What does dispossession mean? The process of dispossession in the USSR

Education

Dispossession - what is it? The policy of dispossession in the USSR: causes, process and consequences

February 12, 2015

To put it simply and briefly, dispossession is the massive confiscation of property from peasants in the 30s of the last century, behind which lie millions of lives and destinies. Now this process has been declared illegal, and its victims are entitled to compensation for damages.

Beginning of dispossession

Dispossession, that is, the deprivation of the peasant kulak of the opportunity to use the land, the confiscation of the instruments of production, the “surplus” of farming, took place during the years of collectivization.

However, dispossession actually began much earlier. Lenin made statements about the need to fight wealthy peasants back in 1918. It was then that special committees were created that dealt with the confiscation of equipment, land, and food.

"Fists"

The policy of dispossession was carried out so crudely that both wealthy peasants and sections of the population completely far from prosperity fell under it.

Significant masses of peasants suffered from forced collectivization. Dispossession is not only the deprivation of one’s own economy. After the ruin, peasants were expelled, and entire families, regardless of age, fell under repression. Infants and old people were also exiled indefinitely to Siberia, the Urals, and Kazakhstan. All “kulaks” faced forced labor. By and large, dispossession in the USSR resembled a game in which the rules were constantly changing. The special settlers had no rights - only responsibilities.

Whom to be classified as “kulaks” was decided by the Soviet government without trial or investigation. It was possible to get rid of anyone who was not so friendly or came into conflict with the local authorities.

The worst thing is that those who acquired their “excesses” through hard work, without hiring hired workers, were also considered undesirable. At first they were called “middle peasants” and were not touched for some time. Later they were also recorded as enemies of the people, with corresponding consequences.

Video on the topic

Signs of kulak farms

To identify the kulak economy, its characteristics were listed (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 1929). Among them were the following:

The use of hired labor in agricultural work and other crafts.
The peasant owns a mill, an oil mill, a drying plant for vegetables and fruits, and any other mechanical equipment with an engine.
Hire of all the above mechanisms.
Renting out premises for housing.
Engagement in trading activities, intermediation, receipt of unearned income.

Reasons for dispossession

The reasons for such a tough government policy are very simple. Agriculture has always been a source of food for the country. In addition to such an important function, it could help finance the industrialization process. It is more difficult to cope with the huge number of small independent agricultural enterprises. It is much easier to manage several large ones. Therefore, collectivization began in the country. The stated purpose of this event is to carry out socialist transformations in the village. Even specific deadlines were set for its successful implementation. The maximum period for its implementation is 5 years (for non-grain regions).

However, it could not have taken place without dispossession. It was this that provided the basis for the creation of collective and state farms.

Dispossession is the liquidation of more than 350,000 peasant farms that were ruined by mid-1930. At a rate of 5-7% of the total number of individual agricultural enterprises, the real figure was 15-20%.

Village reaction to collectivization

Collectivization was perceived differently by village residents. Many did not understand what it could lead to and did not really understand what dispossession was. When the peasants realized that this was violence and arbitrariness, they organized protests.

Some desperate people destroyed their own farms and killed activists representing Soviet power. The Red Army was brought in to suppress the disobedient.

Stalin, realizing that the trial could harm his reputation and turn into a political disaster, wrote an article in Pravda. In it, he categorically condemned the violence and blamed local performers for everything. Unfortunately, the article was not aimed at eliminating lawlessness, but was written for one’s own rehabilitation. By 1934, despite the resistance of the peasants, 75% of individual farms were transformed into collective farms.

Results

Dispossession is a process that crippled the fates of millions of people. Eyewitnesses recall how huge families who lived together for entire generations went into exile. Sometimes they numbered up to 40 people and united sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandsons. All family members worked hard to develop their farm. And the coming power took away everything without a trace. The country's population has decreased by 10 million people over 11 years. This is due to several reasons. In 1932-1933, almost 30 million people starved. Areas where wheat grew (Kuban, Ukraine) became the main victims. According to various estimates, the famine claimed five to seven million lives. Many died in exile from hard work, malnutrition and cold.

In economic terms, this process did not become an impetus for the development of agriculture. On the contrary, the results of dispossession were disastrous. There was a sharp decrease in the number of cattle by 30%, the number of pigs and sheep decreased by 2 times. Grain production, traditionally an important Russian export, fell by 10%.

Collective farmers treated public property as “nobody’s property.” New workers worked carelessly, theft and mismanagement flourished.

To date, all victims of dispossession have been recognized as victims of political repression. Local government bodies are tasked with considering and making decisions on issues of compensation for damage to rehabilitated citizens. To do this, you need to fill out an application. According to Russian legislation, it can be submitted not only by the rehabilitated citizens themselves, but also by members of their families, public organizations and trusted persons.

The October Revolution of 1917 was not only a sharp turn in the historical path of Russia, but also turned the lives of ordinary people far from politics upside down. The fire of the revolution burned even the peasantry, and the best part of it - hardworking people, but, according to the new government, irresponsible, who did not want to understand why

For what?

In the 1930s, a large-scale campaign to dispossess the village was launched. The authorities saw the wealthy peasants (“kulaks”) as the enemy of the people, because they had something to lose. At the state level, the norm was set at 60 thousand people arrested and 400 thousand people expelled, but the OGPU, headed by G. Yagoda, provided data already in the first years of the program that exceeded those originally stated. The Soviet government did not stand on ceremony with dispossessed peasants.

Families most often did not suspect that they were blacklisted for eviction and lived a normal life. Special forces working with fists could show up at a house at night and distribute all family members in different directions: some to the North, others to Siberia or Kazakhstan. Those who resisted were shot on the spot. The Soviet government created support for itself in the form of collective farms; the self-sufficient, strong economy of the kulak was an obvious obstacle.

How I met Siberia

The Narym region became a haven for hundreds of thousands of exiled peasants. In Soviet times, there was a saying: “God created Crimea, and the devil created Narym.” The nature of this region speaks for itself: impassable swamps and swamps, around which the tributaries of the Ob flowed, from which it was impossible to get out. For such settlements, fences with barbed wire were not built; escape was comparable to suicide.

What did you eat?

Half of the people died from hunger and disease on the way to Siberia, but no less died on the spot. Due to lack of preparation, life in the taiga became a real challenge. People often died from eating poisonous mushrooms or berries. Sometimes, hunger led to extremes.

The Nazim tragedy was an indicative case of what people went to when they found themselves in conditions of survival. After the exiles landed, almost on bare ground, near the village of Nazino, cases of cannibalism were recorded. People, driven to despair, resorted to murder. This fact was kept secret by the Soviet authorities for a long time, but among local residents the name “Island of Cannibals” was assigned to this village.

Where did you live?

Once the peasants were dropped off on the banks of the river, all they could see was a wild, uninhabited area. Some built houses from branches and fallen trees, which looked more like huts. Others dug dugouts and holes in order to somehow protect themselves from the weather. If the family survived the winter, then by autumn barracks were erected for the survivors.

Local authorities were not prepared that the number of exiles would reach half a million people. There were neither means nor money to provide basic conditions for all those who arrived. For every thousand people, relatively speaking, three axes and three saws were issued. If it was possible to put together a wooden house, then 40-50 people lived there.

Medical assistance also existed only in official reports for Moscow. In fact, it was a great success if the paramedic (one per thousand people) lived in a local village and did not have to travel hundreds of kilometers. The clothes were only those that they had time to change into when leaving the house. If a relative died, then everything was taken from him and distributed among others. Frostbitten limbs were common; the harsh climate of Siberia made it impossible for the weak to survive.

In conditions unsuitable for life, peasants were required to work almost a 12-hour working day. The state, thus, fulfilled ideological tasks and, at the same time, developed the taiga territories with the hands of free labor. It is noteworthy that one of the most famous exiles of Narym was I.V. Stalin, sent there in 1912. After being a prisoner for no more than a month, he escaped and only then became actively involved in the revolutionary movement of the Russian Empire.

BONUS

The collectivization of agriculture in the USSR was accompanied by a repressive phenomenon - dispossession. Wealthy peasant kulaks were declared class enemies of the working peasantry and the revolutionary government. According to various estimates, as a result of dispossession, from 60 to 600 thousand peasants died, and in total up to one and a half million people were repressed.

Origin of the kulaks

After the abolition of serfdom, stratification emerged among the peasantry. Active peasants who quickly adapted to new conditions became richer, achieved greater yields, quickly redeemed themselves from a temporarily indebted state, and over time began to leave the peasant communities and buy up the lands of other peasants and the discredited nobility. People began to call such rich peasants kulaks. Kulak farms used hired (farm) labor. Due to the greater turnover of funds, they were quickly equipped with technical innovations. By 1917, peasant kulaks were the main conductors of capitalist relations in the countryside.

Civil war and first dispossession

During the years, the Soviet government relied in the villages on committees of the poor - committees of the poor. These bodies were given full power in matters of confiscation of landowners' lands, redistribution of communal possessions and means of production. Peasant kulaks were deprived of the right to vote in the committees. Under the policy of war communism, when commodity-money relations between the countryside and the city were paralyzed, and most of the products were confiscated by the state, part of the kulak farms went bankrupt. Even those kulaks that remained afloat were forced to cede a significant part of their lands to the committees.

With the abolition and the beginning of the kulak farms began to revive. Although the kulaks lost land and financial assets during the Civil War, they still controlled a significant part of the means of production. The use of hired labor resumed. By the mid-twenties, kulaks again became the main productive force in the countryside.

Second anti-kulak campaign and destruction of the kulaks

In 1928, a massive campaign against the kulaks began in the Soviet press. Pravda and other newspapers accused the kulaks of disrupting grain procurement plans, exploiting poor peasants and other sabotage actions. Dispossession has resumed. At the same time, the government began to encourage the union of peasants into collective farms. The kulaks, who had the most to lose from the creation of collective farms, most actively resisted their creation. Collective farms received support from machine and tractor stations organized by the state in the countryside, but these measures did not particularly speed up the entry of kulaks into collective farms.

In 1930, the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda published an article in which the liquidation of the kulaks as a class was first mentioned. At the end of the same year, the OGPU formed special detachments that began evicting kulaks from their native villages. The richest kulaks and organizers of anti-Soviet protests were subject to imprisonment in concentration camps or execution. Their families, as well as less active kulaks, were evicted outside the collective farm lands. At the same time, all the property of the evicted families was confiscated. Middle peasants who refused to join collective farms also fell under dispossession. They were branded with the word “subkulakists.”

Deportation of peasant families

Although the kulaks and sub-kulaks who were least dangerous to the Soviet regime were resettled to neighboring villages, a significant part of the kulak families were sent to hard-to-reach and sparsely populated areas: Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Urals and the Far North. Those evicted did not receive assistance and were deprived of the right to leave their special settlements. In the first years of their life, elderly and young members of kulak families died in new places. Unlike repressed party workers, dispossessed persons were rehabilitated only in 1991.

Collectivization provided for a radical breakdown of previous economic relations in agriculture. It was required to eliminate the remnants of outdated relations in the village, and was also necessary to replenish the state budget. Without this, it was impossible to carry out the rapid and large-scale industrialization of the Land of Soviets. The essence of collectivization was the transition from individual farming to collective farming.

From the previous capitalist system in the country, which went through revolution and civil war, strong peasant farms were preserved, in which the labor of hired workers - farm laborers - was relatively widely used. The heads of such farms have been called kulaks in Russia since the end of the 19th century. The Soviet state set its local executive bodies the task of mercilessly eliminating the kulaks, since the existence of this social stratum prevented the complete elimination of exploitation.

The kulaks in the Soviet Union were equated with the bourgeoisie, which, as many knew from the political literacy course, makes its countless fortunes through the merciless predatory exploitation of the working masses. As long as pockets of capitalist relations remained in the countryside, there could be no talk of the victory of socialism. This was the ideological basis of the repressions that unfolded in Soviet villages.

How did the dispossession take place?

The campaign to dispossess strong individual peasant farms began in the late 20s, although the resolution of the Party Central Committee on measures to combat the kulaks in areas of mass collectivization was issued in January 1930. The measures to eliminate the class of rural rich people were intended to prepare the basis for attracting peasants to collective farms.

During the first two years of repression, several hundred thousand individual farms were dispossessed. Food supplies accumulated through the exploitation of other people's labor, livestock and other property of the kulaks were subject to confiscation. Wealthy peasants were deprived of their civil rights and entire families were evicted to remote regions of the country. The confiscated property was transferred to collective farms created in the villages, but there is information that part of it was simply stolen by those who carried out measures to “cleanse” the village of kulaks.

After the first wave, the second stage began, during which the middle peasants, who sometimes owned only poultry and one cow, began to be equated with kulaks. In this way, proactive activists tried to achieve the normative indicators for dispossession established at the top. Even the term “subkulak” appeared. This was the name given to individual middle and poor peasants who somehow did not please the local authorities.

By 1933, the process of dispossession was suspended by special government directives, but locally, due to inertia, it still continued. During the years of repression, the Soviet village lost not only exploiters, but also many independent and enterprising owners. The stage of widespread involvement of peasants in collective farms began, which became the main form of farming in the countryside.

Education

To put it simply and briefly, dispossession is the massive confiscation of property from peasants in the 30s of the last century, behind which lie millions of lives and destinies.

Now this process has been declared illegal, and its victims are entitled to compensation for damages.

Beginning of dispossession

It established the procedure and list of measures for the liquidation of kulak farms in the regions where collectivization was taking place.

However, dispossession actually began much earlier.

Lenin made statements about the need to fight wealthy peasants back in 1918. It was then that special committees were created that dealt with the confiscation of equipment, land, and food.

"Fists"

The policy of dispossession was carried out so crudely that both wealthy peasants and sections of the population completely far from prosperity fell under it.

Significant masses of peasants suffered from forced collectivization.

Dispossession is not only the deprivation of one’s own economy. After the ruin, peasants were expelled, and entire families, regardless of age, fell under repression.

Infants and old people were also exiled indefinitely to Siberia, the Urals, and Kazakhstan. All “kulaks” faced forced labor. By and large, dispossession in the USSR resembled a game in which the rules were constantly changing. The special settlers had no rights - only responsibilities.

Whom to be classified as “kulaks” was decided by the Soviet government without trial or investigation.

It was possible to get rid of anyone who was not so friendly or came into conflict with the local authorities.

The worst thing is that those who acquired their “excesses” through hard work, without hiring hired workers, were also considered undesirable.

At first they were called “middle peasants” and were not touched for some time. Later, they were also recorded as enemies of the people, with corresponding consequences.

Video on the topic

Signs of kulak farms

To identify the kulak economy, its characteristics were listed (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 1929).

How it happened: dispossession

Among them were the following:

The use of hired labor in agricultural work and other crafts.
The peasant owns a mill, an oil mill, a drying plant for vegetables and fruits, and any other mechanical equipment with an engine.
Hire of all the above mechanisms.
Renting out premises for housing.
Engagement in trading activities, intermediation, receipt of unearned income.

Reasons for dispossession

The reasons for such a tough government policy are very simple.

Agriculture has always been a source of food for the country. In addition to such an important function, it could help finance the industrialization process. It is more difficult to cope with the huge number of small independent agricultural enterprises. It is much easier to manage several large ones. Therefore, collectivization began in the country. The stated purpose of this event is to carry out socialist transformations in the village.

Even specific deadlines were set for its successful implementation. The maximum period for its implementation is 5 years (for non-grain regions).

However, it could not have taken place without dispossession. It was this that provided the basis for the creation of collective and state farms.

Dispossession is the liquidation of more than 350,000 peasant farms that were ruined by mid-1930.

At a rate of 5-7% of the total number of individual agricultural enterprises, the real figure was 15-20%.

Village reaction to collectivization

Collectivization was perceived differently by village residents. Many did not understand what it could lead to and did not really understand what dispossession was.

When the peasants realized that this was violence and arbitrariness, they organized protests.

Some desperate people destroyed their own farms and killed activists representing Soviet power. The Red Army was brought in to suppress the disobedient.

Stalin, realizing that the trial could harm his reputation and turn into a political disaster, wrote an article in Pravda.

By 1934, despite the resistance of the peasants, 75% of individual farms were transformed into collective farms.

Results

Dispossession is a process that crippled the fates of millions of people.

Eyewitnesses recall how huge families who lived together for entire generations went into exile. Sometimes they numbered up to 40 people and united sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandsons. All family members worked hard to develop their farm.

And the coming power took away everything without a trace. The country's population has decreased by 10 million people over 11 years. This is due to several reasons. In 1932-1933, almost 30 million people starved. Areas where wheat grew (Kuban, Ukraine) became the main victims. According to various estimates, the famine claimed five to seven million lives.

Grain production, traditionally an important Russian export, fell by 10%.

Collective farmers treated public property as “nobody’s property.” New workers worked carelessly, theft and mismanagement flourished.

To date, all victims of dispossession have been recognized as victims of political repression.

Local government bodies are tasked with considering and making decisions on issues of compensation for damage to rehabilitated citizens. To do this, you need to fill out an application. According to Russian legislation, it can be submitted not only by the rehabilitated citizens themselves, but also by members of their families, public organizations and trusted persons.

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S. I. Ozhegov. Dictionary of the Russian language. 1986

DISCOVER,-chu, -chish, -chenny; Sov., whom (what). Deprive the kulaks of the means of production and land in order to eliminate the kulaks as a class. || nesov. dispossess,-ay, -ay; noun dispossession,-I, Wed

DISPOSALIZATION, system of re-pressive measures implemented by the government of the USSR and the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on-ka-nu- not during the number of ku-la-kovs against the Christians.

Pro-vo-di-elk under the lo-zun-g li-k-vi-da-tion of ku-la-che-st-va as a class. The basis for askulakization could be any of the signs identified by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated May 21, 1929: the annual income of the farmer's household for one meal is over 300 rubles.

(but not less than 1500 rubles per family); for trade; rental of car tires, location; use of work; on-li-chie mill-ni-tsy, butter-boy-ni, kru-po-rush-ki, fruit or vegetable su-shil-ki, etc. When from day-st -vii of these signs were attached to the old fiscal lists stored in the village councils of Vienna , to the do-not-se-ni-yam os-ve-do-mi-te-lei of the OGPU and co-se-dey.

At the beginning of mass dispossession according to the same secret in 1930 by the sta-new-le-ni-em of the Lit-Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 30, by Sta-nov-le-ni-em of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on February 1 and by OGPU order No. 44/21 of February 2. During the dispossession of the kre-st-I-not-pre-de-la-lis in 3 ka-te-go-ri-yams: the kre-st-yan from the “evil counter-re -in-lu-tsi-on-no-go ak-ti-va” are-sto-you-va-li and on-right-la-li in prison-we and is-pra-vi-tel-no- labor la-ge-rya (ITL), their families pissed off, the most active pro-tiv-ni-kov number of le-k-ti-vi-za -tion ras-str-li-va-li; “inclined to help counter-re-vo-lu-tion” you-la-li-on a special-on-se-le-nie with seven regions of the region (regions, republics) or to distant regions of the country; os-tal-nyh races-se-la-li on special-tsi-al-but from-in-di-my teaching-st-kah behind the pre-de-la-mi collective farm territory -rii.

Con-fi-sko-van-nye of the races-ku-la-chen-nyh im-st-vo, livestock, fodder and seeds for-pa-sy re-da -you joined the kol-ho-zy, you spread out. Dispossession of kulakization was about-those-st-ny-mi you-stu-p-le-niya-mi kre-st-yan, “sa-mo-ras-ku-la-chi -va-ni-em” (for-cattle-fight, race-for-da-ha-imu-st-va) and run-st-vom to the cities and to industrial construction sites.

By 1933, mass dispossession was basically over, and the in-di-vi-du-al-noe continued. The number of racial-ku-la-chen-significant-but-pre-you-si-lo primary plan for the country's leadership, because . Local party-state bodies and poor activists are usually on the scale of dispossession.

In total, in 1929-40, about 1.1 million farms were subject to dispossession (4-5% of their total number, 5-6 million people; data from N . A. Iv-nits-ko), 4 million people were released (some of them after their release from prisons and correctional labor camps; data) ny V.N.

Zem-sko-va). During the same time, at least 600 thousand people died from hunger and disease.

More-shin-st-in-ras-ku-la-chen-nyh in de-st-vi-tel-but-sti were s-red-nya-ka-mi. Many of you-living specialists in the villages (work-do-in-the-villages) have become exactly the work force for the OS -war of natural resources in the northern and eastern regions of the USSR.

In 1948-50, the peasant villages of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, Moldavia, Baltic states were subject to dispossession. tee-ki, who became part of the USSR at the beginning and after the Great Patriotic War.

Lit.: Zem-skov V.

H. Ku-la-kaya exile in the 30s // So-tsio-lo-gi-che-studies. 1991. No. 10; Special migrants to the Western Ciberia / Comp. V. P. Da-nilov, S. A.

Dispossession - what is it? The policy of dispossession in the USSR: causes, process and consequences

Kra-sil-ni-kov. No-vo-sib., 1992-1996. Vol. 1-4; Iv-nitsky N.

A. Kol-lek-ti-vi-za-tion and ras-ku-la-chi-va-nie. M., 1994; aka. The fate of races in the USSR.

M., 2004; Tra-ge-dia of the so-vet-skoy de-rev-ni: Kol-lek-ti-vi-za-tion and ras-ku-la-chi-va-nie, 1927-1939: Do-ku-men- you and ma-te-ria-ly.

M., 1999-2006. T. 1-5; Kra-sil-ni-kov S.A. Serp and Molokh: Kre-st-yan-skaya exile in Western Siberia in the 1930s. 2nd ed. M., 2009.

Dispossession in the USSR

Dispossession, carried out during complete collectivization, was one of the most tragic facts in the village drama that played out at that time. In the system of Stalinist stereotypes, it was portrayed as a classic example of the liquidation of the exploiting class, carried out during the socialist transformation.

The very word “dekulakization” was born during the years of the revolution and civil war, that is, in conditions of a sharp aggravation of the class struggle, open armed clashes, when the warring parties reached the complete liquidation of the enemy’s economy and property and even his physical extermination.

The direct and violent expropriation of the means of production in kulak farms came to be called “dekulakization.”

During the NEP period, the road to the new society was not closed to the kulak, despite the class struggle, which continued in different forms and with varying severity in the countryside.

Kulak farms had the right to join agricultural cooperatives of all types, including collective farms. There was only one limitation: they could not act as founders of cooperatives and be elected to their boards.

The question of the fate of the kulaks changed radically at the end of the 20s, when emergency measures were taken against kulak farms.

In the summer of 1929, a decision was made to prohibit the admission of kulak families to collective farms, and this immediately drew a clear boundary between them and the rest of the peasantry and made their resistance extremely fierce.

And terror against the organizers and activists of collective farm construction, and arson of collective farm property, and the organization of anti-Soviet riots - that was all. But there was something else - an artificial aggravation of this struggle, caused by the hopelessness of the situation in which a significant mass of people found themselves.

The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On measures to liquidate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization” proposed confiscating the means of production, livestock, farm and residential buildings, enterprises for processing agricultural products and seed stocks from the kulaks.

Economic property and buildings were to be transferred to the indivisible funds of collective farms as contributions from the poor and farm laborers, with the exception of the part that went to repay the debts of kulak farms to the state and cooperation. The same decree divided those dispossessed into three categories:

Dispossession is... Concept, main goals and results. The tragedy of dispossession in the USSR

those who participated in anti-Soviet and anti-collective farm protests - “counter-revolutionary activists” - they themselves were subject to arrest, and their families were subject to eviction to remote areas of the country;

2. “big kulaks and former semi-landowners who actively opposed collectivization” - they, along with their families, were evicted to remote areas;

The “rest” of the kulaks were to be resettled in special settlements within the same administrative districts.

The artificiality of identifying these groups and the uncertainty of their characteristics created the ground for widespread arbitrariness on the ground.

It was established that the number of dispossessed people in the regions should not exceed 3-5 percent of all peasant farms, but for the winter of 1930 this limit was already much higher than the number of surviving kulak farms.

“By the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated February 1, 1930, the regional and regional executive committees of the Soviets and the governments of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were given “the right to apply ... all necessary measures to combat the kulaks, up to the complete confiscation of the property of the kulaks and their eviction from the boundaries of individual districts and territories (regions).”

The governments of the union republics were ordered to “give the necessary conditions” to local executive committees, which was done in the form of special instructions translating the resolution of January 30 into the language of normative acts.”

In practice, the number of those dispossessed began to include both middle peasants and poor people who did not want to join collective farms.

In some areas, the proportion of those being dispossessed by the kulaks reached 10-15 percent by the beginning of March. The direct threat of inclusion in the category of kulaks was deprivation of voting rights. Therefore, it is not surprising that the number of “disenfranchised” has increased to 15-20 percent. Openly speaking out against the lawlessness that was happening was quite sufficient grounds for enlistment in the “counter-revolutionary activists” and arrest.

There were cases of division of confiscated property, robberies and looting.

Condemnation of excesses and measures aimed at correcting the catastrophically deteriorating situation in March-April saved a significant part of dispossessed farms from ruin and eviction, especially those that had not yet been liquidated. The rehabilitation of the dispossessed (special commissions considered complaints and canceled previous decisions in large numbers) in many cases was accompanied by the restoration of their farms.

Even regulations were adopted regulating the procedure and conditions for the return of seized livestock and equipment.

And at the beginning of 1931, a new dispossession campaign was carried out, covering almost all regions of the country.

The peasants' ability to openly resist was broken.