dekulakize

present singular third person dekulakizes · participle present dekulakizing · participle past dekulakized · past dekulakized · alternative dekulakise · alternative de-kulakize

1. historicaltransitiveUsually with reference to the Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe: to dispossess a kulak (that is, a prosperous peasant) of his or her property and/or rights.First known use 20th c.

   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?

   1969, E[dward] H[allett] Carr, R[obert] W[illiam] Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy: 1926–1929 (A History of Soviet Russia; 4), volume I, London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., →OCLC, page 179

   5 more examples

   [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.

   1930, J[oseph] Stalin, “Collective Farms”, in International Press Correspondence, volume 10, Berlin: Richard Neumann, →OCLC, page 341, column 2

   [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.

   1938, Ivan Solonevich, “The Soviet ‘Active’”, in Warren Harrow, transl., Russia in Chains: A Record of Unspeakable Suffering, London: Williams and Norgate Ltd […], →OCLC, pages 122 and 124

   [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’.

   1989, R[obert] W[illiam] Davies, “The Repression of the Peasantry”, in Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, Bloomington; Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, part I (The Mental Revolution), page 49

   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."

   1991, Eduard Shevardnadze, translated by Catherine A[nn] Fitzpatrick, The Future Belongs to Freedom, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, →ISBN, page 25

   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.

   1993, Lynne Viola, “The Second Coming: Class Enemies in the Soviet Countryside, 1927–1935”, in J[ohn] Arch[ibald] Getty, Roberta T. Manning, editors, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, part II (Backgrounds), page 88