Reign of Stalin--Collectivization and the "Kulaks"
Peasants resist Collectivization
In late 1929, the list of regions to be collectivized was created. Three types of kulaks were identified: 1) "Counterrevolutionaries" to be sent to GPU camps or shot if resist in any way. 2) "Arch exploiters" to be deported to remote regions and 3) "Loyal" kulaks to be deported to barren land outside the Kolkhozy or collective farms.
This process was done by Communist party members sent to a village and given a few poor peasants to "dekulakize" the area of kulaks not already on GPU lists. Kulaks were then robbed of their goods their farms seized. The dekulakization brigades ran rampant and were terribly abusive. Virtually any activity in the last several years, from "excessively going to church," or even the sale of a pig, was enough to be classified as a "kulak." This process quickly devolved into simple looting.
The peasants began protesting in early 1930 and expanded quickly. There were 402 revolts in January and in March there were 6,500. In March, 1930 Stalin wrote an article called, "Dizzy with Success" that said local bosses had been "dizzy with success" at collectivizing and had abused their powers. Five million peasants left the Kolkhozy in the next four weeks. In 800 occasions, troop had to put down revolts and demonstrations as hundreds of Communist officials were killed or wounded by angry peasants. Unrest slowed after March. However, 2.5 million peasants took part in revolts that year involving 14,000 separate incidents. The peasants demanded that churches be reopened, the Kolkhozy be disbanded and an end to Bolshevik rule. Entire districts of Ukraine actually escaped from Soviet control.
Though the tide was rolled back it was at a terrific cost. In one part of Ukraine alone, 15,000 people were arrested. By the end of the year the GPU sentenced over 20,000 people to death through courts alone.
Expelling the Kulaks and "Abandonment in deportation"
Over 60,000 kulaks from the first category were "taken out of circulation" in a matter of weeks. By the end of 1931, more than 1.8 million kulaks were now in the labor camp system. The tragedy was that many were deported to the middle of nowhere, without food, tools or shelter, and simply abandoned on the bare ground. One camp was to have 1400 buildings for the prisoners, however only seven existed when several thousand prisoners showed up. In many places, cannibalism commenced within only a few day of arrival when it was clear no food would arrive and people were dying by the dozens every day. Hundreds of thousands died in this process. Moscow criticized the directors of these "colonies," not for cruelty, but for losing valuable labor. Women were sometimes kept as sex slaves by the administrators of the camps. One camp director told a prisoner, "If we wanted to, we could liquidate all of you. If we were to do so, the GPU would promptly send us another hundred thousand just like you."
Eventually, the idea of creating "colonies" in uninhabitable places was abandoned, and the deportees were sent to more conventional mining, lumbering or other operations where they worked alongside free people. Over time, the distinction of free vs. prisoner went away and remote regions simply had a larger population bolstered by the deportees.