political influence, and particularly against the economic prospects, of the kulak stratum of the village.'' '

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Davies,  op. cit. , p. 228.

A few days before, Odintsev,  vice-chairman of the Kolkhoztsentr of the Russian Republic, said: `We must deal with the kulak like we dealt with the bourgeoisie in 1918'.

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Ibid. , pp. 232--233.

Krylenko  admitted a month later that `a spontaneous movement to dekulakization took place locally; it was properly organized only in a few places'.

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Ibid. , p. 231.

On January 30, 1930, the Central Committee took important decisions to lead the spontaneous dekulakization by publishing a resolution entitled, `On Measures for the Elimination of Kulak Households in Districts of Comprehensive Collectivisation'.

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Ibid. , p. 233.

The total number of kulak families, divided into three categories, was at most 3--5 per cent in the grain-growing regions and 2--3 per cent in the other regions.

(I)

`The counter-revolutionary activ'. Whether a kulak belonged this category was to be determined by the OGPU (political police), and the resolution set a limit of 63,000 for the whole of the USSR. Their means of production and personal property were to be confiscated; the heads of families were to be sentenced on the spot to imprisonment or confinement in a concentration camp; those among them who were `organisers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary demonstrations and insurrectionary organisations' could be sentenced to death. Members of their families were to be exiled as for Category II.

(II)

`The remaining elements of the kulak aktiv', especially the richest kulaks, large-scale kulaks and former semi-landowners. They `manifested less active opposition to the Soviet state but were arch-exploiters and naturally supported the counter-revolutionaries'. Lists of kulak households in this category were to be prepared by district soviets and approved by okrug executive committees on the basis of decisions by meetings of collective farmers and of groups of poor peasants and batraks, guided by instructions from village soviets, within an upper limit for the whole USSR of 150,000 households. The means of production and part of the property of the families on these lists were to be confiscated; they could retain the most essential domestic goods, some means of production, a minimum amount of food and up to 500 rubles per family. They were then to be exiled to remote areas of the Northern region, Siberia, the Urals and Kazakhstan, or to remote districts of their own region.

(III)

The majority of kulaks were probably `reliable in their attitude to Soviet power'. They numbered between 396,000 and 852,000 households. Only part of the means of production were confiscated and they were installed in new land within the administrative district.

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Ibid. , pp. 235--236.

The next day, on January 31, a Bolshevik editorial explained that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class was `the last decisive struggle with internal capitalism, which must be carried out to the end; nothing must stand in the way; the kulaks as a class will not leave the historical stage without the most savage opposition'.

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Ibid. , p. 228.