English

Alternative forms

• koulak
• Kulak

Noun

kulak ‎(plural kulaks or kulaki)

1. (historical) A prosperous peasant in the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, who owned land and could hire workers.
   • 2002, Christopher Hitchens, "Martin Amis: Lightness at Midnight", The Atlantic, Sep 2002:

     The “internal organs,” as the CHEKA and the GPU and the KGB used to style themselves, were asked to police the mind for heresy as much as to torture kulaks to relinquish the food they withheld from the cities.

   • 2105 February 6, Nick Gillespie, “To the Barricades, Brooklyn Yuppies!”, in The Dailey Beast, retrieved 20150206:

     We are the “upper middle class”, the new kulaks whose antisocial self-interest and lack of submission to the aims of the revolutionary vanguard must be extinguished.

Usage notes

During Soviet state collectivization of farming in the 1920s and 1930s the label kulak, implying “tight-fisted”, was applied pejoratively to attack land-owning peasants in general.

Synonyms

• kurkul

Related terms

• kulakism
• kulakize, kulakise
• kulakisation, kulakization
• dekulakise, de-kulakise, dekulakize, de-kulakize
• dekulakisation, de-kulakisation, dekulakization, de-kulakization
• self-dekulakisation, self-dekulakization
• subkulak

Translations

Quotations

• For usage examples of this term, see Citations:kulak.

References

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: Tenth Edition 1997

Portuguese

Noun

kulak m (plural kulaks)

1. (historical) kulak (prosperous peasant in Russia)

Turkish

Etymology

From Old Turkic kulkak (“ear”), from Proto-Turkic *Kul-kak ‎(“ear”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ku.ˈɫɑk/
• Hyphenation: ku‧lak

Noun

kulak ‎(definite accusative kulağı, plural kulaklar)

1. ear

Declension