kulaks

Updated: May 8, 2025

The former fair had been held for the sale of horses, cattle, cheese, and other peasant produce, and the buyers had been merely cattle-jobbers and kulaks; but this time the function was to be one for the sale of manorial produce which had been bought up by wholesale dealers at Nizhni Novgorod, and then transferred hither.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol - Dead Souls

There were now administrators who did the same thing unofficially. Prompted by selfish motives, the local Kulaks or "bosses," from among the Russian tradesmen, acting in conjunction with the rural elders, would convene peasant assemblies which were treated to liberal doses of alcohol.

Simon Dubnow - History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II: From the death of Alexander I. until the death of Alexander: III. (1825-1894)

Unfortunately some Soviets, where the minority of the Kulaks had retained the unfair domination given it by its economic strength, had distributed the tax-paying equally over the whole population, thus very naturally raising the resentment of the poor who found themselves taxed to the same amount as those who could afford to pay.

Arthur Ransome - Russia in 1919