Home Grape When did dispossession begin in the USSR? How did dispossessed peasants survive in exile? Who were the kulaks according to the Bolsheviks?

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When did dispossession begin in the USSR? How did dispossessed peasants survive in exile? Who were the kulaks according to the Bolsheviks?

Among the peasants in the 30s of the last century, behind which stand millions of lives and destinies. Now this process has been declared illegal, and its victims are entitled to compensation for damages.

Beginning of dispossession

Dispossession, that is, the deprivation of the peasant kulak of the opportunity to use the land, the confiscation of the instruments of production, the “surplus” of farming, took place during the years of collectivization.

However, dispossession actually began much earlier. Lenin made statements about the need to fight wealthy peasants back in 1918. It was then that special committees were created that dealt with the confiscation of equipment, land, and food.

"Fists"

The policy of dispossession was carried out so crudely that both wealthy peasants and sections of the population completely far from prosperity fell under it.

Significant masses of peasants suffered from forced collectivization. Dispossession is not only the deprivation of one's own economy. After the devastation, peasants were expelled, and entire families, regardless of age, fell under repression. Infants and old people were also exiled indefinitely to Siberia, the Urals, and Kazakhstan. All “kulaks” faced forced labor. By and large, dispossession in the USSR resembled a game in which the rules were constantly changing. The special settlers had no rights - only responsibilities.

Who was included in the “kulaks” was decided without trial or investigation. It was possible to get rid of anyone who was not so friendly or came into conflict with the local authorities.

The worst thing is that those who acquired their “excesses” through hard work, without hiring hired workers, were also considered undesirable. At first they were called “middle peasants” and were not touched for some time. Later, they were also recorded as enemies of the people, with corresponding consequences.

Signs of kulak farms

To identify the kulak economy, its characteristics were listed (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 1929). Among them were the following:

The use of hired labor in agricultural work and other crafts.
The peasant owns a mill, an oil mill, a drying plant for vegetables and fruits, and any other mechanical equipment with an engine.
Hire of all the above mechanisms.
Renting out premises for housing.
Engagement in trading activities, intermediation, receipt of unearned income.

Reasons for dispossession

The reasons for such a tough government policy are very simple. has always been a source of food for the country. In addition to such an important function, it could help finance the industrialization process. It is more difficult to cope with the huge number of small independent agricultural enterprises. It is much easier to manage several large ones. Therefore, collectivization began in the country. The stated purpose of this event is to carry out socialist transformations in the village. Even specific deadlines were set for its successful implementation. The maximum period for its implementation is 5 years (for non-grain regions).

However, it could not have taken place without dispossession. It was this that provided the basis for the creation of collective and state farms.

Dispossession is the liquidation of more than 350,000 peasant farms that were ruined by mid-1930. At a rate of 5-7% of the total number of individual agricultural enterprises, the real figure was 15-20%.

Village reaction to collectivization

Collectivization was perceived differently by village residents. Many did not understand what it could lead to and did not really understand what dispossession was. When the peasants realized that this was violence and arbitrariness, they organized protests.

Some destroyed their own farms and killed activists representing Soviet power. The Red Army was brought in to suppress the disobedient.

Stalin, realizing that the trial could harm his reputation and turn into a political disaster, wrote an article in Pravda. In it, he categorically condemned the violence and blamed local performers for everything. Unfortunately, the article was not aimed at eliminating lawlessness, but was written for one’s own rehabilitation. By 1934, despite the resistance of the peasants, 75% of individual farms were transformed into collective farms.

Results

Dispossession is a process that crippled the fates of millions of people. Eyewitnesses recall how huge families who lived together for entire generations went into exile. Sometimes they numbered up to 40 people and united sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandsons. All family members worked hard to develop their farm. And the coming power took away everything without a trace. The country's population has decreased by 10 million people over 11 years. This is due to several reasons. Nearly 30 million people went hungry. Areas where wheat grew (Kuban, Ukraine) became the main victims. According to various estimates, the famine claimed five to seven million lives. Many died in exile from hard work, malnutrition and cold.

In economic terms, this process did not become an impetus for the development of agriculture. On the contrary, the results of dispossession were disastrous. There was a sharp decrease in the number of cattle by 30%, the number of pigs and sheep decreased by 2 times. Grain production, traditionally an important Russian export, fell by 10%.

Collective farmers treated public property as “nobody’s property.” New workers worked carelessly, theft and mismanagement flourished.

To date, all victims of dispossession have been recognized as victims. Local governments have been tasked with considering and making decisions on issues of compensation for damage to rehabilitated citizens. To do this, you need to fill out an application. According to Russian legislation, it can be submitted not only by the rehabilitated citizens themselves, but also by members of their families, public organizations and trusted persons.

Recently, after the appointment of O. Vasilyeva as Minister of Education, anti-Stalinists became active again and started another wave. Which is quite expected, given Vasilyeva’s attitude towards Stalin. And if almost everything is clear with the so-called “repressions,” then the mention of a somewhat earlier period confuses people. A lot is known about him, but at the same time NOTHING!... We are talking about dispossession and collective farms.

There are two popular versions:

1. The villain Stalin hated the peasantry so much that he first destroyed its best representatives, and then took away all the property from the rest, drove them to collective farms, deprived them of all rights and made them new serfs.

2. The country needed industrialization, but there were neither the funds nor the people for this. The only place that could provide all this was the village. And since war was on the horizon, they did not skimp on funds.

The first is, of course, ridiculous, but it is supported by the descendants of those very dispossessed kulaks, their social circle, all sorts of fighters against the “bloody regime” and other fellow citizens prone to zombies and not bothering to think. The second is supported by “communists,” but it also does not answer all questions and suffers from historical accuracy. But the truth, as they say, lies somewhere in the middle!...

By the way, both of my grandfathers were dispossessed. No, they were not kulaks in the classical definition, just strong, hardworking peasants, very different from the surrounding lumpen. So the jealous fellow villagers dealt with them - this was practiced in the village all the time and under the guise of fighting with fists. But the grandfathers did not get lost, did not break down, but radically changed their lifestyle! One was recruited as a hunter, which he worked for all his life, and even received a reservation during the war, although he was eager to go to the front, under the pretext: “There are enough snipers at the front, but who will earn gold for the country?” Another moved to the city and joined the NKVD, where he worked until his death in 1989. Not one had any grudges against the Soviet regime - what does it have to do with it?

What is dispossession?

On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization.” From this moment it is customary to count the beginning of one of the most dramatic events in the history of the pre-war USSR - dispossession, which still remains the subject of heated emotional discussions.
What was dispossession? From the side of the liberals we hear statements about a war against the peasantry, from the side of the Stalinist patriots - discussions about the suppression of kulak terror directed against the much-needed collectivization of the country. Let's leave ideology and emotions aside and turn to dry facts.
Dekulakization was considered by the state as a campaign to destroy the kulaks as a class. It was done as follows. Immediately after the decree was issued, in the territories where complete collectivization was carried out, special “troikas” were created, consisting of the first secretary of the district party committee, the chairman of the district executive committee and a representative of the GPU. They considered the question of whether this or that peasant belonged to the kulak class. Fists were divided into three categories. The first group included the organizers and perpetrators of terrorist acts and anti-Soviet uprisings - they were handed over to the GPU to determine the extent of their personal guilt, and their family members were evicted to remote areas of the country. The second included “a stronghold of the kulaks in the village”; they and their family members were also evicted to remote areas. The third category included all the other kulaks, who, together with their families, were evicted outside the collective farm lands, but in their own area (that is, they did not end up in special settlements). The property of those evicted was confiscated and became collective farm property, and the resettlers were given small funds to settle in a new place.
Kulaks (mainly of the second category) and members of their families who arrived in a new place acquired the status of special settlers. The number of special settlers included not only kulaks, but also antisocial elements evicted from cities (tramps, drunkards), as well as persons who had committed minor offenses, for whom the camp was replaced with a special settlement. They lived in special settlements built in areas where there was a shortage of labor, located no closer than 200 kilometers from borders, railways, cities and villages.
They were not accepted into trade unions or the party, money was withheld from their salaries to support the administration of the special settlement (which, by the way, included activists-special settlers), and finally, they were deprived of voting rights. However, they also had benefits - until 1934 they were exempt from all taxes and fees, as well as from military service, including during the war.
Since 1933, mass expulsions have ceased and, in fact, dispossession has ceased as a campaign on an all-Union scale. In the same year, the gradual return of civil rights to special settlers began. Since 1933, the state has returned voting rights to children of special settlers who have reached adulthood. Since 1935, children of special settlers who graduated from high school could leave the settlement to enter a technical school or university. Since the same 1935, voting rights have been returned to all former special settlers.
In just two years of the campaign (1930–1932), about two million people were resettled, that is, about 400 thousand families, or about 2% of the then population of the USSR. The authorities themselves admitted that mistakes were made during dispossession and those who were not them were declared kulaks, and made attempts to identify the “wrongly deported” and release them (although, of course, not everyone was released). Many kulaks managed to avoid repression and deportation by selling or abandoning their property and leaving for cities, where they pretended to be middle peasants or poor peasants. This “self-dispossession” has acquired quite a wide scope.
In one word, “dekulakization,” two different state campaigns were named, in each of which the term “fist” had its own special meaning (which is why the classification of kulaks into categories was made). The first campaign was a military-police operation to neutralize and punish the organizers and perpetrators of terrorist acts, that is, “kulaks of the first category” (which actually included all active village anti-Soviet activists, associating them with kulaks only due to the need to view the conflict through the prism of official class theory ). I understand that for many modern people, especially young people who learned history from textbooks published by the Soros Foundation, existence in a Soviet village in the 1920s and 1930s was... terrorism will be a revelation. But if we look at the newspapers of that time, at the research of modern historians of collectivization, and finally, at the OGPU documents of the late 1920s and early 1930s that have been declassified today, we will see: starting from 1927, there were regular reports of murders from the localities communists, Soviet employees, police officers and even teachers who came from the cities. Statistics reported that in 1927, 901 cases of so-called kulak terror were recorded, and in seven months of 1928 there were already 1049 cases. By the way, terrorism is considered a serious crime everywhere in the modern world, regardless of what the motives of the terrorists are.
The second campaign is an operation to disband the kulak class, turning them into special settlers, so that after “re-education through labor” they and their children will return to ordinary citizens of the Soviet country. Here, kulaks (more precisely, “kulaks of the second category”) were understood as members of individual peasant farms that separated from the peasant society (community), systematically using the labor of hired workers - farm laborers. Of course, in reality, simply wealthy peasants who used only the labor of their family members, and even those who were not very wealthy, fell into this category, especially if those administration officials who were involved in dispossession had personal scores to settle with them, but this was an expected and understandable aberration, associated with the human factor.
However, if the guilt of the terrorist kulaks was obvious - they committed such criminal offenses as murder, arson, beatings, which are strictly punishable in any society, including a democratic one - then the guilt of all the other kulaks is not entirely clear. Modern liberals tend to brush aside this issue altogether, believing that they had no guilt before the state and, moreover, they did not owe anything to the state. According to liberal denouncers of collectivization, the kulaks fell victim to the revolutionary utopianism of the Bolshevik leadership, which wanted to rebuild life in accordance with its theoretical principles. Stalinist patriots, in general, do not deny that there was no special guilt for the kulaks who did not participate in the struggle against Soviet power. Patriots just disagree that Stalin’s plans for collectivization were utopian and destructive for the village and the country. On the contrary, they prove that without collectivization, industrialization and victory in the Great Patriotic War would have become impossible. But here too the kulaks appear as sacrifices, albeit necessary and justified from a historical perspective.
For what kind of guilt, which was known to contemporaries but not known to us, did the kulaks suffer? In order to understand this, you need to understand when and for what purpose the social group of kulaks was created, which was subjected to repression in 1930–1932, and what it was.

Who are the Soviet kulaks?

This question may seem strange. Isn’t it constantly being told to us that the class of rural bourgeois farmers, or, as the Bolsheviks called them, kulaks (although in the Russian village not only farmers, but also rural moneylenders and generally all village rich people were called kulaks), no one created it, it arose on its own on its own, as the community decomposed and wealthy peasants emerged in it, who took over the land, the means of production, and poor peasants, who turned into rural proletarians - farm laborers? Stolypin's reform, which allowed secession from communities and private land ownership, only provided a legal basis for the existence of the kulaks.
All this may be true, but the pre-revolutionary kulaks had nothing to do with those kulaks who were dispossessed and evicted in the 1930s. Experts in the history of the Russian peasantry unequivocally state: the old kulaks perished – both as a class and even physically – in 1917–1921. In the summer and autumn of 1917, after the tsarist regime fell and the Provisional Government was unable to establish any firm power, the village actually ceased to be subordinate to the state.
Russian peasants began the “black redistribution” that they had been dreaming about for several centuries. First, peasant communities appropriated 44 million dessiatines of landowners' lands, while burning the landowners' estates and killing landowners and members of their families if they did not have time to escape. Then came the turn of the “farmers” who once took advantage of the rights given to them by Stolypin’s reform and left the community, turning their plot into private property. At gunpoint and pitchforks, they returned to the communities, and their lands were socialized. The peasants expressed their demands in orders that formed the basis of the decree “On Land”, adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets and implemented by the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars. This decree proclaimed two fundamental theses:
The right of private ownership of land is abolished.
Hired labor is not permitted.
Thus, the decree “On Land” proclaimed the transfer of all land in Russia to the state and the right of collective farms (agricultural communities, communes, etc.) to use it, but only using their own labor. It is not for nothing that this decree was called the law on the socialization of the land. As we see, he laid out the legal basis for the destruction of the kulaks as a class. A kulak is, after all, a rural bourgeois who, having privately owned land, hires proletarian farm laborers to cultivate it, and if the land is no longer private property and hired labor is prohibited, then the existence of a kulak is impossible.
Those few kulaks who managed to preserve their farms and settlements even after the decree “On Land”, taking advantage of the state of anarchy that reigned during the civil war, were dispossessed and partially destroyed by food detachments and committees created by the Soviet government in 1918, which, after after famine began in the cities, it took a decisive course towards removing “grain surpluses from the hands of the kulaks and the rich,” as stated in the corresponding decree of 1918. Resisting, the kulaks organized armed uprisings against the communists or went over to the side of the whites, which ultimately led to the fact that almost all of them were destroyed by the end of the civil war. As historians note: “We can say with confidence that by 1922 there were no pre-revolutionary kulaks left in the Russian countryside.”
Where did fists appear again in the Soviet village? With the introduction of the NEP, the state is revising some provisions of agricultural policy. In 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a law on labor land use and a new Land Code of the RSFSR. According to this law, individual peasants (of course, together with their families) again received the right to separate themselves from the collective economy (community, commune, TOZ) and receive a separate plot of land, which was no longer subject to communal redistribution, but was assigned to a given family and for the cultivation of which peasant the farm could, under certain conditions, hire farm laborers. These peasant families, “separated” from the community, soon turned into wealthy ones, largely due to the use of hired labor, and received the nickname kulaks, since they reminded the communal peasants of Stolypin’s choppers and farmers. The government, which thought in terms of class theory and sought to find bourgeois and proletarians everywhere, also recognized them as rural bourgeois, like the pre-revolutionary kulak farmers. However, if we look into the laws of the Soviet state of that period, we will find that they differed significantly from the rural bourgeoisie.
First and most important, they were not the owners of the land on which they lived and worked. The Land Code of 1922 clearly stated that all agricultural land belonged to the state and was under the authority of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture (Ministry of Agriculture). The law declared peasants, including those who separated from the community, to be “land users” who were given the right to farm on state land indefinitely and free of charge. The state, represented by land authorities, gave them plots of land. This land could not be sold, bequeathed, donated, or pledged. An attempt to do this ended for the land user not only in criminal punishment, but also in the fact that this plot was taken away from his family forever. Renting was permitted in exceptional cases.
The main responsibility of land users was agricultural cultivation of the land (if it stopped, the state took the land away from the land user) and payment of agricultural (food) tax to the state (the amount of agricultural products or its monetary equivalent strictly determined by state bodies). Until 1923, the tax was paid only on products, primarily bread. From 1923 to 1924 it was contributed partly by products, partly by money, and from 1924 - mainly by money. The tax was progressive, so most of it fell on wealthy land users, and especially those using farm labor, that is, kulaks. Poor peasants were generally exempt from it and, moreover, received material assistance from the state. The peasants could sell the surplus remaining after paying the tax in kind on the market, but even here there were rules: the state bought bread at fixed low prices, since its goal was to provide the entire population of the country with inexpensive products. The state partially paid for agricultural products with industrial goods.
This was the social reality of that time, if you look at it not through the prism of ideology, but directly, perceiving things as they really were. Based on them, it is clear that the fist in the village of the 1920s. (or an individual labor land user, as it is more correct to call him and as the law called him) is not a bourgeois, that is, a private owner of the means of production, but a user or manager of state land, having certain rights and obligations given and assigned to him by the state. Among his rights, the most important is the right to more or less free labor cultivation of the land using farm labor only in the most extreme cases and provided that the kulak himself works on an equal basis with the farm laborer; Among his responsibilities, the most important is to hand over a significant part of the results of labor to the state or sell them at fixed prices.

Bukharin's course of relying on the fist

In 1925, a discussion broke out in the party between two factions - the left, headed by L. Trotsky, and the right, headed by N. Bukharin. The left proposed a program of super-industrialization, that is, the rapid creation of its own industry in the USSR through high taxation of the countryside, and above all its most prosperous layer - the kulaks; the right, on the contrary, proposed in every possible way to support the peasants, especially the wealthy, in their desire to enrich themselves, in order to provide the cities with agricultural products and gradually move to slow gradual industrialization and slow collectivization of agriculture on a purely voluntary basis. The party majority and, most importantly, the “apparatus faction”, led by Stalin, took the side of Bukharin and the right, which predetermined the collapse of the Trotskyists.
This choice was not accidental. Behind Trotsky’s program of super-industrialization was his thesis about the impossibility of building socialism in a single country and the expectation of a speedy proletarian revolution in the countries of Western Europe, primarily in Germany. Stalin, as a sensible, realistic politician, did not believe in this prospect and, on the contrary, rightly believed that all the symptoms of a decline in revolutionary activity in Europe were evident. And this meant that it was necessary to somehow organize life in the Soviet country on our own, without relying on the help of the victorious German and French proletarians. This arrangement involved, first of all, providing cities with agricultural products, and above all bread. Secondly, the export of grain abroad for the purchase there of the necessary technical means to begin industrialization.
Under these conditions, Stalin, believing Bukharin’s assurances, relied on the village kulak, and not on the community. There were, however, pragmatic reasons for this. Kulak farms, although considered individual, were in fact quite large. As a rule, peasants with many children became kulaks in the village; their families could consist of 20 people, since children and their families were not separated and remained to live in a common household with their parents. All of them were entitled to land, since according to Soviet laws, unlike pre-revolutionary ones, land was allocated according to eaters, and not according to souls, and women were also entitled to land. It was easier for the kulaks to use machines and mechanisms to cultivate the land and produce crops (not to mention the fact that they also had money to purchase machines and mechanisms).
Indeed, in the 1920s. kulak farms were mechanized to a greater extent than communal and collective farms. It is no coincidence that in the 1929 decree “On the characteristics of kulak farms in which the Code of Labor Laws should be applied”, one of the important signs of a kulak farm was considered to be the presence of complex agricultural machines with mechanical engines. According to 1927 data, 3.2% of kulak households owned 21.7% of cars, while the poor in the village were 26.1%, and they owned only 1.6% of cars.
It is clear that in this regard, kulak farms were economically more efficient: the 3% kulak stratum handed over and sold to the state about 30% of all grain handed over and sold by the village.
For this reason, Stalin supported Bukharin’s group, which took a course towards supporting the kulak. Of course, this course was not officially called that, but, as they would say now, more politically correct: “facing the village”, and its slogan “Get rich!” Bukharin formally addressed not only the kulaks, but also all peasants. But it was clear to everyone both in the country and abroad: this was precisely a course to support the kulaks. The kulak had every right, following Bukharin’s call, to increase the efficiency of his farm by hiring new farm laborers, and Bukharin’s faction met him halfway in this. In 1925, the Council of People's Commissars issued “Temporary rules on the conditions for the use of auxiliary hired labor on peasant farms” and instructions for them. These documents significantly expanded the rights of kulaks to exploit hired workers.
Of course, the rights of farm laborers were also stipulated in the law: in addition to the right to sign an employment contract and to a salary not lower than a certain minimum, which they already had, according to the 1922 code, a farm laborer or a farm laborer now received the right to insurance at the expense of the kulak, the right to one day off per week and on weekends on holidays, the right to one meal at the expense of the fist, to severance pay in case of dismissal without warning, to two weeks' pay in case of illness or childbirth, to membership in a trade union, etc. The law prohibited the labor of children under 14 years of age and the use of teenagers and pregnant women in heavy work. But with all the restrictions imposed on the kulak, the law was actually drawn up in his interests.
In addition, in the same 1925, a resolution prepared by Rykov, a supporter of Bukharin, was adopted, which reduced the agricultural tax by 40% and expanded the possibilities of obtaining credit for peasants. It is clear that these measures were beneficial to the kulaks, since the tax was progressive, and it fell heavily on the kulaks.
So, in 1925, the Soviet state turned its face to the kulak (a land user who separated from the community and used hired labor). A kind of agreement is concluded with him, not reflected in official documents, but understandable to each of the contemporaries of those events as “tacit knowledge.” The essence of the agreement was simple: the state allows the kulaks to enrich themselves by increasing the exploitation of farm laborers and, moreover, protects them from the wrath of the poor (since the poor part of the village perceived this law negatively, the anger at the kulaks was great and it could result in spontaneous reprisals against them). The kulaks, in turn, undertake to provide the city with agricultural products, primarily bread, at a fixed price favorable to the state and pay an increased tax (up to 25%). From the point of view of the state, the kulaks, having separated from the community and decided to hire farm laborers, by the very fact of this tacitly agreed to fulfill the terms of this unspoken agreement, because it was from the state that the kulaks received everything that made them agricultural producers and brought them profit - both land and the right to hiring farm laborers. In the eyes of the state, this was not an agreement between two equal and free subjects, due to the fact that the kulaks were actually state land users with their own responsibilities.

Kulak strike and kulak terror

Throughout 1926, this agreement was observed. But already in 1927, the kulaks began to disrupt the grain procurement plan. In the fall of 1927, the state managed to buy only 2.4 million tons of bread, compared to 5.8 million during the same period last year. The price offered for bread by the state did not suit the kulaks, in whose hands the main reserves of grain were concentrated. They did not need manufactured goods; peasants bought only tobacco, kerosene, matches, and soap in the shops, but they stocked up on them in abundance during the NEP period.
The kulaks had bread. In 1927 there was a good harvest in Russia. But they did not want to sell it at a low price to the state to provide for the city. They preferred to hide the grain so that the next year, when the state would be forced to raise prices, they could sell it at a higher price. If the kulaks sold bread, it was mainly to private traders, who in the city resold it at 50–100% more expensive.
The result of this was the urban food crisis of 1928–1929, which few people remember today, since it somewhat spoils the good story that our anti-Soviet people repeat - about the evil Stalin, who never offended the strong owners. But for the townspeople of that time (and also for the rural poor, who were also affected by the kulak disruption of grain procurements) it was a shock.
People have already lost the habit of queues and coupons, which seemed to be a thing of the past forever along with the civil war and post-war devastation. And suddenly, in the eleventh year of Soviet power, when there is no war and no intervention, the cities again lack bread and bakery products, then other food products disappear from the shelves: meat, milk, tea, sugar, and finally food products.
Indignation is growing in the cities; perplexed citizens are sending letters to the Central Committee and the Supreme Council. Party oppositionists are distributing leaflets - Trotsky was expelled from the USSR just a year ago, Trotskyist factions in party organizations are numerous and strong.
The population of cities demands the introduction of a card system in order to somehow defeat speculators and have a guaranteed piece of bread. Locally, cards were introduced already in 1928, and on February 21, 1929, this practice extended throughout the country. First, cards are introduced for bread, then for other products, including potatoes. Card holders were divided into categories, the most received were workers, who were given cards of the 1st category, then co-workers - holders of the 2nd category, then pensioners, the unemployed, who had the 3rd category. The dispossessed - former nobles, priests, etc. - received nothing at all. A network of public catering was created - canteens, often closed, for employees of a certain department, where they could get lunch at a reduced price. Canteens opened in factories and institutions, and people came there with whole families.
Stalin was very worried about this situation. There is a widespread point of view, shared by both Stalinist patriots and anti-Soviet liberals, that Stalin needed collectivization and dispossession to carry out accelerated modernization. This was the opinion back in the 1930s. was expressed by Stalin’s implacable enemy, Trotsky, who reproached the leader of the USSR for “stole”, modifying his idea
over-industrialization. I.V. Stalin categorically disagreed with such statements. In his famous night conversation with Churchill, Stalin explained the need for collectivization: “...To get rid of periodic hunger strikes, Russia had an absolute need to plow the land with tractors. We had to mechanize our farming.” I think it was so; what frightened Stalin most of all was the famine in the cities. As a man of the older generation, Stalin remembered very well that the fateful events of 1917 - when the entire empire collapsed overnight and bloody chaos established itself in its territory for four long years - were provoked by the same kulak strike. In 1915, an economic crisis began in Russia, which had already been waging a grueling war for a year. Although there was a good harvest, the peasants, and especially the kulaks, did not want to sell grain to the state at a low price. To avoid starvation in the cities and undersupply of the army, the tsarist government introduced food appropriation and created food detachments, which were tasked with confiscating 772 million poods of grain from the peasants. (It is only semi-literate liberals who argue that surplus appropriation was introduced by evil communists; as we see, the tsarist ministers did not see any other way to supply the city and army with bread.) However, surplus appropriation was disrupted due to the corruption of tsarist officials. Unlike the Bolshevik commissars, having received a bribe from the kulak, they gave him a certificate that due to poverty he was not subject to food appropriation, and the city was left without food. The February Revolution, by the way, began with lines of hunger in Petrograd, whose warehouses ran out of food.
The proposal of Bukharin and Rykov to make concessions to the kulaks, to increase purchase prices to a level that suited the kulaks, was unacceptable to Stalin. He quite rightly believed that if the state did this, it would forever become the object of kulak blackmail and would never solve the food problem (not to mention the problem of industrialization). And not solving this problem means losing power and again plunging the country into chaos. The solution was to reform agriculture, or rather, to abandon the reliance on the kulaks, who turned out to be an extremely fragile ally, and to rely on collective farms. The kulak failed to cope with the role of a state-appointed land user, obliged to supply the city with agricultural products, and therefore he must answer for this. And not individually, but as a class, because not individually, but as a whole class, kulaks received from the state in 1922 and 1925. special rights that became the key to their enrichment. State legislative acts of 1922 and 1925 formed the social stratum of post-revolutionary kulaks, therefore the state had every right to disband this stratum.
Dispossession looked in the eyes of the absolute majority of Soviet people of that time (naturally, except for the kulaks themselves and their relatives) as a completely fair and justified campaign. Moreover, the campaign is also humane in its own way, no matter how paradoxical it may sound today.
After all, firstly, the kulaks, for their attempt to strangle the state with the bony hand of hunger - the very state that gave the kulaks the opportunity to enrich themselves - were only deprived of their rights and, after staying in special settlements, returned to normal life (for the children of the kulaks, this return was even much more earlier - in the late 1930s). And secondly, by evicting the kulaks to remote areas, Stalin actually saved them and their family members from extrajudicial killings by the rural poor, which had already begun throughout Russia. The poor were extremely embittered against the former “masters of life.” A lot has accumulated here - the grievances of former farm laborers, and hatred of wealth acquired not only by one’s own, but also by others, and revenge for kulak terror, and, finally, a simple understanding that if it were not for the disruption of grain procurements by the kulaks, which caused famine in the cities , collectivization could begin much later and be much less painful.
Contemporaries understood this, but descendants have already forgotten about it.

Education

Dispossession - what is it? The policy of dispossession in the USSR: causes, process and consequences

February 12, 2015

To put it simply and briefly, dispossession is the massive confiscation of property from peasants in the 30s of the last century, behind which lie millions of lives and destinies. Now this process has been declared illegal, and its victims are entitled to compensation for damages.

Beginning of dispossession

"Fists"

The policy of dispossession was carried out so crudely that both wealthy peasants and sections of the population completely far from prosperity fell under it.

Whom to be classified as “kulaks” was decided by the Soviet government without trial or investigation. It was possible to get rid of anyone who was not so friendly or came into conflict with the local authorities.

Signs of kulak farms

To identify the kulak economy, its characteristics were listed (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 1929). Among them were the following:

The use of hired labor in agricultural work and other crafts.
The peasant owns a mill, an oil mill, a drying plant for vegetables and fruits, and any other mechanical equipment with an engine.
Hire of all the above mechanisms.
Renting out premises for housing.
Engagement in trading activities, intermediation, receipt of unearned income.

Reasons for dispossession

The reasons for such a tough government policy are very simple. Agriculture has always been a source of food for the country. In addition to such an important function, it could help finance the industrialization process. It is more difficult to cope with the huge number of small independent agricultural enterprises. It is much easier to manage several large ones. Therefore, collectivization began in the country. The stated purpose of this event is to carry out socialist transformations in the village. Even specific deadlines were set for its successful implementation. The maximum period for its implementation is 5 years (for non-grain regions).

However, it could not have taken place without dispossession. It was this that provided the basis for the creation of collective and state farms.

Village reaction to collectivization

Some desperate people destroyed their own farms and killed activists representing Soviet power. The Red Army was brought in to suppress the disobedient.

Results

Dispossession is a process that crippled the fates of millions of people. Eyewitnesses recall how huge families who lived together for entire generations went into exile. Sometimes they numbered up to 40 people and united sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandsons. All family members worked hard to develop their farm. And the coming power took away everything without a trace. The country's population has decreased by 10 million people over 11 years. This is due to several reasons. In 1932-1933, almost 30 million people starved. Areas where wheat grew (Kuban, Ukraine) became the main victims. According to various estimates, the famine claimed five to seven million lives. Many died in exile from hard work, malnutrition and cold.

Collective farmers treated public property as “nobody’s property.” New workers worked carelessly, theft and mismanagement flourished.

To date, all victims of dispossession have been recognized as victims of political repression. Local government bodies are tasked with considering and making decisions on issues of compensation for damage to rehabilitated citizens. To do this, you need to fill out an application. According to Russian legislation, it can be submitted not only by the rehabilitated citizens themselves, but also by members of their families, public organizations and trusted persons.

In the 30s, Stalin's repressive machine, like a giant roller on asphalt, went through the peasantry three times. The first approach was associated with the dispossession of 1929-1931, the second - with the so-called “law on ears of corn” of August 7, 1932 and the activities of the political departments of the MTS in 1933-1934. and the third - with the "Great Terror of 1937".

The issue of dispossession received the greatest coverage in historiography. In addition to the series of works by N.A. Ivnitsky, books and articles by other authors; valuable documentary collections have been published in recent years. In general, quite a lot of factual material has been accumulated on this problem, the understanding of which reveals more and more new aspects. As for the subsequent waves of Stalinist repressions against the peasantry, there is still a lot of work to be done on the primary accumulation of factual material in the context of the continued restriction of access to the archival funds of the NKVD. One of the first “swallows” in this regard can be considered the publication of new documents and materials by M.A. Vyltsana and V.P. Danilov from the Center for the Storage of Modern Documentation - TsKHSD, identified for the international project “The Tragedy of the Soviet Village: Collectivization and Dispossession” edited by professors V. Danilov (Russia), R. Manning (USA), L. Viola (Canada).

The purpose of this article is not only to show the scale of violence, terror and lawlessness against the peasantry in the 30s, but also to try to find an answer to the question of why this became possible? The existing explanation, especially in journalistic literature, that Stalin is to blame for everything, is true, but not enough. It is necessary to show those objective and subjective factors and conditions, characteristic features of the historical era and the social psychology of the masses, which to a large extent contributed to the rampant terror and violence in the years under review.

Dispossession.

Dispossession was carried out under the slogan “liquidation of the last exploiting class.” Moreover, not economic liquidation “on the basis of complete collectivization,” as official propaganda claimed, but physical: the bulk of the “dispossessed” means of production and property went to replenish the indivisible funds of collective farms. In a certain sense, complete collectivization itself took place on the basis of the liquidation of the “kulaks,” and not vice versa.

Nowadays, hardly anyone will deny that the authorities brought the strongest and economically “tight-fisted” peasants under exploiters (“capitalist entrepreneurs in agriculture”, “small capitalists”). It was believed that the main distinguishing feature of the kulak (exploitative) economy was the hiring of labor. But due to the specific nature of agricultural production and its seasonality, middle peasants and even poor peasants often resorted to hiring labor. Subsequent experience in the development of agriculture showed that collective farms, these “socialist enterprises,” widely resorted to hiring labor from outside. There is no need to talk about the widespread involvement of city residents year after year in harvesting the collective farm harvest. Nevertheless, no one from the authorities said that collective farms and collective farmers are exploiters.

If anyone exploited the peasants (and the “kulaks”, and the middle peasants, and the poor, and then collective farmers), then it was the state.

To carry out “socialist industrialization” (purchase of imported equipment, payment of foreign consulting engineers) currency was needed. Stalin believed that it could be obtained through “tribute” from the peasantry. He directly stated this in his report “On industrialization and the grain problem” at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in July 1928. Collective farms became the most successful form of withdrawing this “tribute”: the entire harvest there was immediately poured into a common barn and its removal was not possible. caused resistance, while in order to confiscate grain from individual farmers, powerful units such as the prodarmiya of the times of “war communism” were required. This was one of the main reasons for the hasty, forced collectivization of Stalin.

Stalin's collectivization turned into a tragedy of dispossession for the village. In 1927, there were approximately 900 thousand farms in the country classified as “kulak” by financial and statistical authorities. This amounted to 4 - 5% of the total number of peasant farms (there were 60% of middle peasant farms, 35% of poor peasant farms). By the beginning of complete collectivization, in connection with the implementation of the “policy of restricting and ousting the kulaks” and the use of emergency measures during grain procurements, the number of “kulak” households was reduced to 600-700 thousand. In total, during the years of complete collectivization, approximately 1.11.2 million farms were liquidated ( 5.5-6 million people), i.e. almost twice as many are officially recognized as “kulak”. This is data provided by historians V.P. Danilov, N.A. Ivnitsky, I.E. Zelenin. Other figures are also mentioned (6-8 million - D. Volkogonov, up to 20 million - N. Mikhailov, N. Teptsov).

At the grassroots level, dispossession was carried out by special commissions of village councils, which included representatives of the OGPU and representatives of the poor. The village lumpen willingly responded to the cry “Rob the loot!” Part of the confiscated property of the “kulaks” was transferred to organized collective farms, and part was sold at low prices. This not least explains the huge number of dispossessed people, among whom there were many “middle peasants” and poor people declared “sub-kulak” enemies of the Soviet regime.

N. Ivnitsky in his book “Class struggle in the countryside and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class” writes, “that the poor peasant masses, interested in the expropriation of the kulaks, sought to expand the circle of farms subject to dispossession, because the property confiscated from the kulaks was transferred to the indivisible funds of collective farms in as entry fees of the poor and farm laborers. In addition, part of the kulak property... was distributed among the poor and farm laborers. This means that the latter were personally interested in as many dispossessed people as possible.”

In the peasant mentality, there was initially a negative attitude towards the “fist”, the “world-eater”. From the first years of Soviet power, official propaganda intensively carried out anti-kulak propaganda among the peasantry. This further aroused the hostility of the poor towards the “rich” peasants. Here is an excerpt from an open letter from the peasant Smerdov (village of Darovskoye, Vyatka province) published back in 1924: “Recently, the word “bourgeois” has penetrated into the wilderness of the village. In the village language it has become a swear word and, for many, downright shameful. It is used everywhere, appropriately and simply for ridicule, and hits everything that comes under the tongue, namely: a peasant built himself a new hut, acquired a second cow, a sleigh, etc., everywhere they throw in his eyes: “Hey, bourgeois, "I got my hands on it under the Soviets. It's probably because of you that you have power. Before, I suppose, there wasn't even a cow, and I didn't even get out of the dugout, but now look how I got my hands on it."

What “kulak” farms were like at the peak of dispossession can be seen from the following data for Siberia. Even compared to 1929, at the beginning of 1930 the number of livestock in them decreased by 2 times. Many “dispossessed themselves.” The value of the property confiscated from the “kulaks” (on average 326 rubles per household) was extremely low. According to a sample survey in the spring of 1930, 22.7% of the “kulaks” had means of production worth up to 400 rubles, 57.3% - 400-1000 rubles, 20.5% - over 1000 rubles. Essentially, many more or less wealthy people in the 20s. farms, in the early 30s. were the same poor peasant farms. But no one removed the “kulak” label from these peasants.

By July 1930, according to the People's Commissariat of Finance of the USSR, 191,035 farms, or 58.1% of farms subject to individual tax, were expropriated in 1,269 out of 2,851 districts (excluding the Western Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Central Asia and Yakutia). The value of the confiscated property reached 111,364.4 thousand rubles, or 564.2 rubles. per farm. Of the total amount of confiscated property, about 76% (84.5 million rubles) was transferred to collective farms. In addition, cash, bonds and deposits in an amount exceeding 2,250 thousand rubles were taken from the “kulaks”. According to approximate estimates of Narkomfin, the total number of expropriated “kulak” farms by the summer of 1930 in the USSR as a whole amounted to over 320 thousand, and the amount of confiscated property amounted to 180 million rubles.

As N. Ya. Gushchin notes, hundreds of resolutions of farm laborers, poor peasants and general peasant meetings held in the winter of 1929/30 demanded the expropriation and eviction of the “kulaks.” The decision of the poor peasants’ meeting in the village of Pokrovki, Lyublinsky district, Omsk Okrug, said: “The poor peasants’ meeting proposes to the Pokrovsky village council to deprive individual kulaks of their land plots; confiscate all property, means of production, productive livestock and transfer them to the collective farm.” From many places it was reported about the desire and demands of the poor for dispossession and about restraining measures taken by the authorities. This gave grounds to M.I. Kalinin to state that in 95 out of 100 cases the authorities have to play a “restraining role” in the area of dispossession. The “restraining role” was carried out, of course, for appearances. In fact, the Stalinist leadership in every possible way supported and encouraged the poor peasants' initiative “from below.” Adhering to the principle of “divide and conquer”, it played on such base qualities of human nature as envy, revenge, the “Sharikovsky” desire to “take and divide”, to profit at the expense of others. This is one of the reasons for the “triumphant” progress of Stalin’s collectivization and dispossession, which has not received sufficient assessment in historical literature, but without which it is impossible to understand the events described.

Another important reason for the astronomical numbers of those repressed during the years of collectivization is associated with peasant resistance. In January-February 1930, on the basis of collectivization and dispossession, 1,682 mass peasant uprisings took place, in which about 350 thousand people participated, and in March, only in 13 regions of the RSFSR, Belarus and Uzbekistan, about 1,650 peasant uprisings and at least 500 thousand participants in them. Although the Stalinist leadership was forced to maneuver in the face of the actually unfolding civil war, condemning the “excesses” in collectivization and dispossession, in reality there was no change in policy, only the forms of coercion changed. Dispossession and eviction continued in 1931-1932. The most active participants in the peasant uprisings did not escape Stalin’s punishment. In just 4 months of 1930, 140 thousand people. were condemned “as a counter-revolutionary,” enemies of Soviet power.

Peasants from more than a million dispossessed farms fled in large numbers wherever they could, mainly to the cities. Some remained in their previous places of residence. Some were resettled to neighboring regions and districts. The rest were destined for “kulak” exile.

In the certificate of the Department for Special Resettlers of the GULAG OGPU entitled “Information on the evicted kulaks in 1930 - 1931.” (introduced into scientific circulation by V.N. Zemskov), it was indicated that at that time 391,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent to special settlements (Northern Territory, Western and Eastern Siberia, the Urals, Far Eastern Territory, Yakutia, Kazakhstan and some other regions) . Until 1934, peasants sent into “kulak” exile were called special settlers; in 1934-1944. - labor settlers.

According to incomplete data, as of July 1938, labor settlers (“former kulaks”) were employed in the following sectors of the national economy: in heavy industry - 354,311, in forestry - 165,405, in artisanal agriculture - 162,225, in the People's Commissariat of Agriculture - 32,023, in the Belbaltkombinat of the NKVD - 28083, in the system of the People's Commissariat of Food Industry - 20298, in the system of the People's Commissariat of Forestry Railways - 18196, in the state farms of the People's Commissariat of State Farms and the People's Commissariat of Land - 16505, in light and local industry - 7886, in the system of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route - 3076, in the labor colonies of the NKVD - 2691, in other organizations - 44722; There were 3,471 people in orphanages and nursing homes. Of this total number, 355,301 people were employed. In addition, 59,043 people who were considered able to work for various reasons did not work.

The situation of those repressed, especially in the first years of exile, was extremely difficult. In a memorandum from the Gulag leadership dated July 3, 1933, the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the RKI noted: “From the moment of the transfer of special settlers to the People’s Commissariat of Forestry of the USSR for labor use in the timber industry, i.e., from August 1931, the Government established a standard for the supply of dependents - migrant workers in the forest at the rate of distribution per month: flour - 9 kg, cereals - 9 kg, fish - 1.5 kg, sugar - 0.9 kg. From January 1, 1933, by order of Soyuznarkomsnab, supply standards for dependents were reduced to the following amounts: flour - 5 kg, cereals - 0.5 kg, fish - 0.8 kg, sugar - 0.4 kg. As a result, the situation of special settlers in the timber industry, especially in the Ural region and the Northern Territory, has sharply worsened...

Everywhere in private farms (Lespromkhozes. - M.V.) of Sevkrai and the Urals, cases of eating various inedible surrogates, as well as eating cats, dogs and the corpses of fallen animals, were noted... Due to hunger, a number of suicides took place, crime increased... Hungry migrants steal bread from the surrounding population, in particular from collective farmers... Due to insufficient supplies, labor productivity has sharply decreased, production standards have fallen in some private household plots to 25%*. Exhausted special settlers are not able to work out the norm, and in accordance with this, they receive less food and become completely unable to work. There have been cases of death from hunger among displaced persons at work and immediately after returning from work...”

Infant mortality was especially high. In a memorandum from G.G. Yagoda dated October 26, 1931, addressed to Ya.E. Rudzutak, it was noted: “The morbidity and mortality of migrants is high... The monthly mortality rate is 1.3% of the population per month in Northern Kazakhstan and 0 .8% in the Narym region. Among the dead, there are especially many children of younger groups. Thus, under the age of 3 years, 8-12% of this group died per month, and in Magnitogorsk - even more, up to 15% per month.”

In accordance with the stereotypes of Stalinist propaganda, in the years under review, the myth about the economic efficiency of forced labor of special settlers was exaggerated. Information about thousands of hectares of new plowed land, thousand-pound harvests on them, thousands of cubic meters of harvested wood, etc. were called upon to substantiate a positive assessment and moral justification of the state action to deport peasants. It was alleged that state funds spent on the deportation, resettlement and employment of special settlers were returned to the state budget after a few years (about five).

V.P. Danilov and S.A. Krasilnikov in the Preface to the book “Special settlers in Western Siberia. 1933 - 1938” they write: “The economic activities of special settlers in most industries were unprofitable. Even handicrafts, with a huge raw material base, were economically unprofitable for a long time. Victory reports in the development of, say, the Narym North were intended to hide the reality of the opposite sense: the debt of non-statutory artels of special settlers from Narym to the state did not decrease, but increased (hence the constant petitions to the Center asking for a delay in its repayment); the same non-statutory artels, with rare exceptions, were in a vicious circle from year to year - having completed the obligatory deliveries of grain and other agricultural products in the fall, after a few months they needed to receive a seed loan, fodder, etc. As a result of gross miscalculations of the management, the number of horses in the Narym commandant's offices in the first half of the 30s. not only did it not grow, but decreased in absolute terms.”

The only possible form of protest of the special settlers, their struggle for survival, was escape. The OGPU and NKVD managed to detain up to half of those who fled and return them to the commandant’s office. The fate of the remaining fugitives was also unenviable. Many of them died in forests and swamps; those who got out were forced to hide and live in constant fear of exposure. An “anti-escapism” network of agents was planted not only among the special settlers, but also among the local population. For the capture of fugitives, the gunners were paid a monetary reward. Participation in informing corrupted people, turning them into obedient executors of the repressive machine. The administration of the commandant's offices, encouraging snitching, equated it with good work in restoring exiles' civil rights.

The authorities’ attempts to justify the “kulak” exile with the interests of labor re-education of “former exploiters” were completely untenable. Since these “exploiters” related to peasant labor, it was precisely those who helped the authorities in dispossessing the economically powerful men who needed to learn, i.e. village lumpen, to a large extent consisting of careless peasants, lazy people, drunkards, and reckless people.

And the hard labor of the special settlers could only discourage even the most industrious and industrious peasant from working.

Stalin's dispossession and exile of the peasants could not be justified by any considerations: neither political (they aggravated the already difficult situation in the country), nor economic (they undermined the productive forces of the village). There is no need to talk about the moral side of the action. Dispossession means millions of distorted human destinies, death from hunger and cold in the camps, the most tragic page in the history of the Russian peasantry.

The October Revolution of 1917 was not only a sharp turn in the historical path of Russia, but also turned the lives of ordinary people far from politics upside down. The fire of the revolution burned even the peasantry, and the best part of it - hardworking people, but, according to the new government, irresponsible, who did not want to understand why

For what?

In the 1930s, a large-scale campaign to dispossess the village was launched. The authorities saw the wealthy peasants (“kulaks”) as the enemy of the people, because they had something to lose. At the state level, a norm was set at 60 thousand people arrested and 400 thousand people expelled, but the OGPU, headed by G. Yagoda, provided data already in the first years of the program that exceeded those originally stated. The Soviet government did not stand on ceremony with dispossessed peasants.

Families most often did not suspect that they were blacklisted for eviction and lived normal lives. Special teams for working with fists could show up at a house at night and distribute all family members in different directions: some to the North, others to Siberia or Kazakhstan. Those who resisted were shot on the spot. The Soviet government created support for itself in the form of collective farms; the self-sufficient, strong economy of the kulak was an obvious obstacle.

How I met Siberia

The Narym region became a haven for hundreds of thousands of exiled peasants. In Soviet times, there was a saying: “God created Crimea, and the devil created Narym.” The nature of this region speaks for itself: impassable swamps and swamps, around which the tributaries of the Ob flowed, from which it was impossible to get out. For such settlements, fences with barbed wire were not built; escape was comparable to suicide.

What did you eat?

Half of the people died from hunger and disease on the way to Siberia, but no less died on the spot. Due to lack of preparation, life in the taiga became a real challenge. People often died from eating poisonous mushrooms or berries. Sometimes, hunger led to extremes.

The Nazim tragedy was an indicative case of what people went to when they found themselves in conditions of survival. After the exiles landed, almost on bare ground, near the village of Nazino, cases of cannibalism were recorded. People, driven to despair, resorted to murder. This fact was kept secret by the Soviet authorities for a long time, but among local residents the name “Island of Cannibals” was assigned to this village.

Where did you live?

Once the peasants were dropped off on the banks of the river, they were faced with nothing but wild, uninhabited terrain. Some built houses from branches and fallen trees, which looked more like huts. Others dug dugouts and holes in order to somehow protect themselves from the weather. If the family survived the winter, then by autumn barracks were erected for the survivors.

Local authorities were not prepared that the number of exiles would reach half a million people. There were neither means nor money to provide basic conditions for all those who arrived. For every thousand people, relatively speaking, three axes and three saws were issued. If it was possible to put together a wooden house, then 40-50 people lived there.

Medical assistance also existed only in official reports for Moscow. In fact, it was a great success if the paramedic (one per thousand people) lived in a local village and did not have to travel hundreds of kilometers. The clothes were only those that they had time to change into when leaving the house. If a relative died, then everything was taken from him and distributed among others. Frostbitten limbs were common; the harsh climate of Siberia made it impossible for the weak to survive.

In conditions unsuitable for life, peasants were required to work almost a 12-hour working day. The state, thus, fulfilled ideological tasks and, at the same time, developed the taiga territories with the hands of free labor. It is noteworthy that one of the most famous exiles of Narym was I.V. Stalin, sent there in 1912. After being a prisoner for no more than a month, he escaped and only then became actively involved in the revolutionary movement of the Russian Empire.

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