Dekulakization

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Soviet policy of stripping wealthier peasants of their land, property and status, and often deporting or killing them, during forced collectivization
2. The forced dispossession and elimination of prosperous farmers known as kulaks under Stalin's collectivization campaign in the Soviet Union
3. The campaign of liquidating the rural upper class in the USSR, carried out through confiscation, exile and execution during the 1930s

Etymology: "Dekulakization" is a Soviet-era coinage, built from "de-", "kulak" and "-ization". The "kulak" element is the key: the Russian word "kulak" literally means "fist" and, in rural usage, came to describe a relatively prosperous peasant who owned land, hired labour or lent money. In the Soviet campaigns of collectivization from the late 1920s, the term was stretched to label anyone regarded as a class enemy in the countryside, often families with only modest holdings. The prefix "de-" carries the sense of removing or undoing, so the whole word means the elimination of the kulaks as a class. The "-ization" ending turns the noun into a process, the way "collectivization" names the act of forming collective farms. Put together, the word names a policy of dispossessing, deporting and sometimes killing peasants so labelled, rather than a neutral agricultural term.