What is a curcule? This is an offensive word that endow a person who is excessively economical. However, a hundred years ago, this term had a completely different meaning. The peasants were called peasants, but not all, but those who, according to the Bolsheviks, lived too well.
In dictionary
According to Ushakov, “kurkul” is “a money-grubber, a grabber, a miser”. But when this word first appeared, it had a slightly different connotation. Kurkul is a "prosperous peasant, a resident of Ukraine." A synonym for this word is "fist". In order to understand the meaning of this word, it is worth recalling the events that took place after the 1917 revolution.
Fist
Curcul is the same as a fist. There is no exact information about the origin of this word. It probably arose in the 20s of the last century. Kurkul is the Ukrainian equivalent of the Russian word fist. Both the first and second concepts have a brightly negative connotation.
In the post-revolutionary years, the attitude of the Bolsheviks to wealthy peasants changed several times. At first it was negative, then softened, for a short while in the policy of the new government even a "fist course" appeared. In the early twenties, the destruction of the kulaks as a class began.
Cuckulders called speculators, the rural bourgeoisie. Wealthy peasants used wage labor, that is, according to the policy of the Bolsheviks, they engaged in the exploitation of poorer villagers.
Dispossession
The final decision to eliminate the kulaks was made by Lenin and his associates in November 1918. In a matter of months, committees of the poor were created , which included, as a rule, farm laborers who had previously worked for wealthy peasants. They launched a fierce fight against smoking.
Land, equipment, and the so-called food surplus were taken from the kulaks. What this surplus was, could not be explained by any member of the committee of the poor. Wealthy peasants found themselves in unbearable conditions. They were deprived of the opportunity to earn. And a few years later, most of them were sent to Siberia. Many died on the way from cold and hunger.
In Soviet times, the word "kurkul" became a synonym for such words as "miser", "drive". Propaganda worked so efficiently that as early as the thirties, few thought about the true meaning of this neologism. And only in the 60s works began to appear in the literature, telling about the tragic fate of the peasants. And not only the wealthy. First, fists were sent to Siberia, then the so-called middle peasants. One of the works of art describing the victims of dispossession of money is Tendryakov's Bread for a Dog.