Word: kulak
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From the general principles laid down by the central authorities it becomes evident that a Kulak would be a "poor farmer" in the United States or Germany. Over the breadth and sweep of Russia, conditions are variable. To accord with these varying conditions, a Kulak has been defined by law as a peasant who uses hired labor or machinery, who rents house or room, leases land or orchard, or engages in trade, speculation, "or any other source of non-productive income, including income as religious or secular employees of churches...
...peasant-born figurehead (TIME, Nov. 26, 1928). Some 150,000,000 peasants hope that he defends their interests in proletarian councils of the Kremlin. He tries to. But last week he was obliged to pledge his support to a policy most peasants hate, the project to exterminate the kulak or "moneyed peasant" as a class (TIME, Jan. 13). Just now this is the thing closest to the heart of cold, quiet Dictator Josef Stalin, the arch-proletarian who is also making Russia stride...
Writing with stark frankness last week in Pravda (Truth), Dictator Stalin denied reports that a kulak, after the Government has seized his land, will be allowed to stay on it as a humble toiler on the Government's "collective farm." In the Dictator's mind such a policy smacks of weakness, sentimentality and therefore danger. "The kulak must be completely liquidated!," he wrote, using a popular but ambiguous Soviet verb also correctly used in the sentences, "Let the hangman now liquidate the condemned!" and "Let us, Comrade, endeavor to liquidate the static in our radio...
What Stalin appeared to mean was that a kulak family once deprived of their land must migrate completely away from their district. Even if they survive they will be so poor as to have been liquidated as kulaks, and if they die they will have been liquidated...
...first that they must be destroyed in Soviet Russia, but recently this has not seemed practical. "It is now," said Stalin with quiet menace last week. He launched into an argument which may be summarized thus: 1) Even two years ago the Government was largely dependent upon the kulak to produce what is called the "export surplus" of Russian grain. It is this surplus which the Government sells abroad, using the gold received in exchange to buy foreign manufactured goods. Since foreign manufacturers will not take their pay in Russian rubles, the surplus grain which equals gold is vitally important...