Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

Instead, wrote Ivanisov, he and his fellow peasants were now in an impossible situation. If they worked hard and built up their farms then they became kulaks, “enemies of the people.” But if they took the other option and remained bedniaks, poor peasants—then they were worse off than the “American peasants” with whom they were supposed to be competing. There

One of their techniques, learned from their tsarist predecessors, was to create fake opposition movements and organizations designed to tempt potential dissidents into exposing themselves by joining them.