A Russian term meaning fist, popularly used to refer to rich peasants who owned land and hired poor peasants to work it. Lenin described the kulaks as "exploiters and profiteers who used their surplus grain to enrich themselves at the expense of the starving non-agricultural parts of Russia."
Kulaks (Russian: кулаÌк, kulak, "fist", literally meaning tight-fisted; , kurkul) is a pejorative term extensively used in Soviet political language, originally referring to relatively wealthy peasants in the Russian Empire who owned larger farms and used hired labour, as a result of the Stolypin reform introduced since 1906. Among Peter Stolypin's intentions was the creation of a group of prosperous farmers who would support the Tsar's government. In 1912, 16% (11% in 1903) of Russian farmers had over 8 acres (32,000 m²) per male family member (a threshold used to distinguish middle-class and prosperous farmers in statistics).