[Andrey_BY]

Clara and Alex have said almost maximum about Russian Germans and Soviet kulaks.

Yekaterina the Great was a really clever and powerful woman. That idea with invitation of skilled farmers from her motherhood to Russia was magnificient in the same great manner as Peter the First done 50-70 years before her times. German farmers have added extra modern tips to old traditional Russian gardening techniques. They have taken many new and non-traditional vegetables to Russia and have adopted in Volga regions to increase our gardening flora very much.

As for kulaks I agree with what has been written by Alex with several addings. There was a major trend for Bolsheviks to call "a kulak" any peasant with his/her own house and garden on their own or rented land. If these individuals didn't want to give almost all they had to the State collective farms (kolkhoz) they considered as enemies of the State and should be punished (usually up to the death). There were millions of Soviet kulak families died under repressions of NKVD (early abbreviature of KGB) in 1917-1941. This cruel practice was especially actual in the most hunger years of Soviet agricultural policy in the end of 1920s - first part of 1930s. Millions of Soviet people have died those times especially in the traditional agricultural Soviet regions like Ukraine and in the South of Russia. Stalin's regime took almost all yield of grains and vegetables from these highly fruitful regions to feed other Soviet areas, but have no ideas how Ukrainians and peasants from Kuban, Rostov, Voronezh and Belgorod should have some meal for their own living.
My family was also involved in this awful tragedy of the whole USSR under Communist regime. My greatgrandfather (mother's grandfather) has been arrested in his native Ukrainian village (on the border with Moldova) and then executed by shooting just because he has collected several wheat seeds from the ground after a horse-powered vehicle with sacks of wheat and potatoes requisitioned from their village left his road. He was in need of some food for his 7 children. 4 of his children have died soon after this. My grandfather was lucky to survive and now we are still own his 100 y.o. traditional Ukrainian house made of clay in Vinnitsa region of Ukraine near the river Dnestr to the border with Moldova with highly rich soil, a big garden with 300 bushes of excellent grapes and a very clear water from the spring.

And I want to add that I appreciate much Reinhard's and Mannfred's hard work to maintain and distrubute on a very low cost their seeds. I have a very mutual relationships with Reinhard as well.