Jack Mason
Glossary of Russian Terms
Agitprop - Agitation and Propaganda Department, established by the Central Committee of
the party in 1920.
Batrak - A landless peasant or a peasant labourer who lacked any arable land. These formed
the lowest class of peasant in Tsarist society.
Bedniak - A poor peasant who possessed land, but one who remained desperately poor.
These families were the second lowest class of peasant.
Cadre – An organised group of party activists.
Dvor – A typical peasant household.
Gulag – The government agency responsible for the administration of the Soviet forced
labour camp system (also used as a noun to refer to the prisons themselves).
Kolkhoz – Collective farm.
Kolkhoznik – Member of a collective farm.
Kulak – A rich peasant, viz. one who was wealthy enough to hire labour, own multiple
horses, and one who owned a large plot of land.
MTS (Mashinno-tratornaia statsiia) – Machine Tractor Station: these supplied the collective
farms with machinery for harvests.
NEP (novaia ekonomicheskaia politika) – New Economic Policy, viz. limited capitalism
enabled under Lenin.
OGPU - Joint State Political Directorate; the secret police.
Politburo – Political Bureau of Central Committee of Communist parties. This formed the
highest collective decision making policy within the Soviet Union.
Russification – A process of changing the cultural identity of Ukrainians to one similar to
Russians.
Seredniak – The ‘middle-peasant’ who fell between the counter-revolutionary kulak and the
landless batrak in terms of wealth.
Troika – ‘Triumvirate’: a commission of three within village society who had the authority to
make important local decisions.
Torgsin – State-run stores operating within the USSR from 1931.
Jack Mason
‘Twenty Five Thousanders (25,000ers)’ – Urban workers sent to manage the collective
farms; many lacked any agricultural experience and were highly inefficient.
Ukrainisation – Growth of independent Ukrainian culture.
Ural-Siberian method – A grain acquisition procedure infamous for its brutality.
USSR – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
VSNKh - Supreme Soviet of the National Economy.