Resurrecting Kulaks in Russia

A return to soviet ideology - a potted history and analysis of the decay in society following the illegal invasion of Ukraine

The State Duma called to revive the kulaks - November 2025

In Russia, the time has come to revive the kulaks, says State Duma deputy Sergey Lisovsky. According to him, this is facilitated by the large territory of the country and the complex transport system.

“There were kulaks in Tsarist Russia, then — at the beginning of Soviet power — so-called kulaks. These were large families with many workers who were motivated, worked for the interests of their family, and sold products. Now the time has come again,” he explained.

Let’s analyse the notion of the kulaks in late Tsarist Russia and the purported call by the State Duma of Russia to resurrect them in 2025, a symptom of broader societal and economic decline associated with the invasion of Ukraine.

A potted history of Kulaks in Russia

“Kulaks” in Tsarist Russia: class, power and modern echoes

The term kulak (Russian кулак, literally “fist”) originally referred to relatively prosperous peasants in the Russian Empire — farmers who owned somewhat larger holdings, could hire labour or lease land, and in many villages occupied a social-administrative role distinct from the majority of smallholders. During the late Tsarist era and into the early Soviet period, the term became ideologically charged and was applied pejoratively to signify “wealthier” peasants or those deemed exploitive of their poorer neighbours.

In the broader sweep of Russian agrarian history, the rise of such “prosperous peasants” followed, in part, the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and subsequent agrarian reforms (notably the Pyotr Stolypin reforms beginning in 1906) which aimed to create a class of independent, market-oriented farmers.

In that context, the kulaks were not simply exploiters but part of a dynamic agrarian social structure: they were peasants who succeeded in accumulation or leasing, thus occupying a transitional role between subsistence peasant and proto-capitalist farmer.

However, the Soviet interpretation of the kulak transformed them into a class enemy.

Reviving Evil: Lenin, Stalin and Putin

Under the murderous rule of both Vladimir Lenin and particularly under Joseph Stalin — the kulaks were targeted during collectivisation (shortly after 1929) with the infamous policy of “dekulakisation” that sought to eliminate this social category. Class-enemy discourse turned wealth, hire of labour and land-leasing into grounds for violent repression: arrests, deportations, executions, land-confiscations.

The historical significance of the kulak category is therefore threefold.

1. First, it reflects the differentiated nature of rural Russian society — not a monolithic peasantry but stratified.

1. Second, it illustrates how state power exploited or created class labels in service of ideological and economic transformation (in the Soviet case, collectivisation).

1. Third, it serves as a cautionary tale of how rural economic actors may be vilified or suppressed when the state opts for radical transformation rather than incremental reform.

The illegal invasion of Ukraine has driven the decay in Russian society

Turning to the present, the claim that the Russian State Duma has called for the revival of the kulak class in 2025, assuming that the claim is meant metaphorically — i.e., that the Russian leadership is encouraging or tolerating a return of agrarian oligarchic/privileged classes in rural Russia as a symptom of declining social norms and economic governance — there is merit to analysing the symbolic resonance of the kulak story in the post-2022 context of the invasion of Ukraine.

In the aftermath of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy has been under severe strain: sanctions, declining investment, labour dislocation, logistical disruptions and declining living standards.

As economic opportunity narrows, and as the state seeks ways to maintain legitimacy and manage discontent, the resurgence of privileged rural actors (akin to “new kulaks”) might emerge — large land-owners or agribusinesses favoured by the state, urban elites relocating wealth into farmland, or the agricultural sector increasingly serving state export interests rather than peasant subsistence.

In this sense, the invocation of “kulaks” is a potent symbol: it suggests a reversal of egalitarian or shared-responsibility norms in favour of privilege, accumulation and state-aligned rent-seeking.

Critically, the re-emergence of a “kulak”-style class in Russia would amplify both economic and social tensions.

Economically, such a class can undermine equitable rural development by concentrating land, labour and resources in fewer hands, reducing incentives for broader peasant productivity or innovation.

Socially, it can revive historical resentments and distort the social contract in rural communities: the “prosperous peasant” becomes a potential exploiter in the eyes of his neighbours, or a client of the state rather than a member of a self-governing community. The historical record shows that when the Soviet state turned against the kulaks it inflicted grave disruption: agricultural productivity fell, and famine and repression followed.

In the current Russian context, if indeed the state is tacitly endorsing or relying on a rural elite class to deliver on agricultural export or import-substitution objectives (as part of war-economy mobilisation), then we might view this as a symptom of institutional weakness: the retreat of broad-based peasant support, the re-emergence of rent-seeking rather than entrepreneurial farming, and the erosion of social norms around communal rural welfare. The decline in independent peasant agriculture may reflect the wider decline in Russia’s economic dynamism after 2022.

Furthermore, the metaphorical “resurrection” of kulaks signals a moral-political decline: rural privilege once again may be legitimised via state-alignment rather than through market fairness or public accountability.

The kabuki of peasant class warfare that characterised earlier Russian history may be reprising itself — not in the ideological terms of the 1920s, but in the logic of war-time privilege, state favour, and domestic adjustment to sanctions and economic isolation.

Conclusions:

The kulaks in Tsarist and early Soviet Russia were a socially differentiated class of peasant-landowners and labour-hiring farmers who later became targets of revolutionary class policies.

Their history offers a lens to view how rural society, state power and class conflict intersect.

In the contemporary Russian context, the suggestion that the Duma is calling for their “resurrection” (even symbolically) may signal a troubling turn: the re-emergence of rural wealth concentration, state-favoured agrarian elites, and the erosion of more participatory rural economic norms — all of which reflect and contribute to the broader decline of economic and social governance in Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

By linking the historical category of the kulaks to post-2022 Russian agrarian and social dynamics, we gain insight into how class, power and state-peasant relations may be evolving in a state under economic stress and wartime conditions.

It remains essential for researchers to verify whether any formal policy change exists, but even the metaphorical invocation is suggestive of deeper structural decay in the Russian economy and society.

References and sources:

“Kulak.” Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/kulak

“Kulaks.” Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/kulaks

“Kulak – Russia’s Periphery.” Russia’s Periphery, William & Mary. https://russiasperiphery.pages.wm.edu/general-2/kulak/

“The Liquidation of the Kulaks, 1930-1932.” Map of Memory. https://en.mapofmemory.org/liquidation-kulaks-1930-1932

“Kulak Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kulak

“The State Duma reminded about the laws coming into force in 2025.” Izvestia. https://en.iz.ru/en/1816245/2024-12-29/state-duma-reminded-about-laws-coming-force-2025

“Useful Terms – Kulak.” Heathen History – Russia. https://heathenhistory.co.uk/russia/materials-to-support-your-studies/useful-terms/

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