On 27 December 1929 Stalin officially announced the forthcoming 'liquidation of the Kulaks as a Class'. Dekulakization consisted of the expropriation of the richer peasants' households that were officially labeled 'kulak' and the expulsion of their members from the village.
The decree on Dekulikization established three categories of kulaks. The first: 'counterrevolutionary kulak activists' were subject to incarceration or execution; their families were exiled. The second, 'kulak activists' were to be exiled to distant parts of the Soviet Union. The third, the majority, were to be resettled outside, but nearby, collective farms. Two million peasants of the first two categories were deported in 1930-1931.
Read more? Lynne Viola, 'Taiga Conditions: Kulak Special Settlers, Commandants, and Soviet Industry' in: A Dream Deferred. New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History (Bern 2008)