A Brief History
On December 27, 1929, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin signed an order to “eliminate the Kulaks as a class,” resulting in a sort of genocide. The Kulaks were not an ethnic group but rather a social class that in today’s United States would be the equivalent of the upper working class or the lower middle class. In the Soviet Union, Kulaks were the upper class of peasants who had accumulated more property, wealth and power than the lower-class peasants.
Digging Deeper
Stalin sought to separate the Kulaks into 3 main groups, the first of which were those to be executed. The second group were those to be exiled to Siberia or to other remote locations to work in labor camps, and the third group were those to merely be stripped of their belongings and forced to work in local labor camps. In all cases, the property of the Kulaks was to be seized by the State. Local secret police and communist party officials would decide which Kulaks would be placed in which category. As many Kulaks were rich farmers, their elimination contributed to the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 which resulted in the deaths of 6 million peasants!
The upper working class and a lower middle class in America could be considered the equivalents of the Kulaks. Both classes are rapidly disappearing today! Workers with union jobs and good pay, health care, paid vacation and holidays and retirement plans could be considered the modern American version of Kulaks as could lower rung white collar workers such as nurses, teachers, policemen, firefighters and those lower-level management types.
Today the United States is witnessing the end of its “Kulak class” or what is generally referred to as the “middle class.” The better working-class jobs are disappearing faster than Blockbuster video stores and telephone booths and are being replaced with part-time jobs with low pay and no retirement plans, health care or other benefits. Vast segments of the American work force are being bumped out of full-time jobs and replaced with “part timers” who work 30 to 38 hours per week and at a lower rate of pay on top of that. Even police, fire, and city service departments are not immune, and colleges are eliminating full-time professorships to have the teaching instead done by part-time professors known as adjuncts. This trend is sweeping the nation, causing the poorer working class to expand and leaving a small but richer upper class made up of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, executives, etc.
Personally, the thought of a “wannabe” part-time policeman deciding the course of the rest of my life instead of a well-trained professional scares the heck out of me. We might soon find out that if you treat people as second-class workers long enough, they might start acting as second-class citizens in other ways as well, which might eventually lead to the big decline of American supremacy. Question for students (and subscribers): Oh, you did notice that the Soviet Union fell apart, right? Feel free to share your thoughts on this subject in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Kleiner, Ellen, Dennis Marker, et al. Fifteen Steps to Corporate Feudalism: How the Rich Convinced America’s Middle Class Eliminate Themselves. One Standard Press, 2012.
