Раскулачивание как класс: почему это не было только террором сверху

Summary

The discussion argues that Soviet dekulakization was neither only a campaign of terror imposed from above nor simply a conflict between the state and a united peasantry. It combined state policy, the forced transformation of agriculture, local class tensions, and the redistribution of property within villages. The speakers stress that explaining these dynamics does not make the resulting repression and deaths less serious.

Who Counted as a “Kulak”?

Historian Kirill Nazarenko distinguishes three broad rural groups:

• Poor peasants lacked sufficient land, livestock, or equipment and often had to hire themselves out or rent what they needed.
• Middle peasants could generally work their farms with family labor and did not systematically hire workers or rent out their assets.
• Kulak households, in the definition discussed, had enough land, livestock, or equipment that they systematically hired labor, rented out property, or engaged in lending.

Nazarenko cautions against equating a kulak simply with a hardworking or prosperous farmer. He describes village moneylending as potentially very harsh and argues that a kulak’s economic position could depend on hiring poor neighbors on unfavorable terms or lending to them when they were in crisis. At the same time, a household’s rise or decline could depend on circumstances such as illness, harvest failure, or whether family members survived and could work.

Why the Policy Developed

The discussion traces the immediate drive toward collectivization to the grain-procurement crisis of 1927–28. A foreign-policy scare prompted panic buying in towns and grain-hoarding by some peasants; a poor procurement campaign then left the state worried about future supplies and price rises. Stalin interpreted the withholding of marketable grain as a “kulak strike,” and the government resorted to forced grain seizures.

Nazarenko says repeated seizures risked discouraging peasants from growing surplus grain. Collectivization was presented by Soviet leaders as a more lasting solution to agricultural problems, including the state’s difficulty obtaining grain and the shortage of land relative to the growing rural population.

The longer-term issue, in his account, was the transformation of the peasantry under modern agriculture. He argues that capitalist development also tends to displace small-scale peasant farming through competition, bankruptcy, and consolidation into larger enterprises. The Soviet approach differed in that the state directed and accelerated this transformation rather than allowing it to unfold mainly through market competition.

The Connection to Industrialization

The conversation sets out three needs that collectivization was meant to address:

1. Grain and foreign currency to buy machinery and technology abroad.
2. Workers to build and staff factories.
3. Food to feed those workers.

Mechanization was supposed to reduce the number of people needed in agriculture, freeing labor for industry. But building factories required equipment, money, workers, and food—creating a cycle the state believed it could break by collectivizing farms and extracting grain and labor from the countryside. Nazarenko characterizes this as a forced transfer of resources from peasants, while also emphasizing that the material gains of industrialization came at a grave human cost.

A Policy Involving Both the State and the Village

A central theme is that dekulakization had a state-public character. Officials set and enforced policy, but parts of the village could also benefit from it. The dispossessed family’s house might become a collective-farm office or public facility; household goods could be taken by neighbors; and debts owed to the kulak could effectively disappear.

This helps explain why some villagers supported or participated in the campaign. However, Nazarenko says denunciations were not generally the primary mechanism for deciding who would be arrested or dispossessed. Local officials often classified households using formal criteria, though the criteria could be stretched and rules were frequently violated. The designation of “under-kulak” was especially elastic and could be applied to people who resisted or supported a targeted household.

Comparison with the Great Terror

The historian distinguishes dekulakization from the Great Terror:

• The Great Terror, as he describes it, was principally a state security operation: arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, execution, or confinement in camps.
• Dekulakization also involved state coercion, but its effects reached into village life through confiscation, eviction, redistribution of property, and the participation or interests of local residents.

He emphasizes that “liquidating the kulaks as a class” meant removing the social and economic characteristics that made a group a class—not, as an official stated aim, physically exterminating every person in it. Nonetheless, deportations, famine, disease, poor conditions, and executions caused very large numbers of deaths.

Exile, Famine, and the Human Toll

The discussion describes three broad categories of treatment for targeted households:

1. The most politically suspect household heads could be arrested, with their families resettled.
2. Other households were deported to more remote or colder regions.
3. Some families had their property confiscated and were relocated within their district or sent to factories and construction sites.

Nazarenko argues that special settlements were often poorly administered. Authorities allocated some supplies and building materials, but local agencies frequently failed to provide adequate conditions. The settlements were not necessarily the fenced, tightly controlled camps familiar from later popular images; escape could be possible, and many people fled.

The speakers cite figures from Soviet reports and later accounting, including estimates of deaths during transit and in exile, executions for resistance, and large numbers of escapees. The figures discussed are not fully consistent within the subtitles, and Nazarenko stresses that estimates vary. He also questions higher estimates of famine deaths, saying he regards some totals in the range of 5–7 million as exaggerated, while acknowledging losses measured in millions.

The famine of 1932–33 is presented as having several contributing factors: poor harvests in a wider region, procurement demands that were not sufficiently adjusted to the worsening conditions, and the broader pressures of rapid industrialization and economic crisis. The discussion notes that famine also affected areas beyond Ukraine, including the Volga region, the North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan. Nazarenko rejects the claim that it was exclusively a genocide directed against Ukrainians, but says this does not absolve the authorities of responsibility.

Historical Interpretation and Caution

The speakers discuss why dekulakization remains controversial: family memories are still close, the history of the peasantry has a long place in Russian culture, and present-day political debates shape how the Soviet past is portrayed. Nazarenko warns against one-sided accounts and “hype-driven” history, noting that public interpretations can swing between condemning Stalin absolutely and rehabilitating him.

He also cautions against judging the period only by modern living standards. Rural life across many countries was extremely harsh at the time; even so, comparison is not an excuse for suffering. His broader point is that historians should distinguish explaining the pressures and goals behind a policy from morally approving it.

The conversation closes with a call for careful historical work: use documents and evidence, acknowledge uncertainty, and update interpretations as scholarship develops. Nazarenko says historians should help the public understand the past while avoiding the distortion of history to justify future experiments on people.

Speakers and Sources Featured

Speakers

• Vlad Aganov — host and interviewer.
• Kirill Nazarenko — historian and principal guest.

Sources and References Discussed

• OGPU/NKVD reports on public sentiment, including volumes published under the title Stalin’s Lubyanka.
• Soviet resolutions and instructions on kulak classification, deportation, and the ending of mass evictions.
• Soviet newspapers and propaganda, including published letters and anti-kulak statements.
• Statements and political debates involving Stalin, Trotsky, Lenin, and Bukharin.
• The Soviet constitutional changes of 1936, including the discussion of voting rights.
• A promotional segment for Avito Travel.