Changes

The kulaks were prosperous Russian peasants who usually owned a large farm and several horses or cattle, and could hire labor and even lease land.  The kulaks were leading figures in the peasant villages prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The '''kulaks''' ([[Russian]]: кулак, [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]]: куркуль) were prosperous Russian peasants who usually owned a large farm and several horses or cattle, and could hire labor and even lease land.  The kulaks were leading figures in the peasant villages prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The term kulak was used interchangeably with as "enemy of the people."

[[Vladimir Lenin]] ordered execution of kulaks to terrorize village and rural populations into submission under the Soviet yole.  An order dated Novermeber 8, 1918 illustrates the terrorist tactics used by the [[Bolsheviks]] in the early days of the [[Russian Revolution]]:

[[Vladimir Lenin]] ordered execution of kulaks to terrorize village and rural populations into submission under the Soviet yole.  An order dated Novermeber 8, 1918 illustrates the terrorist tactics used by the [[Bolsheviks]] in the early days of the [[Russian Revolution]]:

</blockquote>

</blockquote>

When [[Joseph Stalin]] rose to power, kulaks resisted some of his measures.  Stalin responded with a brutality of horrific proportions.  Stalin either executed or shipped to labor camps nearly 2 million kulaks in the 1930s and there was mass starvation in the Ukraine of perhaps 20 million people.  The term kulak was used interchangeably with as "enemy of the people."

When [[Joseph Stalin]] rose to power, kulaks resisted some of his measures of [[collectivization]].  Stalin responded with a brutality of horrific proportions, known as "Dekulakization".  On 27 [[December]], 1929 he announced the ''"liquidation of the kulaks as class"''. The purpose of this was to combat suppossed "counter revolutionaries", but in reality it served to enable the advance of collectivization.  The kulaks and their families had all of their property confiscated by the state.  Stalin then either executed, put in labor camps, or deported them to [[Siberia]] or central Asia.  It is unclear how many died to to the Soviet policy of dekulakization, but most estimates place the death toll around 15 million.  Dekulakization was also a factor in the [[Holodomor|man-made famine]] ''(Holodomor)'' in Soviet controlled [[Ukraine]], which claimed around 7 million lives.  In 1934, the [[Communist Party]] justified their actions with the statement "''Not one of them'' [Kulaks] ''was guilty of anything; but they belonged to a class that was guilty of everything''".  

"KULAK" was the code name given by the [[KGB]] in [[Venona cables]] to U.S. [[Republican party]] nominee [[Thomas Dewey]] who ran against incumbant Democratic [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]] for President in 1944. <ref>Venona 1433 - 1435 New York to Moscow, 10 October 1944, [http://www.nsa.gov/venona/releases/10_Oct_1944_R3_m3_p1.gif p.1]

"KULAK" was the code name given by the [[KGB]] in [[Venona cables]] to U.S. [[Republican party]] nominee [[Thomas Dewey]] who ran against incumbant Democratic [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]] for President in 1944. <ref>Venona 1433 - 1435 New York to Moscow, 10 October 1944, [http://www.nsa.gov/venona/releases/10_Oct_1944_R3_m3_p1.gif p.1]