The Village and the Class War: Anti-Kulak Campaign in Estonia 1944-49

Appendix I

appendix i Kulak Families in the 1939 agrarian Census There are no statistics from the period of the war and immediately after the war, which means we can only get numerical information about kulak families from the 1939 agrarian census. This is however relevant, since kulak declarations normally referred to the situation of the families before the soviet land reform. in the estonian countryside, the most important social division was between the vanatalud, the old farms that were bought in 1860–1914 as freeholds, and the land reform farms of 1919–1925, which were smaller and less prosperous. The preconditions of agriculture were good in Viljandimaa, and farmers could make money selling flax to itinerant buyers in the late 19th century. The ratio of old farms was high on the site of this local study. The old farmers were considered the backbone of the conservative agrarian party, while the farmers of the “bourgeois” land reform had their own political party with a more liberal orientation. old Viljandimaa farmers would thus be the local target of the soviet class struggle, even if differences between the groups were quite small on an international scale. There were no manors and few landless peasants, they belonged to the same social group of family farmers. What was the position of kulak families in this modest social variation? That is what the agrarian census can show. The official kulak register created in the estonian soviet republic according to the decree of 30 august 1947 is the point of departure. Kulak declarations were made until the death of stalin in 1953, most 262 THE VILLAGE AND THE CLASS WAR intensively from autumn 1947 up to March 1949, when many of the kulak families were deported. There are 213 kulak families on the lists from the three townships under investigation, 55 in the northern township, 100 in the eastern and 58 in the southern township. i looked up these families in the primary material for the 1939 agricultural Census. it was the third census in estonia, the previous ones had been conducted in 1925 and 1929.The enquetes covered four pages per farm household, and local officials helped households to answer it in June, 1939. The material gives a picture of the social and economic situation of the household, and can be compared to other households in the same township, county or estonia as a whole. using the data Ten Years after 157 farm families of the 213 kulak families in 1949, or 74 per cent could be identified in the 1939 census. Table i:1 shows the share of identification in each township. Table I:1. Kulak households identified or missing in 1939 Township kulak total found -39 missing % missing southern 58 51 7 12 northern 55 36 19 35 eastern 100 70 30 30 Total 213 157 56 26 Sources: Kulak files in Viljandimaa, VilMA f 599, n1, enquetes of the 1939 agrarian census in Viljandimaa. The ten years between the census enquetes and the kulak files of 1947–49 were eventful. There could be many reasons why households of 1939 could not be found in 1949. arrests, deportations and shootings, flight and war casualties were among them. if the farm had been taken over by biological children, the household could be traced, provided the children had the same family name. But if the farm was managed by a son-in-law, it was not possible to identify him as family. in the reigning chaos, entirely unknown people could take hold of 263 Appendix I farms. it was not uncommon, moreover, that people changed their surname to escape guilt by association. The unidentified farms were different from the identified in that the families were more mobile. The “mobility” in these cases often had political reasons, and often were families close to the independent estonian regime, the german occupation power or the soviet power of the first year. This is practically the only thing that can be said with some certainty about the missing farms, and so the character of the bias is largely unknown. The census was concerned with those who actually farmed the place—besides, farming families could own land that they farmed out, but that was only noted as part of their income. The size of Kulak Farms The size of kulak farms is compared to farm sizes generally in Viljandimaa county. identified kulak farms in the census have in this case...