Collectivization and dekulakization

In late 1929 Stalin announced the shift “from restricting the kulaks to eliminating them as a class.” A kulak, in theory, was a richer peasant who hired labor. In practice the label was assigned by quota. Villages had to produce a percentage. Neighbors, grudges, and a cow or a tin roof were enough.

About 1.8 million people were deported in the early 1930s to “special settlements” in the north and in Siberia. Lynne Viola’s research on those settlements estimates hundreds of thousands of deaths from cold, hunger, and labor in 1930–33 alone. Those who stayed behind were driven into collective farms. Slaughter of livestock by peasants who preferred to eat an animal rather than surrender it wrecked Soviet herds for years. The state called this progress.