Free Stalin's Genocides by Norman M. Naimark Page B

that something was seriously wrong. Kulaks—including their families—were dying by the tens of thousands from hunger, typhus, and a variety of diseases induced by inhuman living standards and widespread famine. With their parents dead or dying, kulak orphans scavenged and begged throughout the Gulag system, looking for any way to stay alive. Cannibalism was rife and was widely reported by camp administrators and OGPU officials throughout the settlements and surrounding villages.
    Stalin surely knew and understood that these conditions were ubiquitous and that the kulak population of the special settlements was being decimated month after month by the horrid conditions in which they lived. He was also responsible in many instances for reducing state funding for resettlement, which in turn made these conditions even more difficult for the kulaks to survive.17 His indifference to this suffering and dying was certainly murderous, if not genocidal. Indeed, a good argument can be made that Stalin intended to wipe out the kulaks physically as a group of people—not just metaphorically as a class—and that therefore the result can be considered genocide.
    The attack on the kulaks, not unlike the Turkish assault on the Armenians or the Nazi elimination of the Jews, came in waves. This first attack in 1929–30 was the most seri-64
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    ous. After Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success,” reported in Pravda , March 2, 1930, which with typical devious-ness transferred blame for the excesses of collectivization from himself to overzealous local officials, the campaign was relaxed. But in the fall of 1930 and the beginning of 1931, the machinery for forcing peasants into the collective farms was again ramped up and few so-called kulaks were to remain in the countryside. These measures were complemented by draconian legislation against stealing state or collective property (August 1932), which made the theft of a small amount of grain or animal products punishable by death or exile. Especially during the onset of the famine years, this decree was discharged with particular frequency and harshness.
    In typically cyclical fashion, the waves of attacks on the kulaks between 1929 and 1932 were followed by the relaxation of surveillance of the special settlements and the release of some kulaks from their terms of exile in 1932–
    33. Instead of returning to the countryside, hundreds of thousands of kulaks found their way out of the Gulag into major cities and industrial centers, where the severe shortage of industrial labor gave factory officials an incentive to ignore their background as “enemies of the people.” In the deceptively calm political atmosphere of the mid-1930s, kulaks were able to establish themselves in jobs and positions around the country. Some were able to return again to their home villages and engage in agriculture. A few even made claims for the return of their property.
    But this respite was only the lull before the storm. In connection with the election campaign to the Supreme dekulakization 65
    Soviet in December 1937, which was intended to ratify the new Soviet constitution of 1936, Stalin and his lieutenants were determined to eliminate any possible dis-sonance in the country during the highly publicized and well-attended speeches and electoral events. The constitution trumpeted the victory of socialism, the end of the class struggle, and the creation of the new Soviet man and woman. In this context, there was no room for the outli-ers of Soviet society—the so-called lishentsy (disenfranchised) and byvshie (former people). The police targeted especially kulaks and dekulakized peasants, but also vagrants of all sorts, prostitutes, ex-noblemen, ex-landowners, former tsarist officials, and the like. Once considered a “class” to be eliminated, the remaining ex-kulaks were lumped together with the “socially harmful elements,”
    who were to be cut off from society and quarantined as a lethal