All events · The World Wars
Soviet Dekulakization and the Special Settlements
1930–1933 · Europe & Northern Eurasia
Displacement
Displaced
2 million
Roughly 1.8 million people were deported in 1930-31 alone: about 560,000 in the first wave of February-May 1930 (some 115,000 families) and 1,244,000 in the wave of May-September 1931 (about 265,000 families), with further waves through 1933 bringing the total to roughly 2.1 million. Only 1,317,000 were still registered as 'specially displaced' on 1 January 1932, the shortfall of about half a million reflecting deaths and escapes. A further 284,000 people were arrested as 'first category' kulaks between February and September 1930. The figures come from OGPU and NKVD registration and transport records opened after 1989 and compiled by V. N. Zemskov, V. P. Danilov and the Memorial society; they are administrative counts rather than estimates, though they undercount those who fled before deportation.
Share of the population affected
1.7%
of the rural population of the Soviet Union at the start of collectivisation, 1930
Killed
300,000–600,000
deaths in transit or in camps
Open on the interactive map →
What happened
Following the Politburo decision of 30 January 1930 'on measures for the liquidation of kulak households', the OGPU expropriated, arrested or deported peasant families classified as kulaks in order to break resistance to collectivization. Households in the 'first category' were shot or sent to camps, those in the 'second' were deported with their families to remote 'special settlements' under commandant supervision, and those in the 'third' were resettled on poor land within their own districts. Roughly two million people were moved between 1930 and 1933, most of them to the Urals, western Siberia, the Northern Krai and Kazakhstan, where they were set to logging, mining and land clearance with little shelter or food. Mortality in the settlements was severe, reaching about 14 per cent of the registered population in 1933 alone. The special settlement regime, with its commandant offices and travel bans, became the administrative model later applied to whole deported nationalities.
Parties
The Soviet Politburo and the OGPU expropriated and deported peasant families labelled kulaks from the grain-growing regions to closed 'special settlements' in the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan and the far north
Disputed
Historians differ over the total deported and over how many died, because OGPU registers count only those who reached the settlements and were still registered there, and because deaths from flight, transit and the 1932-33 famine overlap.
The denominator
The 1926 Soviet census counted 147 million people, about 82 per cent of them rural, giving roughly 120 million peasants by 1930. OGPU records, published after 1991, show about 1.8-2.1 million people deported to special settlements in 1930-31 and some 2.4 million by 1933, of whom several hundred thousand died in transit or in the settlements.
Those deported were drawn from a designated category of a few per cent of peasant households, so a share of the whole rural population understates how far the campaign reached inside the group it targeted.
Where the baseline comes from
On the death toll
Zemskov's registers record about 151,000 deaths among special settlers in 1933 alone, a rate of some 14 per cent, and roughly 390,000 deaths in the settlements between 1932 and 1940; Werth notes that about 500,000 of those deported in 1930-31 were lost to death or flight by January 1932. The lower bound counts registered deaths in the settlements, the higher bound adds deaths in transit, in the first unregistered months and among those who fled.
Documented forms of violence
Forced LabourArbitrary DetentionDestruction of PropertySummary Execution
Confiscation of houses, livestock and tools, the shooting of 'first category' kulaks, and the compulsory labour regime in the settlements are documented in OGPU and NKVD operational orders and settlement reports published after 1989 by Memorial and in the Danilov-Viola document series.
Movements mapped
- Ukrainian grain districts -> Narym special settlements, western Siberia300,000
- North Caucasus -> Urals special settlements250,000
- Volga region -> Northern Krai and Komi settlements200,000
Countries touched, on present-day borders
Russia, Ukraine
Related entries
- Overlaps with: The Gulag: The Soviet Forced-Labour Camp System
Deaths among deported kulak families in the special settlements, which the camp administration ran from 1931, may be counted in both the dekulakization entry and the Gulag entry's upper death estimate.
Sources