Dekulakize

[W]hen, in their eagerness to achieve a higher percentage of collectivisation, they began to employ force against the middle peasants, to deprive them of the right to vote, by "dekulakising" and expropriating them, the united front with the middle peasants began to be undermined and the kulak obtained the opportunity, as is quite clear, to make fresh attempts to recover his position.

[page 122] Ivan ‘dekulakises’ a peasant’s pig, and delivers it to the police. […] [page 124] [A]ll this [rotting] meat had originated with pigs ‘dekulakised’ from the peasants, and slaughtered by the Activists. About a month after this fragrant event, half of the local Activists were themselves slaughtered by the peasants and the remainder fled.

Or admit the kulak who dekulakizes himself. But can we now entertain the illusion that kulaks on any considerable scale will go in for self-dekulakization?

[T]he Belorussian novelist Vasil’ Bykov, following the award of the Lenin prize for his novel Znak bedy, explained that in Belorussia ‘we did not have any kulaks generally, but they required us to dekulakise’.

Later, [Mikhail] Gorbachev asked me: "What do you think he is, exactly?" / "A farmer," I [Shevardnadze] said. "A good manager. But if you like, we can de-kulakize him. Then there won't be any farm, milk, or livestock."

Local officials may have had no other resort but to dekulakize illegally or tax as kulaks the households of otkhodniki in order to raise the collectivization rates or increase the landholding of the collective farms.

As in 1930, the local officials were blamed for collectivizing and dekulakizing the people whose level of development had not prepared them for such undertakings. Personal property should not have been collectivized; the kulaks should have been limited and squeezed out—not liquidated; and the speed of reform should have been adjusted to local conditions.

More than one million peasant families—five million people, at least—were dekulakized during collectivization.