Ukrainian Wealthy Peasantry in the Conditions of «War Communism»: Class Enemy of Bolshevism

Progressive development of society is impossible without understanding and awareness of the experience of the past. In the complex historical process, there are constantly operating factors that not only connect the past with the present, but also largely determine the present through history. It is worth noting that with the emergence of modern ideas about science as a way of knowing and explaining the world around us and man in it, the history of agriculture, the peasant as a producer of agricultural products, occupies a decisive place in the process of studying the experience of rational use of Ukrainian black soil, ensuring the food security of the state by the Ukrainian peasantry. The Ukrainian peasantry is the foundation of the nation, the bearer of the national code, identity, and spirituality. Over the centuries, the peasantry has accumulated rich experience in organizing rural life, everyday life, traditions, and agricultural activities on their own household and family land allotments. Of particular interest to researchers is the history of agriculture during the Russian Revolution, initiated by the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October 1917. It is known that the main point of the communist doctrine developed by V. Lenin was the destruction of commodity-market relations and the elimination of private ownership of the means of production. This opened the way to extra-economic coercion over the vast mass of the rural population. The agrarian policy of the Bolsheviks, directed against the capitalist mode of production, stemmed from Lenin’s theory of the advantages of collective ownership over private peasant land ownership. Having destroyed the landlord land ownership, the Bolsheviks set the goal of eliminating independent producers in the person of wealthy farmers. V. Lenin, in relation to the rural productive owners, who produced a significant share of grain and agricultural products, used brutal names: «rural bourgeoisie», «rural rich», «exploiters», «bloodsuckers», «vampires», «leeches», «spiders», «enemies of the Soviet government», etc. In this way, the Ukrainian wealthy peasant was transformed into a negative image of a kulak who profited from the exploitation of hired labor. But it is known that this stratum of the Ukrainian village, through the hard work of their families, sometimes hiring one or two workers, achieved certain successes in their difficult economic activities, acquired the status of a wealthy rural owner, from whom the Bolsheviks made an enemy of the Soviet government.