Kulak (Russian: “fist” ( кулак ), i.e. “held firmly in the hand”) indicated, in a pejorative way, in the Russia tsarist, a peasant who had large farms on which it made work rented farm laborers.

In Russia of XIXe and beginning of the 20th century, the " term; koulak" the “social class” of the peasants indicated having a certain level of ease (cattle, sufficiently large ground to produce agricultural surpluses which would be then sold, etc) compared to the majority of peasants impoverished by the civil war and the famine. More still, the Communists compared to the very country kulak dissatisfied with their policy. Grigori Zinoviev, revolutionary Bolshevik member of the Politburo, had a personal definition “ Any peasant who does not die completely of hunger is a kulak ”.

During the Stalinist Collectivisation , envisaged in the first Five-year plan (1928-1932) a campaign of dekoulakisation (expropriation of the private property of the kulaks to the profit of the Kolkhoz S) brought to the deportations, imprisonments, even the death of 5 million peasants, particularly in Ukraine and Kouban (Holodomor).

The law of July 7th, 1932 envisages the capital punishment or Gulag for “any swindle with the damage of a kolkhoz”. In 1930 - 1932, 2 million peasants (that is to say 380.000 hearths) is off-set in villages of exiled: 100000 in the camps of Gulag. One estimates at 10% per annum the mortality of the " moved spéciaux" .

In 1935, the mode declares officially that the kulaks as a social class ceased existing.

“The operation kulak” defined by the operational order n°00447 of the July 30th 1937 made the greatest number of victims. It aimed at the socially harmful elements and pertaining to last the : the ex-kulaks flee seeking work (the police sources indicate: 600000 assigned ex-kulaks with residence). For this operation, quotas by areas and of the categories (the first category meaning the execution, the second, a ten years sorrow of camp) were establish by Stalin near the leaders of the Party. The quotas were largely exceeded by the local managers wanting to post their zeal. The required supplements were often ratified by Politburo. In front of the clogging of the prisons, the n°1 category was increased. Instead of the 4 months envisaged, the operation lasted 15 of them. The initial quotas were pulverized: : 387000 people were shot and not: 75950: 380000 deportees and not: 193500. According to the figures of NKVD, similar operations between July 1937 and November 1938 entered the arrest of: 335513 people, of which 75% were classified n°1 category.

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