puhekieltä A prosperouspeasant in the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, who owned land and could hire workers.
2002, (w), "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.