Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe

Irwin T. Sanders

• Editore: The University Press of Kentucky
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813186498
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: Eastern European History

Collectivization of agriculture is an essential feature of the Communist program for the satellite countries of Eastern Europe. It is a means of extending state control of agriculture as well as the basis for developing large-scale industrial and military power. Irwin T. Sanders has edited this excellent group of papers by specialists on Eastern Europe and American rural social scientists, which collectively serve as an analysis of efforts to regiment the East European peasant.

To those for whom the terms "collective farm" and "collectivization" have little meaning, this book will provide an actual picture of Communist effort to organize millions of peasants into a standard pattern of production and control. Such regimentation, these writers show, has led to less efficient agriculture from the standpoint of total production although it facilitates the delivery of produce to state economic enterprises.

Chapter 1
EASTERN EUROPE AND WORLD AFFAIRS
by Enno E. Kraehe

IN A GENERAL WAY, when historical, political, and economic factors, as well as geography, are taken into account, the term Eastern Europe refers to the territory between Russia on the east and Germany, Austria, and Italy on the west. Some, especially certain German nationalists, might wish to extend Central Europe a good deal farther east than this, and others, especially geographers, might prefer to include in Eastern Europe all Russia up to the Ural Mountains. However, this book is concerned with the phenomenon of collectivized agriculture outside the Soviet Union, and that means the area west of Russia but still under the control of Communist regimes. This scope also means omitting countries which otherwise quite properly belong to Eastern Europe—the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania because they are now annexed to the Soviet Union, and Finland and Greece because they have not fallen to Communism and therefore have not experienced collectivization. The latter two nations, by denying to Communism the northern and southern anchors of Eastern Europe, confine the regimented character of the area to Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. In these countries collectivization of agriculture has been the core of a vast experiment fundamental to their future regardless of their relations with the Soviet Union.

Like all experts, the contributors to this volume like to think of their specialties as central to human knowledge, vital to the future of mankind, and pivotal in world affairs. For this conviction the present writers can offer more than the usual evidence. The recent spectacular events in Russia's satellites are just the most recent of a long succession of Eastern European troubles that have touched individual lives around the globe. In 1914 the assassination of an Austrian archduke in the province of Bosnia plunged Europe into the First World War. In January, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson devoted six of his Fourteen Points to the problems of Eastern Europe. A few months later Russia placed the entire area at the disposal of the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In November the collapse of the Central Powers freed the nations of Eastern Europe from external control and enabled them to fight wars of their own. In 1919-1920 five different peace treaties, including Versailles, involved the reorganization of Eastern Europe. In the next fifteen years the rise and fall of democratic governments, several assassinations, complex world-trade problems, and diplomatic intrigue filled the news from the area. Then in 1938 the Munich conference smashed Czechoslovakia. In 1939 Hitler completed the subjugation of the Czechs, Ribbentrop and Molotov divided Eastern Europe into German and Russian spheres, and Germany invaded Poland from the west as Russia did so from the east to begin the Second World War. For two years Eastern Europe was an area of diplomatic maneuver, and for the next three, a major battleground of the war. In 1943 the future of the area was discussed at Teheran, and in 1945 it was a major topic on the agenda at Yalta. Since then it has been liberated, lost again to the Soviet Union, and given a prominent place in our election campaigns under the slogan of “liberating the Soviet satellites.”

Taken altogether, these satellite states cover an area of about 450, 000 square miles and contain nearly 90, 000, 000 inhabitants, a population density of almost 200 persons per square mile. In size the states range from Poland’s population of about 25, 000, 000 and area of 120, 000 square miles down to Albania’s population of slightly over 1, 000, 000 and area of under 11, 000 square miles. Other approximate population figures are: Bulgaria, 7, 500, 000; Czechoslovakia, 12, 500, 000; Hungary, 9, 500, 000; Romania, 17, 000, 000; and Yugoslavia, 17, 000, 000. Ethnically, Eastern Europe is extremely variegated; nowhere else can there be found such a complex mingling of peoples with intense consciousness of their nationality. Ten different nations inhabit the area and have their roots there. Of these the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Bulgarians are Slavs; the Magyars of Hungary are of Mongolian extraction; and the Romanians, though racially a mixture, derive their separate nationhood from their language, which comes from the Latin brought to the region by Roman settlers in the second century. The Albanians stem from the Illyrians, likewise a people of Roman antiquity.

To these peoples should be added Germans, Italians, Greeks, and Turks, who dwell in the area as small minorities cut off from the great mass of their fellow nationals. Before the Second World War the Germans were the largest minority group in Eastern Europe, numbering in the millions in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and constituting important enclaves in Romania and Hungary. However, many of these fled the advances of the Russian army. Most of the rest have been forcibly removed by wholesale population transfers since the war, notably from the border regions of Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland), from the provinces of the former Polish Corridor, and from the former German provinces to the east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, which were given to Poland after the war (subject, theoretically, to future discussion) as compensation for territory that Poland ceded to the Soviet Union. This last transaction, together with Soviet acquisition of Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia and Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania, also removed the Ruthenians from the ranks of those who had been sizable minority groups before the war.

Ethnic diversity alone need not be politically explosive, as the case of the United States well illustrates. In Eastern Europe, however, no process of assimilation has taken place. On the contrary, ethnic pluralism has been in the past 150 years harnessed to the doctrine of nationalism, which by 1918 was a force strong enough to dissolve the multinational Austrian, Russian, and Turkish empires and to keep Eastern Europe in turmoil ever since. The early hopes of nationalists that the peoples of Europe could be sorted out politically into their own states, independent of one another but with mutual respect, have been utterly disappointed.

When the great experiment to reorganize Eastern Europe around the nationality principle was undertaken at the Paris Peace Conference, it was soon clear that the area was ill-suited to this western idea. Memories of past oppression and past political glories, often dating back to the Middle Ages, made it impossible to start with a clean slate. Territorial losses of Austria, Hungary, Germany, Russia, and Bulgaria, and corresponding gains by such states as Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland, at the outset drove a wedge between the defenders of the status quo and the “revisionist” states. Wars raged as Poles sought to settle old grievances against Russia and Germany, and as Czechs, Serbs, and Romanians attacked Hungary. The wars were settled, but they left a legacy of national hatreds and frontiers established by the sword. Moreover, the need to create states with sufficient territory, defensible frontiers, natural resources, and profitable industries all caused gross violations of the nationality principle. This was inevitable anyway, for in many regions the ethnic groups were so intermingled that no frontier could separate them.

The result of all this, ironically, was that most of the new states created on the nationality principle were almost as multinational as the old Hapsburg monarchy had been. Czechoslovakia, even apart from large German, Polish, and Magyar minorities, was based on three separate groups, the Czechs, Slovaks, and Ruthenians, who had quarrels enough among themselves - including even the question whether Czechs and Slovaks were separate ethnic groups or one. Yugoslavia was a federation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Romania and Poland both had so many minorities, including large representations from neighboring great powers Germany and Russia, that their international existence was always precarious. Nationalism and ethnic diversity were the major reasons why Eastern Europe between the wars was a power vacuum, a standing invitation to invasion from Germany or Russia. Today the ethnic situation has been modified by the population transfers and boundary changes mentioned above. Nationalism too has been modified. It still exists in potent form, a constant threat to the monolithic character that Russia seeks to give the area, as Tito has demonstrated very clearly. But it seems likely that the old national hatreds have somewhat abated, giving place to the common hatred of all the ethnic groups for their Soviet masters.

Religiously, Eastern Europe was in early days a no man’s land between the competing missionaries of the western and eastern churches. In addition much of the area was for centuries ruled by the Moslem Turks. The result is a much wider diversity than is found in the rest of Europe. In Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary the Roman Catholics preponderate, with various western-type Protestants forming strong minorities. In Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia the majority of the population is Eastern Orthodox. In Bulgaria the largest minority is Moslem, and in Romania, Roman Catholic. In Yugoslavia, Roman Catholics and Moslems together almost balance the Eastern Orthodox half of the population. In Albania the Moslems are the dominant religious group, but Roman Catholics in the north and Orthodox in the south form substantial minorities. It is not merely religious diversity that is important here, but also the fact that religion is so closely interwoven with politics and often identified with ethnic groups.

In Yugoslavia, for example, the intense national rivalry between the Serbs on the one hand and Slovenes and Croats on the other is greatly intensified by the fact that the former are Orthodox while the latter two are Roman Catholic. In Czechoslovakia the dominant Roman Catholic church between the wars received preferred treatment from the state, yet in Slovakia it was the Catholics who persistently led an autonomy movement against the unity of the state and the Lutherans who favored centralism. In Albania the Orthodox minority of the south has often been regarded, on grounds of religious similarity, as fellow nationals by the Greeks and their territory claimed as a rightful part of Greece. Similar claims have been made to parts of Bulgaria. In Romania, German and Magyar minorities have flaunted their Protestantism against both Orthodox and Roman Catholic Romanians. Ruthenian minorities, whether in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, or Romania, showed an affinity for their fellow nationals of the Russian Ukraine by giving support to a Uniate church, which combined the Roman faith with the eastern rites. Of all the Eastern European states Poland, with its overwhelming Roman Catholic population, displayed the greatest religious homogeneity, and even here, in addition to the Ruthenian Uniates, there were substantial Lutheran and Reformed elements, especially among the Germans of the Corridor provinces, Eastern Orthodox adherents among the Byelo-Russians, and an unusually large Jewish population.

The complexity and importance of the religious question can well be appreciated when one considers that in Eastern Europe it has always been customary for the state to support the churches with tax funds, that churches have often maintained their own political parties or given strong endorsement to some secular party, and that the western tendency to regard religion as a private matter has never been widespread. Under the present Communist regimes all churches have suffered, especially the Roman Catholic because of its administrative as well as spiritual ties to the West. Cardinals Stepinac of Yugoslavia and Mindszenty of Hungary immediately come to mind as victims of this situation, although their cases are not simple. Protestants are suspect because of their ties to the Protestants of the remainder of Europe and America, and even Moslems have been attacked for their connections with Turkey, an ally of “American imperialists.” In efforts to make use of the Eastern Orthodox church to cement ties to Russia, a subservient clerical hierarchy has been installed in each Orthodox country by the communist governments. In all cases control of the schools and the freeing of national clerical hierarchies of outside connections—and thereby support—have been the central issues of dispute, but at bottom the conflict is that between Christianity and the materialism of Communism. On this the churches cannot budge; because of this, they lead a precarious existence.

In contrast to the ethnic and religious diversity of Eastern Europe, economic life is relatively homogeneous. The area is predominantly agricultural. Aside from Czechoslovakia, where the peasantry does not amount to more than a third of the population, 50 percent to 80 percent of the population have been engaged in agriculture. Traditionally, most of the land was in the hands of big holders, who constituted prior to the First World War the dominant political class. This was especially true in the areas that subsequently became Poland, in Hungary, in Romania, and in the provinces of Croatia and Slavonia, which later went to Yugoslavia. On the other hand, Serbia and Bulgaria were traditionally lands of small farmers. The life of vast numbers of peasants was extremely poor, whether they were small owners or simply agricultural day laborers. Nor did even the great landlords always prosper. During the nineteenth century they, like their fellows elsewhere in Europe (the Junkers in Germany and aristocrats in Russia), felt the impact of competition from the vast grain production of America. Many estates failed or were sold to even greater holders (called the “magnates” in Hungary) or to banks. The former owners as a rule then moved to the cities, where they entered business, the professions, or the government bureaucracies, imparting to these institutions a certain conservative, aristocratic outlook different from the bourgeois outlook of Western Europe. They also helped create intense anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, since they found these occupations largely in the hands of the Jews, who before the beginnings of industrialization and the decline of agriculture were the only people interested.

The existence of great landed estates side by side with an impoverished mass peasantry made land reform the most important issue at the founding of the new Eastern European states after the First World War. It was, as a matter of fact, an incomparably favorable time for reform. Bolshevism, with its own reforms, was a threat that the owning classes could not overlook. The new states began their careers with democratic electoral practices which enfranchised the great masses of peasants. And the reforms could easily begin at the expense of minority nationalities, who not only lost much land thereby but also found their districts “infiltrated” by the peasant buyers from the dominant group who were resettled there. Land reform was undertaken in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and parts of Yugoslavia. It was most successful in Czechoslovakia, where almost 100, 000, - 000 acres were converted from large to small holdings, of which about half remained in the hands of the original owners. In Romania and Yugoslavia reform was much less extensive, and in Hungary and Poland ambitious plans shattered on the opposition of well-entrenched magnates, who managed to tighten their hold on political power and eventually become the mainstay of quasi-dictatorial regimes. In all countries, land reform meant one thing: the partitioning of large holdings and redistribution for sale to smaller owners. It did not mean collectivization or state ownership of land, both of which have been anathema to the peasants of Eastern Europe, just as they were to the peasants of the Soviet Union itself.

Unfortunately, the reforms did little to relieve the depressed condition of agriculture. They did not help the landless laborer, whose resources were so meager that he could not take advantage of even generous governmental terms to buy land. The new owners did not have capital, knowledge of modern methods, or machinery of any kind. Even if they had had machinery, it would have been of limited utility with basically small holdings (often no more than ten acres) made smaller by the European custom of dividing land equally among all of one’s sons. Whatever social values were promoted by land reform, economic efficiency actually suffered, and minority problems were inflamed. Meanwhile, the population of Eastern Europe continued to grow. The average density of almost 200 persons per square mile would not have been unreasonable for a highly productive, industrial economy, but for the stagnant conditions just described, it meant gross overpopulation.

The picture is not entirely one of monotonous, unrelieved backwardness. Actually, large cities like Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw rank among the great European metropolises, and regions like Upper Silesia, the border areas of Bohemia, and the environs of Budapest and Lodz are major manufacturing centers. Czechoslovakia, with its highly industrialized province of Bohemia balanced against the agricultural provinces of Slovakia and Ruthenia before the Second World War, has enjoyed considerable economic stability and a high standard of living. It has produced surpluses for export. Its armaments, machinery, and textiles have competed successfully with similar products from Germany and Great Britain; its glass, shoes, and beer have been highly esteemed on world markets. Against this must be set Albania at the other extreme, where there is virtually no industry and where even arable land is confined to a small area in the center. Here a population of primitive mountaineers in pre-Communist days devoted themselves to stock raising and cereal production (chiefly corn), and maintained an economic pattern verging on family self-sufficiency.

On the whole the type of society thus far described, with its great mass of poor and illiterate peasants, its small but powerful privileged class of large landowners, its relatively small bourgeoisie, and its small urban working class, was not likely to provide firm foundations for the development of political liberalism and democracy. And indeed these movements have not flourished. Nevertheless, the ideological atmosphere at the end of the First World War made any but parliamentary government unthinkable, and there was great optimism that Eastern Europe, under democracy, could make the same progress Western Europe had. There ensued in the various countries a period of democratic rule and lively party politics. The dominant parties in most cases were western-style bourgeois parties with no doctrinaire programs but a goal of consolidating the newly formed states by appealing to as many different elements as possible. Such were the National Democrats of Poland, the National Liberals of Romania, and National Democrats as well as the National Socialists in Czechoslovakia. These parties appealed to businessmen, government officials, professional people, and conservative landlords, and even at times attracted considerable following among the peasants. The great difficulty was that in times of stress, as during the Great Depression, nationalism and fear of revolution won the upper hand and prompted the more conservative wings to embrace some degree of authoritarian rule.

Peasant parties also appeared in large number, and in view of the agrarian character of the society, one would have expected them to rule. But they had to depend on urban intelligentsia for leadership, they confined their interests too much to the land question, and they tended to organize on provincial lines with the result that they often represented particularist interests against centralism in government. Thus the peasant parties of Slovakia and Croatia worked harder to gain autonomy within Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia respectively than to cooperate with the peasants of Bohemia and Serbia. Socialist parties were strong in the industrial areas of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, but elsewhere they were very weak both because of government persecution and because the working classes were infinitesimal. Communism, on the other hand, did better in Eastern than in Western and Central Europe relative to the socialists. Widespread poverty, proximity to the Soviet Union, and observance of Lenin’s doctrine that peasants can serve in place of an urban proletariat as the mass basis for social revolution account for this showing. A Communist, Bela Kun, actually ruled Hungary for six months in 1919.

Fascist parties sprang up in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, but not until the Second World War and the Nazi overlordship of the area did any of them come to power—the “Iron Guard” in Romania in 1940, and the “Arrow Cross” group of Szalasi in Hungary in 1944, both under German pressure. In the first case, the leader, General Antonescu, was soon embarrassed by the crudities of the Iron Guard and obtained Hitler’s consent to suppress the organization. The second was a case of last-ditch fighting against the Red armies after the Regent Admiral Horthy had decided to take Hungary from the war. These movements, which sought mass support, preached racism and anti-Semitism, and aimed at radical, leveling social reforms, should not be confused with the groups who commonly supported the dictatorships of Eastern Europe. The latter were genuine reactionaries, fearful of all mass movements, bent on preserving their privileges, and on the whole loyal to their respective states. During the brief period of democracy in Eastern Europe they made up the right wing of the broad democratic govern...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Contents
• Maps
• Tables
• Introduction
• 1. Eastern Europe and World Affairs
• 2. The Peasantries of Eastern Europe
• 3. Collectivization of Agriculture in Soviet Strategy
• 4. The Collectivization of Bulgarian Agriculture
• 5. Collectivization in Czechoslovakia and Poland
• 6. Collectivization in Hungary and Romania
• 7. Collectivization of Agriculture in Yugoslavia
• Appendix A. Marxist Population Doctrine
• Appendix B. Mechanization of Agriculture in the Balkans
• Appendix C. Peasantisms
• Appendix D. Who’s Who in the Seminar on Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe