After the Bolshevik
Revolution, the communists began to single out specific societal groups known
as the kulaks (кулакс). Kulaks,
although ill-defined, were considered enemies of the Bolshevik Revolution and
of the Soviet State. Generally speaking,
the kulaks were the landowing class
of the Russian countryside. The
Bolsheviks painted the picture that the kulaks
stood in the way of the socialist utopia they would create. Generally, collectivization took away land
and possessions from the kulaks.
The kulak (кулак) “class” consisted of
land-owners who were of foreign nationality or who became landed after the
Stolypin agrarian reforms of 1906. The
Stolypin reforms dissolved peasant communes, bought land from nobles, and
divided the land among peasants, creating “land-owning” peasant class – the muzhiks (мужчин). These muzhiks
received small parcels of land from the government, on a mortgage type system –
it was intended that they would have to pay for the land. Muzhiks
were those who were serfs before 1861 and became free peasants after the
emancipation. These kulaks generally supported the Whites in the Russian Civil
War. The kulaks understood that the Bolsheviks would probably take away
their land if they won the civil war. In
the 1920s the civil war (the war, creating the first wave of inefficient
collectivization) created famine in Russia and Lenin began to confiscate grain
from peasants. Anyone accused of being a
kulak had his grain taken, as well as
his seed-grain. Kulaks were doomed. After
the civil war, the Bolsheviks considered only the poorer classes of landless
peasants as allies. During the period
after the civial was, the Soviets official defined the kulak class as: 1) those who hired others for labor, 2) owners of
mills, creamerys, or other processing equipment with a mechanical motor, 3)
those who rented out agricultural machinery or facilities, 4) those who were
involved in trade, money-lending or commercial brokerage (i.e., anyone who sold
a surplus for money). Bolshevik
revolutionary thinker, Grigory Zinoviev, once said that a kulak was any peasant who had enough to eat.
Stalin continued
collectivization and used the kulaks
as scapegoats for ineffective practices. Offical
policy of 1930 approved extermination of kulaks. Kulaks
began to be transported to Siberia or Kazakhstan. Many were simply dropped off in the middle of
nowhere without supplies, food or shelter.
Others were forced to work their farms, but not allowed to keep any of
its production. 4 to 8 million kulaks died. Many kulaks
didn’t even know what crimes against the state they may have committed. Even ex-kulaks
weren’t safe. But the Soviet machine saw
them as obstacles to the collectivization process; the real heart and soul of
communism in the countryside.
Collectivation,
however, was such a failure that shortages of food continued to occur into the
1980s. The Russian Army was forced to
help farmers till the land at periods between the 1930s and the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration
ramped up military spending in the US that the USSR had to try to match. Money that should have gone to propping up
the Soviet economy had to be put towards the military. The US’ victory in the
Cold War was in part due to economic shortages in the USSR caused by
collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks. Economic shortages that could have been
averted had the kulak class been
allowed to keep their land and help produce food to feed the countryside. Kulaks
became the missing link in the economic chain that brought the USSR to its
ruin.
The Soviet Bolsheviks continued to press their authority
over the countryside, however, and Joseph Stalin’s NKVD (The People's
Commissariat of Internal Affairs; the Soviet administrative body used to fight
crime and maintain public order) roamed
the country rounding up kulaks and
setting the groundwork for collectivization.
Exorbitant taxes were levied. Kulaks by the hundreds and thousands
were seized and exiled deep into Soviet controlled Siberia. Many Germans and Poles were taken from
Volhynia too, and the Counties of Ostrog and Zaslaw suffered as well. Churches were closed and schools were
consolidated. Villagers were forced to
give up their traditional languages and customs. The numbers of Polish and German kulaks exiled from the villages in the
neighborhood of the Volhynian Mennonite villages in the 1930s was thus:
- Borisov:
12 families
- Choten
II: 150 families
- Kunev:10
families
- Dorohosch:
35 families
- Old
Husk: 30 families
- New
Husk: 20 families
- Kamenka:
48 families
- Kustarna:
21 families
- Lisna
(Leeleva): 30 families
- Martynie:
9 families
- Michailivka:
25 families
- Little
Radohosch: 30 families
- Siever:
16 families
- Stanislavka:
11 families
- Storonich:
27 families
A firsthand account of a Polish kulak family exiled from the nearby village of Belotin can be found
here:
Stalin’s collectivization policies fundamentally changed the
countryside. The villages in Ostrog and
Zaslaw counties, as well as the other Volhynian Counties and Russian provinces,
were formed into collectives.
Directly affecting the Karolswalde villages, the Russian Civil
War was followed by the Polish-Soviet War, after which the victorious Poles
took control of the northwestern half of Volhynia; cutting Ostrog County right
in half. Ostrog then fell under Polish
control and the Soviet-Polish border lay along the Vilia River, passing
directly through the village of Karolswalde, which was then named Prikordonnoe
(Russian: Прикордонное; Ukrainian: Prykordonne, Прикордо́нне), after the Ukrainian
adjective for ‘border’ (прикордонний).
During this time, the administrative center of the Polish half of Ostrog
County was moved to Zdolbunow. The
southern half of Ostrog County, under Soviet control, was consolidated into
Zaslaw County.
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