Krasilnikov Sergey A.,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The First Wave of Peasant Exile in Siberia: Calculations and Miscalculations (1930, January – April)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-4-7
The year 1930, marked the beginning of unprecedented forced migrations of the peasant population within an officially non-war country, is now recognized by most professional historians as the part of the strategy of the forced transfer of governing institutions and the Soviet population to a mobilization regime of functioning, which was necessary for radical solution of the ‘agrarian and peasant question’ for state accelerated modernization. The segregation of the peasantry into ‘useful’ (collective farmers) and ‘alien’ (‘kulak’) groups that required punitive withdrawal is presented in expert assessments as inevitable losses, ‘concomitant’ to this ‘socialist’ type of modernization. Meanwhile, such a position (‘no other was given’) leaves outside the scope of problems a number of key issues such as the causes, factors and motives of behavioral reactions of managerial bodies that solved extreme problems by extreme means, thereby creating the extreme consequences of decisions made. This publication is devoted to consideration of a number of unanticipated consequences of deliberate political decisions by the central and regional authorities regarding the ‘kulak issue’ in Siberia in 1930. It is proved that previously operating in the 1920s ordinary economic (voluntary and state-encouraged resettlement) and geopolitical (strengthening borders and resettlement of “unreliable populations”) causes of migration underwent radical destructive deformations under the influence of doctrinal, social and repressive factors in the early 1930 (the policy of “eliminating the kulaks as a class” ). The deportation campaign caused unpredictable consequences for the authorities (“dekulakization”, accompanied by the destruction and plunder of a significant part of economic potential of the village, generated a response of protest resistance from the peasantry; repression revealed inconsistency and inter-agency conflicts during the expulsion and resettlement of special settlers, which led to mass mortality rate and escapes).
Publishing: 29/08/2020
How to cite: Krasilnikov S.A. The First Wave of Peasant Exile in Siberia: Calculations and Miscalculations (1930, January – April) // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 4 (12), pp. 87–110. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-4-07.pdf
Links: Issue 4 2020
Keywords: social tension; radicalization; “The elimination of the kulaks as a class” (dekulakization); plans; unanticipated consequences