Well, kulaks WERE peasants -- a _very_ loosely defined class of "rich peasant." I think there was a lot of "we don't those guys on the other side of the village, they've always been snooty and they've got a cow, our crops are doing poorly and it's probably because the snooty people are poisoning the land with poison some Trotskite-Bukharinite gave them to undermine Comrade Stalin." Kind of reminds me of the European witch craze actually.
Michael Pollack asked me offlist to translate some more of Kara-Murza's book. I think I will. He's got some interesting material, though he's too much of a fan of the Brezhnev era for my taste.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Didn't the peasants really want to kill the kulaks?
>
> Doug
>
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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