Podkulachnik

Podkulachnik (Russian: Подкулачник, lit. 'person under the kulaks'; also translated as "sub-kulak" or "kulak henchman") was a political label used in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s to brand people considered traitors to the Soviet Government.

History

Podkulachnik is considered by many to be a Stalinist neologism from the late 1920s.[1] After the Russian Revolution, the Kulaks - relatively affluent and well-endowed peasants - were persecuted by the Soviet Government as class enemies of the poor, and hence enemies of the Revolution itself.

In other countries

In Hungary under Mátyás Rákosi, a Podkulachnik was called Kulákbérenc, meaning Kulak Hessian.

See also

References
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Harper & Row, First Edition, 1973. ISBN 0-06-013914-5

Notes
  1. "Kotsonis informs us that the term podkulachnik or 'kulak stooge' – thought by many to be a Stalinist neologism from the late 1920s – was already used before the war." Lars T. Lih. Experts and Peasants. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2.4 (2001) 803-822. Referenced to Yanni Kotsonis, Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia, 1861–1914. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. x + 245 pp. ISBN 0-312-22099-5.
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