Page "Kulak" Paragraph 3

The Stolypin reform created a new class of landowners by allowing peasants to acquire plots of land for credit from the large estate owners.

They were to repay the credit ( a kind of mortgage loan ) from their farm work.

By 1912, 16 % of peasants ( up from 11 % in 1903 ) had relatively large endowments of over per male family member ( a threshold used in statistics to distinguish between middle-class and prosperous farmers, i. e., kulaks ).

At that time an average farmer's family had 6 to 10 children.