|
Kulaks (, ) "fist", by extension "tight-fisted"; kurkuls in Ukraine, also used in Russian texts (in Ukrainian contexts) were a category of relatively affluent farmers in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word ''kulak'' originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged from the peasantry and became wealthy following the Stolypin reform, which began in 1906. The label of kulak was broadened in 1918 to include any peasant who resisted handing over their grain to detachments from Moscow. During 1929–1933, Stalin's leadership of the total campaign to collectivize the peasantry meant that "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres more than their neighbors" were being labeled "kulaks". According to the political theory of Marxism–Leninism of the early 20th century, the kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants.〔 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin described them as "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine."〔(Comrade Workers, Forward To The Last, Decisive Fight! )〕 Marxism–Leninism had intended a revolution to liberate poor peasants and farm laborers alongside the proletariat (urban and industrial workers). In addition, the planned economy of Soviet Bolshevism required the collectivisation of farms and land to allow industrialisation or conversion to large-scale agricultural production. In practice, government officials violently seized kulak farms and murdered resisters;〔〔Mikhail Gorbachev. ''Memoirs'', 769 pages. Publisher: Doubleday; 1st ed edition (September 1, 1996) ISBN 0-385-48019-9〕 others were deported to labor camps. ==Definitions== According to the Soviet terminology, the peasants were divided into three broad categories: ''bednyaks'', or poor peasants; ''serednyaks'', or mid-income peasants; and ''kulaks'', the higher-income farmers who had larger farms than most Russian peasants. In addition, they had a category of ''batraks'', landless seasonal agriculture workers for hire.〔 The Stolypin reform created a new class of landowners by allowing peasants to acquire plots of land for credit from the large estate owners. They were to repay the credit (a kind of mortgage loan) from their farm work. By 1912, 16% of peasants (up from 11% in 1903) had relatively large endowments of over per male family member (a threshold used in statistics to distinguish between middle-class and prosperous farmers, i.e., kulaks). At that time an average farmer's family had 6 to 10 children. The number of such farmers amounted to 20% of all rural courts, while their production level was reaching 50% of marketable grain.〔(Kulaks (Korkulism) ) at the ''Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia''.〕 After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks considered only batraks and bednyaks as true allies of the Soviets and proletariat. ''Serednyaks'' were considered unreliable, "hesitating" allies; and ''kulaks'' were identified as class enemies because they owned land (later this was expanded to include those who owned livestock; but a middle peasant who did not hire labor and was little engaged in trade, "might yet (if he had a large family) hold three cows and two horses."〔Conquest, ''Harvest of Sorrow'', p. 76.〕 And there were other measures that indicated ''kulaks'' as not being especially prosperous. The average value of goods confiscated from kulaks during the policy of "dekulakization" (раскулачивание) at the beginning of the 1930s was only $90–$210 (170–400 rubles) per household.〔 Both peasants and Soviet officials were often uncertain as to what constituted a kulak. They often used the term to label anyone who had more property than was considered "normal," according to subjective criteria, and personal rivalries played a part in the classification of enemies. Historian Robert Conquest argues: During the summer of 1918, Moscow sent armed detachments to the villages in order to seize grain. Any peasant who resisted was labeled a 'kulak.' "The Communists declared war on the rural population for two purposes: to extract food for the cities and the Red Army and to insinuate their authority into the countryside, which remained largely unaffected by the Bolshevik coup."〔 A large-scale revolt ensued. It was during this period, that Lenin sent a telegram directive in August 1918 instructing: to "Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. ... Do it in such a way that for hundreds of versts () around the people will see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks." During the height of collectivization in the early 1930s, people identified as kulaks were subjected to deportation and extrajudicial punishment. They were often murdered in local violence; others were formally executed after conviction as kulaks.〔〔Strobe Talbott, ed., ''Khrushchev Remembers'' (2 vol., tr. 1970–74)〕〔Dmitri Volkogonov. ''Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy'', 1996, ISBN 0-7615-0718-3〕 In May 1929, the Sovnarkom issued a decree that formalised the notion of "kulak household" (кулацкое хозяйство). Any of the following defined a kulak:〔Robert Conquest (1986) (''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine'' ). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.〕〔"On the characteristics of kulak farms subject to the Labor Code", Sovnarkom resolution, May 21, 1929, in: ''Collectivization of Agriculture: Main Resolutions of the Communist Party and Soviet Government 1927–1935'', Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of History, Moscow, 1957, p. 163 (Russian).〕 * use of hired labor * ownership of a mill, a creamery (маслобойня, butter-making rig), other processing equipment, or a complex machine with a mechanical motor * systematic renting out of agricultural equipment or facilities * involvement in trade, money-lending, commercial brokerage, or "other sources of non-labor income". By the last item, any peasant who sold his surplus goods on the market could be automatically classified as a kulak. In 1930 this list was extended to include those who were renting industrial plants, e.g., sawmills, or who rented land to other farmers. At the same time, the ispolkoms (executive committees of local Soviets) of republics, oblasts, and krais were given rights to add other criteria for defining ''kulaks'', depending on local conditions.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kulak」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|