Class enemies in the context of "Coriolanus"

Dekulakization (Russian: раскулачивание, romanized: raskulachivaniye; Ukrainian: розкуркулення, romanized: rozkurkulennya) was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of supposed kulaks and their families. Redistribution of farmland started in 1917 and lasted until 1933, but was most active in the 1929–1932 period of the first five-year plan. To facilitate the expropriations of farmland, the Soviet government announced the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" on 27 December 1929, portraying kulaks as class enemies of the Soviet Union.

More than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931. The campaign had the stated purpose of fighting counter-revolution and of building socialism in the countryside. This policy, carried out simultaneously with collectivization in the Soviet Union, effectively brought all agriculture and all the labourers in Soviet Russia under state control.

Kulak (/ˈkuːlæk/ KOO-lak; Russian: кула́к, romanized: kulák, IPA: [kʊˈɫak] ; plural: кулаки́, kulakí, 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul (Ukrainian: куркуль) or golchomag (Azerbaijani: qolçomaq, plural: qolçomaqlar), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over 3 ha (8 acres) of land towards the end of the Russian Empire. In the early Soviet Union, particularly in Soviet Russia and Azerbaijan, kulak referred to property ownership among peasants who were considered hesitant allies of the Bolshevik Revolution. In Ukraine during 1930–1931, there also existed a term of podkulachnik (almost wealthy peasant); these were considered "sub-kulaks".

Kulaks referred to former peasants in the Russian Empire who became landowners and credit-loaners after the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and during the Stolypin reform of 1906 to 1914, which aimed to reduce radicalism amongst the peasantry and produce profit-minded, politically conservative farmers. During the Russian Revolution, kulak was used to chastise peasants who withheld grain from the Bolsheviks. According to Marxist–Leninist political theories of the early 20th century, the kulaks were considered class enemies of the poorer peasants. Vladimir Lenin described them as "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten themselves during famines", declaring revolution against them.