Decius wrote:

Both peasants and Soviet officials were often uncertain as to what constituted a kulak, and the term was often used to label anyone who had more property than was considered "normal."

Burning the middle class. Literally - with fire.

"From a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks, we have gone over to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class."

and Stalin decided to kill them all or ship them to Siberia
i read an abridged version of Gulag Archipelago in the summer before university and the only book that compares to it for horror that i've read is Primo Levi's account of his time in Auschwitz "If This Is A Man"
Hitler decided to destroy a "race"
Stalin a "class"
Solzhenitsyn went so far as to call Hitler a pupil of Stalin's and went further - downplaying what a monster Hitler was in comparison to Stalin

in Wild Swans Jung Chang describes Mao's war on the "landlord class" and her shock at seeing the house where Mao himself grew up because - by the criteria she had seen used in this war on the "landlord class" then Mao himself would have been seen as in need of re-education because of his landlord upbringing
btw Wild Swans is a great book and a 20th century classic

RE: Kulak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia