Kulak
A comparatively prosperous peasant who obtained income through activities such as employing hired labour, lending money, trade, or renting out land and equipment. In Marxist terminology, kulaks were regarded as the rural capitalist stratum of the peasantry.
Further explanation
The Russian word kulak, literally “fist”, was used before the October Revolution for comparatively prosperous or economically powerful peasants, particularly rural traders, moneylenders and farmers who employed hired labour. It did not always mean every peasant who was better off than their neighbours, and its boundaries were disputed even before Soviet rule.
In Bolshevik and Soviet class analysis, kulaks were treated as a rural bourgeois stratum whose income depended partly upon exploiting hired labour or other peasants. A 1929 Soviet definition included farms that regularly employed labour, operated certain processing equipment, rented machinery or premises, engaged in trade or moneylending, or received other income not derived from their own labour. In practice, however, official and local use of the label varied, especially when resistance to state agricultural policy was treated as evidence of kulak interests.
During the forced collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, the Soviet government pursued the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class”. Dekulakisation involved confiscation of property, exclusion from collective farms, imprisonment, deportation and, in some cases, execution. The campaign also affected many poor and middle peasants who had been classified as kulaks or accused of supporting them.