in the campaign “Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936)”
A "kulak" was what the colonizers called a peasant they deemed "well-off". In Chechnya officials entered a person into the "kulaks" without any trial, and the colonizer then stripped him of his rights. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "To limit the political influence of the kulaks such a measure was applied as deprivation (temporary or permanent) of voting rights. In 1926, 1.3% of the voters were thus barred from taking part in the elections, and in 1927 - already 4.5%"[1]. The report on the inspection of the party organization of the Chechen Autonomous Oblast, sent on 7-9 March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, states: "The lishentsy [people stripped of the vote] in the re-election campaign of 1928/29 numbered 11,279 people, on average 6.8% across the oblast; in some settlements of the okrugs the percentage reached 30, and in the Galanchozh okrug up to 40%"[2]. In January 1930 the leadership of the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)"), preparing a resolution on the expulsion of peasant families, wrote into the draft: "subject to expulsion are exclusively those deprived of voting rights, and also kulaks who by chance have not been deprived of voting rights"[3]. Officials drew up the lists of "kulaks" at random, and the party's own oversight admitted it. Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, reported in February 1930: in Avtury and Shali, "of the 18 households listed for individual taxation [a punitive higher tax], 4 households turned out to be not kulak at all: one poor-peasant and three middle-peasant"; in Kurchaloy 12 poor-peasant and 7 middle-peasant households were entered into the "kulak list", while 89 households that the colonizer himself counted as well-off in his own tax rolls did not make it into the "kulak list"[4]. Larin also named the purpose of the "grain assignments" - the quotas of grain the colonizer ordered the auls to hand over: "The aim was benign: to introduce stratification into the mountain auls by these assignments, but what came of it was exactly the opposite"[4]. Peasants entered as "kulaks" and middle peasants were put on trial by the colonizer for failure to deliver grain and pay taxes - and even the imperial courts found no guilt in those cases: by Larin's count, 40% ended in what amounted to acquittal. Up to November 1929 "265 cases against kulaks were heard, and 132 against middle peasants"; of the 265 cases against "kulaks", "30 were acquitted and 26 sentenced conditionally", another 58 people received forced labor, and such verdicts Larin also counted among the acquittals: "40% were acquitted"[4]. The empire vetted even its own village soviets - the organs it had planted in the auls in place of Chechen self-government - and expelled from them Chechens with the "wrong" past. Larin reported: "In 5 mountain okrugs, 215 persons of clearly alien element have been found in the composition of the village soviets. There are kulaks, and traders, and former elders, and former policemen, and former bandits, and clergy"; the resolution of the oblast party conference, which had proclaimed "the complete cleansing of the composition of the village soviets from alien and kulak elements", he corrected: "To put it mildly, that was said incautiously"[4]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "If in 1928 62 kulaks were repressed across the whole of Chechnya, a year later the number of the repressed reached 356 people... As a result of these repressions, by the end of 1931 the number of kulak households in Chechnya had shrunk threefold compared to 1929"[1]. Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, who fought against the insurgent Chechens, in his report to the krai committee of the party named among the causes of the uprising "the incorrect disenfranchisement of middle peasants, and in a number of cases of poor peasants as well", which in the Itum-Kali okrug had become mass practice[2].