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When [[Joseph Stalin]] rose to power, kulaks resisted some of his measures of [[collectivization]]. Resistance usually involved the burning of ones crops, or the killing of ones livestock.<ref>Walters, E. Garrison. ''The Other Europe, Eastern Europe to 1945''. New York, Dorset Press, 1988. pg. 319</ref> Stalin responded with a brutality of horrific proportions, known as "Dekulakization". On 27 [[December]], 1929 he announced the ''"[[liquidation ]] of the kulaks as class"''. The purpose of this was to combat suppossed "[[Counter Revolution|counter revolutionaries]]", but in reality it served to enable the advance of collectivization. The kulaks and their families had all of their property confiscated by the state. Stalin then either executed, put in labor camps, or deported them to [[Siberia]] or central Asia. It is unclear how many died to to the Soviet policies of dekulakization and collectivization, but most estimates place the death toll around 15 million.<ref>Robert Conquest. ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine''. Oxford University Press: 1986. ISBN 0-19-505180-7. pg. 306</ref> Dekulakization was also a factor in the [[Holodomor|man-made famine]] ''(Holodomor)'' in Soviet controlled [[Ukraine]], which claimed around 7 million lives. <ref> John Heidenrich, ''How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen'' (2001): 20 million, including [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin Kulaks: 7 million], [[Gulag]]: 12 million, [[Great Purge]]: 1.2 million (minus 50,000 survivors).</ref> In 1934, the [[Communist Party]] justified their actions with the statement "''Not one of them'' [Kulaks] ''was guilty of anything; but they belonged to a class that was guilty of everything''".