Radu - Bundeanca - Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe

Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeanca (Eds.
Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe
Mainzer Beitrge
zur Geschichte Osteuropas
herausgegeben von
Jan Kusber
Band 8
LIT
Countryside and Communism

in Eastern Europe
Perceptions, Attitudes, Propaganda
edited by
Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeanca
LIT
Cover image: The peasant workers from Zabrani-Arad commune signing the act of constitution of the agricultural cooperative of production. The summer of 1949. (Fototeca online a comunismului romnesc,
http://fototeca.iiccr.ro/fototeca/, cota: 4/1949)
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ISBN 978-3-643-90715-8
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Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................. 13
Sorin RADU
Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions,
Attitudes, Propaganda Problems, Interpretations and Perspectives ..... 15
1. The Peasant, the Countryside and the Communist Ideology....................... 15
2. Main Research Directions on the Countryside
in the Years of Communism ........................................................................... 22
3. Prospects for Research on the Countryside Under Communism ................ 40
Cosmin BUDEANC
The Concept of the Volume .................................................................... 44
The Structure of the Volume........................................................................... 45
Organization and political practices within

the countryside of the Eastern Bloc
Olev LIIVIK
Lords of the Countryside: Personal Characteristics of the First
Secretaries of the County Committees of the Estonian Communist
Party in the Second Half of the 1940s ..................................................... 59
County administration and Party Secretaries .................................................. 60
Nationality, origin and language skills ........................................................... 62
Length of party membership and age.............................................................. 67
Education ........................................................................................................ 71
Conclusions..................................................................................................... 77
Marius TR
The Policy of the Partys Organization in the Lipcani District
of the Moldavian SSR in 1944-1945 ....................................................... 78
Introduction..................................................................................................... 78
The first steps of the Lipcani Partys Committee in spring 1944 .................... 79
Education in the Lipcani district in 1944 ........................................................ 81
The priorities of the Partys committee in district affairs ............................... 83
Lipcanis district reunion from the 9th of June 1945 ...................................... 86
Conclusions..................................................................................................... 90
6 ________________________________________________________ Contents
Bogdan IVACU
The Achilles Heel: Difficulties in Establishing a Functional Party
Network in the Transylvanian Countryside (1945-1947)........................ 93
Transylvanias ethnical particularities and organizational build ..................... 94
Difficulties at the Beginning: the Party between 1945-1947 and its
Organizational Problems................................................................................. 96
Conclusions................................................................................................... 113
Stanisaw STPKA
Peasants in the Face of Activities of the Polish United
Workers' Party in Rural Areas (1948-1989) .......................................... 114
Introduction................................................................................................... 114
Factors determining the position of party organizations ............................... 115
PUWP as the executive body implementing agricultural
policy of the state .......................................................................................... 122
Between opposition and fitting in ................................................................. 129
Conclusions................................................................................................... 133
Piotr SWACHA
United People`s Party Activists in the Central Power Elite in Poland
(1949-1989) ........................................................................................... 135
Introduction................................................................................................... 135
Article purpose.............................................................................................. 137
ZSL members in authorities of parliament,
government and State Council ...................................................................... 138
Basic socio-demographic data (gender, age, place of birth,
social origin, education) ................................................................................ 142
Political experience ....................................................................................... 145
Connections between the elite`s members a social network perspective ... 149
Conclusions................................................................................................... 154
Marcin KRUSZYSKI
Art for arts sake how the Unnatural Attempts
of Transforming Peasants into Intelligentsia
were Implemented in Poland (1944-1956) ............................................ 156
a. Introduction ............................................................................................... 156
b. The embryo phase (1944/1945 the turn of the 1950s) ........................ 159
c. The foetal phase (1950-1956) ................................................................ 166
Conclusions................................................................................................... 172
Contents ________________________________________________________ 7
Agrarian reforms and collectivization

of agriculture in Eastern Bloc
Miroslaw KUSEK, Robert ANDRZEJCZYK
Attitudes of the Landowners in Poland towards the Communist
Decree of 6 September 1944 on the Execution of Land Reform .......... 177
Introduction................................................................................................... 177
Problems with executing the land reform decree in connection
with livestock and deadstock of land properties' owners and lessees ........... 177
The issues of properties excluded from the decree
on the execution of land reform .................................................................... 182
Appeals due to unlawful plotting and the issue
of equivalent on this account ........................................................................ 185
Conclusions................................................................................................... 189
Sorin RADU
The Ploughmens Front and the Land Reform from 1945 in Romania . 191
Background of the Political Situation in Romania after WW II ................... 192
The Tradition of the Agrarian Reform in Romania ................................... 194
The Land Reform in March 1945 ................................................................. 196
The German Minority in Romania and the Agrarian Reform ....................... 199
The Land Reform and the Comrades The Case
of the Ploughmen's Front .............................................................................. 200
Conclusions................................................................................................... 205
Magorzata MACHAEK, Stanisaw JANKOWIAK
State Agricultural Farms in Polish Agriculture the Origin
and Social-Economic Consequences ..................................................... 206
The Origin of State Agricultural Farms ........................................................ 206
Establishing of State-Owned Collective Land Property ............................... 210
State Agricultural Farms ............................................................................... 216
Social aftermaths of SAFs liquidation .......................................................... 225
arko LAZAREVI
Communist Agriculture between Ideological Rigidity and Economic
Rationality the Case of Private Agricultural Sector in
Slovenia/Yugoslavia.............................................................................. 228
Introduction................................................................................................... 228
1. Slovenian Agricultural Heritage ............................................................... 229
2. A Time of Ideological Rigidity ................................................................. 232
3. Facing Reality and Liberalization ............................................................. 248
8 ________________________________________________________ Contents
Zsuzsanna VARGA
Three Waves of Collectivization in one Country (Interactions
of Political Practices and Peasants Resistance Strategies
in Hungary in the long 1950s) ........................................................... 258
Collectivization Decollectivization I ......................................................... 262
Collectivization Decollectivization II ........................................................ 273
Collectivization III ........................................................................................ 283
Concluding remarks ...................................................................................... 293
Csaba KOVCS
Complaints from the Final Period of Hungarian Collectivisation ......... 296
The features of agricultural policy after 1945 ............................................... 297
The third wave of co-op organisation and its consequences ......................... 298
Private complaints caused by collectivisation............................................... 305
Conclusions................................................................................................... 334
Rbert BALOGH
A Program for Afforestation: Sovietisation, Knowledge
and Work in Hungary, 1949-1959......................................................... 335
Towards research questions: the meaning of forest in popular
literature of the 1950s ................................................................................... 335
Knowledge and locality in (semi)peripher .................................................... 338
Anarchy of planning and governance: dimensions
of afforestation in the 1950s ......................................................................... 342
Propaganda about desirable goals and contest for political
mobilization in the 1950s: the Week of Trees ............................................ 345
Linkages and entanglements in the Cold War: forest research
and afforestation ........................................................................................... 352
Gendered geography: women in the landscape of afforestation ................... 359
Locality, boundaries and work: forestry and afforestation
in the vicinity of Pard .................................................................................. 362
Conclusions................................................................................................... 366
Political instruments of the communist regimes

for transforming the village: between coercion
and resistance
Marna ZAVACK
How could we? Explaining Faulty Steps, Mishits
and other Regrettable Deeds in the Slovak Countryside ................... 369
Local conditions............................................................................................ 371
Contents ________________________________________________________ 9
Party decisions .............................................................................................. 375
How to explain a failure................................................................................ 382
Ji URBAN
Distrust as a Perception, Resistance as a Response: the Introduction
of Communist Politics in the East Bohemian Rural Area ..................... 395
Actors............................................................................................................ 400
Installation of the gallows ............................................................................. 402
Perception of the region ................................................................................ 406
Other actions ................................................................................................. 408
Futile investigation ....................................................................................... 410
Provocations staged by the State Security (StB) ........................................... 413
Further plans interrupted by arrests .............................................................. 419
Circumstances of the lawsuit ........................................................................ 423
Conclusions................................................................................................... 427
Dariusz JAROSZ
Questioning the Persecutor-Victim Paradigm: Polish Peasants
versus the Authorities, 1945-1989......................................................... 428
Period I: Communism on the Offensive ....................................................... 429
1956-1989: Communism in Decomposition ................................................. 433
Cosmin BUDEANC
The Last Stage of Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania.
Repressive and Restrictive Methods against the Rural Population ....... 440
The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania. General Considerations ... 440
The Soviet Model of Transformation of Agriculture .................................... 443
The first two Stages of the Process of Collectivization of Agriculture ......... 444
Methods of Repression and Restriction of the Population ............................ 448
The Final Stage of the Process of Collectivization of Agriculture................ 450
The End of Collectivization .......................................................................... 454
The Repression in the Last Phase of Collectivization. Micro Case Study.......... 456
Conclusions................................................................................................... 458
Valentin VASILE
The Rural Population under the Surveillance of Securitate
during the Totalitarian Regime in Romania (1948-1989) ..................... 460
1948-1967 ..................................................................................................... 461
The informative network in rural areas (1948-1967) .................................... 467
Protests (1948-1967) ..................................................................................... 474
1968-1980 ..................................................................................................... 476
The work with informative network ............................................................. 481
1981-1989 ..................................................................................................... 486
10 _______________________________________________________ Contents
The informative-operative work during the last years
of the socialist regime ................................................................................... 491
Conclusions................................................................................................... 494
Drago PETRESCU
Commuting Villagers and Social Protest: Peasant-Workers
and Working-Class Unrest in Romania, 1965-1989 ............................. 497
Industry vs. Agriculture: Heavy Industry at All Costs .................................. 498
Unrest in Working-Class Milieus:
Peasant-Workers vs. Genuine Workers ..................................................... 502
Commuting to Work: Within or Beyond a Commuting Distance ................. 508
Concluding Remarks..................................................................................... 512
Social change and rural mentality

Natalia JARSKA
Between the Rural Household and Political Mobilization The Circles
of Rural Housewives in Poland 1946-1989 ........................................... 527
Women in the Polish countryside ................................................................. 528
The Circles: organization and numbers ........................................................ 530
Continuity and change .................................................................................. 533
Communism gender countryside: interpretations ................................... 543
va CSESZKA, Andrs SCHLETT
Tradition Interest Labour Organisation: Transformation of Rural
Mentality during the Period of Communism in Hungary...................... 547
Introduction: the two traditions ..................................................................... 547
Peasant labour organization, work culture .................................................... 548
Changes ........................................................................................................ 548
The labour organization of socialist agriculture............................................ 551
Work culture ................................................................................................. 556
Conclusions................................................................................................... 561
gota Ldia ISPN
Its hard to do your duty here. Cultured Retail Trade in Hungary ..... 562
The shop assistants of socialist trade ............................................................ 563
The transformation of the retail network ...................................................... 577
The decline of the old methods and places of selling ................................... 585
Conclusions................................................................................................... 592
Contents _______________________________________________________ 11
Cristina PETRESCU
Peasants into Agro-Industrial Workers The Communist
Modernization of Romanian Villages, 1974-1989 ................................ 594
Old Ideas in a New Context .......................................................................... 595
Multilaterally Developed Socialist Society in the Countryside .................... 602
A Symbol of Irrational Thinking and Unrestricted Power ............................ 609
Concluding Remarks..................................................................................... 617
Communist propaganda and representations

of the countryside in the official discourse
in Eastern Bloc
Tomasz OSISKI
Communist Propaganda and Landowners during
the Agricultural Reform in Poland (1944-1945) ................................... 621
Judit TTH
Kulaks in Political Cartoons of the Rkosi-Era..................................... 637
The Persecution of Kulaks in Hungary ......................................................... 637
Anti-Kulak Propaganda and its Forms .......................................................... 642
The Portrayal of Kulaks in the Caricatures of the Newspaper Ludas Matyi . 648
Manuela MARIN
Refashioning People in Collectivized Countryside:
Turks and Tatars in Dobruja during the 1950s ...................................... 656
Introduction................................................................................................... 656
Abduraman Abdurain understood... .......................................................... 659
These wonderful people () are also different ......................................... 664
Conclusions................................................................................................... 674
Klra LZOK
Community Homes and Cultural Education in the Rural World:
Communist Propaganda Clichs as Reflected in the Kulturlis
tmutat (ndrumtorul Cultural) in the Years 1948-1949 ............. 676
1. Establishing the chain of cultural centers: the level of action ................... 677
2. The cultural campaigns ideological basis: the level of the issued texts ......... 680
3. Tentative interpretations ........................................................................... 688
Eli PILVE
Ideological Upbringing in Estonian SSR School Lessons
Based on the Example of Extolling Soviet Agriculture ........................ 690
Introduction................................................................................................... 690
Ideological Upbringing ................................................................................. 693
12 _______________________________________________________ Contents
General Ideological Principles of the Soviet Educational System ................ 696
The Realignment of Teaching in Schools in the Estonian SSR:
New Curricula and Textbooks ...................................................................... 699
Ideological Upbringing in Reports of School Inspectors
and in Recollections of Contemporaries ....................................................... 704
Conclusions................................................................................................... 706
Mihaela GRANCEA, Olga GRDINARU

The Collectivization Process in the Soviet and Romanian Films.
A Comparative Perspective ................................................................... 708
1. The Collectivization Process in the Soviet Films ..................................... 708
2. The Collectivization Process in the Romanian Films ............................... 724
Conclusions................................................................................................... 737
Zsuzsanna BORVENDG, Mria PALASIK
Hungary and Stalins Plan for the Transformation
of Nature through Propaganda .............................................................. 740
New Research Methodologies ...................................................................... 740
The Political Decision ................................................................................... 744
Crazy about Cotton ....................................................................................... 747
Rice Production in the 1950s ........................................................................ 756
Construction of the Tiszalk dam and Irrigation System.............................. 760
The Transformation of Thinking .................................................................. 769
Life after the Plan ......................................................................................... 776
About contributors................................................................................. 781
Acknowledgements
The publication of the volume was made possible with the financial support
of The National Research Council from Romania (CNCS) Executive
Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI), project no. PN-II-RU-TE-2012-3-0334 Communism in the Romanian Countryside. Case Study: Ploughmens Front
Propaganda (1944-1953) and of The Institute for the Investigation of
Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. The content
of this volume does not reflect the official opinion of the latter.
The coordinators of the volume are deeply grateful to Herr Prof. Dr. Hans
Christian Maner from Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and to
Dr. Flavius Solomon, Romanian Academy, A. D. Xenopol Institute of
History from Iai, for their unconditional help and for the advice given
during the editing process of the volume.
Equally, we are grateful to LIT Verlag and personally to Herr Dr. Wilhem
Hopf for accepting such a project, for the excellent collaboration and for
making possible the publishing of this book.
Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe:

Perceptions, Attitudes, Propaganda Problems,
Interpretations and Perspectives
Sorin RADU
1. The Peasant, the Countryside and the Communist Ideology
Eastern Europe holds a strong rural tradition, with the rural world playing
an important role in the economic, social, political and cultural life of the
state. For a long time researchers, among others, have been interested in
understanding the road towards modernity of the countries in this area
and of the role played by the rural world.1 Even if the communist regimes
have dramatically shaped the rural world of the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, the picture of the daily life under communism has remained (in
many regions) predominantly rural up to the fall of communism. This
happened despite the efforts made by the state-parties to change the ratio
between the village and the city through the process of artificial urbanisation.2 Many of the urban localities were rather rural communities. On the
other hand, as Jeremy Brown noted, when we imagine what life was for
rural people in communist societies, the first picture that might come to
mind is that of a stooped peasant, defeated and demoralized by collectivization. When the revolution came to the village, communist officials had
raised his hopes by granting his family a plot of land and teaching him to
write his name, but a few years later he was forced to join a commune
and give most of the harvest to the state. He opposed collectivization at
first, but as time passed he could only grumble, drag his feet, and stealthily swallow handfuls of unripe grain in the fields. He lived in constant fear
1
See in particular: Andrew Flynn, Philip Lowe, The Contested Countryside

(London: UCL Press, 1994); Keith Hoggart, Henry Buller, Richard Black,
Rural Europe: Identity and Change (London: Arnold, 1995); Leo Granberg,
Imre Kovch (eds.), Actors on the Changing European Countryside (Budapest:
Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1998);
Katja Bruisch, Als das Dorf noch Zukunft war. Agrarismus und Expertise
zwischen Zarenreich und Sowjetunion (Kln, Weimar, Wien: Bhlau, 2014).
See for example: Thomas M. Bohn, Marie-Janine Calic (eds.), Urbanisierung
und Stadtentwicklung in Sdosteuropa vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. 47.
Internationale Hochschulwoche der Sdosteuropa-Gesellschaft in Tutzing 6.10.10.2008 (Mnchen, Berlin: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2010).
16 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
that a neighbour or a cadre would denounce him as a rich peasant who

had concealed his true identity from the masses knowing well that such
a charge could lead to deportation or a bullet to the head.3
The concern of the intellectuals to understand peasantry as a social actor,
the peasant family and the social-economic relations within the peasant
societies has generated an extremely diverse and rich literature.4 As
Werner Rsener noted, the universe of rural life has generated the interest
of both the general public and scientific research since a long time ago.
Particularly the endangerment of the traditional peasantry, the threat of
the disappearance of the archaic village and the progressive destruction of
the environment have been, obviously, those which have turned the attention of some large population layers towards the problems of the peasantagrarian universe.5 Scientific research in the field of peasantry and in the
phenomena of rural society was held on the background of the development of the modern urban-bourgeois society and of the industrialization
process, which has fundamentally changed the European economy in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Peasantry has been regarded and analysed either from a conservative, idyllic perspective, or from an opposite
perspective, a critical direction which focused upon the unpleasant aspects of the rural life.6
If some writers have treated the agrarian society as amorphous groups,
without a structure of its own, others have described it as being traditional and have labelled its inhabitants as people bound by tradition,
3
Jeremy Brown, Rural Life, in Stephen A. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook
of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 455.
4
Eric R. Wolf, Peasants (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966); Wolf, from an
anthropological perspective is concerned to understand peasantry as a social
actor, the peasant family and the socio-economic relationships with the peasant
society. See also: S.H. Franklin, Rural Societies (London, Basingstoke: The
Macmillan Press LTD., 1971); Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in
Rural Europe (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978);
Werner Trobach, Clemens Zimmermann, Die Geschichte des Dorfes
(Stuttgart: Eugen Ulmer, 2006); Judith Pallot (ed.), Transforming Peasants.
Society, State and the Peasantry, 1861-1930 (Houdmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire: Macmillan Press LTD, 1998).
5
Werner Rsener, ranii n istoria Europei (Iai: Polirom, 2003), 7. First edition:
Werner Rsener, Die Bauern in der europischen Geschichte (Mnchen: C.H.
Beck, 1993).
6
Rsener, ranii n istoria Europei, 7-8.
Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 17
the opposite of the modern. Anthropologist Eric R. Wolf notes that

such labels simply describe a phenomenon and describe it poorly but
they do not explain it: To say that a society is traditional, or that its
population is bound by tradition, does not explain why tradition persists,
nor why people cleave to it.7
In the socialist literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the
peasants were regularly questioned of their progressive political capacities
and autonomous social competence.8 Centred on the idea of liberating the
progressive working class, neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels were
concerned in detail with the social stratum of peasantry, being absolutely
convinced of the imminent disappearance of this obsolete class, from the
pre-industrial age.9 They praised the progressive character of the bourgeoisie, which they opposed to the obtuseness of the countryside population. The bourgeoisie already ripped a good part of the rural population
out of the rural life idiocy.10 For Marx and Engels, even the peasant
property upon the land was a fossil of past ages, condemned to gradual
disappearance. Belonging to the middle class, the peasants formed a reactionary, conservative class meant to fight the progressive bourgeoisie, to
save themselves from the disappearance of their existence of middle
class.11 By clearly and constantly expressing dislike and contempt towards the peasants, Marx and Engels make a few references on the progressive role on which the peasants would be able to play in history,
provided that the proletariat let awaken the revolutionary latencies of the
rural population, which had been tempted until then with false promises,
7
Wolf, Peasants, viii.

The notorious exception in this respect is the Russian populism and the trends
related with it in certain regions of Eastern Europe. In Romania this current
was represented the most notably by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and at the
beginning of his political career, by Constantin Stere. Constantin DobrogeanuGherea, Neoiobagia (Bucureti, 1910); Cathy A. Frierson, Peasant Icons:
Representations of Rural People in Late 19th Century Russia (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993).
9
Rsener, ranii n istoria Europei, 9.
10
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Manifestul Partidului Comunist [The Communist
Partys Manifest] (Bucureti: Editura Politic, 1962), 4, available online la
https://polifilosofie.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/marx_engels_manifestul_par
tidului_comunist-fragmente.pdf, consulted in 11.02.2016.
11
Marx, Engels, Manifestul Partidului Comunist, 7.
8
18 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
to get into the claws of the reaction.12 The doctrinaire position of the
Marxists in the agrarian problem was obviously in direct connection with
the townspeople life of most of the socialists and their lacunar knowledge
in respect of the conditions of living in the countryside.13
However, the peasants, the agrarian issue have occupied an important
place in the literature of the party and in the Russian social-democratic
Marxist programmatic papers and have represented a major target for the
Bolshevik propagandists during the revolutionary events and in the years
of the civil war14, when the peasants were seen, rather constantly, as an
uncertain element, even dangerous for the new soviet power.15 The feeling
of distrust against this important social category, away from any kind of
radical social change and with a limited horizon to their own household,
or at most community16, found its reflection in the legislation of the Soviet Union immediately after taking over the power by the Bolsheviks17 and
in various writings with a programmatic character. For instance, in the
brochure Put k socializmu i raboe-krestjanskij sojuz [The road to socialism and the alliance between workers and peasants] (1925), Bukharin
drew a perspective as clear as can be on the status and role of the peasantry within the soviet state, using unequivocal terms. Among other things,
Bukharin argues that the peasants, because of the darkness and lack of
culture in which they live and of a certain consideration against land12

14
Alessandro Staziani, Agrarian Question, in Silvio Pons, Robert Service (eds.),
A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism, translated by Italian edition (2006)
Mark Epstein and Charles Townsend (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 2010), 3-5; Igal Halfin, Classes, in Pons, Service, A Dictionary of
20th-Century Communism, 114-117; Lynne Viola, Peasants in USSR, in
Pons, Service, A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism, 603-607; Roger Bartlett
(ed.), Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia. Communal Forms in
Imperial and Early Soviet Society (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1990).
15
Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party,
1927-39 (Houdmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, London: Macmillan Press
LTD, 1988), 6-7.
16
See Bartlett, Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia, passim.
17
Among other things, by the Constitution of the Soviet Socialist Federal Russian
Republic from 1918, workers were insured a degree of representativeness of
the upper net of the peasants (G.I. melev, Agrarnaja politika i agrarnye
otnoenija v Rossii v XX veke (Moskva: Nauka, 2000), 96.
13
owners, are willing to go, against their own fundamental interests,

beside the bourgeoisie.18 In the same direction spoke V.I. Lenin, in
1921, at the Second and Third congresses of the Comintern, when he assimilated the peasantry to the last capitalist class and said that [granting
to this the same rights as for the workers] would mean nothing else than
the resumption of capitalism.19 As Irwin T. Sanders observed, the official Party doctrine, as interpreted by Lenin, would call for the creation of
a rural proletariat who, as the toiling peasantry, would unite with the
urban workers to create the Communist Utopia.20 Even if there were
some moments in which the Bolshevik leaders encouraged the recruitment of new members from the rural environment, the share of the peasants in the Bolshevik party in the years 1920-1930 was well below their
share in the population.21
The attitude of distrust, even hostile toward the peasants, will mark, after
1945, also the politics of the communist authorities of the East European
states, entered into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. On the
other hand, in most of these countries, the existence of very influential
political parties and political groups with peasant ideologies, some of
which were susceptible to real expectations of a large number of poor
peasants for profound agrarian reforms and open to an ideological approach
and collaboration with the communist parties, while others, assuming the
role of the opposition, had imposed differentiated approaches, often opposite even to the principles developed previously in the USSR. These
and other reasoning, including external, had decided the acceptance for a
18
Apud N.I. Bukharin, Izbrannye proizvedenija. Put k socializmu (Novosibirsk,

1990), 1-100.
19
melev, Agrarnaja politika i agrarnye otnoenija v Rossii v XX veke, 98, 100101. A large part of the provisions of the agrarian program of the Comintern
were made in response to the challenges of the peasant/agrarian parties in
Eastern Europe. See George D. Jackson Jr., Comintern and Peasant in Eastern
Europe, 1919-1930 (New York, London: Columbia University Press, 1966), 5.
The pioneering study of the struggle between Marxism and agrarianism (or
populism) in Eastern Europe is by David Mitrany, Marx against the Peasant:
A Study in Social Dogmatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1951).
20
Irwin T. Sanders, Introduction, in Irwin T. Sanders (ed.), Collectivization of
Agriculture in Eastern Europe (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,
1958), 1.
21
Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 11 and next.
20 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
time of a seemingly political pluralism, including the creation of some

blocs or democratic fronts,22from which undesirable parties were excluded.23 A particular case may have been Yugoslavia, where the relationship between the Communists and the peasants was defined
differently than in the other communist countries. The explanation lies in
the major impact on the peasants of the resistance of the anti-fascist, organized by Titos partisans. Melissa Bokovoy regards the Yugoslav peasantry on two perspectives: the real peasantry of Yugoslavia, which was
divided by region, ethnicity, material circumstance, and wartime experience, and the mythical peasantry of the Yugoslav Communists. The peasantry of KPJ [Komunistika partija Jugosslavije] appears as a loyal
member of the partisan struggle, undifferentiated, unwavering, and following the interests of the Yugoslav Communists and their new state. Indeed, certain segments of Yugoslav peasantry did find themselves
fighting with the Communists during the war and can be credited with
having helped the KPJ to power. Other portions of the peasantry were not
allied with the Yugoslav Communists.24
The inability of the peasants to become a relevant factor in the communist policy is succinctly explained by Eric R. Wolf: ...Communist
22
Ideologically and programmatically, the popular fronts from Eastern Europe

after the World War II are rooted in decisions made during the 7th Congress of
the Comintern, held at Moscow from 25 July, to 21 August 1935. The failure of
the plan for a proletarian world revolution and the constant decrease of the
communist influence in the labour movement put the Comintern leaders in a
position to seek solutions to attract towards the 3rd International at least some of
the parties, factions and unions left, out of the control of the reactionary
leadership. This change in attitude was linked to the increasing of the fascist
danger. One of the priorities of the united front was creating a common
government for the left-wing political forces, as an intermediate step in building
a democratic dictatorship of the working class. [Alexander Vatlin, Komintern:
idei, reenija, sudby (Moscow, 2009), 75; VII Kogress Kommunistieskogo
Internacionala i borba protiv faizma i vojny (Sbornik dokumentov) (Moscow,
1975), 364-375].
23
T.V. Volokitina, G.P. Murako and A.F. Noskova, Narodnaja demokratija:
mif ili realnost? Obestvenno-politieskie processy v Vostonoj Evrope,
1944-1948 gg. (Moskva: Nauka, 1993), 109-110; Melissa K. Bokovoy, Peasants
and Communists. Politics and Ideology in the Yugoslav Countryside, 19411953 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), 1-27.
24
Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists, XIV.
party organization provides the staff of professional revolutionaries

whose entire function is to provide the long-range strategy of which the
peasantry itself is incapable. Only under conditions of major and prolonged social disturbance, however, especially under conditions of warfare which shake the foundations of the traditional order beyond repair, is
it likely that such a revolutionary general staff will be able to lead a peasantry in the making of successful revolution. The Russian and Chinese
examples, however, also indicate that while such a revolution may be
made with the aid of a peasantry, it is not made for the sake of peasantry.
Such revolutions aim, ultimately, at the subjugation and transformation of
peasantry into a new kind of social grouping.25
When the communists under the umbrella of the Red Army established the
Stalinist regimes in the Eastern European countries, the social-economic
structure was quite different. Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Hungary were
clearly in the category defined by Samuel Franklin as a peasant society26. The observation of Peter Kenez relating to the fact that in the selfperception of the Hungarian people, Hungary was a rural country and the
peasantry was the repository of the national traits and virtues and that the
interwar intellectuals had fostered this image27, was also applicable to the
other rural countries.28
The situation of Czechoslovakia, as it could have been included in the
category of industrialized countries, was different. Even in this case there
was a split ratio between the two parts. More precisely, even before
WWII Bohemia was among the most industrialized regions of Europe. As
Per Ronns noted, following the social and economic indicators, the
Czech Republic was closer to the Nordic countries, Germany and France,
than to the countries in the East and South-Eastern Europe. Only 25% of
the labour force was busy in the primary sector (agriculture, forestry and
fisheries) in 1930, in comparison with 29% in Germany (1933), 36% in
25
Wolf, Peasants, 109.

Samuel Franklin, The European Peasantry: The Final Phase (London: Methuen,
1969), 141-144.
27
Peter Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets. The Establishment of the
Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944-1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 107.
28
See Per Ronns, Urbanization in Romania. A Geography of Social and Economic
Change Since Independence (Stockholm: The Economic Research Institute,
Stockholm School of Economics, 1984).
26
22 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
Sweden (1930) and 36% in France (1931).29 Moreover, the rural Czech
space was developed in a significant proportion from the perspective of
the manufacturing industry and commercial matters, and as a result, it had
developed a social structure that was diversified and elevated economically and culturally. In contrast, Slovakia was much more rural, preserving this character even after the war. From the demographic perspective,
economic and social matters, this one had more characteristics in common with Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, than with the Czech
Republic. In general, the policy of eradicating the differences regarding
the living standards of the farming population and the non-agricultural
one, between the rural and the urban areas, or lastly between the two republics, was a success.30
2. Main Research Directions on the Countryside
in the Years of Communism
2.1. Agrarian Reforms After WWII and Their Impact on the Rural World
Agrarian reforms made in the interwar years, to a large extent, did not
reach their purpose, so that after 1945 the theme of agrarian reform had
been moved back into discussion by almost all political forces. Agrarian
reforms undertaken in the countries of Central and Eastern European
countries after the year 1945 exceeded from the beginning their socialeconomic nature, transforming itself into a real political weapon in the
hands of the clientelistic parties of Moscow, interested essentially in capturing the electoral will of the rural population. In Western Europe, the
concern of the state for social assistance generalized after 1945, as an expression of the desire for change on the entire continent. For the rural
world, the agrarian reform, considered by many as Europes most pressing dilemma31, was the most significant measure taken by the rulers. In
the countries of Eastern Europe entered under the influence of the Soviet
Union, the agrarian reform after bringing a share of capital of popularity
29
Per Ronns, Introduction, in Alois Slepia, Eva Hokov, Per Ronns, rjan
Sjberg (eds.), Rural Czechoslovakia: Patterns of Change under Socialism
(Stockholm: The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of
Economics, 1989), 1; see and B.R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics,
1750-1970 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 51-63.
30
Ronns, Introduction, 2.
31
Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Pimlico, 2007), 77.
to the communist parties, went to put an end to the influence of the

wealthy owners, to ensure social peace by encouraging the small property, so that after a short period of time, the same rulers could argue the inefficiency of the small property and so justify the necessity of agriculture
collectivization. As Peter Kenez noted (in Hungary), immediately after
the war, the communists operated on the need for the reform of the social
and economic situation in the countries of Eastern Europe.32
In chronological order, Poland was the first country of the future communist camp in which the agrarian reform was decreed (6 September
1944), followed by Romania (23 March 1945), Czechoslovakia (21 May
1945), Yugoslavia (23 August 1945), Albania (29 August 1945), the part
of Germany under Soviet control (October 1945), Bulgaria (12 March
1946) and Hungary (7 May 1946).33 Jean-Franois Soulet says that the
post-war agrarian reforms took the shape of a real agrarian revolution
realized from the top. In that crucial moment of power-seizure, the
communist parties used the strategy of the agrarian reforms for political
purposes, looking in a propagandistic manner to attract the enormous
peasant community and to unite it around a reform presented at the same
time as a class battle having as a consequence the immediate elimination
of the ruling classes and as a punishment of those guilty of war (Germans S.R.).34 The phenomenon happened on a desolate background
shaped by the damages caused by the war: thousands of villages destroyed, agricultural lands, vineyards, etc. out of production, livestock
dramatically reduced a grim background the discouraged peasant found
at home and in which he had to continue his activity.35
A maximum threshold of landownership was set in all countries under the
influence of the Soviet Union: 5 ha in Albania, 20 ha in Bulgaria, 45 ha in
Yugoslavia, 50 ha in Romania and Czechoslovakia, 57 ha in Hungary, 15
ha of arable land or 20 ha of pasture in Poland and East Germany. And
then they made transfers of property, particularly important in Hungary
32
Agrarian Reform in Hungary destroyed the feudal relics of the system for the
farming property. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, 107.
33
Augustin ru, Noaptea moierilor. Aplicarea Decretului 83/1949 n nordvestul Romniei [The Landlords Night. Applying the 83/1943 Decree in
North-West Transylvania] (Oradea: Editura Arca, 2009), 37.
34
Jean-Franois Soulet, Istoria comparat a statelor comuniste din 1945 pn n
zilele noastre (Iai: Polirom, 1998), 72.
35
For an overview of these condition of things, see Judt, Postwar, 16-19.
to the communist parties, went to put an end to the influence of the

wealthy owners, to ensure social peace by encouraging the small property, so that after a short period of time, the same rulers could argue the inefficiency of the small property and so justify the necessity of agriculture
collectivization. As Peter Kenez noted (in Hungary), immediately after
the war, the communists operated on the need for the reform of the social
and economic situation in the countries of Eastern Europe.32
In chronological order, Poland was the first country of the future communist camp in which the agrarian reform was decreed (6 September
1944), followed by Romania (23 March 1945), Czechoslovakia (21 May
1945), Yugoslavia (23 August 1945), Albania (29 August 1945), the part
of Germany under Soviet control (October 1945), Bulgaria (12 March
1946) and Hungary (7 May 1946).33 Jean-Franois Soulet says that the
post-war agrarian reforms took the shape of a real agrarian revolution
realized from the top. In that crucial moment of power-seizure, the
communist parties used the strategy of the agrarian reforms for political
purposes, looking in a propagandistic manner to attract the enormous
peasant community and to unite it around a reform presented at the same
time as a class battle having as a consequence the immediate elimination
of the ruling classes and as a punishment of those guilty of war (Germans S.R.).34 The phenomenon happened on a desolate background
shaped by the damages caused by the war: thousands of villages destroyed, agricultural lands, vineyards, etc. out of production, livestock
dramatically reduced a grim background the discouraged peasant found
at home and in which he had to continue his activity.35
A maximum threshold of landownership was set in all countries under the
influence of the Soviet Union: 5 ha in Albania, 20 ha in Bulgaria, 45 ha in
Yugoslavia, 50 ha in Romania and Czechoslovakia, 57 ha in Hungary, 15
ha of arable land or 20 ha of pasture in Poland and East Germany. And
then they made transfers of property, particularly important in Hungary
32
Agrarian Reform in Hungary destroyed the feudal relics of the system for the
farming property. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, 107.
33
34
Jean-Franois Soulet, Istoria comparat a statelor comuniste din 1945 pn n
zilele noastre (Iai: Polirom, 1998), 72.
35
For an overview of these condition of things, see Judt, Postwar, 16-19.
However, Tony Judt gives another result of the agrarian reforms carried
out between the years 1944-1947: a stratum of small owners was created
in all Eastern European countries, which were grateful to the new authorities for their land.38 The author does not tell us how large this stratum
was, but it is obvious that the agrarian policy applied by the communists
in this stage caused even sympathy among the peasants.
Another interesting aspect of the agrarian reforms is the expropriation of
assets of the German minorities from Poland up to Yugoslavia, which in
the opinion of Tony Judt, completed the radical transformation initiated
by the Germans by moving the Jews. The German communities in the
Sudeten region, Transylvania and northern Yugoslavia held significant
estates. In Czechoslovakia, the goods and the properties taken from the
Germans and from their collaborators, totalled a quarter of the national
wealth; only from the distribution of agricultural land did they win over
300,000 peasants, agricultural workers and their families39: Like the war
itself, they represented both a radical caesura, a clear break with the past,
and a preparation for even bigger changes still to come.40 The agrarian
reform in Romania made by the pro-Soviet government headed by Petru
Groza represented, at the same time, an act directly pointing against the
members of the German community.41 In 1945, approximately 75,000
German ethnics were deported to the Soviet Union to labour camps.42 The
Germans in Romania were excluded in a brutal way from the benefits of
this law, being reckoned all of them as collaborators of the Nazis. As
stated in article 4 of the draft law of the agrarian reform, the Germans in
Romania that collaborated with Nazi Germany lost all lands and agricultural properties. Those who were found not guilty remained with 20 hectares, while the other landowners could keep 50 ha of arable land, plus
38
Judt, Postwar, 78.

Judt, Postwar, 38-39.
40
Judt, Postwar, 39.
41
Hannelore Baier (ed.), Germanii din Romnia, 1944-1956 [The Germans in
Romania, 1944-1956] (Sibiu: Honterus, 2005), 11; Dumitru andru, Reforma
agrar din 1945 i rnimea german din Romnia [The Agrarian Reform
from 1945 and the German Peasantry in Romania] (Bucureti: Institutul
Naional pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2009), 12-13.
42
Hannelore Baier (ed.), Deportarea etnicilor germani din Romnia n Uniunea
Sovietic 1945 [The German Ethnics Deportation from Romania to the Soviet
Union in 1945] (Sibiu: Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din Romnia, 1994),
passim.
39
26 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
vineyards and forests. Most of the time it was to the confiscation of the
entire fortune of the German and Swabian peasants, as a result of the confusion of the guidelines, ignorance and financial interest of those involved in the implementation of the reform. According to some estimates,
at the beginning of 1947, at the national level, 143,000 German families
were expropriated, with a total of 804,000 jugars. It must be noted that, in
that age, all German minorities were treated with the same hostility, also
being subject to dispossession of lands and other goods, and expelled.
According to some opinions, all German peasants in the Central and
South-Eastern Europe were expropriated and lost approx. 10 million hectares of land, with total expropriations of 16.7 million hectares. This state
of things is not deducted from the responsibility of the Romanian governors of the time, but only reveals that they had the same mentality and
habits as their counterparts in other countries.43
In a practical way, the post-war agrarian reforms did not have the time
needed to produce positive economic effects in the rural world. Shortly,
the peasants were dispossessed in their turn by the communist regimes,
within the framework of the forced collectivization process.
2.2. Collectivization and Communization in the Rural World
The most important direction of research in the Eastern Europe countryside was the collectivization of agriculture, the interest of historiography
generating an extremely rich and varied literature.44 The focus on this
43
Comisia Prezidenial pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din Romnia, Raport

final [The Presidential Commission for the Analyses of the Romanian Dictatorship, Final Report] (Bucureti: Humanitas, 2007), 360; Cosmin Budeanc,
Efectele exproprierilor i naionalizrilor asupra etnicilor germani: integrarea n
Cooperativele Agricole de Producie i migraia spre orae, n percepia romnilor, [Die Auswirkungen der Enteignungen und Nationalisierungen auf die
Rumniendeutschen: die Integration in die Landwirtschaftlichen Produktionsgenossenschaften und die Migration in die Stadt in der Wahrnehmung der
Rumnien] in Hannelore Baier (ed.), Abbrche und Aufbrche. Die Rumniendeutschen nach zwei Weltkriegen. Tagungsbeitrge, (Sibiu: Honterus, 2014), 71.
44
A final comparative analysis of the process of collectivization in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe was published in 2014: The Collectivization of
Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements,
Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper (eds.), (Budapest, New York: CEU
Press, 2014). An interesting review of the book was published by Rbert
Balogh, Hungarian Historical Review, 1 (2015), 240-247.
topic is explained by the fact that the process of collectivization included

directly or indirectly more than half of the rural population in East European countries, while in some countries such as Romania and Bulgaria,
the process affected more than two thirds of the population. The Eastern
European parties implemented the soviet model of collectivization in realities and cases very different from those in the Soviet Union, without
being fully organized and without having enough political force to impose, which lad to the emergence of specific situations in each communized country.45 The collectivization was nowhere uniformly46 carried
out. In short, they lacked the power to impose their will upon an unwilling population.47
As Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery noted, the collectivization of
agriculture was the first mass action, in largely agrarian countries like the
Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Romania, through which the new communist
regime initiated its radical program of social, political cultural and economic transformation. Collectivizing agriculture was not merely an aspect of the larger policy of industrial development, but an attack on the
very foundations of rural life.48
Most of the researchers in the field, such as Robert Conquest49, R.W.
Davies50, Moshe Levin51, Sheila Fitzpatrick52, Lynne Viola53, Stephen
45
Pavel Cmpeanu, The Origins of Stalinism. From Leninist Revolution to Stalinist

Society (Armonk, New York, London: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1986); Gail Kligman,
Katherine Verdery, Peasant under Siege. The Collectivization of Romanian
Agriculture, 1949-1962 (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011),
2; Jan Gross, A Note on the Nature of Soviet Totalitarianism, Soviet Studies
34/3 (1982), 367-376; Stephen Kotkin, The Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as
a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
46
The Soviet Union exported the revolutionary technology of collectivization to
its satellites, providing the blueprint along with Soviet advisers to guide them.
This blueprint set out the parameters for establishing collectives: new methods
to improve agricultural production, a new institutional infrastructure, and an
arsenal of pedagogical techniques with which cadres were to enlighten peasants
and discipline dissenters. Kligman, Verdery, Peasant under Siege, 445.
47
Kenneth Jowitt, The Leninist Response to National Dependency (Berkeley:
Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978).
48
Kligman, Verdery, Peasant under Siege, 2.
49
Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the
Terror-Famine (New York, 1986).
28 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
Kotkin54, Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery55 have contested the totalitarian presumption that Stalinism meant the imposition of a policy
from the top to the bottom through the elimination of any resistors, considering the collectivization a lengthy and dynamic process of evolution,
where some of the sections of the apparatus of the party have adopted
certain distinctive features not only on the basis of an initial schedule, but
also in the form of a practice appeared and developed in time. In the case
of Romania, for example, Kligman and Verdery go further stating that the
inability of the state-party to control the cadres involved in the collectivization has modelled a particular type of relationship between state and society, but also some patterns of behaviour, which would mark the entire
existence of the Communist Party. The collectivization process had been
decisive for the determination of the nature of the new state-party and its
subjects.56 The perspective of the two researchers upon the process of collectivization is original, addressing the collectivization not simply as a
process which was subordinated to the industrial development, as it is
frequently done in the dedicated literature, but also as part of a wider set
of technologies for modernisation, an improved system for the protection
of public health, industrialization (which the collectivization also made
possible). In the place of a mainly political history, Kligman and Verdery
focus on the social and cultural implications of a process which has sought
to replace a form of organization based on the principles of relationship,
with a bureaucratic one.57 The importance of the kinship relationships in
50
R.W. Davies, The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture,

1929-1930 (London, 1980).
51
Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization
(New York, 1968).
52
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalins Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian
Village after Collectivization (New York, 1994).
53
Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of
Soviet Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Lynne
Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant
Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Lynne Viola, V.P.
Danilov, N.A. Ivnitskii, Denis Kozlov (eds.), The War Against the Peasantry,
1927-1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside (New Haven, 2005);
54
Kotkin, The Magnetic Mountain, passim.
55
Kligman, Verdery, Peasant under Siege, passim.
56
57
the process of defining and formation of the collective property in the rural world in the countries under communization was noted even before by
David A. Kideckel.58 The collectivization, conclude the two authors, represented a massive social engineering project whose technologies were
mediated through daily practices of kinship, rural temporalities and status
ideals.59 Such an approach comes as a sequel to the thesis launched by
James Scott60 and developed in particular by the works of Lynne Viola61,
who considered the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR as a policy
of modernization, of economic development, of political centralization.
Jeremy Brown also strengthens this idea, that most communist regimes
across the world have seen the collectivization of agriculture as the only
way to solve the problems of the peasantry: the eradication of exploitation and poverty.62
The Soviet experience of the years 1920-1930 helped the leaders of the
communist parties of the Eastern European countries to adopt by the end
of the 1940s and early 1950s complex strategies by which they could win
large segments of the population, or by which to ensure at least a neutral
attitude on the part of some important social categories, such as the peasants. The active presence in the rural world of some political organizations, autonomous from the formal point of view, but closely related to
the communist parties (road companions), distinguishes the collectivization process of the Eastern European countries63 from the one of the
58
David A. Kideckel, The Socialist Transformation of Agriculture in a Romanian

Commune, 1945-1962, American Ethnologist, 9 (1982), 320-340; David A.
Kideckel, The Solitude of Collectivism: Romanian Villagers to the Revolution
and Beyond (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993).
59
60
James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
61
See note 50.
62
Brown, Rural Life, 456.
63
About the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR and Eastern Europe see
(selective): Jerzy F. Karcz (ed.), Soviet and East European Agriculture
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967); Irwin T.
Sanders (ed.), Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe (Lexington:
University of Kentucky Press, 1958); Joan Sokolovsky, Peasants and Power:
State Autonomy and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1990); Peter D. Bell, Peasants in Socialist
Transition. Life in a Collectivized Hungarian Village (Berkeley, Los Angeles
30 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
Soviet Union, where the massive collectivization (sploshnaya kolektivizatsiya) was made under the sole control of the communist party. Another
particularity is the fact that, taking into account the soviet experience, in
the process of collectivization the communist parties in Eastern Europe,
especially in the start-up phase, have appealed to a much more sophisticated toolkit, in which a particularly important role had the apparently
neutral propaganda from an ideological point of view.64
and London: University of California Press, 1984); James Hughes, Stalinism in
a Russian Province. A Study of Collectivization and Dekulakization in Siberia
(Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Houndmills, 1996); Corey Ross,
Constructing Socialism at the Grass-Roots: The Transformation of East
Germany, 1945-1965 (Harlow England, New York: Longman, 2000); Gerald
Creed, Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent
Transition in a Bulgarian Village (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1998); Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany. A History of the
Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London:
Harvard University Press, 1995) 141-173; Jnis Labsvrs, A Case Study in the
Sovietization of the Baltic States: Collectivization of Latvian Agriculture 19441956 (Bloomington, 1959); Pawel Starosta, Imre Kovch and Krzysztof
Gorlach, Rural Societies under Communism and Beyond. Hungarian and Polish
Perspectives (Ld: d University Press, 1999); Edward Taborsky,
Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1960 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1961); Peter Gunst (Ed.), Hungarian Agrarian Society from the
Emancipation of Serfs (1948) to the Re-privation of Land (1949) (New York:
Boulder, 1998); Constantin Iordachi and Dorin Dobrincu (eds.), Transforming
Peasants, Property and Power: The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania,
1949-1962 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009); Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery,
Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962
(Princeton, 2011); Dietmar Mller, Angela Harre (eds.), Transforming Rural
Societies. Agrarian Property and Agrarianism in East Central Europe in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Innsbruck, Wien: Bozen, 2010);
Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper (eds.), The Collectivization of
Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements
(Budapest, New York: CEU Press, 2014).
64
In this respect the best known case is the one of the Popular Peasant Union in
Bulgaria ( ), which, in the form of an
agrarian organizations affiliated to the communist party, has steadily existed
until in 1989, being represented in the structures of the communist rulers at all
levels. Another relevant example is the propaganda organized in the Romanian
rural world by the Ploughmens Front (Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeanc, Flavius
After 1945 the soviet model of collectivized agriculture had been applied
in all the Eastern and Central European countries occupied by the Soviet
troops, even though in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia the collectivization had not been satisfied with the same consistency. Praised with
enthusiasm by the communists as the solution for all agrarian problems,
the association of the reform with nationalization encountered a strong
opposition from almost everywhere. In spite of the strong efforts to continue the collectivization with means of political constraint, which imprinted the Eastern European agrarian regime for decades, its results were
disappointing a consequence, concludes Werner Rsener, on which
contributed the peasant resistance, the bad organization of the production
accompanies, the insufficient equipping with capital of the collective
households and the severe repression of any autonomous initiative. With
all its shortcomings, the collectivization remained for a long time, in most
of the Eastern European countries, the objective of the official agrarian
policy.65
There are many causes that have determined the peasants to refuse to accept with enthusiasm the soviet collectivization model; its stubbornness,
but maybe the most relevant is the one forwarded by F. Fejt, who claims
that in Eastern Europe the peasant does not understand, does not accept
the communist rules of the game because he is not fully convinced of his
failure as a small farmer.66
The observation of Kligman and Verdery relating to the effects of the collectivization process seems very meaningful: Collectivization brought
undeniable benefits to some rural inhabitants, especially those who had
owned little or no land. It freed them from labouring on the fields of others, and it increased their control over wages, lending to their daily existence, stability previously unknown to them. For many, however,
collectivization was the major trauma of the socialist period67.
Solomon, The Comrades, Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture

in Eastern Europe. The Ploughmens Front in Romania, Historick asopis
(Historical Journal), 63/1 (2015), 113-135;
65
Rsener, ranii n istoria Europei, 18-19.
66
Apud Soulet, Istoria comparat a statelor comuniste, 74.
67
32 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
2.3. The Stalinist Repression and the Resistance Against Communism

in the Countryside
As David R. Shearer noted, the use of police violence and repression became a fundamental part of the Stalinist regime, a fundamental part of
Stalins method of rule. We cannot understand Stalinism or Soviet-style
socialism without understanding the structure and policies of repression
and policing during the years that Stalin ruled the Soviet Union.68 Shearer
strengthens the idea that repression during Stalin was far more than politics by coercive means. Repression became a fundamental part of the way
the Stalinist regime related to its citizens: the way the regime attempted
to impose public order and reshape the Soviet social body.69
The subject of the peasants resistance against communism has been addressed in particular from two perspectives: the resistance against the collectivization of agriculture; and the defence of religious identity against
the attempt of the party to undermine religion and the institution of
Church. By applying mainly the anthropological methodology of Scott70,
Lynne Viola concludes that the soviet peasants launched the weapons of
the helpless during the collectivization process. Failing to overcome the
state in a physical confrontation, they opposed the soviet power by
68
David R. Shearer, Policing Stalins Socialism. Repression and Social Order in

the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press,
2009), 3.
69
Shearer, Policing Stalins Socialism, 2.
70
James Scott, when referring to the way in which the peasantry defended its
interests, brings into discussion the method "weapons of the weak." The symbolic
or ideological resistance (such as gossip, slander, the rejection of ignominious
labels, lack of respect) are included in this definition. Scott argues that there
are no proofs that the resistance took the form of a collective action. This can
have an effect in aggregate form. James Scott, Weapons of the Week:
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1985), 290. Scott argues: It occurred to me that the emphasis on peasant
rebellion was misplaced. Instead, it seemed far more important to understand
what we might call everyday forms of peasant resistance the prosaic but
constant struggle between the peasantry and those who seek to extract labour,
food, taxes, rents, and interest from them. Most of the forms this struggle takes
stop well short of collective outright defiance. Here I have in mind the
ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation,
false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so
forth. Scott, Weapons of the Week, 29.
spreading catastrophic rumours, comparing the soviet regime with the

Antichrist.71 As Viola argued convincingly, referring to the situation in
the USSR: Resistance was only one part of a wide continuum of societal
responses to Stalinism that also included accommodation, adaptation, acquiescence, apathy, internal emigration, opportunism, and positive support.72
Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery also bring into discussion another
form of resistance: the passive resistance of cadres, communist party activists sent to the villages to excite and to disseminate the teachings of
the party relating to the collectivization among others, who by neglect,
misunderstanding of the content and the direction of some instructions,
documents etc. and incorrect interpretation, misunderstanding of the
wooden language, failed to achieve their purpose, doubled by the carelessness and mimicking the achievement of the objectives laid down at the
Centre. Because cadres had difficulty persuading peasants with argument,
performing consent becomes persuasions proxy. Because peasants were
forced to join the collectives willingly, they chose to imitate the conviction: We might say that to a Party that introduced imitation (mimesis)
as a form of persuading, peasants responded by imitating consent.73 Performing consent continues Kligman and Verdery became a key survival
strategy for all, which drew them into relationships with the state that were
both complicitous and duplicitous.74
As a matter of fact, this form of mimicry of the submission of the citizens
to the state was observed before by Norman Davies (2005) in the case of
Poland, with reference to the relation citizen-state-religion: The state
was an atheist and did not support the forms of organized religion. In this
situation, every citizen was caught in a swarm of split loyalties that he
had to reconcile the best he could. Dilemmas, double life and double
thinking in Orwell-style happened daily. For example, the younger priests
were sometimes anticlerical; even some communists were faithful
71
Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin, 60-61.

Lynne Viola (ed.), Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular
Resistance in the 1930s (New York - Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press,
2002), 1.
73
74
Kligman, Verdery, Peasant under Siege, 456; also see Alexei Yurchak, Everything
Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (New York,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
72
34 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
practitioners. Under the threat of dismissal, the workers were asked to

participate at enterprise meetings or political demonstrations especially
organized to be in conflict with religious protests. Somehow, with the
candle in a pocket and with the red flag in the other, they usually managed to participate or to be late at both of them.75 The official ideology
was the Leninist-Marxism, but nobody claimed that they really believed
in it. [...] although few dared to openly denounce the ideology of state, far
too many people, in the eyes of the clerics, came to the church just out of
habit and social tradition or only as a sign of exercising the right to an
unofficial life.76 The observation of Norman Davies is also valid in the
other countries of the Soviet Union.
For many, these attitudes may not be regarded as belonging to a form of
resistance, being appreciated as too subtle or at most as falling into the
category of the so-called passive resistance. Both in the USSR and also
satellite countries, the central authorities have never been certain that the
instructions and directives of the party were fully implemented at the regional and local level by the party bureaucracy. Anyway, it is not easy to
argue about the resistance against communism, considering the diversity
of ethnic groups to which the model of the Soviet Union was applied, different mentalities and last but not least, an aspect that cannot be ignored,
the fact that a part of the citizens in Eastern Europe benefited from the
socialist transformation.77
A few years ago, Timothy Johnston reassessed the specific literature focused on the concept of resistance and improved the idea that during Stalin,
the citizens were brutalised in order to be kept passive. He notices that
the weakness of the resistance's literature was represented by the tendency to use the term to describe a wide range of behaviours, so much that
the resistance is in danger of losing its meaning. The most recent works
of Lynne Viola have included under the same section of the resistance:
homosexuality, the Muslim traditional garb, the illegal food trade and political revolt: As a consequence Johnson concludes it does not distinguish between active and passive resistance, nor does it recognize the
75
Davies, Istoria Poloniei, 495.

Davies, Istoria Poloniei, 498.
77
Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe, Revolution and Resistance in Eastern
Europe: An Overview, in Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Revolution
and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule (Oxford,
New York: Berg, 2006), 1, 2.
76
difference between resistance directed against factory managers, particular government policies, or the Bolshevik state.78 Quoting David-Fox,
who claimed that the passive resistance should be included in the definition of resistance, Johnson finds that the demarcation can no longer be
established, proposing the determining of a model to avoid the numerous
traps at its base: Equally importantly, this broad definition of resistance
does not recognize a distinction between behaviour that was directed
against Soviet power itself and actions that were simply everyday strategies for getting by. Within this approach, whatever the state regarded as
resistance was resistance. However, this leaves both Soviet citizens and
the historian unable to think or act outside the categories of the regime.
Indeed within this definition, all Soviet citizens were resistors. As the historians of everyday life have shown, all Soviet citizens engaged in rumouring, bribery, joking, food speculation, and forgery. Stalin himself
told subversive political jokes about the Purges.79 In his book, Timothy
Johnston uses the term of the resistance in a well-defined manner through
actions or speeches that had the evident intention to undermine the practices or institutions of the soviet regime.
Another topic studied by Timothy Johnston is the soviet identity, in the
context of the complex ethnic diversity in the Soviet Union: Being Soviet mattered in the last years of Stalins life. The experience of war, invasion, victory and a threat of nuclear conflict made international affairs,
and the Official Soviet Identity, a matter of vital interest to everyday residents of the URSS. Sovietness did not swallow up or destroy all other
forms of identity in this period. Residents of the Soviet Union, like most
individuals, embraced a number of simultaneous and different identities.
They were not simply Soviet, or Russian, or Jewish. A Soviet citizen
could define himself as a labourer at the Dinamo Factory, a Kievan, a
member of the global proletariat, a Ukrainian, or as a citizen of the
URSS. These identities were not incompatible, and were often complementary. As Linda Colley suggests, identities are not like hats: we can
wear more than one of them at a time. Ethno-national or class identities
were important in this period, but this book draws attention to the rarely
examined supranational identity which coexisted along-side them.80 One
78
Timothy Johnston, Being Soviet. Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life under Stalin,
1939-1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xxi.
79
Johnston, Being Soviet, xxii.
80
Johnston, Being Soviet, xxv-xxvi.
36 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
of the main theses of this book is that the official rhetoric of the soviet
identity had played an important role in forging the way in which ordinary citizens imagined the world around them. A small number of individuals understood the world exclusively by the categories of movies,
theatre plays and newspapers sponsored by the state. A number just as
small of individuals sought to destroy the rhetoric of the Soviet state and to
withstand its power. Most people remained neutral.81
In this context, we also claim together with Kevin McDermott, Matthew
Stibbe82, that the communist parties were not based solely on the political
repression for the institutionalization of the totalitarian regimes. In order
to legitimate the communist regimes83 and to win the sympathy of the
population, including the one in the rural areas, the leaders of the communist parties in the post-Stalinist period made considerable efforts for
the development of the socialist consumerism and leisure industries to
meet the demands of the working class and peasants, as to improve the
standards of services and goods, combined with a central control of the
production and distribution.
With regard to the resistance of the peasant army, most revolts came from
the rural areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia. All
had as reason to refuse to accept collectivization.84 In the other sovietised
countries the phenomenon of the armed resistance was much more restricted.
81
Johnston, Being Soviet, 209.

McDermott, Stibbe, Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: An
Overview, 3.
83
Juan Linz: No regime is 100% legitimate, or as regards the rulers, or as regards
the time, just as it is unlikely that a regime should be completely illegitimate and
based exclusively on coercion. Juan Linz, Legitimacy of Democracy and the
Socio-economic System, in Mattei Dogan (ed.), Comparing Pluralist
Democracies (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 66.
84
McDermott, Stibbe, Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: An
Overview, 5; Misha Glenny, The Balkans, 1804-1999. Nationalism, War and
the Great Powers (London: Granta Books, 1999), 545-552; Melissa K.
Bokovoy, Peasants and Partisans: The Politics of the Yugoslav Countryside,
1945-1953, in Melissa K. Bokovoy, Jill A. Irvine and Carol S. Lilly (eds.),
State - Society Relations in Yugoslavia, 1945-1992 (Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire, London: Macmillan Press, 1997), 115-138.
82
In a more recent piece of work, Liubov Denisova85 appreciates that, at

least in the case of the Soviet Union, the doctrine of the Communist Party
and the systematic campaigns carried out had affected more the rural
world than the urban centres. The repressive policies of the state were, of
course, applicable to all citizens of the Soviet Union; however, the rural
world had been the favourite subject of repression and economic exploitation. The social system in the villages was more shaken by the transformations caused by the Soviets. On the other hand, there is no denying
and neglecting the fact that beyond the dramas and sufferings of the villages, the soviet propaganda created for the peasants hopes and illusions
about a new world of socialist equality and social security, which would
later create the phenomenon of nostalgia for the communist system.86
2.4. The Rural World and Local Elites in Communism
This direction of research appears to be totally marginal in current historiography. Nigel Swain was a path-breaker by investigating the appearance, recruitment, training and forms of manifestation of the managerial
elites of the collective farms and of the cooperatives.87 He argues that
the collectivization process created a new social stratum of professional
managers inside the agrarian field, a unique phenomenon in the modern
world, a stratum which was controlled by manager of managers who
operated within a particular, politicised context.88 Swain focused his research on Hungary, but notices that this type of elite also developed in the
other countries that gave up the Stalinist collectivization system:
Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the Democratic Republic of Germany. But
85
Liubov Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia,
Edited and translated by Irina Mukhina (London, New York: Routledge,
2010), 4.
86
Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, 11.
87
Nigel Swain, Collective Farms which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985); Nigel Swain, Co-operative Elites in Hungary after
1945, in Kub, Lorenz, Mller, oua (eds.), Agrarismus und Agrareliten in
Ostmitteleuropa, 589-619. An important contribution on the issue of the elites
of local parties, for the interwar rural world of the Soviet Union is owed to
Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Communist-era Rural Party
1927-39, and James W. Heinzen, Inventing the soviet of the Countryside. State
Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929 (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).
88
Swain, Co-operative Elites in Hungary after 1945, 598.
38 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
in countries such as Romania and Albania, which retained the Stalinist

model throughout, followed a different socialist path and did not develop
such an extensive managerial stratum.89 An important contribution is also brought by Neil J. Melvin90 who analyses the agricultural policy in the
post-Stalinist period, with particular emphasis on the objectives of industrialization of the rural space, but especially the focus on the role of the
specialists in agriculture, of technocrats in the formation of rural policy in
the post-Stalinist period.91 In a broad sense, the matter of agrarian elites
has been more recently discussed by Eduard Kub, Torsten Lorenz, Uwe
Mller, and Jii oua.92
Of major importance is the research of the manner in which the communist
parties extended their organizational network in the rural environment, at
the level of local communities. The process is important and interesting
considering that the peasantry and the local elites looked at the communist
parties with suspicion, reluctance. The cult of Stalin, the theses about the
socialist transformation of agriculture, the fight for peace or other clichs
of Stalinist propaganda did not arouse the interest of a population deeply
religious, obstinate, and with a developed sense of property. The work of
agitation93 of cadres, communist party activists sent from the Centre, was
encumbered by the difficulty of transmitting ideas, concepts which most of
the time the propagandists did not understand themselves. The wooden
language could not be understood by a population that was, in part, illit89
Swain, Co-operative Elites in Hungary after 1945, 590; Nigel Swain, A

Framework for Comparing Social Change in the Post-socialist Countryside,
Eastern European Countryside 4 (1998), 5-19.
90
Neil J. Melvin, Soviet Power and the Countryside: Policy Innovation and
Institutional Decay (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
91
See the interesting review made to Melvins book by Stephen K. Wegren and
published in the European History Quarterly 35 (2005), 595-596.
92
Kub, Lorenz, Mller, oua (eds.), Agrarismus und Agrareliten in Ostmitteleuropa, passim.
93
It is important to clarify the term base brought by Adam B. Ulam relating to
the distinction between propaganda and agitation: initially put forward by
Plehanov and supported by Lenin: the propagandists explain many and
complicated ideas to a small group of persons, while the agitator is trying to
induce few ideas to a numerous group. Adam B. Ulam, The Bolsheviks. The
Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia,
The Second Edition (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1998),
120-121 (note 15), 181.
erate and little inclined to show patience for the work of the propagandists.
These were the reasons for which in many situations, the communist parties used the road companions tactics, the short-term allies, to penetrate
this world alien to the communist ideology. Temporary alliances concluded by the communists with peasant parties or organizations represented a practice in the years of solidification of the new communist
regimes. It is relevant to point the case of Romania, where The Ploughmens Front became a reliable ally of the Communist Party until the year
of 1953. Officially, the Communist Party hid the subordination of the
ploughmens organization, creating the picture of an independent organization. In reality, its activity was strictly monitored and coordinated by
the communists. Officially, the duty of the Ploughmens Front was to organize and mobilize the whole peasantry to improve its material and cultural condition, but in reality it had to divert the peasants attention from
the real intentions of the communists. The political weighting of the Front
increases significantly alongside the formation of Petru Grozas government (9 March 1945) The President of the Ploughman's Front when,
enjoying the entire logistic support of the state, this organization became
a real attraction point for the peasants. In the years 1948-1949, the
Ploughmens Front had about 1.5 million members with organizations in
nearly all of the rural communes of Romania. The extension of the organization of the Ploughmens Front after the Second World War was carried
out with the involvement and direct support of the Communist Party. The
communist leaders saw the Ploughmens Front as an extension of their
own party in the rural world, a communist organization developed to
translate to the peasants the meaning of the party theories imposed by the
communists, in particular those related to the socialist transformation of
the agriculture, with the purpose to gradually conquer the power and to
prepare the ground for the communization of the society, but also to neutralise the popularity of the National Peasant Party, hostile to the communists and the Soviet Union.94 In the case of Bulgaria, we have already
referred to the case of the Popular Peasant Union (
94
Sorin Radu, Tovari de drum: Frontul Plugarilor i Partidul Comunist n anii

1944-1947, Revista istoric, XXIII / 1-2 (2012), 107-138; Sorin Radu, The
Political Organisation of the Peasantry in Communist Romania: the Ploughmens Front (1945-1953), Bulgarian Historical Review, 1-2 (2013), 79-101;
Radu, Budeanc, Solomon, The Comrades, Propaganda and the
Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe. The Ploughmens Front in
Romania, 113-135.
40 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
), which shaped as an agrarian organizations affiliated to

the communist party, existed on a continuous basis until 1989;in the case
of Hungary, it is relevant to point out the case of The National Peasant
Party headed by Pter Veres, which was intended to represent the interests of the poor peasantry and agricultural proletariat, in opposition with
the Independent Smallholders Party, which represented the interests of
the poor middle peasantry.95
The reluctance of the peasantry against communism persisted until the fall
of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe, despite obvious improvements
in the quality of life induced by the communists through undertaken social and economic measures. The peasants complied with the partys theses by adopting a kind of practice of indifference and ignorance, of tacit
acceptance of the stupid party theses.
3. Prospects for Research on the Countryside Under Communism
Beyond all these concerns to understand communism and its impact on
the rural world in the countries of the former soviet bloc, important
themes still need to be discussed. Jeremy Brown noted that the exclusive
focus on the real trauma produced by collectivization conceals many other parts of the rural life: For villagers in communist societies, being rural (living in the countryside, devoted to agriculture) and being alive'
(eating, sleeping, playing, having sex) shaped everyday life at least as
much as being communist did. Villagers overriding concerns about
work and family were affected, but not necessarily defined by communist
policies and collective organizations. People in villages fell in love, got
married, had children, and had extramarital affairs. Their lives were drastically changed, for better and for worse, by electricity, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and tractors.96 Jeremy Brown claims, just like sociologist
Richard Madsen97 that it is not wise to draw conclusions in white versus
95
Istvn Papp, The Unrealiable Fellow Traveller Pter Veres, Chairman of

the National Peasant Party and the Hungarian Political Police, in Peter Jaek
(ed.), Protikomunistick odboj v strednej a vchodnej Eurpe / Anti-Communist
Resistance in Central and Eastern Europe (Bratislava: stav Pamti Nroda,
2012), 292-293.
96
Brown, Rural Life, 455-456.
97
Richard Madsen scanning the communism in the rural world in China,
concluded: Most changes that must have seemed good to many peasants were
intertwined with changes that must have seemed bad. Richard Madsen, The
black or good versus evil about how communism transformed life in the
rural world, because the situation was much more complex and must be
looked at from multiple perspectives.98
In our opinion, there are insufficiently investigated or still untouched
themes, such as: the way in which the state-party effectively intervened in
the structures, cultural and social models of the villages; the analysis of
the collective households, of social-economic effects on the village, how
these transformed the agricultural production or if these contributed to the
economic failure of socialism, in the context in which one thing is evident:
the improvement of the quality of life of peasants the prosperity of the
peasant (defined also socially, not only economically99); how the collectivized peasants referred towards work and if their cultural values and
models changed100; the wooden language, the new language and its impact on the peasants; the party structures of the rural world; how the
propaganda was organized in the rural world and how the cultural work
and political work was carried out, defining the border between the two
components of the agitation and propaganda; the interpretation of the cultural, the alphabetization of peasants (how did this process happen, which
was its impact and which was the perception of the peasants?)101; what
was the role of the community centres in villages?; the daily life of the
Countryside under Communism, in Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank

(eds.), The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 675-676.
98
Brown, Rural Life, 456.
99
Vladimir Pasti, Noul capitalism romnesc [The New Romanian Capitalism]
(Iai: Polirom, 2006), 82-89.
100
For an interesting case study about the manner in which social models, where the
attitude toward work has changed under the impact of collectivization in a village
in Hungary, see Martha Lampland, The Object of Labor. Commodification in
Socialist Hungary (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
See a compared sociological perspective on the relationship between the
peasants landownership in Hungary and Poland: Pawel Starosta, Imre Kovch,
Krzysztof Gorlach (eds.), Rural Societies under Communism and Beyond.
Hungarian and Polish Perspectives (d: d University Press, 1999).
101
For a general perspective on the cultural rules and Stalinist values which governed
society, see David L. Hoffmann, The Stalinist Values. The Cultural Norms of
Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941 (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2003).
42 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
peasants in communism102; the reshaping of the landscape, the forests and

implicitly the lifestyle of the peasants by the communists. It has been
stated many times that the Soviet model undermined the traditional culture of the peasants, but too little was discussed about the cultural forms
imposed by the communists in the rural world and especially it was explained unconvincingly how this traditional culture has survived the years
of totalitarian regime.
In a similar manner, the place and the role of women in the rural world
are to be examined, even if the issue has been partially addressed in
works such as that of Liubov Denisova103 and Susan Bridger.104 It is not
to be neglected that women represented at least half, and in some periods
even more, of the work force in kolkhozes, collective agricultural households
or in farms, and moreover women were the main force of work and the
driving force in the rural world throughout the entire communist period,
both in the agricultural production, and in the social aspects of life. They
worked on equal terms with men in agriculture.105 An excellent way of
research may be case studies referring to villages, bigger communities or
focusing on a particular issue.106
Paradoxically, as Bogdan Murgescu observed, in the analysis of the economic development of communist regimes, and implicitly of the impact
of the collectivization upon agriculture, the works of some economists
have not stirred the interest among historians.107 The socialist agriculture,
102
The work of pioneerdom which leads the field is that signed by Sheila
Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times:
Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
103
Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, passim.
104
Susan Bridger, Women in the Soviet Countryside. Womens Roles in rural
development in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987).
105
Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, 9-10.
106
See in this direction, Peter D. Bell, Peasants in Socialist Transition. Life in a
Collectivized Hungarian Village (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University
of California, 1984).
107
Bogdan Murgescu, Romnia i Europa. Acumularea decalajelor economice
(1500-2010) [Romania and Europe. The Accumulation of Economic Gaps
(1500-2010)] (Iai: Polirom, 2010), 327-328.
the collective property and the way in which these influenced the peasants and the village still remain open themes.108
All of these are just a part of the possible themes that are waiting to be
investigated and analysed in an interdisciplinary and comparative manner
in the countries of the ex-Soviet bloc. In other words, we advocate for an
analysis, for a critical history of the rural world in Eastern Europe.
In this context, the present volume tries to answer some of these questions,
to open discussions in some new directions, to supplement the existing
information in the specific literature and offer a parallel picture of issues
in the countries of the former communist bloc.
If the rural world in Western Europe has changed a lot during the last
decades and seems to be regarded more and more after the expression
of Hugh D. Clout as a theme park, seen by townsmen as a backdrop
for leisure and recreation, and as a place of consummation rather than of
production,109 in Eastern Europe the realities of rural area are much
more present in the daily life and still anchored in mentalities and styles
of life.
Sibiu, March 2016
108
A newer and more important contribution towards this direction is brought by

Hannes Siegrist and Dietmar Mller, who analyse the property in Central and
Eastern Europe from the perspective of the terminology, institutions and practices
with regard to the land property. Hannes Siegrist, Dietmar Mller (eds.), Property
in East Central Europe. Notions, Institutions and Practices of Landownership
in the Twentieth Century (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2015).
109
Hugh D. Clout, The Countryside: Towards a Theme Park?, in Dan Stone
(ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), 563.
The Concept of the Volume

Cosmin BUDEANC
This volume contains most of the scientific contributions presented at the
conference The Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes, Propaganda, Sibiu, 25 to 26 September 2015 by historians from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Great Britain, Poland,
the Republic of Moldova, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
This conference was organized by the Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu
and the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and The
Memory of Romanian Exile in Bucharest and had as partners the following institutions: The Executive Unit for the Financing of Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation, Johannes Gutenberg
Universitt, Mainz and the Institute of History A.D. Xenopol in Iai, of
the Romanian Academy.
The initiators of the conference started from the ascertainment that the
studies dedicated to the communization of Eastern Europe have focused
mainly on different themes of political history the institutionalization of
the new totalitarian regimes, liquidation of the democratic order, repression, and anti-communist resistance and less on several aspects of social and cultural history, in general, and on the transformations of the
rural world, in particular. Among these latter less known aspects, a central place is occupied, of course, by the collectivization of agriculture.
The need for a historiographical recovery on this area of historical
knowledge is needed even more as in recent years many monographic
papers and important theoretical and methodological studies referring to
the social and cultural history appeared, and as the opening of important
archive funds on the history of the beginning of communism in the states
of the former cordon sanitaire provides the documentary material necessary for elaborate applied research.
The conference organized in Sibiu offered the necessary framework to
debate the aspects of the understanding of the perception of the peasants
regarding the communist ideology, the interaction between theoretical
prescriptions and ideological Stalinist communist prescriptions and real
expectations from the rural world after the end of the Second World
War, the understanding of the general mechanism and the specific characteristics in each country of the socialist bloc in the process of village
The Concept of the Volume ________________________________________ 45
communization. From a comparative perspective, we consider to be a

priority the research regarding the manner in which the peasants have
seen communism, the persuasion methods, the reaction to the propagandistic clichs, the perception towards the various changes imposed by
the new totalitarian regimes of soviet origin, etc.
The Structure of the Volume
With respect to the structure of the volume, it mainly follows the one of
the conference. So, the first part comprises of six studies and its theme is
Organization and political practices within the countryside of the
Eastern Bloc. The Baltic States, including Estonia, were among the
first that have experienced the Soviet-type regime as a result of the occupation in the 1940. For several years this was replaced with the German
occupation, after which it has returned under the control of Moscow. In
the study, Lords of the Countryside: Personal Characteristics of the First
Secretaries of the County Committees of the Estonian Communist Party
in the Second Half of the 1940s, Olev Liivik, presents the personal characteristics of the first secretaries of county committees of the Communist
Party in Estonia (organization which was part of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union) between 1944-1950, the years when Estonia returned
under the soviet domination and was reorganised from an administrative
point of view. The study presents the main features of the Communists
who came to lead the administrative structures of Estonia, the difficulties
of the Communist Party to find cadres and supporters, and also the
changes that occurred with the strengthening of the regime.
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic presented a situation somehow
similar to the Baltic countries, meaning that it was acquainted with the
sovietization process in two stages. Some of these similarities are also
presented in the study of Marius Tr, The Policy of the Partys Organization in the Lipkani District of the Moldavian SSR in 1944-1945. Even if
they present a case study on the Lipkany district in the Baltsy (Bli in
Romanian) County, a small administrative unit in the north-western part
of the Moldavian SSR, the analysis is relevant for an understanding of the
sovietization policies conducted after the territory returned under Soviet
occupation. To all the difficulties of a general nature which the communists were forced to encounter when they took over again the political
and administrative control of the area, some particulars were added,
46 ____________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
generated by the fact that the war was not over yet and, in addition, the
area was a border one, which made it unique in character and thus much
more difficult to manage.
The picture of the difficulties the Communists had in taking control of the
countries that entered in their sphere of influence is completed by the
study of Bogdan Ivacu, The Achilles Heel: Difficulties in Establishing a
Functional Party Network in the Transylvanian Countryside (19451947). Relying on documents from the archives of the various counties in
Transylvania (Romania), he brings a series of clarifications regarding the
difficulties which the Romanian Communist Party had in the first two
years following the end of the Second World War in establishing a network of members in the rural environment in Transylvania. This topic
was too little analysed by historians, and it is very interesting because it
deconstructs the picture created over time by historians, that of a strong
party, which exercised control on all levels of the society, because, in the
opinion of the author, things happen very differently in the first period.
On the other hand, the study makes for an understanding of the mechanisms that subsequently led to the taking over of the total power in
Romania by the Communists, who just a few years before were very few
in number. An interesting feature of the study is that it shows the situation in Transylvania, a region of Romania with a special characteristic,
due to the presence of ethnic minorities which dominated the main cities
until the first years after the Second World War, and with a rural area
mainly Romanian. And here was the great dilemma of the Communist
Party, because if it wanted to be a party of the workers, it could not have
been called Romanian (Romanian Communist Party), because most of the
workers belonged to national minorities, and most Romanians were farmers, not workers.
The difficulties of the communists to penetrate the rural space, as presented by Bogdan Ivacu, are similar to those also identified by Stanisaw
Stpka in Poland. In the study Peasants in the Face of Activities of the
Polish United Workers Party in Rural Areas (1948-1989), he analyses
the reaction of the population in the rural areas to the process of collectivization of agriculture and the way in which the Polish United Workers
Party has changed, in the course of time, the attitude toward the inhabitants of villages, as a result of their resistance to the socialist transformation of the agriculture.
By the study of Piotr Swacha, United People`s Party Activists in the Central Power Elite in Poland (1949-1989), we remain in the Polish geographical territory, and to some extent even in the area of the rural environment,
even if the protagonists are the political representatives who represented
the farmers in the central political life (Parliaments authorities, government and State Council) in the years of communism. Concretely, it is
about the members of the United Peoples Party (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe - ZSL), a satellite party of the Communists, without a special political importance, but which was their official partner and had
representatives at all levels of the political life. Practically, the author carries out a study on the elite and the social-demographic structures which
generated them or which they developed in time.
Marcin Kruszyski in his study Art for the arts sake how the Unnatural Attempts of Transforming Peasants into Intelligentsia were Implemented in Poland (1944-1956), presents the situation of the change of the
intellectual elite in Poland after the establishment of communism. Of
course, in this case, as in many others that will be referenced in this volume, the pattern of transformation was the Soviet one, with particularities
having a local specificity. Practically, the new regime established in Poland
needed a new intelligentsia, and the base level of recruiting was identified
in the rural area. The consequences were, however, toxic for the Polish
society, because most of the future specialists, who were transformed
overnight, did not have the ability to reach the quality standards and
competitiveness of those whom they had to replace in the society.
Agrarian reforms and collectivization of agriculture in Eastern Bloc
is the second section of the volume, made up of seven studies. After the
Second World War, in future communist countries the agrarian reforms
represented the major characteristics of the changes that were to come,
and they preceded the socialist transformations in agriculture. The situation in Poland is presented by Miroslaw Kusek and Robert Andrzejczyk
in their study Attitudes of the Landowners in Poland towards the Communist Decree of 6 September 1944 on the Execution of Land Reform.
Based on the documents of the archive, the two authors review the manner in which the agrarian reform and the nationalization process were applied, and also the reaction of the landowners.
With regard to the Romanian agrarian reform, Sorin Radu discussed in
The Ploughmens Front and the Land Reform from 1945 in Romania
about the implication of the Ploughmens Front led by Prime Minister
48 ____________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
Petru Groza in land reform from 1945. In Romania, the collectivization of

the agriculture process (started in 1949) was preceded by a comprehensive land reform through which the new government tried to adjudicate
an important political capital among farmers, representing about 80% of
the countrys population. The land reform was primarily political and only secondarily economic and social. The agrarian reform, developed and
applied by Petru Grozas government, who strengthened his position
through this law, was simultaneously an act directed against members of
the German community from Romania (accused of collaboration with the
Nazis) and only secondly against landowners, as the Communists and
the Ploughmens Fronts speech and propaganda implied. The study argues that the Ploughmen's Front had an important role in the implementation of the communist structures within the rural world and hence the
application of the agrarian reform.
With respect to the study State Agricultural Farms in Polish Agriculture
the Origin and Social-Economic Consequences, by Magorzata
Machaek and Stanisaw Jankowiak, this presents the beginnings of a
great economic and social experiment represented by State Agricultural Farms in Poland, but also the time course of these economic structures, with their avatars and the effects they had on the population.
An interesting case study is presented by arko Lazarevi in his article,
Communist Agriculture between Ideological Rigidity and Economic Rationality the Case of Private Agricultural Sector in Slovenia/Yugoslavia.
Having a statute and an evolution different from other communist countries, the agriculture of the states that formed the former Yugoslavia also
had a special development, where the private agricultural sector had a
crucial role. Lazarevi presents, on one hand, the role of ideology in the
field of agriculture and the way in which this marked the category of
farmers (with consequences even after the fall of communism), and on
the other, the multiple attempts to reform, which the authorities had tried
to impose in the four decades of communist rule, but without achieving
the desired results.
The following three studies present various aspects of the collectivization
of agriculture in Hungary. Thus, Zsuzsanna Varga in her study Three
Waves of Collectivization in one Country (Interactions of Political Practices and Peasants Resistance Strategies in Hungary in the long 1950s),
using the documents of the archive, but also testimonies of oral history,
examines the agrarian policies, the aggressive methods used to force the
farmers to sign over their lands including the so-called kulak beater
groups, which meant a new type of repressive techniques, quotas, imprisonments and internments, survival and adaptation strategies of the
peasants in the period until 1953, effects of the policy of the New
Course, which followed the death of Stalin, and the evolution of cooperative-type agriculture until 1961.
As for the study of Csaba Kovcs, Complaints from the Final Period of
Hungarian Collectivisation, the author describes and analyses the last wave
of establishing cooperatives in Hungary between 1958 and 1961, from
an unusual perspective, of complaints and grievances made by farmers
who were dissatisfied with the way in which the new regulations affected
their daily life.
The modernization of Soviet-type also affected forestry, and the study
A Program for Afforestation: Sovietisation, Knowledge and Work in
Hungary, 1949-1959, by Robert Balogh, very well captures the way in which
the industrialization transformed the forest fund into a raw material producer and multiple related effects of this change. In addition, it is presented
through the interaction between propaganda and actions for afforestation
carried out in the 50s, the exchanges of experience in the field between
socialist states, the role of women in this domain and, in the end, the
manner in which the afforestation influenced the lives of the inhabitants
of the rural environment from vicinity of Pard, in Northern Hungary, in
the period before the completion of the collectivization of agriculture.
Given that the establishment of communism had a consistent repressive
component, extremely visible in the rural world, a section of this volume
dedicated to this aspect was required. Therefore, in the section called Political instruments of the communist regimes for transforming the village: between coercion and resistance we have six studies that analyse
various aspects of the methods used in the transformation of the villages by
communist regimes, in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.
In the study How could we? Explaining Fault Steps, Mishits and other
Regrettable Deeds in the Slovak Countryside, Marna Zavack focuses
on the first years of the collectivization of agriculture in the regions of
north-east of Slovakia, as attested to this process from the perspective of
the delegates participating at the annual conferences of the party. The
perspective is even more interesting, as it shows that at the level of party
representatives the problems that the collectivization process generated at
50 ____________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
the level of the population were known. In addition, the study also brings a
certain hue with regard to the positioning of some party members from the
rural environment, who were in their turn dissatisfied with collectivization.
An analysis at a regional level is also carried out by Ji Urban in the study
Distrust as a Perception, Resistance as a Response: the Introduction of
Communist Politics in the East Bohemian Rural Area. Starting from a
general observation that the anti-communist resistance (and implicitly the
anti-collectivization one) has had various forms depending on countries
and periods, the author focuses on the east of Bohemia showing characters and concrete actions undertaken by them against the process of collectivization of agriculture in that part of the country.
Dariusz Jarosz finds that, in the Polish historiography after 1989, there
has been a tendency to insist very much on the resistance to collectivization and, implicitly, it took the shape of dichotomous picture of invincible communist power in conflict with society, and above all with the
peasants. In these conditions, in the study Questioning the PersecutorVictim Paradigm: Polish Peasants versus the Authorities, 1945-1989, the
author analyses the relations between the authorities and the peasants in
two distinct periods: the beginning and the expansion of communism
(1944-1956), and a second period (1956-1989) of gradual erosion of the
system entwined with moments of intensification of repressions against
anti-system activities.
In the study The Last Stage of Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania:
Repressive and Restrictive Methods against the Rural Population, Cosmin
Budeanc makes a general analysis of the conclusion of the process of
socialist transformation of agriculture, between 1957-1962, characterised
by the acceleration of dramatic changes and especially by the frequent
use of violent means. Also, a micro-case study about the way in which
the communist authorities acted against the peasants in a commune of the
eastern part of the country completes the presentation.
The reaction of the population of the Romanian rural area to the establishment of communism has highlighted the fact that the totalitarian regime had to take firm and constant action in order to be able to maintain
control over the society and to prevent any reactions of revolt. Even after
the completion of the collectivization, the mood of the inhabitants in the
rural environment has still remained in the attention of the repressive authorities. The methods used by the political police in the communist Romania
(Securitate), the concrete actions and their results with the purpose of
preventing possible actions against the regime are presented by Valentin
Vasile in the study The Rural Population under the Surveillance of Securitate during the Totalitarian Regime in Romania (1948-1989).
The study of Drago Petrescu, Commuting Villagers and Social Protest:
Peasant-Workers and Working-Class Unrest in Romania, 1965-1989, brings
an interesting image of the way in which the possible actions of protest
against the communist regime of the inhabitants of the rural world were
kept under control in the time of Nicolae Ceauescu. According to the author, this was possible as an effect of massive industrialization, which
drew to the cities a large number of inhabitants of the rural environment,
who were commuting on a daily basis. Thus, finds the author, keeping the
connections with the village dampened the potential revolt, a situation
which is different from the workers coming from the rural environment,
but who had less consistent connections with the rural area, after they established their permanent residence in the cities.
Social change and rural mentality, the fourth section of the volume,
analyses the way in which the communist regimes tried to double the
transformations at a political, economic, social and cultural level and changes
to the level of mentalities. And such approaches also concerned the rural
environment. One of the constant and defining approaches for the communists was the promotion of equality between men and women, and of
course, this field did not escape from the interference of propaganda. In
this respect, in Poland, various courses for rural housewives were organised in the years of communism. But, as demonstrated by Natalia Jarska
in the study Between the Rural Household and Political Mobilization
The Circles of Rural Housewives in Poland 1946-1989, these courses did
not necessarily represent a novelty, because they had also existed during
the interwar period. Starting from this fact, the author identifies the elements of continuity and the changes that have occurred in the activity of
the Circles of Rural Housewives an association for rural women in Poland
between 1946-1989, but also other interesting aspects, such as the main
fields of activity, the promoted ideology of kind, the interference and
their respective political context, and the results obtained as a result of
these activities.
About the transformation in the mentality of the inhabitants of the rural
world regarding the organization of work, this time in Hungary, is also
the study signed by va Cseszka and Andrs Schlett, Tradition Interest
52 ____________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
Labor Organisation. Transformation of Rural Mentality during the Period of Communism in Hungary. These transformations have been generated
both by the changes, as a result of the establishment of communism, but
also by some developments at world level (green revolution, Taylorism etc.), which have been imposed by authorities and showed their
effects also in Hungary.
gota Ldia Ispn in her study, Its hard to do your duty here. Cultured
Retail Trade in Hungary presents the changes that took place in the area
of the trade in Hungary in the '50s and '60s. The newly established political regime tried in those years not only to change the rules of commerce,
by switching to the so-called cultured socialist trade, but also to intervene at a much more complex level that of mentalities, both of those who
worked in this field, and also of the purchasers, of the population. Even if
the study followed these transformations particularly in the rural area,
they could also be observed in the urban environment, and help to better
understand the impact it had on the Hungarian society the establishment
of communism and complex transformations this has generated, both at
the economic level and also at the mentalities level. The study is based, in
addition to the bibliography, both on the documents from the archives, as
well as on testimonies of oral history, joint information increasingly used
by researchers of recent history, and which often offers remarkably complex results.
As it can be noticed in the previous studies, the interest of the authorities
of the communist states for the rural environment had been a special one,
and its modernization represented a priority. And as in other areas, this
modernization was also conducted to replicate, as much as possible, the
Soviet model. The study of Cristina Petrescu focuses on what is going
on in the Romanian rural world in the period which followed the end of
the collectivization process of agriculture, and more accurately on the
process known under the name of systematization of the rural areas. In
concrete, the purpose was the demolition of the villages and the setting up
of the agricultural-industrial centres. Thus, in her study Peasants into
Agro-Industrial Workers. The Communist Modernization of Romanian
Villages, 1974-1989, the author presents, on the one hand, the plan of rural modernization of (re)interpretation of the Marxist-Leninist dogmas,
concerning the transformation of the rural environment, and on the other
hand, the aspects related to the legislation, the action plan and the practical consequences of these steps, including those at the level of the men-
tality. And last but not least, it also offers interesting information about
the international reaction to this absurd project of Nicolae Ceausescu, and
the efforts made by the Operation Village Roumains organization to stop
this destruction of the Romanian rural world.
The communist parties had appropriated important resources to propaganda both in the start-up phase, in order to convince the population of
the benefits which such a regime shall bring them, and afterwards, after
taking over the power, to distort the reality and try to offer an idealized
picture both within the countries and outside their boundaries. There is a
rich specialized literature about the role of ideology and propaganda in
the communist regimes, and also about the way in which it had been attempted to create the new man even from the youngest ages, with authorities using textbooks in this respect. Aspects concerning propaganda,
and not only, in Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Soviet Union and Romania,
are analysed in the section Communist propaganda and representations
of the countryside in the official discourse in Eastern Bloc. The section starts with the study of Tomasz Osiski, who analyses the Communist Propaganda and Landowners during the Agricultural Reform in
Poland (1944-1945). During that period, the Polish communists used the
press to antagonise the poor population from the rural environment
against large owners and of those who held average properties, considered as stifling component of the atmosphere in Poland. In order to
achieve their purposes, they had no reservation to use as propaganda the
important historical events in the recent history of Poland or some national tragedies, which they presented in a context different from the real one.
At the same time, the agrarian reform and the owners lands expropriation were presented as an act of social justice.
In her study, Kulaks in Political Cartoons of the Rkosi-Era, Judit Tth
presents the situation of the enemies of the people represented by kulaks, a social category that can be found in all communist states. And
even if they had different names, depending on the countries entered under Soviet control, the measures taken against them and the authorities
attitude towards them was similar: they had to be marginalised and even
eliminated from the society. As Judit Tth shows, in Hungary, the direct
repression against kulaks was accompanied by one that could be considered soft, but not less dangerous. The latter was implemented by the
propaganda, and especially through the press. The study is complemented
54 ____________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
by an analysis of the way in which the kulaks were presented in the humour magazine Ludas Matyi.
An important minority community in Romania is the Muslim, represented
in the years of communism in particular by the Turks and Tatars. The
manner in which they had been affected by the collectivization of agriculture and the communist propaganda through the official newspaper of the
Constana/Dobruja Regional Party Committee, Dobrogea Nou [New
Dobruja] is presented by Manuela Marin, in the study Refashioning People in Collectivized Countryside: Turks and Tatars in Dobruja during the
1950s. At the same time, the study analyses the way in which the propaganda built a new ethnic and social identity for the Turks and Tatars, in
accordance with the political context specific to the '50s.
In the continuation of the study of Manuela Marin, also fits the one signed
by Klra Lzok, Community Homes and Cultural Education in the Rural
World: Communist Propaganda Clichs as reflected in the Kulturlis
tmutat [ndrumtorul Cultural] in the Years 1948-1949. This time, the
community taken into account by the communist propaganda was the
Hungarian one of the Hungarian Autonomous Region. On the basis of the
local press, the author presents the process of reorganization of the artistic
life and the steps taken by authorities to impose a campaign of community
education in both cities and villages, and also the means and methods used
by the Romanian Labour Party in the campaigns of cultural education of
the years 1948-1950 in a rural area mainly inhabited by Hungarians.
The study of Eli Pilve, Ideological Upbringing in Estonian SSR School
Lessons Based on the Example of Extolling Soviet Agriculture shows the
way in which, in the framework of the school lessons in Estonia, in the
years of communism, the power was glorified and the system of agriculture of cooperative type was idealized. And in the conditions with 67% of
the countrys population living in the rural environment in 1939, it is easy
to understand why the new authorities gave such a great importance to
the theme of the collectivization of agriculture and transmitting the communist ideology via textbooks. In order to achieve the maximum efficiency, the propaganda had to be done by all means, reasons for which the
cinema could make no an exception. How the historical process of the
collectivization of agriculture was presented in movies, both in the Soviet
Union (in four movies) and in Romania (in seven movies), are analyses in
a comparative manner by Mihaela Grancea and Olga Grdinaru in the
study The Collectivization Process in the Soviet and Romanian Films. A

Comparative Perspective.
The Promethean dimension of the communist regime in the Soviet Union
was taken over and implemented by the representatives of the communist
parties also in other countries that entered in Moscows sphere of influence. And such approaches could not be put into practice without a propagandist stand. But what did the changing of the environment matter in
the vision of the communists, when they were doing social engineering
and changed even human nature? About the way in which this transformation of nature after the soviet model was implemented in Hungary until the first half of the 50s, how new agricultural crops (cotton, rice) have
come to have an unprecedented significance, or about the development of
the system of irrigation, wrote Zsuzsanna Borvendg and Mria Palasik
in the study Hungary and Stalins Plan for the Transformation of Nature
through Propaganda.
Organization and political

practices within
the countryside of the
Eastern Bloc
Lords of the Countryside: Personal Characteristics of the First

Secretaries of the County Committees of the Estonian Communist Party in the Second Half of the 1940s
Olev LIIVIK
In the Baltic States, which were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union
in 1940 and then conquered by Germany from 1941 to 1944/45, one of
the most urgent tasks of the leaders of those Soviet republics was to create a social basis for the regime to strengthen and expand the power of
the Communist Party. In order to achieve that, it was necessary to increase the number of Communist Party members and to promote communists to leading positions on all levels from the republican level to
the villages.1 Achieving both of these tasks was far from easy. On the one
hand, the majority of the local population were hostile towards the foreign power that had destroyed their independence, and, on the other hand,
the communist regime also distrusted the local people. For these reasons,
the admission of local people into the Communist Party and their placement in leading positions was very limited in the 1940s. The result was a
lack of personnel everywhere and on all levels, which was only partially
alleviated by bringing in personnel from old Soviet republics. There was
a particularly severe lack of politically trustworthy and loyal personnel in
rural areas. Even the communists in the countryside appointed in leading
position in rural municipalities were not trusted by the leaders of the Soviet republics, because most of them had no experience in administrative
work, their ideological preparation was weak, and they were often corrupt
or tended to be too friendly towards the local population.2 In such a situation, most of the responsibility of sovietising rural areas3 fell onto the
power structures of the county, particularly on the First Secretary of the
Communist Party of the County, who was not an extremely powerful
man, as Kees Boterbloem depicts the First Secretary of the Oblast
1
2
, 1940-1953 (: , 2008),
145-146.
David Feest, Collectivization of Agriculture in the Baltic Soviet Republics,
1944-1953, in Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe:
Comparison and Entanglements, eds. Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper
(Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2014), 87-88.
For the term Sovetisation, see: Olaf Mertelsmann, On the Term Sovetisation,
Humanitro zintu vstnesis 18 (2010), 78-93.
60 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
Committee4 but was still, on the one hand, a kind of a master of the County, who governed over the whole County and controlled the structure of
the party of the county, local party organisations and the administrative
structure, but, on the other hand, was a subordinate, whose obligation was
to obediently fulfil and intermediate the orders from Moscow and from
leadership of the Soviet republic and to supervise their execution.
In this article, I study the personal characteristics of the First Secretaries
of the County Committees of the ECP5 in the Estonian SSR6 from 1944 to
1950 from the return of the Soviet power to the liquidation of counties. I
examine nationality, origin, language skills, length of party membership,
age distribution and education of the county party leaders, asking whom
did the leaders of the Estonian SSR entrust with leading the county in the
difficult conditions after the Second World War?
County administration and Party Secretaries
The history of counties in Estonia began hundreds of years ago. From
1917 to 1950 and since 1990, a county was the major administrative unit
in Estonia. After the Republic of Estonia was annexed by the USSR in
1940, the existing administrative-territorial division was not changed at
first and counties remained in existence until 1950, when Estonia was divided into raions. However, the number and borders of counties were repeatedly changed in the 1940s. While in 1940 Estonia had 11 counties, in
1950, it had 13. In 1944, the Petseri County was abolished and most of the
rural municipalities of the former county went under the Russian SFSR,
but in 1946 the Hiiu County and in 1949 the Jhvi and Jgeva Counties
were formed.7
However, in 1940, the two-level local government system, where the first
level consisted of rural municipalities and cities and the second of counties,
was abolished and, along with the government and administrative system,
4
Kees Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945-1953
(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999), 101.
5
The Communist Party of Estonia (ECP) was the territorial organization of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
6
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.
7
Liivi Uuet, Eesti haldusjaotus 20. sajandil [The Administrative Division of Estonia
in the 20th Century] (Tallinn: Eesti Omavalitsuste hendus, Riigiarhiiv, 2002),
79-83
Lords of the Countryside: Personal Characteristics of the First... __________ 61
was unified with that of the USSR, where the monopoly of power belonged
to the Communist Party. The system established on the example of the
USSR meant the introduction of a binary power and directorial structure.
On all levels, its instruments included both the bodies of the Communist
Party and the State8, the relation and competence of which were not legally regulated. This was also justified by the Leninist principle according to
which the legislative, executive and judicial functions were to be intentionally and purposefully intermixed and the need to delineate the tasks of
institutions was to be disregarded.9
By the end of 1940, the Soviet Executive Committees of Peoples Commissars as local state bodies and County Committees as party bodies were
formed in the annexed Estonia. The latter were led by the First Secretaries of County Committees, whose position were part of the CPSU Central
Committee nomenklatura10, which is why assigning County Secretaries
required the approval of the higher party bodies in Moscow.11 Those assigned to the position rose to the highest level of their former careers, the
next step would have been a top position in the party or state system,
which remained unattainable for many County Secretaries.
In 1940, the appointed county leaders with one exception were those first
rank local communists who had been active underground in the Republic of
Estonia and had been sentenced to forced labour for communist activities.
Only the Russian Aleksei Ovsyannikov had joined the party after the annexation of Estonia in 1940, but even he had been a part of the activities of
leftist organisations during Estonian independence.12 Following the out8
Instead of state organ the term Soviet organ was used.

Vladimir Lenin, Riik ja revolutsioon [The State and Revolution] (Tallinn:
Poliitiline Kirjandus 1947), 41-42, 81-82.
10
For the Soviet party nomenklatura system, see: Bohdan Harasymiw, Nomenklatura. The Soviet Communist Party`s Leadership Recruitment System, Canadian Journal of Political Science 2 (1969), 493-512; T[homas] H[enry]
Rigby. Staffing USSR Incorporated. The Origins of the Nomenklatura System, Soviet Studies 4 (1988), 523-537.
11
Olev Liivik, Parteikomiteed 1944-1960, [The Party Committees, 1944-1960]
in Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid 1940-1991
[Local Party Organizations of the Communist Party of Estonia], ed. Enn
Tarvel (Tallinn: Kistel-Ritso Eesti Sihtasutus, 2005), 89.
12
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid 1940-1991 [Local
Party Organizations of the Communist Party of Estonia, 1940-1991], ed. Enn
Tarvel (Tallinn: Kistel-Ritso Eesti Sihtasutus, 2005), 300-301.
9
62 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
break of war between the USSR and Germany in the summer of 1941,
some of the County Secretaries were evacuated to the rear of the USSR,
but most remained underground in Estonia, where they were captured and
executed. In 1944, after Estonia was conquered by the Red Army, the Soviet
officials returned. Most of the surviving County Secretaries were already appointed to their former positions in 1944 or after being demobilised from
their political work in the Red Army, but the leaders of the Soviet Republic were usually not satisfied with their work and all except for the aforementioned Aleksei Ovsyannikov, who remained a County Secretary until
the spring of 1950, were dismissed quite quickly. In fact frequent replacing of County Secretaries was common during the post-war years. In total,
44 communists were employed as First Secretaries in the counties of the
Soviet Estonia from 1944 to 1950, the largest of the counties Harju
County had a total of seven First Secretaries. As a rule, the First Secretary kept their position for one to two years and only two of them worked
on the position for more than three years.13
Nationality, origin and language skills
The First Secretaries of the ECP County Committees were mainly of Estonian nationality. During the years of 1944 to 1950, 35 of the 44 communists who governed the counties were Estonian and 9 Russian. This
data is based on the personnel documents of the Secretaries of County
Committees, which were composed according to the existing approach in
the USSR from the 1930s nationality is a congenital and permanent
characteristic.14 Therefore, a citizen of the USSR was born with a certain
nationality and remained of that nationality until death, even though the
formal nationality that was based on the nationality of their parents may
have differed from the persons national identity. While being determined
by a biological criterion, nationality was also a legal category, as the nationality of all USSR citizens was noted in their passports and it had to be
stated in several applications, forms and other official documents.15
13
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid 1940-1991, 361-363.

Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the
Soviet Union 1923-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 448.
15
For Ethnic self-identification and personal documents, see: Rasma Karklins,
Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below (Boston, London:
Allen & Unwin, 1986).
14
Therefore, an Estonian continued to be an Estonian by the objective definition of nationality even if their family had lived in Russia for several
generations and they did not speak Estonian, as is abstractly noted by
David Feest, who studied the post-war sovietisation of Estonian rural municipalities.16 In reality, the ethnic Estonians appointed to party and state
positions in Estonia during the post-war years were mainly the descendants
of those having migrated to Russia at the end of the 19th and the beginning
of the 20th century or those having left Estonia with their parents as a child.
Those having returned in the 1940s however included people who were Estonian only according to their documents as they had no connections with
Estonian culture and did not understand the Estonian language.
Most of the arrivals did have a proper command of Estonian at least in
speech, but reading and writing skills varied significantly among those
having been born and raised in Russia. The Estonian skills of ethnic Estonian functionaries who came to Estonia from the USSR did not only
depend on their parents and family, but also on whether they had lived in
the city or at an Estonian settlement or whether they had been educated in
Russian or whether Estonian was also taught at school. The communist
leadership in Moscow and the holders of the top positions at the republican
level did not bother with these issues. Ethnic Estonians with a USSR
background were preferred to locals because of political trustworthiness,
better ideological preparation, experience in the Soviet party and state
work, and the command of both languages Estonian and Russian. Since
sending ethnic Estonians to the Soviet Estonia was part of the personnel
policy of Moscow, the leaders and agencies of ESSR constantly requested
the central authorities of the USSR to send Estonian communists and Estonian-speakers to Estonia, implying that the command of Estonian was
necessary for working in the Soviet Estonia.17 In reality, this was only
half-true, as Estonian skills were required only from ethnic Estonians with
a Russian background, but not from the numerous Russians (their num16
David Feest, Zwangskollektivierung im Baltikum. Die Sowjetisierung des

estnischen Dorfs 1944-1953 (Kln, Wien: Bhlau, 2007), 83.
17
Olev Liivik, Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee aparaat 1945-1953
[Apparatus of the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party, 19451953] (Tartu: Tartu likooli Kirjastus, 2006), 64, 74; Hill Kulu, Eestlaste tagasirnne 1940-1949 Lne-Siberist prit eestlaste nitel [The Return Emigration of Estonians in 1940-1989 Based on the Example of Estonians from
Western Siberia] (Tartu: Tartu likooli Kirjastus, 1999), 132.
64 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
bers were even higher than those of assigned Estonians) who Moscow sent
to work at leading positions in the 1940s, including in the counties.
The position of the First Secretary of the County Committee required Russian skills, but a command of Estonian was also advisable as Estonian
had to be used for communicating with local residents and the personnel
of the rural municipality. However, Russian was the main language of
operation at the central institutions of the state, and without knowing
Russian, it was impossible to communicate with Russian-speaking personnel, who were also members of County Committees.
From 1944 to 1950, the First Secretaries of County Committees included
21 ethnic Estonians with a Soviet background, i.e. they made up nearly
half of the Secretaries. According to the personnel records, they all spoke
both Estonian and Russian. A closer investigation reveals that the Estonian skills of some party secretaries were quite poor or nearly non-existent.
Eduard Eiche, who was the party leader of the largest county Tartu
County from 1945 to 1946, elucidated in one of his letters to the ECP
Central Committee that he was able to read in Estonian as much as he had
taught himself during his employment in Estonia and admitted that he is
not able to give a political speech in Estonian as he was unable to pronounce all words and expressions.18 It is clear that the completely Russified Eduard Eiche did not understand Estonian at all, which could have
been one of the reasons why he was removed from the position of the
County Secretary quite quickly. Hugo Tamm, who was employed at Vru
County during the same period, was better at Estonian. In his personnel
documents, he confirmed that he spoke Estonian, but read and wrote it
poorly.19 When possible, Russian was also preferred to Estonian by those
Estonians of non-local origin who did not complain of their command of
Estonian, but still felt insecure when communicating in the language. A
similar situation was prevalent also at other organisations of the ESSR.
Ethnic Estonians of the USSR background with poor Estonian skills
could also be found among the personnel of the ECP Central Committee
and among ESSR Government as Ministers.20
18
Letter, Eduard Eiche to the Bureau of the Central Committee of the ECP, January 1, 1946, Eesti Riigiarhiiv (Estonian State Archives, hereinafter ERAF) 16-4251, 40.
19
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid, 328-329.
20
Olev Liivik, Rahvus- ja naispoliitika Nukogude Eestis: Eestimaa
Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee aparaadi rahvuslik ja sooline koosseis
In 1940, the number of local Estonians employed as First Secretaries of

County Committees was one third less than the one of non-local Estonians.
While in 1945, half of the First Secretaries were local Estonians, in the
following years, there were two to three Estonians among them at most.
The ratio of local Estonians among the First Secretaries of the County
Party increased again in 1949, when two new counties were formed and
the First Secretaries of many existing ones were replaced.21
Similarly to the Estonians with a Soviet background, the local Estonians
who governed counties also spoke Estonian and Russian. Yet, it is known
that there were Estonians among County Secretaries whose command of
Russian was considered poor. In 1947, the ESSR party leader Nikolai
Karotamm wrote about the First Secretary of the Harju County Committee, Rudolf Meijel, stating that he spoke poor Russian and did not make
an effort to learn it.22 Apparently, the situation was not so hopeless for
Meijel to be removed from the position of the Harju County Secretary,
but rather, the party leader was worried that due to poor Russian skills,
the Party Secretary cannot be admitted to the Party School in Moscow. It
is probable that Meijels subordinates included his peers who had grown
up in the Republic of Estonia and did not speak any Russian at all.
As with Estonians, local Russians should be differentiated from non-local
ones. From 1944 to 1950, all but one of the County Secretaries with Russian
nationality were of local descent and spoke Estonian fluently. It is very
probable that their command of Estonian was even better than the one of
many ethnic Estonians with a Russian background, as they had received
their education during the Republic of Estonia and certainly had studied
some subjects in Estonian. In the 1940s, party functionaries of EstonianRussian descent may have preferred speaking Estonian rather than Russian
1945-1953, [Nationality and Gender Politics in Soviet Estonia: the Nationality
and Gender of the Members of the Estonian Communist Party Central
Committee, 1945-1953] petatud Seltsi Aastaraamat 2006 [Yearbook of the
Learned Estonian Society in 2006] (Tartu: petatud Eesti Selts, 2008), 54-74;
Olev Liivik, Eesti NSV Ministrite Nukogu: Kas liiduvabariigi paljurahvuselise
haldusaparaadi rahvuslik vimuorgan?, [The ESSR Council of Ministers: a
Nationality-Based Organ of Power for the Union Republics International
Administration?] in Nukogude Eesti klma sja ajal [Soviet Estonia during
the Cold War], ed. Tnu Tannberg (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2015), 31-58.
21
Liivik, Parteikomiteed,132-137.
22
Personal file of Rudolf Meijel, ERAF 1-6-12167, 28-32.
66 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
in the public space, which can be explained by Nikolai Karotamms preference for Estonian. The speech of the First Secretary of Harju County,
Nikolai Turkestanov, in the early spring of 1950 at the ECP Central Committee plenum is worth noting. He stated: I apologise for giving a speech
in Russian for the first time. Although I am Russian myself, I have never
spoken in Russian at plenums.23 It must be added that at the same party
plenum, the party leader Karotamm was dismissed on the orders from
Moscow, being blamed for favouring bourgeois nationalism.24 His opponents demanded the wider use of Russian in society and considered
speaking Estonian nationalistic.25
In the summer of 1950, in the atmosphere of uncovering bourgeois nationalism, Georgi Bolshagin was the first and last non-local Russian to
be appointed as the First Secretary of the County Committee. He belonged
to the so-called international cadre, and after had been assigned to work
in Estonia, his first position being the Second Secretary of the Viru County in 1946. The institution of the Second Secretary had a unique status in
the soviet national republics such as Estonia. Namely, personnel placement in party structures as well as in executive and legislative power
structures was carried out along relatively peculiar lines. An emissary
from Moscow was appointed as the deputy of a native to balance the national factor and supposed to look after the activities of the head of the
organisation or structural unit.26 As a rule, these functionaries had no mo23
EK(b)P Keskkomitee VIII pleenumi stenogramm. III, [Stenograph of 8th

Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the ECP(b). III] Akadeemia 2
(1999), 428.
24
For the concept bourgeois nationalism and its implementation in Soviet Estonia
see: Olev Liivik, Campaign against bourgeois nationalism and repressions
in Estonia, in Estonia since 1944: Reports of the Estonian International
Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, eds. Toomas
Hiio, Meelis Maripuu, Indrek Paavle (Tallinn: Estonian Foundation for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 2009), 113-129.
25
Olev Liivik, The Estonian affair in 1949-1952 and the 8th Plenary Session
of the Central Committee of Estonian Communist (bolshevist) Party in 1950,
in Estonia since 1944: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for
the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 143.
26
,
, 1944-1956: c (: , 2010),
38-39; Olev Liivik, Eesti NSV Ministrite Nukogu institutsionaalne areng ja
kaadrid 1940-1953 [Institutional Development and the Cadres of the Council
tivation or need to learn the local language and Georgi Bolshagin did not
do so either. Thus, Bolshagin was the only representative of the purely
Russian factor among County Secretaries. Others were either locals or
with their Estonian roots and had a proper command of Estonian, albeit
with a few exceptions.
Length of party membership and age
Pursuant to the Articles of Statute of the Communist Party, the Secretary
of the County Committee was required to have a previous length of party
membership of three years.27 This requirement was not yet implemented in
the Baltic Soviet republics in 1940 as the number of members of the Communist Party was too small and higher level party positions desperately
needed to be filled with people who had just been accepted as members
under simplified conditions. However, since 1944, no concessions were
made with regard to the length of membership. Nevertheless, the length of
membership continued to have an insignificant role when selecting County
Secretaries. The practices of appointing Party Secretaries at the Estonian
SSR show that until the liquidation of counties, those party functionaries
who had been members of the CPSU for a few years more than the minimum requirement established in the Articles of Statute were often appointed as County Secretaries. In the middle of the 1940s, also some
Estonians with a USSR background and a length of membership of more
than 25 years, who had joined the Communist Party at the time of Russian revolution or during the Civil War years, were appointed as County
Secretaries. The First County Secretary with the longest length of membership at the CPSU was August Puusep, who worked in Viljandi County
for a short period. He had joined the party at the end of 1918, while working as the Head of the Financial Division of the Executive Committee of
the Tambov Province.28 In addition, in 1919, during their service in the
of Ministers of the Estonian SSR, 1940-1953] (Tartu: Tartu likooli Kirjastus,
2014), 154.
27
As there were no County Committees elsewhere in the USSR, the provisions
regarding Raion Committees were applied to them. See: leliidulise Kommunistliku (bolevike) Partei phikiri. (hel hlel vastu vetud K(b)P
XVIII kongressil) [Articles of Statute of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party of
the Soviet Union. (Unanimously adopted at the XVIII Congress of the
CPSU(b))] (Tallinn: RK Poliitiline Kirjandus 1946), 25.
28
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid, 312.
68 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
Soviet Army, the later Prnu County Secretary, Aleksander Jaksobson,

and Eduard Eiche who was introduced in the previous chapter, were admitted to the Communist Party.29
August Minne, who acted as the Secretary of Lne County from 1945 to
1948, had joined the party long before them. He joined the party in 1917,
but due to having lost his party ticket on the frontier of the Russian Civil
War in 1920, he was considered to have joined CPSU in 1925.30 Two
other First Secretaries of County Committees also had interruptions in
their length of membership. Andrei Torf, who was the First Secretary
consecutively of both Prnu and Harju Counties in the second half of
1940, was a member of CPSU since 1925, but was expelled from the party during the Great Terror of 1937. His party membership was restored
already in 1939, but the years 1937-1939 were not included in his length
of membership.31 The fate of the later Tartu County Secretary, Peeter Tiido,
who was a member of CPSU since 1939, was even worse. He was expelled from the party in 1937 and imprisoned. After bearing his punishment, he applied for the restoration of his party membership, which
happened in 1942, but this with an interruption in his length of membership from 1937 to 1942.32
The County Secretary of local descent with the longest length of membership was Karl Hanson, who joined the ECP while it was an underground organisation in the Republic of Estonia in 1923. In 1924, he was
sentenced to forced labour for communist activities, and a few years after
his release in 1936 he emigrated to the USSR. Hanson participated in the
Civil War in Spain and from 1937 to 1939 was also a member of the
Communist Party of Spain. When the Civil War ended, he was placed at a
concentration camp in France, but he managed to come to Estonia with
the help of the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia and Paris and actively
participated in the sovietisation of Estonia since 1940.33
29
Liivik, Parteikomiteed, 142.

31
32
33
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee organisatsiooniline struktuur
1940-1991 [The Organizational Structure of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Estonia, 1940-1991], ed. Enn Tarvel (Tallinn: KistlerRitso Eesti Sihtasutus, 2002), 450-451.
30
Most First Secretaries of County Committees 27 of them, to be exact

were admitted to the party in 1940 or later. Seven of them had joined
ECP in the summer of 1940, when during a short period of time it was
possible to be admitted to the party on favourable conditions, without a
previous candidate status and generally also without recommendations of
party members. Most of those appointed as First Secretaries of County
Committees at the end of 1940s were admitted to CPSU from the Soviet
Army where they served in the Estonian national regiments. By the time
they were appointed as Party Secretaries, they had been members of
CPSU for 5-7 years on average. Local Estonian Otto Merimaa was probably the Secretary to be appointed as the Saare County Committees First
Secretary in 1949 with the shortest length of membership he had been a
member of the CPSU for a little more than three years.34
Requirements on the length of membership could have affected the average age of County Secretaries in the middle of the 1940s, as the young
men who had been admitted to the CPSU in the national regiments of the
Soviet Army and demobilised after the war, could not have been appointed as County Secretaries. On the lower level, it was easier, as a length of
membership of at least one year was required from the Party Secretaries
of Rural Municipalities. On the example of the rural municipalities in
Tartu County, most of the Secretaries had a length of membership of 1-3
years in the second half of 1940s, whereas the average age of Secretaries
from 1945 to 1950 was 31-37 years.35 The average age of First Secretaries of Counties during the same period was constantly below 40 years of
age, except at the end of 1945, when due to the changes in personnel in
1945, the average age of Secretaries quickly rose to 43 years of age. The
average age began to decrease quite significantly at the end of the 1940s,
falling from 1948 to the autumn of 1950 from 38 years of age to 34.36
Such a large falling trend in the average age was unprecedented among
higher-level positions in Soviet Estonia in most positions, the average
age increased at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of 1950s.
34
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee organisatsiooniline struktuur,

450-451.
35
Indrek Paavle, Kohaliku halduse sovetiseerimine Eestis 1940-1950 [Sovetization
of Local Administration in Estonia, 1940-1950] (Tartu: Tartu likooli Kirjastus,
2009), 168, 173.
36
70 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
Russians with local origin were relatively younger during their appointment as County Secretaries. Aleksei Shishkin was only 25 years old when
he was promoted to the position of the Party Secretary of the largest island in Estonia Saaremaa. He had been admitted as a member of the
CPSU in 1945, while serving in the Soviet Army. In 1949, the then 26year-old Nikolai Minski was appointed as the Party Secretary of the second largest island in Estonia Hiiumaa. He had also joined CPSU while
serving in the Soviet Army, but had done so in 1943. Boris Berzin was a
year older when he was appointed as the head of the Committee in Saare
County he had been a member of the CPSU since the summer of 1940.
Vladimir Makarov was the same age when he was appointed to Prnu
County in 1949 he had been admitted to CPSU in 1943 while being in
the Soviet Army. As was characteristic of the post-war period, County
Secretaries who were in their twenties already had experience in party
work, having held leading positions in the County Committees and in the
ECP Central Committee.37
Younger Estonian communists of local background were promoted to the
positions of County Committee Secretaries starting from 1949, when in
less than one year, four ethnic Estonians aged 28-32 were appointed. The
age structure of communists with a USSR background was more uneven.
Most of those appointed as County Secretaries in the middle of the 1940s
were 40 years old or older, however, starting from 1948, three Secretaries
were appointed who were in the beginning of their thirties.38 In general, the
personnel with USSR background were older than locals, and therefore,
more experienced. They had held leading positions in the administration
of the local soviets of the USSR and occasionally worked even at party
apparatus.
All County Secretaries who were over 50 or reached 50 years of age during
their appointment as a Secretary had a USSR background. The oldest of
them was August Puusep, who was 59 years old when he became the
First Secretary of Viljandi County in 1945. He was presumably the Estonian with the largest management and leadership experience in the USSR
as he had even been the Deputy of the Peoples Commissar of Agricul-
37
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid, 240-241, 278279, 286, 325-326.

38
Liivik, Parteikomiteed, 142-144.
ture of Kyrgyzstan, but he had no previous party work experience.39 By

1950, the age of non-local Estonians appointed as County Secretaries had
also fallen and when counties were liquidated, the oldest Secretary was
the Soviet Russian Georgi Bolshagin, who was 44 years old.40
Education
Never before or after in the 20th century have Estonian leaders been less
educated than in the 1940s. Unintelligent functionaries with a low level
of formal education could be found in all government bodies and institutions, on both local and republican levels. Estonian counties were no exception. There, the concentration of uneducated communists was higher
at the county level than at the republican one. Among County Secretaries,
Aleksei Ovsyannikov stood out particularly for his poor education. He
had graduated from a 4th-grade elementary school in the Republic of Estonia in 1927. As in his early years, his life was tied to his parents farm,
and he worked as a simple construction worker in the second half of the
1930s; he had no need to continue his education. After Estonia was occupied, he somehow caught the attention of the new leaders and was placed
to Petseri County in Southeast Estonia where he had been born and
raised. Back then, it was the only county where the Russian-speaking
population outnumbered the Estonian-speaking one. In that county,
Ovsyannikov held the position of the First Secretary from 1940 to 1941,
and from 1944-1950, he was consecutively the Secretary of Prnu and
Valga Counties. In the middle of the 1940s, the leaders of the Estonian
SSR repeatedly complained about his management skills, but did not look
for another job for him that would be more suited to his abilities. In 1945,
the Secretary of the ECP CC, Villem Kuusik, wrote on the occasion of
Ovsyannikovs placement from Prnu County to Valga County that
Ovsyannikov had trouble with managing the county due to his weak general educational and political preparation. In 1947, it was known to the
party leader of ESSR, Nikolai Karotamm, that Ovsyannikov did not do
much work to improve his knowledge and had trouble with Russian
grammar.41 Karotamms conclusion was logical: Ovsyannikov needed to
study hard and acquire a secondary education. Instead of advising
39

41
Personal file of Aleksei Ovsyannikov, ERAF 1-6-12608, 21, 28.
40
72 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
Ovsyannikov to study at a general educational institution, Karotamm

proposed admitting the basically illiterate county leader to the in-service
trainings of leading personnel at the Party School in Moscow, where he
would have been sent to the main course of the Party School. And this
was done. In 1947, Ovsyannikov attended the party courses in Moscow
and graduated in 1948. In the same year, he was admitted to the distance
learning department of the Higher Party School of the CPSU Central
Committee, although he did not have an upper secondary education,
which was formally required upon admission to that higher educational
institution.42 A similar course of action was chosen with the Russian
Nikolai Turkestanov who had been appointed as the Party Secretary of
Harju County in the autumn of 1949 he was also from Petseri County
and had graduated from elementary school there. He had participated in
courses for the leading personnel of the party and the soviet in Moscow
from 1946 to 1947 and in 1949 it was found that he was ready to begin
studies at the distance learning department of the Higher Party School of
the CPSU Central Committee. In 1945, when Turkestanov worked as the
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Harju County, the County Secretary of that time, Adolf Pss, wrote in bureaucratic jargon that Turkestanovs ability to find his way in politics had not fully developed yet,
suspecting the reason to be his low level of education.43 While Turkestanov was able to graduate from the Party School, Ovsyannikov was not.
In the spring of 1950, he was accused of favouring kulaks, bourgeois nationalists and counter-revolutionary elements and was removed from the
position of the Party Secretary and expelled from the Party School.44
On the basis of Ovsyannikov, Turkestanov and many other communists
with a similar educational background, it can be concluded that in addition to the political preparation of personnel, party schools also dealt with
the basic education of communists, helping them catch up in their general
education. A particularly peculiar educational institution was the Communist University of National Minorities of the West (CUNMW), which
operated in the USSR in the 1920s and during the first half of the 1930s
42
,
1940- ,
Tuna. Spetsvypusk po istorii Estonii XX veka (2010), 174-175.
43
Personal file of Nikolai Turkestanov, ERAF 1-6-3939, 18.
44
Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid, 300-301, 343344.
and was a higher educational institution only by its name. In the 1920s,
many young communists born in Russia or having emigrated from Estonia
were admitted there regardless of their previous education. Therefore,
many students had to be given a basic elementary education at first, after which their party political preparation continued. Since studies at the
school lasted for three years until 1929 and later for four years, it is
doubtful that any intellectuals came out of the school.45 In the post-war
Estonia, three CUNMW graduates worked as the First Secretaries of the
County. Alma Pruks is the only one whom it is confirmed as having had a
secondary education. Alma Pruks, who was the Party Secretary of Lne
County from 1948 to 1950, is also noteworthy among other County Secretaries for being the only woman to hold this position.46 Of the other two
CUNMW graduates, Aleksander Jaksobson had studied at a village
school, but had not graduated. Yet, as a graduate of CUNMW, Jaksobson
was considered a communist with a political higher education, who seems
to have developed into a sufficiently mature political worker and teacher
over the years so that he was accepted into the postgraduate programme
of CUNMW, which he did not graduate from due to the school being
closed. 47 However, on the basis of Jaksobson and other graduates of party schools, another conclusion can be drawn with regard to party schools:
the partys educational system enabled communists with a low level of
education to increase their formal level of education quickly and with little effort for most, this would have required a lot more effort in the general educational system. It is worth noting that in forms, party statistics
and reports only political education was shown for communists whose
level of general education was low, wherefore the statistics of the education of leading personnel looked somewhat better than they would have
done without party education.
45
Olev Liivik, Kas minu saatus testi nii kurb on, et mina ei vi isegi ppima
minna?: parteipoliitilise krghariduse thendusest ja omandamisest 1940ndail
aastail Eesti NSV kommunistide poolt, [Is My Fate Really So Sad that I Cannot Even Go to Study?: The Meaning of Higher Party-Political Education and
its Acquisition by Soviet Estonian Communists in the 1940s] in Snasse ptud
minevik: in honorem Enn Tarvel [History in Words: In Honorem Enn Tarvel],
eds. Priit Raudkivi, Marten Seppel (Tallinn: Argo Kirjastus, 2009), 331.
46
47
74 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
Even without party education, the classification of the levels of education

(and moreover, records kept on them) was confusing: elementary, incomplete secondary, secondary, vocational secondary, incomplete higher and
higher education. While in personnel statistics, an elementary education
was noted also for those who had not attended school for a single day in
their life, then the so-called intermediate levels of incomplete education
decreased the ratio of personnel with the lowest level of education, but
students of higher education schools, those having attended at one point
and, for example, the graduates of pedagogical seminaries were listed as
having incomplete higher education, although they had acquired only a
secondary education.
Aside from Aleksei Ovsyannikov and Nikolai Turkestanov, there were
three communists among the First Secretaries of Counties in the middle
of the 1940s who, according to the Soviet system of classifying the levels
of education, had an elementary education. Their educational background
differed. Eduard Eiche, who was born and raised in Russia, had studied at
a village school at the beginning of the 20th century and in his early forties had passed a course on economy for management employees in
Leningrad, which did not formally increase his level of education.48 The
previously introduced Karl Hanson, who had participated in the Spanish
Civil War, had studied at an elementary school in Estonia during the First
World War and then at Marinsk in Russia, but as the family returned to
Estonia, he did not graduate. During his employment as a County Secretary, it is not known that Hanson studied anywhere, but while working at
the Ministry of the Interior at the end of the 1940s, he acquired the profession of a lawyer by distance learning at the Higher School for Officers
of the Ministry of the Interior of the USSR.49 However, Oskar Abori, who
worked as the County Secretary of Viljandi County from 1940 to 1941
and again from 1944 to 1945, did not supplement his education neither
during his employment as a County Secretary nor after, although upon his
release in 1945, it was written that he was unsuitable for the position due
to political preparedness and general intelligence.50
48

450-451.
50
49
Compared to communists with elementary education, there were more

County Secretaries who had incomplete secondary education according to
the Soviet classification, which could also be considered basic education.
Among the nine County Secretaries with this level of education, there
were those with a USSR background who had not completed a secondary
school and also those who had dropped out from upper secondary school
in the time of Republic of Estonia. In the second half of the 1940s or later, some of them were sent to party schools after being released from the
position of a Party Secretary, whereas the admission to the party school
could have been one of the motives for release. By being sent to a party
school, the local Estonian, Eduard Sremat, was released from the position of the Party Secretary in 1948. From 1934 to 1936, he had the possibility of studying at the Lenins Comintern School in Moscow, but
according to records, it did not increase his level of education. In 1948,
he was assigned from Jrva County to the capital of the Estonian SSR
Tallinn to the Republican Party School of the ECP CC, where secondary education was not required upon admission. He was dismissed from
the position of the County Secretary due to alleged management errors
and his wifes kulak background. At the time, Nikolai Karotamm defended him by stating that the cause of his errors was the lack of political education.51 Rudolf Mejel, who was mentioned in the chapter regarding the
language skills of the Secretaries, was also sent from his Party Secretary
position to the party school in 1949 and this was also done with the Russian born and raised Andrei Torf both of them began studying full-time
at the Higher Party School in Moscow.52
In the years 1944 to 1950, there were 19 County Committee Secretaries
with secondary education, whereas two of them had studied at a university in the Republic of Estonia and two had studied in USSR respectively at
the Kaganovich Industrial Academy and at a teachers institute. According to personnel documents, Nikolai Tilk raised in Russia and employed as the Secretary of Jhvi County in 1950 was also considered to
have incomplete higher education, although there probably was no basis
for doing so. In the 1920s, Tilk had studied at an elementary school for
three years, then graduated in three years from a technical school in Leningrad as a land surveyor and continued to improve his knowledge also
51
52
Personal file of Eduard Sremat, ERAF 1-6-13778, 43.

Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid, 282-283, 335-336.
76 ___________________________________________________ Olev LIIVIK
during employment by attending courses for increasing his qualifications

at the Omsk Agricultural Institute at the beginning of the 1930s. During
the Second World War, he was admitted to the Soviet Armys political
staff courses, but did not complete them, and in 1948 to 1949 he passed
in-service training for party and soviet personnel at the Higher Party
School in Moscow.53 Meanwhile, the education acquired by Peeter Tiido
in 1935 at the distance learning department of the Institute of Journalism
of Moscow, was re-evaluated as secondary education in 1940.54 Why a
person having undergone qualification courses had an incomplete higher
education and a graduate of the Institute of Journalism had a secondary
education was probably known to the Soviet educational bureaucrats, but
in such cases as the one of Peeter Tiido or Nikolai Tilk, the personnel bureaucracy of the ECP CC interpreted the level of education once in one
way and then in another.
Among County Secretaries with secondary education, there were also
several party functionaries who had studied or were studying at party
schools, four of whom had graduated from the state party school before
becoming County Secretaries, formally having an incomplete political
higher education. In addition, one of the Party Secretaries with a USSR
background had studied at CUNMW, but had dropped out, and one Russian-born County Secretary had been admitted to the distance learning
department of the Higher Party School.55 Other County Secretaries with
secondary education did not continue their education while working as a
Secretary.
Every fourth First Secretary of the County Committee had a formal higher education. Although the indicator was modest, it probably exceeded
the average level of old Soviet republics. For example, in the post-war
Vinnytsia Oblast in Ukraine, 16% of communist Secretaries of the City
and Raion Committees had higher education.56 However, it has to be noted that of the eleven County Secretaries with higher education in Estonia,
five had party education. The latter included three CUNMW graduates
and two graduates of the Higher Party School of the CPSU Central
53

55
Liivik, Parteikomiteed, 142-144.
56
Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War. The Second World War and the Fate of the
Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 63.
54
Committee. Two of the remaining Secretaries had studied in Estonia, one

as an engineering technician and the other had graduated in economy a
speciality with which he would have been more suited to be the head of
industry of the state. Those raised in the USSR educational system included a historian-propagandist, a lawyer, an expert in Soviet finances
and a teacher.57
Therefore, it can be said that the educational background of County Secretaries was extremely varied and the level of education was uneven and
relatively low. In order to increase the level of education and professionalism of the personnel, acquiring a party political education was favoured. By such means, the leaders of the Soviet Estonia hoped to
improve the preparedness and management skills of the Secretaries.
Conclusions
In October 1950, counties and rural municipalities were liquidated in Estonia
as their existence had become anachronistic, still reminiscent of the Republic of Estonia. Thirty-nine raions were formed instead of counties.
The former County Secretaries were dismissed, but most of them were
reassigned as Secretaries of Raion Committees. The profile of a Raion
Party Secretary differed somewhat from the one of the County Secretary.
While most of the County Secretaries were Estonian and the ratio between locals and non-locals was equal, then among Raion Secretaries
there were more communists of Russian ethnicity and the position was
dominated by the former Second Secretaries of County Committees, who
had been assigned to Estonia by the CPSU CC and did not speak Estonian. In comparison to County Secretaries, the average age and length of
party membership of raion leaders increased. Still as was done with the
County Secretaries in the 1940s mainly younger communists with no
experience at a position with such a level of responsibility were appointed
as Raion Secretaries. The level of education and political preparedness of
Raion Secretaries was better than that of County Secretaries, and so the
party leaders no longer had to take care of creating the conditions for increasing the level of education of the Secretaries of Raion Committees
and providing them with basic political preparation.
57

298-299; Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid, 242,
312, 339-340.
The Policy of the Partys Organization in the Lipcani District

of the Moldavian SSR in 1944-1945
Marius TR
Introduction
This paper is dedicated to the issue of the Partys policy in a little district
from the most north-western part of the Moldavian SSR the Lipcani
district in the Baltsy (rom. Bli) county. This area covered the greatest
part of the territory of the Lipcani district from the former Khotyn county
in 1938, which was divided by the Soviet authorities in August 1940 between Ukrainian SSR and Moldavian SSR.1 A considerable part of this
district had a border along the Prut River with Romanias Dorokhoy
(rom. Dorohoi) county. The district was created in August 1940 by the
Soviets and was recreated after their military comeback on the 28th of
March 1944. The district covered a territory of 0,5 thousand square km,
while the entire Moldavian SSR had 33,7 thousand square km. The total
population of the district, in 1945, counted 46,593 inhabitants. From
these 30,163 were Moldavians (Romanians).2 The second main ethnic
group were the Ukrainians. Before the Second World War in Lipcani also
existed an important Jewish community. Later, in 1950, according to the
evaluative Partys data, the Lipcani district had 43,900 inhabitants (from
whom 5,600 an urbanized area).3 In 1945 in the Lipcani district existed
6,106 families of the recruited, from this 2,698 families had state allocations.4 For the number of the demobilised between 17th of November
1945 and 4th of January 1946, see Table 3.
1
The former Lipcani district lost in its western part the villages of Zelena, Kishla
Salieva and Kishla Zaimeva. These villages passed to the Chernautsy region of
the Ukrainian SSR.
2
Archive of Social-Political Organizations from Republic of Moldova (ASPO),
Fund 51, inventory 3, folder 90 (51/3/90), 68.
3
ASPO, 51/19/49, 1-4. Other data from 1950 Lipcani had one hotel with 10
places and one bath. There was no aqueduct and sewage. Twenty-five radio
receiving stations and 27 schools with 6.900 pupils existed in the district. Four
hospitals with the capacity of 145 beds, 11 points for birth and one station for
epidemics, also existed.
4
ASPO, 146/1/21, 31.
The Policy of the Partys Organization in the Lipcani District... ___________ 79
In this paper I will pay attention to the main Partys activities till the
middle of 1945 on the basis of the documents of the local Partys committee. The Lipcani Party organization was subordinated to the Baltsy
Countys Committee of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party from Moldavia.
The documents of the Lipcani organization in 1944-1949 are preserved at
the Archive of Social-Political Organizations from Republic of Moldova
in Chisinau, Fund no. 146. The study of these documents can show at a
micro-scale the measures of the re-sovietisation of Bessarabia in the rural
area and the rhythm in which this process was carried on. The Lipcani
case also has something particular because of the military units and frontier guards which were established there and which had several misunderstandings with both the Party and Soviets staff. The Lipcani district
consisted of 22 villages5 and one urbanised village as residence Lipcani.
The paragraphs of this paper refer to the beginning of the Soviet policies
in spring 1944, to the education issue in the district, to the priorities of the
communists until the end of 1944 and finally to the reunion held on 9th of
June 1945 when the districts communists made their conclusions after
one year and two months of their rule.
The first steps of the Lipcani Partys Committee in spring 1944
The first assembly of the Lipcani bureau was on the 8th of May 1944. It
had four participants E. Antonov,6 N. Roshchin,7 M. Kalinin8 and F.
Rotary.9 The agenda contained two issues the first one was the state of
the grain reserves in the district and the second one, the creation of the
primary Partys organizations in the district.10 The report on grain reserves was read by a lieutenant, comrade Mirovitsky. This indicates that
5
Among them the largest Berlintsy, Bogdaneshty, Bezeda, Belyavinets, Hlina,

Drepkautsy, Kotelna, Grimozyany, Korzheutsy, Kotyuzhany, Kriva, Larga,
Medvezha, Pereryta, Shirautsy, Sloboda Shirautsy, Tetskany and Zaluchya.
6
Secretary of the Districts Committee of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party from
Moldavia.
7
Secretary for staff.
8
The chief of the Executive Committee of the Districts Council.
9
In a document of the Sector of the Partys Statistics is fulfilled that in June
1944 in the Lipcani district only one Partys structure existed, at the districts
Committee, which had four members. It is interesting that the majority of other
districts had also at least NKVDs Party organization. ASPO, 51/2/82, 10v.
10
ASPO, 146/1/7, 1.
80 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
since the entrance of the Red Armys units at the end of March 1944 till
the 8th of May 1944, at least, the district was ruled by the military. They
were the ones who first organized the grain reserves, which they had to
use later for the needs of the army. On the other hand this shows that
there was no Party control on what was going on in the district.
After the report of Mirovitsky, the members of the bureau concluded that
the collecting of grains was unsatisfying from 3,732 planned tons, they
had at the collecting points only 195,8 tons. This situation could be the
result of such circumstances 1) the military didnt know how to deal
with the peasants; 2) the peasants hadnt interest in yielding their grains
to the state or 3) the peasants hadnt so much grain as the new authorities
required.
Among the reasons couched by the bureau were the lack of the organization of those responsible for grain collecting and of the Soviet institutions, the mistakes in the lists of the inhabitants who had to deliver bread,
the mistakes of the collectors from the military units (for example unit no.
03341 from Lipcani) and others. One of the most important reasons maybe, but it appears at the end, refers to the behaviour of the military in the
villages they admitted brutality and administrative methods11 towards the peasants and the villages Soviets staff.12
The final decisions were to open two new points of grain collection at
Larga and Tetskany, to indicate to the villages Soviets to end the collections till the 15th of May 1944, to address to the general-lieutenant
Vostrukhov to change the situation at the Lipcani military unit. Two issues from this first discussion held at Lipcani were lacking the diseases
and the education. As we will see below, there existed the Central Committees decisions on education, but it seems that they even were not discussed in some districts.
The next reunion of the Lipcani district committee was held on the 5th of
June. There was no evidence of how the grain collections campaign ended and which other measures they took between the 8th of May and the 5th
of June 1944. This suggests that the real data on these collections could
11
In the Russian language documents of the Lipcani district, appear the notions of
administrative, administrativism, which refer to the abuses of the communist
staff and military.
12
ASPO, 146/1/7, 1v.
be found only in the military documents, but which can only be consulted
in the case if they still exist, only in the Russian military archives.
Education in the Lipcani district in 1944
Education is one of the essential tasks of the Soviet system. Even if it was
not said every time, the Partys rulers from the Moldavian SSR referred
to the results of the Romanian domination in education. Thats why one
of the goals of the Commissariat for Education of the Moldavian SSR,
which was established at Soroca, was the organization of at least 4-5
weeks of studies in April-May 1945. This had to be done in accordance
with the Soviet scholar curricula, in the districts of the Northern Bessarabia, where the control of the Red Armys units existed. One of the main
problems, as is shown in the note of Gaponov from the 28th of April13 and
the report of M. Radul14 from the 5th of May 1944, was the lack of the
pedagogic staff. Radul explained in this way the majority of the teachers were driven to Romania by the occupants.15 In reality the teachers
were afraid of repressions and fled in March 1944.
In its order no. 35, from the 21st of April 1944, the Commissariat for Education decided the comeback to Soviet scholar program, as it was established in 1940-1941. A complementary measure was the replacing of the
Latin writing with the Russian alphabet. Also were planned tests for the
pupils at the end of May 1944.16 But the circumstances caused the educational authorities to give up. The Pedagogic councils of the schools received indications to decide without tests whom to pass from one class to
another.17 It can be appreciated that finally the Commissariat for Education failed in organizing the last weeks of the school year.
Another problem, which is reflected in an Educations Commissariat report, is that a considerable number of the buildings of the schools from
13
Gaponov was the chief of the Staff Section. He wrote a note to Salogor, the
secretary of the CC, about education in the Baltsy County (to which belonged
Lipcani district). At that moment in the county remained only 129 teachers
from 1482. Many schools were used as hospitals and only 18 of them were
ready to open their doors for the pupils. See ASPO, 51/2/52, 4.
14
In 1944 peoples commissar for Education in Moldavian SSR.
15
ASPO, 51/1/148, 19.
16
ASPO, 51/1/148, 12.
17
ASPO, 51/1/148, 48.
82 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
Northern Bessarabia were used by the military units and NKVD. In the
case of the Lipcani district, five schools could not be used by the civil authorities. The school no. 2 from Lipcani was used as a warehouse of the
medical unit and the school no. 3 belonged to a military unit (it could be
unit no. 033441 mentioned above). The school from the village Shireutsy
was used as a residence of the military chiefs. Two other schools from
Kriva and Zaluchya were occupied by the military.18
Only in the middle of July 1944, did the Partys committee from Lipcani
deal with the issue of the schools. The communists remarked that they
had only 50% of the teacher staff. The need of the schools was estimated
to be around 850 benches, 50 tables, 70 desks and 200 seats. Also they
had to repair several schools. The one responsible for education, Petrov,
had to find, with the help of the school rulers, old schoolbooks and literature for pupils because they hadnt received new ones. Also it was estimated that 3,000 pencils were necessary for pupils.19
In general, during the school year 1944-1945, the Moldavian schools had
no textbooks and the teaching of the Moldavian (Romanian) Language,
Literature and History were based on newspapers.20 The measures of the
CC and of the Comissariat for Education failed.
The districts committee nominated a number of headmasters only when
the new school year 1944-1945 had begun. In this case the communists
hadnt their own staff, and they were forced by the circumstances to promote local persons. Fyodor Lagutin (b. 1909, communist since 1943) became the headmaster of the middle school in Lipcani for a determined
period of time. Ivan Gavrilenko (b. 1907) who wasnt a Party member
became headmaster of the middle incomplete school in Lipcani. Another
non-communist, Vera Petrova, became the headmaster the school no. 3 in
Lipcani.21
In April 1945, at the Partys reunion, among the conclusions about the
schools were The districts schools are not supplied with textbooks
18
ASPO, 51/1/148, 32.

ASPO, 146/1/7, 14.
20
For more details see Marius Tr, Predarea istoriei n colile din RSS
Moldoveneasc n anii 1944-1945, [The Teaching of History in Schools of
the Moldavian SSR in 1944-1945] Studii i articole de istorie, LXXXII
(2015), 147-148.
21
ASPO, 146/1/7, 52.
19
The general educational level of the teachers is law, the majority of them
hadnt general or special education.22 The accents were changed at the
Partys reunion on the 9th of June 1945, when the teachers were criticized
for being illiterate and children of Kulaks, after the end of the school
year 1944-1945. The guilt was transferred from the failed policy of
both the Party and Soviets staff to the simple teachers who worked in
hard conditions.
The priorities of the Partys committee in district affairs
The administrative centre of the Moldavian SSR, after the Soviet offensive in March 1944, was established at Soroca. Soon members of the bureau and of the CC of the C(B)P from Moldavia came. Even if in
different districts the local Partys structures were soon formed, the public affairs issue remained unsolved for a long period of time. On the 15th
of June 1944, the CC adopted a decision concerning the ruling staff of the
towns and villages from Northern Bessarabia. It was mentioned that until the elections for the local Soviets of the workers deputies the following had to be formed:
a) The towns executive committees consisting of nine members;
b) The settlements and villages executive committees with 5-7 members.23
The districts committees and the districts executive committees had to
complete this task until the 1st of July 1944. The Lipcani committee received this decision, as it shows the entrance date, on the 25th of June.
The task was delivered to Roshchin who had to prepare the question together with Kateshin.
The documents of the Lipcani committee show that on the 5th of June
1944 it had on its agenda also the staff problems, beside such task as the
state collection of the animal products from peasants. During that meeting
certain office workers were confirmed the members of the Komsomol
22
ASPO, 146/1/14, 14v. The last part of the document, which contained the recommendations or the measures the Partys staff had to do, had no references to
the school issue.
23
ASPO, 146/1/24, 5.
84 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
bureau and its first secretary (Olga Shvedova born in 191724), the chiefs
of the propaganda section of the districts committee,25 of the military
section, the secretary of the districts Party organization,26 the chief of the
districts health section,27 the chief of the Belyavinets villages Soviet
section.28
At the next reunion the main task referred to the youth. After the report of
Shvedova it was the decision was adopted to mobilize the youth to complete the plan of the agricultural activities for 1944, to contribute to the
delivery of the products for the needs of the front and of the country.
Connected to this also existed the ideological issue to explain to the
young people the decisions of the Party and of the Unions government,
to inform them about what happened on the wars front, to explain the
new tasks, etc.29 The only task which was linked less or more with the interest of the simple inhabitants was the intention to open in each village
clubs and lecturing houses, to repair those which existed and to assure
them with books, newspapers and journals. Also the purpose of organizing choirs and Drama groups was specified. The second part of the reunion was dedicated to the problem of the agricultural works.
The approval of the staff members in different institutions continued at
the next session on the 17th of July 1944. Valentina Eremina (Russian, b.
1904)30 was appointed the second secretary of the districts committee
and Nikolay Roshchin (Russian, b. 1901)31 became the districts Party
secretary for staff. Mikhail Kalinin (Russian, b. 1909)32 became the chief
of the Lipcani districts executive committee of the Soviet section. Mikhail Ermolayev (Russian, b. 1909) became the chief of the organisational section of the Party in the Lipcani district. Finally Nikolay Omyachkin
24
The document doesnt specify the place of birth and the education, but only
birth date and the date of the Partys membership with its evidence number. In
the case of Shvedova, she was Party candidate member since 1942.
25
Vasily Kosmatykh, b. 1919, Partys member since 1942.
26
Ivan Kateshin in both functions, b. 1896, Partys member since 1919.
27
Ida Gimpelman, b. 1920, member of Komsomol (not clear from which year).
28
ASPO, 146/1/7, 3-4.
29
ASPO, 146/1/7, 10.
30
In the document also appears the education middle school and the Partys
membership since 1929. ASPO, 146/1/7, 12.
31
Middle school not complete education and Partys membership since 1928.
32
Middle school not complete education and Partys membership since 1930.
(Russian, b. 1903) was appointed secretary of the Partys organisation of

the Lipcani NKVD. In the document was written that he had 4 classes (!).33
Even if in the document the data on the new elected or appointed staff are
laconic; they are sufficient to make some preliminary conclusion. In a
district with Moldavian (Romanian) and Ukrainian population, the Party
designated mainly Russians as office workers. The second remark concerns the fact that they were brought from the Soviet Union (maybe the
former Moldavian Autonomous Republic), because the majority of them
became Party members beginning in the 1920s (see Table 1). It is possible that there existed a central decision against the promotion of locals in
public affairs. For the ethnic composition on the Lipcani committee in
1944-1945, see Tables 1 and 2.
In autumn 1944 the Lipcani committee paid attention to the youth. It was
mainly because they were interested in recruiting young man for the army. For example, for October one of the tasks was to empower the political education among the future recruits and to attract the best of them to
Komsomol.34 Beside this, another issue, which finally took into account
the interests of the inhabitants, was the medical one. The problem was
that in different districts of the Bessarabia typhus spread, but the authorities were passive.35
The folders do not contain the exact information on conscription for the
Army. This indicates that this was the job of the military commandment
from Lipcani, while the Party dealt only with the political education of
the recruits and after that tried to support the families of the recruits.36
33
ASPO, 146/1/7, 12.

ASPO, 146/1/7, 45.
35
For the diseases and mortality question see Leonid Bulmaga, Moldova n a
doua jumtate a secolului al XX-lea. Aspecte ale vieii social-economice
[Moldova during the Second Part of the XXth Century. Social and Economic
Aspects] (Chiinu: CEP USM, 2008), 47-48. Information about diseases,
especially typhus, in the Lipcani district in 1944 existed, but it is not in the
consulted folder. At page 53v of the folder 7 is written that the decision to
combat typhus in the district is attached, but on p. 54 begins the text of the
reunion from 21st of December 1944. Also on p. 53v there is no text of the
discussion on diseases but only the topic of this discussion.
36
ASPO, 146/1/7, 53. See also the folder of the Military Section, with laconic
information on its activity in June-December 1945 ASPO, 146/1/22. They
34
86 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
Beside the contributions of the animal products, there also existed a compulsory contribution in vegetables. The page containing information
about this is spoiled.37
The largest Party reunion in the Lipcani district in 1944-1945 was on the
17th of March 1945. At this one 315 persons participated and it was dedicated to the plan of the development of the agriculture in 1945. In fact,
as it results from the first discourse of the Kovalchuk from Medvezha village, the main purpose was to assure the Army with the agricultural products. This development, which was invoked, had nothing to do with the
interest of the simple inhabitants, but had to respond to the Partys commandments. Here it is important to notice that in 1944-1945 the Party
hadnt such an issue as the revival of the Kolkhoz. There could be several
explanations it was wartime, the people were afraid after the experience
of 1940-1941, or the Party simply changed its policy, becoming apparently softer.38 The text of the discussion from the 17th of March 1945 was
sent to CC of the C(B)M at Chisinau. As the secretariats note shows it
was received on the 3rd of April 1945.39
There were also other reunions, but in general, as noted above, the policy
promoted by the Party was one that was complementary to the collections
organized by the Army, surveillance of the agricultural works, the coordination of the staff policy, the political education of the recruited young
men, etc. Some conclusions for the first year and two months of Soviet
policy in the Lipcani district were made on the 9th of June 1945.
Lipcanis district reunion from the 9th of June 1945
Formally the districts Party reunion was organized as the result of the 5th
plenum of the CC of the C(B)P from Moldavia. The Presidium of the reunion was formed by Antonov, Kateshin, Roshchin, Kalinin, Rotary and
the first secretary of the Baltsy county Korneyev. The agenda of the day
referred to the conclusions of the 5th plenum.
tried to support the families of those dead in the war and of those injured. For
the data on those who came back alive from the war see Table 3.
37
ASPO, 146/1/7, 54v.
38
For example during the first occupation of the Bessarabia, from 1940-1941,
the Party had among the priorities also the marginalization of the Church and
began the repressions on clergy. In 1944-1945 there was no such priority.
39
ASPO, 146/1/16, 9.
The first who spoke after the speaker (the text of the speaker is lacking)
was Tsyganok. He referred to the propaganda issue there exists such
moments when the people do not understand the speaker because the
speaker doesnt know the Moldavian language. Such speaker must have a
translator. He also said that the states contributions in meat werent implemented correctly.40 After him, Matveev, who was responsible in the
Lipcani district for contributions, mentioned the bad quality of the work
of the agitators. He also referred to the lack of the storehouses and to the
fact that because of the unsanitary conditions they lost 163 tons of
grain.41 The delegate of NKVD, Rotary, criticized the activity of the institution responsible for contributions because it dissatisfied the peasants.
He also reminded people about the loss of 160 tons of maize. It is important that he mentioned the problem of the staff and the facts of corruption linked with the prosecutors office.42
Roshchin, the Partys staff secretary, remarked we deal here with the
beginners in the sphere of the Soviet system of activity. This requires an
individual approach towards people. He added that cases of bribe existed
among the medicines.43 The delegate of the Bank criticized the lack of
discipline among the communists. We propose decisions, we vote, and
after that we dont realize them. An important remark was that the
teachers hadnt received bread since April 1945.44 This idea was supported by Zhukovsky, the chief of the machine and tractor station, who also
remarked that the workers hadnt received their salaries for April and
May. Chernetsov from the Military Section completed the image with the
information that the families of the military hadnt received their allocations since April. On the other hand, the military education of the young
born in 1928 was unsuccessful.45
Heley, the chief of the districts Communication office, said that the taxes
perceived by inhabitants created dissatisfaction among them. It is important to note that in the next discourses, other problems that existed in
the district appeared. Kalinin, the chief of the districts executive committee made a sort of conclusion. The majority of us are here for more than
40
ASPO, 146/1/14, 18.

ASPO, 146/1/14, 18.
42
ASPO, 146/1/14, 19.
43
ASPO, 146/1/14, 19.
44
ASPO, 146/1/14, 19v.
45
ASPO, 146/1/14, 20.
41
88 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
one year. At the beginning we met big difficulties. A number of communists hadnt understood their tasks here. We began with the solving of
the question of the bread contribution. This was an essential question for
the country, but the administrativism [rus.]46 of some activists disturbed
our work. Many problems were determined by the instructions that the
frontier guards received where it was said, that the supreme authority
was the military one. In such cases the peasants didnt know to whom to
listen. At the end he added that the districts NKVD had was greatly lacking in its activity and didnt see the public offences.47
Dobrovolsky who represented the Frontier Guards control point from
Korzheutsy, had the most Bolshevik speech at that moment. He linked the
question of the teachers with that of the Kulaks. The local teachers staff
is illiterate politically, and the teachers also are, in general, illiterate and
mainly they are the children of the repressed Kulaks48, and so when we
seriously choose the staff, then it will be easier to carry on the measures
in the villages. It is necessary to balance the relationship between the
frontier guards and the local authorities. We have one common purpose,
but on the way of reaching it always appear divergences.49 His colleague from Lipcanis frontier guards, Lukashenko, criticized the districts propaganda and agitation section.
Kateshin tried to explain the mistakes of the communists. He said that
they had to base measures on poor and middle layer of the inhabitants.
Our agitation must be daily and with results firstly for the staff, and
through the staff among all the inhabitants. After that he referred to the
conflict with the frontier guards. At each reunion appears the topic of the
incorrect relations with the frontier guards. We have to finish with this
because we have common purposes and tasks.50
46
See footnote no. 9.

ASPO, 146/1/14, 20v.
48
He maybe referred to the Kulaks deportation from 11th-13th of June 1941. But
even in this case this idea had no sense. The Kulaks were deported together
with their children. And even if the children remained, not all of them had 1718 years in 1941 and became teachers until 1945. It seems that Dobrovolsky
tried to transfer to the Bessarabias reality an idea from the Bolshevik
experience in other parts of the Soviet Union.
49
ASPO, 146/1/14, 21v.
50
ASPO, 146/1/14, 21v.
47
In some ways, the conclusions of the reunion were made by Korneyev,

the secretary of the Baltsy county Partys committee. At the beginning he
underlined the appearance of a new context and of the necessity to work
in peaceful conditions. He mentioned that at the beginning they (the
communists) worked otherwise than now, making some mistakes. The
political work with the inhabitants hadnt taken into account the circumstances, but here were transferred mechanically the experiences of the
work in the eastern regions of the USSR. The main direction of the political activity here is the strengthening of the Moldavias power. While
conducting the political activity in villages we faced two features:
1. The backwardness of the inhabitants (68% illiterate).
2. We conduct ourselves with no lucidity our agitation.51
He recommended the selection of the staff from poor and very poor layers of the population. After that he referred to the problems with the frontier guards the misunderstanding of the common tasks. According to
him the main task for the next period was the preparation for the harvesting. Finally he stated that in the circumstances from Moldavia the Partys organization could and should grow.52
The final decision of the reunion had a number of conclusions that hadnt
appeared in the discourse of the participants, so we could suppose that
these were imposed by the official discourse and ideology at that moment. For example it was said that the activity of disclosure of the antipopular pro-fascist nationalist elements was conducted insufficiently.53
An interesting point referred to the studying by the activists of both the
Soviet and Partys staffs of the Moldavian (in fact Romanian) language.54
And also the national activists had to study the Russian language. This
had to be done according to a strong order.55 The last point of the decision, under no. 18, comprised one of the paramount tasks the bread
51
ASPO, 146/1/14, 22.

ASPO, 146/1/14, 22v.
53
ASPO, 146/1/14, 23.
54
The topic of the language was discussed at the CC of the C(B)P from Moldavia
on the 25th-27th of June 1944. And there were no results. At that plenum it was
said that we have to learn the Moldavian language not for me and for the
others, but for our common cause, to transmit more exactly, to propagate all the
decisions of our party, the decisions of our government. ASPO, 51/2/1, 101.
55
ASPO, 146/1/14, 24.
52
90 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
delivery in advance and the completing of the public procurement in the

terms established by the government.56
Conclusions
During the first year after its comeback, the Partys committees in Northern Bessarabia tried to take the control of the public sphere at the districts level. The case of the Lipcani district shows that the Party failed in
this. The first level of the failure was determined by the presence of the
military and of the border guards who considered that they had the supreme authority. The documents dont comprise concrete examples of the
conflict between the Partys structures and the military, but the discussions show that the simple communists hadnt the power in the face of the
arms. As we noted above, from its first contact in the collecting of products for the army in April-beginning of May 1944, the districts bureau
was unsatisfied with how the military unit from Lipcani organized this
process. The second level of failure is that because of the war situation,
the districts Party structures hadnt ideological tasks, but first of all they
had to watch the agricultural works in summer, to organise the warehouses in autumn, to repair the machines in winter, and in spring of 1945
to plan the development of the agriculture. The districts economy had
to support the Army and thats why the development wasnt possible and
on the other hand the revival of the Kolkhoz was postponed. Beside this,
the Party had to coordinate the staff policy, but even the nomination of
the headmasters of the schools was made late in autumn. This may be explained by the fact that the members of the districts bureau and the chiefs
of some institutions, even if they were Old Bolsheviks, since 19271930, they were not local and they didnt know the realities, the mentality
of the people, but also which methods to use (as is recognized by Korneyev, the Baltsy county first secretary on the 9th of June 1945). The documents also show that Party supported the conscription of young men,
assuring their political education and including to Komsomol the best
of them (from the Partys point of view).
The third level of the failure was in the direct relationship with the Partys policies and the inhabitants. The Party paid too little attention to such
problems as the diseases which spread after the return of the Soviets,
56
ASPO, 146/1/14, 25v.
among them typhus. Also the schools, even if in general the CC and Education Commissariat had the intention to support them in 1944-1945, this
policy failed. At least, at the end of this war period of one year and two
months (April 1944-May 1945), several participants of the Partys reunion from the 9th of June 1945 remarked that the teachers, the agricultural
workers, the family of the military and others, hadnt received their
bread, salaries or allocations for April-May 1945.
This reunion shows that the Party officially passed to the peace period,
but it also shows that among the tasks of its policy appeared the disclosure of the anti-popular pro-fascist nationalist elements.
Table 1. A) The Partys members from the Lipcani district in OctoberDecember 194457
Nationality
Men
Women
Total
Russian
18
7
25
Ukrainian
3
1
4
Byelorussian
2
2
Tartar
1
1
Chuvash
1
1
B) The Partys membership

Since year 1917 1918 1919 1920 1927 1928- 1931 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942
1930
Members 1
1
1
2
3
3
1
1
6
2
2
2
Source: ASPO, 146/1/20, 4-4v.
C) The age of the Lipcani communists (October 1944)

Age
Number
Under 25
1
25-35
12
35-45
13
45-60
2
Total
28
Source: ASPO, 51/2/80, 82.
Table 2. The Partys members from the Lipcani district in December 1945
Nationality
Men
Women
Total
Russian
30
16
46
Ukrainian
11
7
18
Byelorussian
2
1
3
Jew
3
3
Moldavian
2
2
Mordvin
1
1
Source: ASPO, 146/1/20, 38.

57
For comparison the situation in the Baltsy county in October 1944: Moldavians
20; Ukrainians 122; Russians 230; Other 52. ASPO, 51/2/80, 106.
92 ________________________________________________ Marius TR
Table 3. The data on demobilised from the Lipcani district between

17.11.1945 and 4.1.1946
Date
17.11.1945
5.12.1945
4.1.1946
Came
back
1262
1677
2035
Source: ASPO, 146/1/21, 23.
men
women
1249
1663
2021
13
14
14
Partys
members
9
13
17
Officers
sergeants
7
7
12
44
63
71
The Achilles Heel: Difficulties in Establishing a Functional

Party Network in the Transylvanian Countryside (1945-1947)
Bogdan IVACU
The current study intends to discuss a lesser-known aspect from the first
years of the Romanian communist regime: the organizational difficulties
that the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) had in establishing a reliable
party network in the countryside. Our research aims to deconstruct a
widespread clich: the Party as monolithic, infallible bureaucratic machinery, yielding a total control over every strata of society. This article
will try to prove that at least referring to the countryside, the above picture is inadequate.1
The proposed research relies on archive documents from various Transylvanian counties. Transylvania presents a specific feature in comparison to the Old Kingdom, due to its multi-ethnic composition: the cities
(such as Arad, Oradea or Cluj-Napoca) were dominated by minorities
during the interwar era and the first years after the war while the rural areas were overwhelmingly inhabited by Romanians. The Romanian communists were confronted in Transylvania with an insoluble dilemma: if
the party wanted to be a workers party it could not be Romanian, as most
of the qualified workers lived in big cities and belonged to the national
minorities; while a majority of Romanians could not be one of workers.
Recent investigations and research have provided a more complete picture of the
mechanisms used by the Romanian Communist regime to transform society:
Ruxandra Ivan (ed), Transformarea socialist. Politici ale regimului comunist
ntre ideologie i administraie [The Socialist Transformation. Policies of the
Communist Regime between Ideology and Administration] (Iai: Polirom, 2009);
Dumitru Lctuu (ed), Structuri de partid i stat n timpul regimului communist
[Party and State Structures during the Communis Regime], vol. 3 of the Anuarul
Institului de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului din Romnia (Iai: Polirom,
2008); Adrian Cioflnc, Lucian Jinga (eds), Represiune i control social n
Romnia Comunist [Represion and Control in Communist Romania] (Iai:
Polirom, 2011)
94 ________________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
Transylvanias ethnical particularities and organizational build

These demographic realities remained a problem for a long time after the
war. The Party found it extremely difficult to gain popularity in the Romanian countryside. A report of the party organization of Bihor from November 1945 states these problems very clearly: Concerning this matter
we could not make progress in November. This state of affairs, i.e. the
disproportion within the ethnical composition of the members is due to
the fact that Oradea and the cities, like county districts centers are inhabited by a majority of Hungarians. Thus the industrial workers are Hungarians, the consequence being that our recruiting cadres are also Hungarians
which makes it difficult to attract Romanian elements, especially in the
countryside.2 In June 1945 just 9% of the party members of the county
were Romanians.3 In October 1945 the number of party members in the
county was of 6463, among which 1083 were Romanians, 4815 Hungarians, and 564 Jews. In the city of Oradea there were 2057 party members,
246 Romanians, 1474 Hungarians and 337 Jews. The disproportion between the ethnical structure of the county and the one of the party organization remains considerable.4
The network of party organization was especially concentrated in urban
areas, the countys capital or the county district centers, this being one of
the main reasons for the difficulty of recruiting Romanian elements, to
be found especially in the rural areas. In Bihor the grounding of party organizations in the counties of Ceica, Beliu and Tinca was considered a
success. As the most worrisome weakness was mentioned the fact that in
the county districts of Tileagd and Alesd where Romanians were dominant, the percentage of Romanian members in the party is very small. In
this month the number of party members grew with 1050 men, but only
150 Romanians. In order to remedy this evil we summoned this month
2
National Archives of Romania (NAR), County of Bihor, The Archive of County Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP), file 3/1945, 35.
3
NAR, County of Bihor, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, file
3/1945, 35. I could not find an adequate translation for the Romanian word
plas, an administrative subdivision of the county existing throughout the interwar period and the first years after the war until the administrative reform
from 1950. I settled for the term of county district.
4
12/1945-1948, 30.
The Achilles Heel: Difficulties in Establishing a Functional... ____________ 95
two meetings with Romanian activists, discussing the situation with them
and requesting more intense activity in recruiting Romanian elements.5
The Party was confronted with the same problem in the county of Cluj:
the difficulty of extending the party network in the countryside. In July
1945 there were party organizations in only three of the nine county districts (Aghires, Huedin, Hida). The incapacity to achieve the recruiting
targets established by the Central Committee was explained by the reluctance of Romanians to join the party ranks. This state of affairs was deplored in party documents, which stated that the Romanians have a
passive attitude and rarely join the party ranks.6 A report of the section
of Political Education from December 1945 mentions 20 cadre schools in
the Hungarian language with a number of 880 students and only two Romanian cadre schools with a number of 90 students.7
A spectacular growth of the party ranks after the communists took power
in 1945 is also registered in the county of Arad. In June 1945 the number
of members grows to 1990 from 1282 in the preceding month, i.e. a 55%
increase. Among these, 887 were Romanians, 725 Hungarians, 258 Jews,
91 Slavs, 28 Germans and one Italian. There were 53 party organizations
in the city and only 18 in the countryside. At the end of the year the county organization of RCP Arad had 7230 members, 2882 being Romanians,
2953 Hungarians, 621 Slavs, 644 Jews, 123 Germans, and 7 others.
Compared to the counties of Cluj and Bihor the ethnic proportion is more
balanced but one has to take into account that Romanians represented the
overwhelming majority in the county and in the city of Arad (270,334 in
the county and 40,677 in the city compared to 70,502 in the county and
26,798 in the city for Hungarians, the second ethnic group and by far the
largest ethnic minority).8
In this county there was also a disproportionate representation of the Party between the urban and rural areas. Although the vast majority of the
5
3/1945, 24.
6
NAR, County of Cluj, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, found 2,
file 1/1945, 40.
7
7/1945, 22-27.
8
NAR, County of Arad, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, file
3/1945, 2-58.
96 ________________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
population lived in the countryside, in December 1945 there were 56 cadre activists in the City and only 16 in the rural area. The Regional Organization of RCP Banat criticizes sharply the County Committee of RCP
Arad: There is a number of communes and small towns where our party
organizations do not reflect the national composition. Our organizers prefer to go on the path of minimum resistance, for it is easier to attract elements of petty bourgeoisie or Hungarians, Jews, Slavs than the compact
mass of Romanian peasantry. In these matters we still couldnt make a
decisive step.9
Only by the year of 1947 will the Party succeed with a relative balancing
of ethnic percentages within the party branches from Transylvania, bringing them closer to the demographic reality of the province. That being
said, in the county of Bihor the Romanians remain a minority within the
Party. From a total of 18,963 members, 6167 were Romanians, an evident
progress compared to the 9% at the end of 1945.10
Greatest progress is registered by the county of Cluj, where at the end of
1947 a Romanian majority is established, while at the beginning of 1946,
the Hungarians represented 80%. In December 1947 the following percentages corresponded to the three main ethnic groups of the party, Romanians / Hungarians / Jews: 57 / 38 / 5%.11 The Romanians become
slightly numerically dominant in the county of Arad also. From a total of
12,695 members in December 1947, 6564 were Romanians, 4718 Hungarians, 698 Jews, 956 Slavs, 65 Germans, and 103 others.12
Difficulties at the Beginning: the Party between 1945-1947 and its
Organizational Problems
The problems encountered by the RCP within the countryside in its attempts to build a trusty party organization should be seen within a broader framework. One must relate them to the status that the RCP had in the
9
3/1945, 235.
10
12/1945-1948, 203.
11
5/1947, 95.
12
40/1947, 156.
eyes of the Romanian public opinion and its interwar history. The main
issue that confronted Romanian communists immediately after the war
was that they came to power without having any kind of popular support.
Among the four parties of the anti-fascist coalition13, the RCP had the
weakest adherence within the ranks of the population, it being clear to
everyone that only the presence of the Red Army had determined its inclusion. The first priority was to create an organizational support by an
accelerated increase of the number of party members. It is a well-known
sociological fact that rapid growth of an organization harms its stability
and its homogeneity; the RCP was no exception in this respect. Everyone
who was considered useful for strengthening the position of the party was
courted. The party did not hesitate to recruit people who had nothing to
do with the communist movement, being on the contrary well-established
collaborators of the ancien rgime.14 The two dominant fractions of the
party, the Muscovites led by Ana Pauker and the autochthonous communists conducted by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej were forced to handle a
recruiting process that they could not control or understand very well, but
which they were nevertheless forced to accept in order to increase the
numbers. In the words of the Romanian historian Victor Frunz, the RCP
was at that time a head in search of a body its greatest paradox was
that because of the geopolitical context it had considerable political power, but did not quite exist.15 The problem was openly acknowledged by
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej at the National Conference of the party in October 1945: The greatest shortcoming of our party is that its political influence greatly surpasses its organizational capacity. At the same time the
political-ideological growth of our cadre cannot keep pace with the
growth of the party.16
13
The National Democratic Bloc was created by the 20th of June 1944 as an antifascist and anti-Antonescu coalition and included The National-Peasant Party,
the liberals, the social democrats and the communists. The last was by far the
most insignificant in terms of popularity
14
Ghi Ionescu, Comunismul n Romnia [Communism in Romania] (Bucureti:
Editura Litera, 1994), 129.
15
Victor Frunz, Istoria stalinismului n Romnia [History of Stalinism in Romania] (Bucureti: Editura Humanitas, 1990), 102.
16
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Articole i cuvntri [Articles and Speeches]
(Bucureti: Editura PMR, 1951), 30.
98 ________________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
Once the RCP acquired legal status it was necessary to create an organizational structure able to fulfill certain functions: to recruit new members,
to promote the image and ideology of the party, to implement the policy
of the party in territory, and last but not least to fight the reactionaries.
The researcher who studies the local party archives is struck by the amateurism, improvisation and the general impression of organizational chaos
suggested by the documents. The very manner in which the party archives from the first years is organized is in itself a strong indicator of the
above issue: few files, reports of several party structures bound together
in one file, statistical data with the number of the existing members contradicted in the next report, etc. All these aspects are in close relation with
the quality of the local communist elite (or better said the lack of a competent one). Its managerial and organizational incapacity are always mentioned and criticized within the reports of the County Committee or the
County Bureau of the RCP during these years, constituting a constant
source of complaint. Almost every one of these reports deplores the low
political-ideological level of the apparatchiks, their incapacity to handle
the organizational process, to fulfill the tasks assigned by the center and
especially to provide the correct national and social composition for the
party. The countryside was always the weak spot of the local party
branches due to the initial reluctance of the Romanian majority to join the
party ranks. The immediate consequence of this state of affairs was the
constant reorganizing of the leading party structures. Visits paid by the
Central Committee delegates to the county organizations of the party, or
those of the county party instructors in the countys territory resulted almost always in a complete change of the existing leadership structure
(whether it was the county committee, the bureaus of the sectors of the
cities or of the county district, the primary party organization).17 Besides
these exceptional, complete reorganizations of the party structures, the
result of inspections initiated by the center, there was also a frequent
change of the local cadres, whether they were sent back to production
when they were considered inadequate, or they were appointed to other
positions or promoted. This fact contributed also to the high volatility of
party organizations during the first years after the war.
17
The sectors were administrative subdivisions of large cities.
A possible solution for the lack of a trusted core of party cadres could
have been the illegalists.18 However these were not very well regarded
after 1945 and in fact they were even submitted to a severe purge. Many
of them were imprisoned during 1941-1943 years, and they were suspected of collaborating with Horthys regime. A document of the party archive from the county of Bihor mentions a verification of the illegalists
conducted by a commission composed of Mihaly Farkas, delegate of the
CC of Hungarian Communist Party (HCP), Alexandru Jakab, delegate of
the Regional Committee of Cluj of the RCP, Vasile Vaida, delegate of the
CC of RCP and Iosif Farkas presented as an expert. Following the investigation of the Commission, 39 illegalists were checked, 10 were excluded from the party while among those of 29 considered adequate, 10 of
them were reaccepted only with an official warning or severe warning.
As an interesting aspect to be mentioned, among these 39 veterans of the
Party only three of them were Romanians, the rest being Hungarians or
Jews.19 In our opinion this further explains the initial lack of popularity of
the RCP within Romanian society and especially within the countryside in
the early years, despite the firm takeover of political power.
The vast majority of population in the interwar Romania were peasants
(79.3% according to the census of 1930). The Romanian communists
were never popular as they were seen as a party strictly controlled by the
Soviet Union (which indeed they were). The fact that they sustained every claim of Moscow, including that Bessarabia and Bucovina were territories taken by force by the Romanian imperialism after the First World
War, did not help their cause much. Additionally, the high percentage of
foreigners within the ranks of the RCP strengthened its image as an antiRomanian party and maintained its popularity as very low. On the eve of
their emergence to power in 1944, their number did not pass 1,000 members.
The documents reveal significant organizational problems in all the counties that were part of our investigation (Arad, Hunedoara, Bihor, Mure
and Cluj). The common element that strikes the eye of the researcher is
the dissatisfaction concerning the control of the Party in the field. This
18
The RCP was declared illegal in 1924 and remained so until 1944. Those who
joined the Party ranks during that period were known as illegalists after the
war and represented a insignificant minority compared to the huge wave of
opportunists who hurried to join the Party when in power.
19
1/1945-1946, 1.
100 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
field is nothing else but the countryside, where the party network was
especially weak and the general problem of lack of competent cadres was
even more acute.
A report of the Regional organization of Banat points to the selection of
functionaries for the organizational department of the party as a main
weakness. Because they were carelessly selected, most of them had to be
replaced immediately after they were appointed. The main consequence
was that the building of a party network in the field did not progress according to the expectations. Another consequence was that the frequent
change forbids accumulation of experience for a given task.20
The lack of competent cadres and the rapid growth of the party are considered the main problems by the leaders of party organization from Arad
County. The number of members increased from 1990 in June to 3,247 in
July 1945. There are also mentioned difficulties concerning the control of
the territory. Thus the party committee from the small town of Ndlac had
to be totally changed as some of the comrades behaved like dictators.21
The Conference of the Regional Party Organization from Valea Jiului reveals similar problems: lack of coordination between the party structures
and between party structures and mass organizations, chauvinism, dictatorial tendencies, reluctance to promote new faces in leadership positions,
but most of all the lack of control in territory which caused the emergence of a left wing deviation in Valea Jiului and of a right wing deviation in Valea Mureului.22
A very harsh evaluation of the party activity is made by the Regional Party
Organization of Cluj. Because of the bad results concerning a reliable party
network in territory, almost the entire leadership is replaced at the end of
1945. Four of the five members of the Political Bureau of the county were
dismissed (Gheorghe Mrginean, Egon Balasz, Iuliu Lajcksack, Polixenia
Csizer).23 The situation in the counties Turda, Mure and Bistria, subor20
NAR, County of Arad Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, file
3/1945, 233.
21
NAR, County of Arad Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, file
3/1945, 9.
22
Rezoluia Conferinei Regionalei Valea Jiului a PCR, [Resolution of the
Valea Jiului Regional Conference of RCP] Zori Noi, official newspaper of the
Regional Party Organization of Valea Jiului, 2 October 1945.
23
NAR, County of Cluj, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, file 2/1945,
97.
The Achilles Heel: Difficulties in Establishing a Functional... ___________ 101
dinated to the Regional Organization of Cluj is also mentioned as highly

inadequate. The county of Trgu Mure is considered as the most damaging for the party reputation because not a single Romanian was co-opted
to the party leadership of the county. The cadre instructor of the Regional
Organization was sent there for two weeks in an attempt to coordinate the
organizing efforts within the territory of the county. He went back reporting the low political level of the local apparatchiks and the overall dissatisfactory situation.24
At the end of 1945 one could say that RCP was concentrated from an organizational point of view in the great industrial centers and far less within the countryside, with a corresponding much lower influence. The
focusing on industrial workers had also ideological reasons (as the Party
claimed to be the workers representative), but most of all pragmatic reasons. The workers concentrated in the great urban centers were much easier to be controlled and mobilized for various actions of the Party
(meetings, manifestation, recruiting of street-brawlers for the paramilitary
formations used against the opposition). Concerning this aspect it is relevant that in October 1945 a third of the member of the party (80,000)
were concentrated in Bucharest, 75% of them being workers. Cluj,
Timioara and Valea Jiului were other important centers of the RCP.25
The year of 1946 failed to bring more coherence for the Party organization. This was in fact impossible as from October 1945 (the date of the
National Conference of the Party) and until June 1946, RCP tripled the
number of its member from 256,863 to approximately 720,000. The entering of half a million of new members within the Party ranks was far
from being a help for its organizational strength or for the quality of its
elite. The main problems signaled within the party organizations from
Transylvania (chauvinism, lack of competent cadres, organizational chaos
especially in the countryside) are to be found again.
In the county of Bihor the organizational situation of the party is understood to be the worst in the rural area. In the meeting from the 1st of
March 1946 of the County Bureau of RCP Bihor, the state of affairs from
the county districts of Tileagd and Valea lui Mihai is considered to be
24
NAR, County of Cluj, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, file
2/1945, 98-99
25
Robert King, A History of the Romanian Communist Party (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1980), 63.
102 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
catastrophic. The cause is identified to be the profound incompetence of

the party leadership of these districts, which had to be immediately replaced. The secretary of the county district Valea lui Mihai had to be urgently replaced because he was mixed up in a matter of theft combined
with murder. The head of the organizational department of the RCP
county branch described the situation here with the following words:
the Party exists here only on paper; everybody minds his own private
interests and business. Bureau meetings were not held since January.26
A new synthesis concerning the situation of the countryside in Bihor
County is made on the 11th of April 1946. It underlined the fragility of the
control of the party here, both of its own structures but also of the mass
organizations (Frontul Plugarilor / Ploughmens Front and Uniunea Populara Magiar / The Popular Hungarian Union). In the central county district many of the Ploughmens Front members were suspected of
sympathizing with Iuliu Maniu, the leader of the National Peasant Party.
The frequency of participation to party meetings was very low, the same
situation being confirmed for the county district of Tileagd. In the county
district of Aled although the instructors of the party have gone no less
than 24 times throughout its area, the political situation is labeled as unsatisfactory. The peasantry, both Romanian and Hungarian was hostile to the
Party in the county district of Scuieni. The peasants labeled as reactionary
are blamed for stopping the growth of the party by spreading rumors and
saying that the party members were fascists and Arrow-Crosses.27
The sustained efforts to implement a reliable party network in the countryside, considering the upcoming 1946 elections, had finally some effects in Bihor County. In October 1946, just a month before the elections
it is reported that party organizations had been created in every county
district. The tables of the countys organizational department show every
such county district organization as structured around a core of apparatchiks, usually the secretary and from two up to eight activists. The eleven
26
27
1/1945-1946, 172-73.
1/1945-1946, 181-185. The Arrow Cross Party was a far-right Hungarian party
led by Ferenc Szalasi. The Romanian Communist Party was more than indulgent with the acceptance of ex-right wingers within their ranks in the first
years after the war when the first priority was the rapid increase of the number
of members.
county districts of the county had a total of eleven secretaries and 63 activists at that time.28
Considerable efforts to increase the partys influence within the dominantly Romania countryside can also be noticed in the county of Cluj.
The main stimulus was again the oncoming elections in November. In
September 1946 the founding of party bureaus for all the nine county districts of the county, each composed of one secretary and five activists is
reported. Each member of the county bureau was assigned to a certain area of the county and instructed to insist on fieldwork. For more efficiency
and increased control, the county districts were in their turn divided into
subunits of 4-6 rural communes, each of them being assigned an activist
or an instructor of the county district. All the important names of the local
nomenklatura are now sent on the field in order to intensify the actions of
propaganda: Egon Balasz, Nagy Dezideriu, Gheorghe Mrginean, Iuliu
Cosma, etc.29
One of the weakest party organizations in terms of control is probably the
one from Arad. The results of party activity were considered as being
very weak in the countryside, especially concerning the Romanian villages and within the ranks of intellectuals. Additionally, the party organization of Arad was confronted with serious discipline problems and with
the lack of trustworthy cadres to be sent to do field work in the countys
territory. The countryside is mentioned as the area where the party meets
the greatest resistance against its propaganda/electoral actions.30
While the organizational circumstance of the county party organizations
was far from being satisfactory, one could say that compared to those of
the mass organizations they were still preferable. The mass organizations
were conceived as useful tools to attract various social categories (peasants, national minorities, women, union members, artists, etc.) closer to
the Communist Party. They were also meant to prove the large support
the party enjoyed within the rank and file of Romanian society, to create
the impression of mass support for communist ideas. The most important
28
12/1945-1948, 154-157
29
NAR, County of Cluj, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, Found 2,
file 1/1946, 25-26.
30
24/1946, 17-33.
104 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
mass organizations with a significant presence in the Transylvanian countryside were The Hungarian Popular Union and The Ploughmens Front.
The Hungarian Popular Union was the mass organization of the most important national minority, the Hungarians. The control of the party over this
organization was not particularly efficient. In those areas of Transylvania
were the Hungarian minority was strong, the party reports described it as
a fortress of chauvinism that refused to work with the Romanian members.
Things were not better concerning the Ploughmens Front, regarded as
the main instrument of the Party for spreading its influence to the Romanian countryside. The official propaganda presented it as the equivalent
of the RCP for peasants, the organizational device of the peasantry to sustain its class struggle.
In truth The Ploughmens Front was just an annex of the RCP. Where the
party was strong, the activity of the Ploughmens Front was also satisfactory; where the party had no influence, The Ploughmens Front proved
itself incapable of winning the sympathy of the peasants. Most of the time
this organization was impressive just on paper. In June 1945 The
Ploughmens Front counted 41,583 members in the county of Bihor, a
remarkable number at first sight. But the documents of the party mention
that it was impossible to find a competent county leadership for it and for
that reason the influence of the organization is very weak. The impression
one gets from the documents is of an organism on life support: the Party
has to do everything, pays for the cars, the gas, the posters and the propaganda materials, and the activists of the Front also.31 The lack of a competent leadership and the lack of credibility in the eyes of the peasants
were mentioned as the main reasons for the Fronts failure to capture the
sympathy of the countryside.
This state of affairs was a general one throughout the country, as proved
by similar researches. The secretary of the county party committee of
Baia wrote that The Ploughmens Front has just a formal existence in
spite of the great number of members.32 The reports of the Regional
31
32
3/1945, 32.
NAR, County of Iai, Archive of the Regional Committee of the RCP, file
1/1946, 38. Quoted in Dumitru andru, Propaganda pe tema colhozului n
campania electoral din 1946 [The Propaganda on the Kolkhoz Thema during
Committee of RCP Banat stated that The Ploughmens Front did not succeed to create reliable organizations and to promote competent cadres
while in many cases the very activity of these organizations was a mystery even for the party officials.33 The same regional committee considered The Ploughmens Front as weak throughout the region, a weakness
due to the presence of numerous members of the Iron Guard and opportunists in the local leadership, elements that were supported by the central
leadership of the Front. They were not liked by the peasants who saw
them as corrupt and opportunists. The vice-president of the county organization of Timi was particularly disliked being seen as a pure opportunist
and dubious businessman.34 It is of course possible that sometimes these
types of reports reflect the conflict between the local leadership of the
party and that of the mass organizations. But the frequency and regularity
of these weaknesses proves that most of the time these mass organizations were a veritable burden for the party who had to make a considerable effort just to keep them functioning. Similarly to the party, many
collaborationists and compromised people sought refuge here, thus affecting the credibility of these organizations, designed to capture the popular
support of the large masses.
The main event of the year of 1946 was the electoral campaign and parliamentary elections in November. Compared to the previous electoral
campaigns from the interwar era, there was a significant difference. For
the communists it did not have the usual meaning of a class of activities
that take place in a determined time span having as purpose the fulfillment
of certain political objective.35 The Leninist conception does not see political competition in general and the electoral campaign in particular, as a
contest of programs and ideas, but as a life and death struggle in which
the opponent must be crushed and any means are allowed to fulfill the
purpose. In the following elections the reactionaries must be definitively
the 1946 Elections), Analele Sighet 3 (1996): Anul 1946 nceputul sfritului
[The Year of 1946 The Beginning of the End], ed. Romulus Rusan (Bucureti:
Fundaia Academia Civic, 1996), 445.
33
NAR, County of Timis, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, found 1,
file 1/1947, 12.
34
NAR, County of Timis, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, found 1,
file 1/1947, 12.
35
Dicionar Enciclopedic [Encyclopedic Dictionary], A-C, vol I (Bucureti: Editura Enciclopedic, 1993), 306.
106 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
crushed, stated Mihai Mujic, the secretary of the regional party organization of Valea Jiului and future deputy of the Bloc of Democratic Parties
(BDP).36
The main targets of the communists in the countryside were the nationalpeasants and their leader, Iuliu Maniu. As they were no match for them in
popularity, the only way the communists found to fulfill their objectives
was the one they turned into a trademark: the obstructing and terrorizing
of the competition. One of the main tasks of the elite force of the party,
the cadres, was to map the countryside, to collect data about the social
and ethnic composition and to identify the enemies and the potential centers of resistance.37
Such a task of mapping the countryside was entrusted to the local party
leaderships starting from the end of 1945. An internal document of the
Regional Organization of RCP Banat from the 10th of December 1945
classified as secret, confidential is addressed personally to the county
secretary, stating the following: Comrade Secretary, in order to identify
the real democratic political forces and the reactionary forces in your
county you will proceed as focused as possible, without revealing this information to all the party members, to an analysis of political organizations (including the communist party). Based on the following
instructions you will provide the required data until the 25th of December
1945. You will answer each question in the list here attached, striving to
provide accurate information. These data help us to make up our political
reports which sometimes are very superficially made by the county party
organizations.38 Comrades county party secretaries are directly responsi-
36
Zori Noi, official newspaper of the Regional Party Organization of Valea

Jiului, 20 of August, 1946. The Bloc of Democratic Parties was a smokescreen
representing in fact the communists and their irrelevant mass organizations
which had no real political autonomy.
37
Virgiliu ru, Aspecte privind tehnica i practica electoral a Blocului Partidelor Democratice n alegerile parlamentare din 19 noiembrie 1946 consideraii
preliminare, [Aspects Concerning Technique and Electoral Practice of the
Democratic Parties Block during the Parliamentary Elections of 19 November
1946] Romulus Rusan (ed.), Anul 1946 Scrisori i alte texte [Year 1946 Letters and other Texts] (Bucureti: Fundaia Academia Civic, 1997), 225-237.
38
3/1945, 245
ble for the making of these reports until the established deadline and for
the secret character of these reports.39
The instructions were structured in three main headings. The first heading
was entitled Characterization of local authorities (prefect, mayors, police,
gendarmerie, army, teachers, civil and military judges, etc.) The questions
that had to be answered by the county secretaries were: How do they implement the dispositions of the government?; Whats their attitude towards the truce and the Soviet Union?; Which party supports them?;
Are they popular among the masses? The second heading was concerned
with both the political parties and non-political organizations (cultural,
sporting, charitable). The questions envisaged their political attitude, the
social categories supporting them, their popularity and growth related to
each category, the conflicts within these organizations, their methods of recruiting new members, their attitude towards the Groza government, the
way they prepared for elections, etc. Finally, the last heading entitled
Conclusions had just one question: Which social categories support the
Groza government and how important are they politically?40
The electoral law conceived for the 1946 elections heavily favored the
communists. It introduced the category of unworthy (unworthy to
vote), which theoretically was aimed against those who collaborated with
Germany and the Antonescu regime. In reality the concept was intentionally vague in order to include all those that were potentially hostile to
communists.41 Having enough control tools, the communists used them
unscrupulously for their own advantage, as the prime minster imposed by
the communists, Petru Groza, openly admits: Let us get used to certain
methods. We, as a political regime must consolidate ourselves continuously. Its about certain advantages that are given to someone. Let us see
what is the structure of this society, who are its members. Do some research of that aspect too. One who is not politically affiliated cannot
properly exist. If we said before that one who doesnt work should also
not eat, today we say: one who is not affiliated to the democratic regime
cannot receive advantages from us. Of course, when we give something
we have the right to verify the attitude of the beneficiary, not only
39
3/1945, 245.
40
3/1945, 246.
41
Monitorul Oficial, no. 161, 15 iulie 1946.
108 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
economically but also politically. That is because I cannot know where

the economics ends and the politics starts.42
A couple of months before the election one can notice a sudden intensification of activity in the county branches of the party. The first priority
was the weak spot of the party network, the countryside. Thus, on 3rd of
May 1946, the meeting of the County Committee of RCP Bihor decides
to promote from production so many activists-electors as the number of
villages in the county, at least five weeks before the elections. Each elector was assigned to a village for which he was politically responsible. He
had to visit every inhabitant of the village, making propaganda for the
BDP, taking note of the reaction of the one visited. In another meeting
with the cadres of the county organization, the head of the organizational
department, Iosif Tigan stated: I summoned you here to this extraordinary session in order to analyze the situation of the state apparatus now
before the elections. We have to have a good knowledge of the situation
and of the enemy for the elections to have the desired result.43 The list of
unworthy had to be made for every county district: priests, notaries,
gendarmes, mayors, teachers, doctors, etc. One can easily notice that the
target were the notabilities of the countryside, the rural elites.
Preparations for the elections also had repercussions for the local party
leadership. Those considered inefficient were hastily replaced. In the
county of Arad a series of changes took place because the superior hierarchy (the Central Committee or the Regional Organization of Banat) was
unhappy with the performance of local leaders. A total of 10 important
apparatchiks were now replaced, among them the political secretary Petru
Prudner. Three of the four county district secretaries (of the county districts Siria, Svrin, Sntana and Curtici) were replaced because of their
incompetence and inefficiency.
A structural reorganization of the party organization was also initiated before the election in the county of Cluj. Special attention went to the party
structures from the countryside, where the majority of voters were, but
which also presented the greatest difficulties. The report of the month of
September 1946 enumerates the main tasks during the electoral campaign: the making of the electoral lists, the list with the unworthy, the es42
43
NAR, Archive of the RCP, Stenographs, file 1/1946, 27-28.

NAR, County of Bihor, The Archive of County Committee of the RCP, file
1/1945-1946, 190.
tablishing of the election centers44, of voting sections, the mobilizing of

the masses, the organizing of contests in production and in party work,
the popularizing of the electoral sign of BDP.45
The mobilizing of the county branch of Cluj was impressive: 134 comrades were taken out of production; a number of streets were allocated to
each of them, thus no street or no houses were left uncontrolled.46 During
the month of September the priorities were the establishing of the list of the
praetors47 in order to replace the reactionary ones; the making of the list
with the trusted judges who had to be putted as presidents of the voting
sections; the establishing of the electoral lists. Thus in the county district of
Cluj a list comprising four mayors, six notaries, a gendarme, three teachers
and nine priests was made who had to be replaced. Also there were mentioned heads of cooperatives and pub owners who will be replaced and
their licenses cancelled, a total number of 14. The lists with reactionaries comprised a total of 5000 people, as stated in a document.48
The rural area enjoyed special attention both from the professional apparatchiks (who were paid by the party to do exclusively party work) as
well as from those who were purposefully taken out of production for
these elections (the electors). The 1946 elections represented a good
opportunity for the ambitious ones who wanted to climb the ladder of the
party hierarchy by proving themselves loyal to the party, sometimes with
an excess of zeal. We have now in the villages 45 activists taken out
from production, 24 activists of the Ploughmens Front and 56 electors, a
total of 125 activists paid to do propaganda work, is shown in a report of
the county party organization from Cluj.49 The contribution of efficient
party cadres was what counted the most: The best results were obtained
44
The election centers were properties commandeered by the Party in which the
responsible apparatchik for a number of streets summoned the citizens in order
to do propaganda for the communists. Those who refused the summons were
automatically put on the list of hostile elements.
45
file 2/1946, 75.
46
file 2/1946, 76, 91.
47
The praetors were the administrative heads of the county districts.
48
file 1/1946, 30-32.
49
file 1/1946, 36.
110 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
where we had competent local cadresWhere they lacked, even the best
electors could not win the trust and thus the votes of the peasants..50
As the countryside was essentially hostile to the RCP, terror was an important instrument, as well as obstructing the opposition from spreading
its message. When the Romanian delegation that took part at the Peace
Conference from Paris arrived in Cluj, 1500 peasants were brought to
greet it. No one dared to demonstrate against the party or the government,
to the great satisfaction of the local party leaders: Although it was dark,
not a single reactionary shibboleth was shouted against the ones shouted
by our teams of agitators. The reactionary propaganda was described
as whispered, and done through the drawing of the eye. The opposition
made some attempts to spread manifests in the villages and to popularize
its electoral logo but these attempts were immediately noticed and
promptly annihilated. During the month of November everything was
filled with the sun and the eye only appeared in exceptional cases, being
promptly erased and replaced by the sun.51
As it is known today, the result of the election was falsified by the communists who pretended they obtained 84% of the votes. The local researches show a clear victory for the NPP, although not crushing.52 The
winning of the 1946 elections meant a decisive strengthening of the RCP
position now legitimated by the popular will. It marks a new stage of
the Sovietization process of Romania. The RCP will use its dominant position in order to eliminate all its political adversaries.
The year of 1947 can be seen as the debut of a consolidation process, intended to assure a greater coherence of the party ranks. One could say that the
priorities were reversed; the hasty growth of the 1945-'46 year is now replaced by a more careful selection process according to ideological standards.
50
file 2/1946, 91.
51
file 2/1946, 33,38, 46. The sun was the electoral sign of the BDP. The eye was
the sign of their main opponents, The National-Peasant Party.
52
Virgiliu ru, Campania electoral i rezultatul real al alegerilor din 19
noiembrie 1946 n judeele Cluj, Some i Turda, [The Electoral Campaign
and the True Result of 19th November 1946 in the Counties of Cluj, Somes
and Turda] Studii de Istorie a Transilvaniei [Transylvanian History Studies],
Sorin Mitu, Florin Gogltan (eds.) (Asociatia Istoricilor din Banat si Transilvania,
1994), 204-212.
A short vocabulary analysis of the party documents from this year highlights a much greater frequency of two terms: verification and control.
The countryside remained an important objective, and the party strove hard
to correct the weaknesses of the previous years. A report of the county party organization of Cluj prefigures for the month of April ten visits of the
county apparatchiks in the rural area in an attempt to reorganize and consolidate the local party organizations. It is also mentioned that 100 cadres
of the party will be closely checked, including their personal life. The admission process itself becomes more demanding: the candidate should be
checked based on his/her statement of purpose, autobiography and references collected from acquaintances and friends.53 In another report it is
shown that many county district bureaus of the party were restructured,
those without perspective of development and inefficient were replaced
with elements distinguished during the electoral campaign. The purging
campaign envisaged not only the party but also the state institutions and
mass organizations. For the month of June the following activities were
scheduled: a to do list with replaceable elements form the state institutions, verification of the leaders of trade unions, of the activists from the
county districts bureaus and committees. The days of 12 and 13 of the
month were intended for control activities on the field, while between the
20 and 30 of the month were reserved for visits to the country side, to
check the activity of party organizations from that area.54
In January 1947 the party organization of Bihor was rebuilt from the
ground. A special commission sent by the CC conducted the reorganization of the bureau and the county committee. Just a single member of the
old county committee was to be found in the new structure. Considering
that the presence of the party in the countryside was unsatisfactory, the
new county bureau proceeded to a restructuring of the county district party organizations, forming four special commissions for that purpose.55
The county of Hunedoara would witness an ample reorganization of the
Ploughmens Front, the mass organization created to spread the influence
of the party. The reorganization was in fact a purging operation, officially
53
file 13/1947, 1-29.
54
file 13/1947, 1-29.
55
12/1945-148, 203-207.
112 _______________________________________________ Bogdan IVACU
recognizing what everybody already knew: that in many cases those who
occupied the highest positions followed their own interests and many of
them were compromised persons who wanted to use the party or its mass
organizations as a shelter. The first priority was cleaning the ranks of the
Ploughmens Front of the enemies of the plowmen. It was admitted that
many times the leadership of the organization imposed the requisition of
grains and distributed the governmental aids preferentially. Also, when the
1945 agrarian reform took place some of them took the lions share of the
distributed land, to the detriment of those entitled although they already had
land. The leaders from county district organizations and communes were
charged as mostly compromised persons who just simulated sympathy towards the RCP but who in the decisive moments of our battle stabbed us in
the back. The whole organization was restructured from the ground up.56
The county organization of Arad in 1947 went through successive reorganizations and great difficulties. On 25th of April 1947 a rebellion of the
workers from the ITA factory resulted in the killing of two party activists.57 The party organization of Arad was probably one of the weakest
links of the party network. At the end of 1947 the number of party members was of 12,695, half the number of county organizations like Bihor or
Cluj, while the population was approximately the same. The countryside
was nominated as particular reason for discontent, the leadership of the
county districts of Hlmagiu, Chiineu-Cri, Svrin and Trnava was
considered very incompetent and soon to be replaced with comrades
who distinguished themselves and those graduated from our cadre
school. The disproportion between the partys influence in the city of
Arad and the countryside is appreciated as enormous. Many county district bureaus were acknowledged appreciated as inadequate and needing
to be completely changed. The leaders of the Ploughmens Front in the
county are characterized as weak and incapable to solve the problems.58
56
Zori Noi, official newspaper of the Regional Party Organization of Valea

Jiului, 31 May 1947.
57
The rebellion from the ITA factory was made the object of an ample investigation and documentation by the Central Committee of the RCP and the county
bureau. Among the many files from the party archives which deal with this
event I would mention NAR, County of Arad, Archive of the County Committee of the RCP, files 37, 38, 40 and 49/1947.
58
37/1947, 189.
Conclusions
The time span between 1945 and 1947 can be seen as one of great instability concerning the life of party organizations in the countryside. The
partys lack of experience in organizational issues, the lack of competent
cadres and the general hostility of the peasants led to a vicious circle: the
incompetent party leadership was frequently changed by the CC which
led to organizational instability and further managerial amateurism.
The picture that shapes itself from the documents of the party archives is
of a party structured rather around command centers rather than a network of organizations homogeneously distributed on the field. The great
urban centers demographically dominated by minorities become the
strongholds of the party in Transylvania, strongholds that attempted to
dominate a rural area most of the time indifferent or even hostile to the
organizational efforts of the RCP. The link between the county centers
and the party organizations from the countryside was significantly weak,
the information that reached the local party leaders being many times deficient. Frequently the situation went out of control. The county party
leadership usually found out about these deviations very late, the only
weapon at their disposal being the discharging of those responsible and
the reorganization of the party structures, which explain the frequency of
the changes. The rural area presents itself during this period of organizational building as a veritable no mans land for the party apparatchiks
as a stable and structured party network did not exist; the tactic was rather
one of expeditions with a propagandistic purpose (sending of cultural
teams to the villages, of electoral squads, workers sent to repair for free
the tools of the peasants, etc.). The notes of the RCP organization of Bihor County speak for themselves: Although every month a meeting is
held with secretaries of county districts, and three comrades permanently
visit the countryside, our connections with the rural area are far from being satisfactory.59
59
3/1945, 20.
Peasants in the Face of Activities of the Polish United Workers'

Party in Rural Areas (1948-1989)
Stanisaw STPKA
Introduction
In the middle of 1948, the assumptions of agricultural policy in Poland
changed significantly. The process was precipitated largely by the events
in the international communist movement. The concepts in place, regarding
the reconstruction of the countryside gained momentum and obtained international sanction as a result of the resolution of the Information Bureau
of the Communist and Workers' Parties on collectivisation of agriculture,
passed in June 1948. The preparations for agriculture collectivisation, hidden from the public so far, were disclosed during a plenary session of the
Politburo of the PUWP (6-7.07.1948). Simultaneously, the issue of development and centralisation of the agricultural government sector significantly grown in importance.
Countryside was being reconstructed based on targets among which the
most important one was agriculture collectivisation. This aim was being
realized by way of setting up production cooperatives. In practice, this
meant the abolishment of private property in agriculture and of peasants
as a social class.1 When in the beginning of the second half of the 50s the
concept proved to be a failure, the party and state authorities changed
their methods of operation to ones that were slower and phased. New
1
See, i.a., Grzegorz Miernik, Opr chopw wobec kolektywizacji w wojewdztwie

kieleckim 1948-1956 [Peasant Resistance to Collectivisation in Kielce Province
1948-1956] (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Takt, 1999); Dariusz Jarosz, Polityka
wadz komunistycznych w Polsce w latach 1948-1956 a chopi [Communist`s
Authorities Policy in Poland in the Years 1948-1956 and Peasants] (Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo, DiG 1998); Adolf Dobieszewski, Kolektywizacja wsi polskiej
1948-1956 [Collectivisation of Polish Village 1948-1956] (Warszawa: Fundacja
im. Kazimierza Kelles-Krauza, 1993); Kazimierz Robakowski, Spoecznopolityczne problemy rozwoju spdzielczoci produkcyjnej w Polsce w latach
1944-1956 [Socio-Political Problems of Production Co-operative Movement in
Poland in the Years 1944-1956] (Pozna: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu
im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, 1986); Andrzej Korboski, Politics of Socialist Agriculture in Poland 1945-1960 (New York-London: Columbia University Press, 1965).
Peasants in the Face of Activities of the Polish United Workers' Party... ____ 115
paths and different ways for agriculture collectivisation were in demand.

Initially, the idea was to achieve this goal with the use of farming societies and peasant's economic groups, and when this failed, the authorities
reached once again for state agricultural farms. In order to achieve such
principal objective, a number of actions were undertaken aimed at convincing the peasants of the party policy's merit. Thus, it became of utmost
importance for communists in the area of culture and education to create
a "new man" a "socialist man". These actions were supported by the
policy applied toward religion that sought to deprive the Catholic Church
of the ability to shape social consciousness, attitudes and behaviour. All
assumptions and objectives of the state policy concerning agricultural areas were implemented by the local units of the PUWP.
The most frequently addressed issues related to the title of this article
are those concerning: conditions of the position of party organizations in
agricultural areas, place and role of the PUWP as the executive body in
matters of state agricultural policy as well as the peasants' attitudes towards
the communist operations in agricultural environment. Analysis of the indicated problems will be discussed in accordance with the above order.
Factors determining the position of party organizations
Organizations of the Polish United Workers' Party, operating in agricultural environment in individual poviats, gminas and gromadas were
responsible for direct execution of the decisions made in the course of
implementation of the policy on countryside and agriculture made by the
highest authorities. For the purposes therefore local party structures were
set up. In 1949, PUWP organizations existed in 45% of more than 40,000
soeckie villages, and Gmina Committees of the PUWP have been organised in 2,545 gminas out of 3,000 existing.2 When in 1954 gminas were
abolished and gromadas introduced3, party groups consisting of the
PUWP members were started to be organized in new administrative units.
In this way, so-called mixed organizations, bringing together peasants
coming from entire gromadas, were formed there, and separate organiza2
3
Jarosz, Polityka wadz komunistycznych, 421, 422.

In the years 1954-1972, a gromada was the smallest unit of administrative division. On 29 September 1954, 8789 gromadas, as the smallest units of administrative division, were established in the place of 3001 gminas. On January 1, 1973,
in the place of 4313 gromadas 2366 significantly larger gimas were created.
116 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
tions existed concurrently in production cooperatives, schools, places of

employment and other institutions.
The "fundamental cell" of party structure was constituted by an Elemental
Party Organization EPO (in Polish: Podstawowa Organizacja Partyjna
POP). To exist, it needed only three persons (after the statute was amended in 1959 five persons), who lived in the country.
When an organization formed for a village turned out too weak or a given
village did not have the required number of members, elemental party organization was set for the area of a few villages, sometimes even a whole
gromada. The aim of the PUWP's operations was to weave an organizational network that would encompass all the villages. As of December 31,
1967, 38,115 EPOs out of 69,452 existed in the countryside. Organizational structures covered three fourths of the countryside. The same year,
it was assured that "out of 9,886 villages, where EPOs had not been set
up, objective conditions for their formation existed only in about 5,000 of
them".4 In spite of impressive statistical data, many EPOs existed only on
the form of an entry in a register, and did not operate in any real way.
Small organizations with 2-5 members prevailed. In an effort to remedy
this predicament, solutions outside agriculture were sought. In 1958, the
Agricultural Department of the Politburo of the PUWP ordered poviat
committees to refer to the EPOs those PUWP members who worked in the
cities, but lived in the country. At the poviat committees, commissions
were created which conducted talks with peasants physical workers belonging to the PUWP. They were advised to develop the small elemental
party organizations and set up PUWP candidate groups in their home villages. As a result, field party groups were being established. In the 70s and
80s, fieldwork groups were being formed for this particular purpose.5
4
Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza od IV do V Zjazdu [Polish United

Workers` Party between IV and V Congress] (Warszawa: Polska Zjednoczona
Partia Robotnicza Komitet Centralny, 1968), 15.
Instrukcja w sprawie struktury organizacyjnej PZPR na wsi [Instruction on the
Organizational Structure of the Communist Party in the Countryside), 24 May
1958, 237/XII-232, Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej
Sekretariat (hereafter cited as KC PZPR Sekretariat), Archiwum Akt Nowych
(hereafter cited as AAN), 65; Statut Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej Ze
zmianami i uzupenieniami uchwalonymi przez VII Zjazd PZPR w grudniu 1975
r. [Statute of the Polish United Workers' Party With the Changes and Additions
Adopted by the VII Congress of the Communist Party in December 1975]
The practice of controlling the political life of gromadas and gminas,

wherein a few party organizations existed, necessitated a new organizational body. In February 1956, the Secretariat of the Politburo gave its
approval to create gromada committees. They were formed in those
gromadas where at least five organizations operated or three organizations of a varied social profile, comprising at least 50 members. Initially,
the committees consisted of the representatives of all the EPOs in a given
gromada. They were composed of 5-11 members, who elected from
among themselves a gromada committee secretary.6
Actual power in gmina, and, since 1954 in gromada, was held by the first
gmina/gromada committee secretary of PUWP. Nevertheless, until the
mid-70s, the party authorities found it difficult to fill the seats of party secretaries in rural areas. Not many village dwellers were willing to take up
such a function. Therefore, party activists from among physical workers
were appointed to fill the vacancies. These were not, however, appealing
fields of activity for persons from outside the environment. A serious obstacle was posed by material difficulties such as apartment shortages, reluctance of family members to move to the countryside or low salary. The
secretaries often met with dislike or even hostility on the part of the local
community. They lacked the necessary agricultural knowledge and understanding of village affairs. In rural areas, until the mid-50s, the role of
PUWP gromada committee secretary was performed by young people. As
of January 1, 1953, 40% of the secretary seats were held by people no older
than 30 years. More than 60% of them had a working class background. A
majority of them had been working in the above-referred-to capacity no
(Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza, 1976), 94; X Zjazd Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii
Robotniczej, 29 czerwca 3 lipca 1986 r. Podstawowe dokumenty i materiay [X
Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party, 29 June 3 July 1986. Basic Documents and Materials] (Warszawa: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza
Komitet Centralny, 1986), 298.
6
Instrukcja sekretariatu KC w sprawie organizacji wiejskich PZPR [Instructions
of Secretariat of the Communist Party`s Central Committee about PZPR`s Rural Organizations], 237/V-188, KC PZPR Sekretariat, AAN, 66-67, 67a; Instrukcja w sprawie struktury organizacyjnej PZPR na wsi, maj 24, 1958
[Instruction on the Organizational Structure of the Communist Party in the
Countryside, 24 May 1958], 237/XII-225, KC PZPR WR, AAN, 268; Benon
Dymek, PZPR na wsi w latach 1956-1960 (wybrane problemy), [The Communist Party in the Countryside in the Years 1956-1960 (Selected Problems)]
Pastwo i Kultura Polityczna 10 (1990), 46.
118 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
longer than a year. Little wonder that inexperienced, in 96% of cases (as at
January 1, 1953) possessing only primary education, of non-agricultural
upbringing, subject to quick fluctuation were no authority for the peasants
and did not enjoy much trust of their superiors. After the administrative division into gminas had been introduced in 1973, the first secretary of the
Politburo of the PUWP usually became the chairman of the National
Council. In the new conditions, such promotion increased the prestige of
the position and improved material status related therewith. It was also
supposed to strengthen that body's position against administration.7
The PUWP was gaining the status of a mass party, and membership in it
became a prerequisite for achieving one's goal and desired social standing. It was commonly believed that the mass character of the party was a
measure of the reach of its influence on the society. Mass scale means the
support of "(...) the working class as well as the intelligentsia and the
peasants for the party's policy." The PUWP comprised through various
stages of its existence from 1.5 to 5 million members. It is essential for
the analysed issue to determine how many peasants were there among the
members of the party. All party documents were notifying of the problems arising with respect to the peasant membership. The management of
the PUWP declared the need to develop the party organizations in the
countryside and advised the committees to pursue this goal. The share of
peasants that joined the PUWP, which in 1948 reached 243,354 (16.9 %),
was the largest in the entire period. Over the following years the numbers
were only getting worse. The place of the peasants in the party structures
is presented by the chart below.
As the analysis of the above chart proves, the peasants as a social stratum
had the lowest representation in the party structures. Over four decades of
the PUWP operation, the number of peasants was steadily declining to
fall from 16.9 % to 9 % in the end of the 80s. Downward trend was present throughout.
Ustawa z 29 listopada 1972 r. o utworzeniu gmin i zmianie ustawy o radach

narodowych [The Act of 29 November 1972. Establishing the Municipalities
and Amending the Law on National Councils] Dziennik Ustaw, no. 49, poz.
312; Jarosz, Polityka wadz komunistycznych, 422.
Chart 1. Social composition of PUWP members and candidates from

1948 to 1987
Source: Own chart based on Adolf Dobieszewski, Nomenklatura partyjna spojrzenie

od wewntrz (1948-1989), w Elity wadzy w Polsce a struktura spoeczna w latach 19561958, ed. Przemysaw Wjcik (Warszawa: Instytut Stosowanych Nauk Spoecznych Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1994), 191-192, 198.
Two processes hindered the growth of party structures in the countryside:

leaving the party by the peasants and human resources personnel policy
of the party. The Central Committee imposed an obligation on the field
party units to Continuous supervision of the purity of the party composition. Implementation of this policy was especially apparent in the period
from 1948 to 1956 as a result of the duality of the party's strategy. On the
one hand, the management of the PUWP forced the mass development of
the party, while on the other alien and hostile elements were removed
from the party on a large scale. "Purification of the party was handled by
special commissions and representatives for expulsion and deletion. From
1948 to 1980, 1,890,335 party members were deleted or expelled, including 198,773 (including 52,825 peasants).8
Adolf Dobieszewski, Nomenklatura partyjna spojrzenie od wewntrz,

[Nomenclature of Party a View from the Inside] in Elity wadzy w Polsce a
struktura spoeczna w latach 1956-1981, [The Ruling Elite in Poland and the
Social Structure in the Years 1956-1981] ed. Przemysaw Wjcik (Warszawa;
Instytut Stosowanych Nauk Spoecznych Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1994), 189,
193, 196.
120 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
The peasants were leaving the PUWP for many reasons. At first, a significant indication of the grounds on which the attitude towards the party
was changing was recent past. Certainly, the party was being left by people who became disillusioned with the ideology. They, however, constituted only a fraction of the phenomenon. Above all, the party was being
deserted by people who joined the party for economic reasons or who
were coerced into joining. Others simply lost faith in the ability of a party
organisation based in the countryside to influence the local affairs. Particularly high number of peasants PUWP members left the party in the
80s. In 1981-1982, the loss of members reached 38%, and, after the wave
of withdrawals of 1987-1989, the PUWP had about 160,000 members,
i.e., 51% compared to 1980.9
In accordance with the assumption made by the central authorities of the
PUWP, the countryside-based party organizations and their members
were to become the avant-garde of the socialist transformation of agricultural areas. The created party organizations were to assemble particularly
small-holder peasants who were the most interested in collective forms of
agriculture. Admitting mediocre peasants alone was supposed to indicate whether they would be prone to participate in dekulakisation. In
the first half of the 50s, the group of peasants who joined the party was
dominated by small-holder peasants, whose share faltered fluctuated between 20% and 30%. On the other hand, the share of peasants who owned
farms of 7-15 ha fallen from 31% in 1949 to 9% in 1955. In practice, until the end of the 50s the most susceptible to the influence of the PUWP
were half-proletarian peasantry groups. Similar proclivity characterized
some of the divided parcel purchasers and settlers. Nevertheless, as the
years passed, the image of a peasant underwent a transformation. The last
two decades of the party's operation saw many large-holder peasants join
the party. Thy were more entrepreneurial, better educated and better experience in dealing with agriculture-related institutions. After the main
wave of withdrawals of peasants from the party in the beginning of the
80s, the representation of PUWP members in the group of medium and
large farms was growing. In 1982, owners of farms sized 5-10 ha members constituted 38.7%, and, in the case of farms above 10 ha, 27%.10
9
Henryk Sabek, O spoecznej historii Polski 1945-1989 [About Social History

of Poland 1945-1989] (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza, 2009), 401, 501.
10
Dobieszewski, Nomenklatura partyjna, 193-194; Sabek, O spoecznej historii Polski, 442-443, 501-502.
A significant element of the PUWP's weakness was the social composition of party organizations. Less than half of its members constituted
peasants. Many of them were random, without the respect of the environment. Many elemental party organizations, apart from farming peasants, had as members people working for gromada or gmina national
councils, policemen, teachers, physical worker peasants and physical
workers employed in cities. The position of peasants in the organizational
structure of agricultural areas has been presented on the chart below.
Chart 2. Members and candidates in party organizations in agricultural
areas by social-professional classes in 1967 (as a percentage)
Source: Own chart based on Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza od IV do V Zjazdu

(Warszawa: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza Komitet Centralny, 1968), 108-109.
The above chart indicates that peasants, who joined PUWP, constituted the
most numerous social-professional group in the party structures. The second place was occupied by non-physical workers who outran the workers
by 5.7%. It is also worth mentioning that workers employed in cities and
farming workers taken together give a share of 30.9% in participation in
countryside-based party organizations. As a result of the high membership,
physical workers ranked second. Summing up, it should be emphasised that
122 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
together the four social classes constituted 62.4 % and substantially prevailed over peasants on the party structures in agricultural areas.
PUWP as the executive body implementing agricultural policy of the
state
The central controlling bodies of the PUWP expected that the members of
agricultural party organizations would take on the role of the promoters of
transformation in the countryside. Therefore, it was assumed that each village would have its own party organization assembling small-holder peasants, who were thought to be the most interested in joining production
cooperatives. Simultaneously, actions were undertaken leading to the
change of social structure of party organizations already in place so that
they would be dominated by a strong core of mediocrity. The peasants
belonging to the PUWP were obligated to take part in the organization of
the production cooperatives. It carried great importance for the authorities
that the cooperative was composed of the peasants with the highest
awareness, which translated into party membership. It was assumed that
each formed cooperative would be joined by all PUWP members who lived
in the village in which the cooperative was created. However, the meetings
of countryside-based party organizations witness many cases of passive resistance to, and even hostile attitude towards the idea of collectivisation itself. Such cases were to be counteracted by the guidelines of the Politburo
of the PUWP, which assumed that whenever a production cooperative is
set up all party members should join it subject to expulsion from the party.
Soon it transpired that following such guideline would result in decreasing
the number party members in the countryside by almost a half.11
PUWP committees in gromadas and poviats strived to shape the basis of
membership in cooperatives. It was their idea to submit projects concerning the organization of cooperatives to villages with the highest party
membership. It was hoped that party members would provide understanding and support. In the initial stages of collectivisation, partial support
was achieved; what was not achieved, however, was lasting success. Party organization suffered dangerous divisions on account of the attitude to
cooperatives.
11
Dobieszewski, Nomenklatura partyjna, 189, 192, 194-195; Jarosz, Polityka

wadz komunistycznych, 431, 432-433.
A telling and surprising fact for the authorities was that in the villages
undergoing collectivisation accession to cooperatives was declared only
by a little more than a half of PUWP members (from 54 to 56%).12
Other area of party organizations involvement in the countryside was
concerned with the mandatory deliveries. The peasants were obligated to
deliver predetermined amounts of food supplies to collection points
(mainly gain and meat) for a price significantly lower that the price offered on the free market. Both the amount as well as type of delivered agricultural produce was determined by the administration prior to the
harvest. The obligatory supplies had given rise to the peasants discontent. The party governing bodies were undertaking actions aiming at
fighting the peasants dissatisfaction with the imposed obligations. Attempts were being undertaken at increasing their awareness. Mainly the
elemental party organizations operating in the countryside were burdened
with the task of carrying out this initiative. They were not capable of
meeting these obligations on account of their organizational weakness
and local party activists frequent refusals to campaign for the party in
fear of revenge exacted by the local communities. In the face of EPOs
unreliability, the party governing body had to refer to the countryside
campaigners coming from city- or workplace-based PUWP committees.
They found it difficult to change the peasants mind on the provisions of
agricultural products. Their presence in villages was meeting with dissatisfaction, and their methods were being criticized. In spite of the resistance, the suppliers were being exacted. Resisting peasants were
paying administrative penalties, stigmatized in the press as well as called
to the offices of the local authorities where they were being forced to deliver the mandatory deliveries by way of persuasion or threat.13
In 1956, pressured by the peasants resistance and political changes, the
concept of forced collectivisation collapsed. The party authorities
changed their strategy employed so far with respect to the reconstruction
12
Stanisaw Stpka, Chopi wobec wydarze politycznych w Polsce (1956-1959)

[Peasants and Political Events in Poland (1956-1959)] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo SGGW 1999), 58.
13
Bohdan Halczak, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza w powiecie. Ewoluowanie powiatowych instancji PZPR na przykadzie Zielonej Gry (1949-1989)
[Polish United Workers' Party in the County. Evolution of County Instance. The
Example of the Communist Party in Zielona Gora (1949-1989)] (Zielona Gra:
Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogrskiego 2011), 50-51.
124 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
of agriculture. The introduction of collectives was spread over time. It

was recognized that the peasants needed to be prepared for the nearing
changes first, and that it was necessary to awaken the feeling of solidarity
with the community and develop the habit of acting for the good of the
society. Only then, based on organizational forms familiar to the peasants, would it be possible to shape a Polish model of socialism in the
countryside. The then I secretary of the Politburo of the PUWP,
Wadysaw Gomuka, specified the conditions that, in his opinion, had to
be met to develop production cooperatives: voluntary participation, full
self-governing, acquisition of ownership of agricultural machines and
tools, load assistance provided by the state. He reckoned that the growth
of production cooperatives should be pursued through the development of
the production cooperatives that survived the events of 1956 in the first
place.14 The strategy consisting in coercion was relinquished, but the priority of state-controlled economy was preserved. Aside from the support
for production cooperatives, support for various other forms of teamwork
in the countryside was promised, in particular for farming societies.15
They were to contribute to agriculture development as well as precipitate
socialist transformation of agricultural areas for it was believed that purchasing by groups of agricultural equipment would bring into individual
farming a new, social factor. As a result, in the production process, apart
from private disposition of the land, appeared social ownership of agricultural production tools. On that account, it was decided that the PUWP
should take over the control of agricultural societies. [] The Party
through its organizations must put them on the right track, must direct
them.16 The Agricultural Department of the Politburo of the PUWP ad14
VIII Plenum KC PZPR. Przemwienie wygoszone 20 X 1956 r. [The Eighth

Plenum of the Central Committee. Speech Delivered on 20th October 1956],
in Wadysaw Gomuka, Przemwienia [Speeches] (Warszawa: Ksika i
Wiedza 1957), 30-32; Jan Ptasiski, Drugi zwrot. Gomuka u szczytu
powodzenia [Second Turn. Gomulka at the Peak of Success] (Warszawa: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza 1988), 42, 79.
15
Agricultural societies existed in the Polish Peaoples Republic from 1956.
They were set up by the peasants as independent organizations of agricultural
self-government. In 1956-1959 almost 70% of the societies were established
by the peasants themselves. In the years that followed, they gradually became
subordinated to the party and state authorities.
16
Nasz program wyborczy. Przemwienie wygoszone 29 XI 1956 r. na krajowej
naradzie aktywu spoeczno-politycznego [Our Election Program. Speech Given
vised that agricultural societies should be joined by all the party members
residing in the countryside. At the same time, interparty coordinating
commissions comprised of the representatives of the PUWP and the
United Peoples Party embarked on the verification of the managements
of agricultural societies. Moreover, members of the poviat and voivodeship associations of agricultural societies were being recalled, and party
activists were being introduced in their place. So transformed agricultural
societies were to play a crucial part in the process of collectivisation.17
A further element that was supposed to set ground for future collectivisation were the changes introduced in agricultural legislation.18 These regulations in practice served the purpose of transferring to state farm
holdings of peasants land that were excluded from production. In consequence of this policy, in the 1960s the area of farmland in the public sector rose by 453.1 k ha from 2,424.9 k ha to 2,878.05 t ha. These actions
were supposed to transform agriculture by way of introducing so-called
state agricultural farms. The assumption of the doctrine regarding the
on November 29, 1956 at the National Conference of the Socio-Political Asset],
in Gomuka, Przemwienia, 110-111; IX Plenum KC PZPR. Wzowe problemy
partii, 15 V 1957 r. [IX Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party. The Key Issues of the Party, 15 May 1957], in Wadysaw Gomuka,
Przemwienia IX 1957 - XII 1958 (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza 1959), 295296; XII Plenum KC PZPR. Zadania organizacji partyjnych w akcji przed III
Zjazdem Partii, 15 X 1958 r. [VII Plenum of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party. The Tasks of Party Organizations in Action before the Third
Congress of the Party], in Wadysaw Gomuka, Przemwienia IX 1957 - XII 1958
(Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza 1959), 375-377.
17
List Midzypartyjnej Komisji Porozumiewawczej KW PZPR i WK ZSL w Poznaniu do powiatowych komisji porozumiewawczych, marzec 29, 1957 [Letter Intergroup Coordination Committee of KW PZPR and WK ZSL in Poznan to
the of Coordination County Committees, 29 March 1957], Gwny Komitet Organizacyjny Zwizku Kek i Organizacji Rolniczych (hereafter cited as GKO
ZKiOR), Archiwum Akt Nowych (hereafter cited as AAN), 4-6, 43,
18
On 28 June 1962, the Sejm of the Polish Peoples Republic passed a resolution
which allowed the administrative bodies to take over the peasants properties (land and buildings) in return for unpaid liabilities. Another step taken in
this direction was the act of June 29, 1963, on the indivisibility of agricultural
holdings. Passed on January 24, 1968, it regarded the voluntary transfer to the
state of farms in return for a pension and forced purchase by the state of
properties constituting a part of agricultural holding.
126 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
necessity of collectivisation in agriculture contradicted economic principles. The peasants were not allowed to buy land despite the fact that it
was contiguous to their farms. Instead, the land was transferred to state
agricultural farms in spite of their resistance to take it, in particular when
the plot of land in question was small and located at a large distance from
the main farm.19 In the period under analysis, the authorities were still
conducting the mandatory deliveries and restricting the land purchases
from the National Land Fund [Pastwowy Fundusz Ziemi PFZ]. The
prices applied with regard to the mandatory deliveries were 2-4 times
lower than the ones offered on the free market. At the same time, the area
of nobodys land was growing since state agricultural farms, production
cooperatives and agricultural societies not always wanted or could utilize
the land received. Only approximately 10% of land was assigned to individual farming.20
In the decade of the 70s like in the preceding years the units of the
PUWP operating in the countryside strived to control the process of social development of this community. For this purpose, the party employed a variety of means such as discussions, explanations and
persuasion, organizing and mobilizing, specifying goals and tasks and execution of their implementation. Any significant change, however, occurred as late as the first half of the 70s, as it was recognized during the
7th meeting of the PUWP: [] for the first time in a long time a visible
tendency pointing to strengthening and deepening of socialist changes in
the Polish agriculture can be noticed. During this period, the possession
of land by the state agricultural farms, production cooperatives and agricultural societies increased from 16 to 20%. About 11 k peasant production groups and more than 22 t groups of common use of agricultural
machines were established, and the number of specialized farms grew to
120 k. After the mandatory deliveries were abolished in 1972, contraction
19
20
IV Zjazd Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej. 15-20 czerwca 1964 r.

Stenogram [IV Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party. 15-20 June
1964. Transcript] (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza 1964), 104, 106-108; Zygmunt Hemmerling, Nowa polityka rolna, jej zaoenia, niekonsekwencje i
zaamania (1956-1970), [New Agricultural Policy, Assumptions, Inconsistencies and Collapse (1956-1970)] Pastwo i Kultura Polityczna 10 (1990), 19.
Jan Lubin, Komunici na wsi polskiej 1944-1989 [The Communists in the
Polish Countryside 1944-1989] (Krakw: Wydawnictwo Myli Nieinternowanej 1988), 36-37, 38, 40.
[kontraktacja] was introduced. A farmer was signing contracts with a

state company for the sale of agricultural produce. In the next few years,
the share of contraction in the sale of grain, pigs and cattle exceeded
90%. In this way, almost the entire agricultural commodity production of
peasants was being sold based on the planned relations with socialist
economy. At the cost of huge new outlays of the state in the years 19711979 about 1,300 new production cooperatives were organized which
held about 3.5% of all the lands utilized for agricultural purposes. However, it turned out that the majority of cooperatives were not able to stay
in on the market without assistance.21
Agricultural policy of the PUWP, which for ideological reasons favoured
socialization of the countryside, in the second half of the 70s gave rise to
an independent peasants movement. In 1978, in a few of the countrys
regions, Committees of Peasants Self-protection in the Lubelska Lands,
Grjecka Lands and Rzeszowska Lands (Komitet Samoobrony Chopskiej Ziemi Lubelskiej, Ziemi Grjeckiej i Ziemi Rzeszowskiej), the
Temporary Committee of the independent Peasants Trade Union
(Tymczasowy Komitet Niezalenego Zwizku Zawodowego Rolnikw)
and the Podlaskie Believers Committee (Podlaski Komitet Ludzi
Wierzcych) were established. Those organizations suffered severe repressions and fought for survival until August 1980. The activists, who
weathered this difficult period, started to form independent representation
of the farmers only after signing of the August agreements in the newlycreated socio-political reality. Three main centres were set up in the
country (Rural Solidarity Solidarno Wiejska Peasants Soli21
VII Zjazd Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej. Stenogram, 8-12 grudnia

1975 r. [VII Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party. Transcript, 8-12
December 1975] (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza 1976), 102-103; VIII Zjazd
Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej. Podstawowe dokumenty i materiay
11-15 lutego 1980 r. [VIII Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party.
Basic Documents and Materials, 11-15 February 1980] (Warszawa: Ksika i
Wiedza 1980), 31-32; Franciszek Gryciuk, Tajne i jawne formy kolektywizacji
wsi w latach 1956-1989, [Secret and Open Forms of Collectivisation of Agriculture in the Years 1956-1989] in Represje wobec wsi i ruchu ludowego (19561989) [Repressions Against the Village and Peasant Movement (1956-1989)], t.
2, ed. Janusza Gmitruka, Zbigniewa Nawrockiego (Warszawa: Muzeum Historii
Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, Instytut Pamici Narodowej Komisja cigania
Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2004), 63.
128 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
darity and Agricultural Producers Self-governing Association Samorzdny Zwizek Producentw Rolnych) that laid foundations for the independent Self-governing Trade Union of individual Fanners Solidarity
(NSZZ Ri Solidarno).22
In 1980-1981, actions of the Union were being hampered by the PUWP
and the security sendees that strived to intimidate the activists and create
discord among them. The 9th Extraordinary Meeting of the PUWP, which
took place in July 1981, opted for the socialist rebirth of the countryside.
Although, the reestablishment of rural self-government was taken as the
symbol of the rebirth, it was at the same time emphasised that the party
would support agricultural societies as a mass social-occupational and
union fanners organization. It was the agricultural societies supported by
the PUWP who were supposed to cooperate with the Solidarity and other
trade union organizations.23
Field structures of the PUWP were supposed to give strength to agricultural societies, which were found to be the most influential element of the
rural community. It was heavily emphasized that the division of selfgovernment was harmful and likely to cause discord among village members. The establishment of the association of private agricultural producers was being opposed to. Criticism of socialist forms of running an
agricultural holding was considered a dangerous trend. Setting up of independent structures of rural Solidarity was treated as a counterrevolutionary attempt. It was feared that it would evolve into a "party of
kulaks". The then 1st Secretary of the PUWP, Stanisaw Kania, during
the meeting of the Politburo of the PUWP in January 1981, described the
rural Solidarity in the following manner: [...] it is an attempt at establishment of political force, and not a form of self-government, it is an attempt at driving the rural community apart. It is the people who are
22
23
Andrzej W. Kaczorowski, Niezaleny ruch chopski 1976-1980, [Independent Peasant Movement 1976-1980] in Solidarno Rolnikw 1980-1989 [Solidarity of Farmers 1980-1989], ed. Andrzej W. Kaczorowski (Warszawa:
Fundacja Kasa Nadzie, 2010), 18; Tomasz Kozowski, Postanie NSZZ
Rolnikw Indywidualnych Solidarno 1980-1981, [Founding of Solidarity
of Farmers 1980-1981] in Solidarno Rolnikw 1980-1989, 36, 41.
IX Nadzwyczajny Zjazd Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej, 14-24 lipca
1981 r. Stenogram z obrad [IX Extraordinary Congress of the Polish United
Workers' Party, 14-24 July 1981. Transcript of the Proceedings] (Warszawa:
Ksika i Wiedza, 1983), 11, 12.
hostile towards us who are beginning it. For this reason, this movement
must be opposed to, and conditions for the development of agricultural
societies must be ensured, we must provide them with means, and expand
their powers.24 As a result of such party policy towards the emerging
structures of Solidarity, actions aiming at impeding the registration of
the association were undertaken. It was not until 12 May 1981 that Solidarity was entered in an official register. In the martial law, its operation
was suspended and then delegalized. The Act of 1982 adopted by the
Sejm of the Peoples Republic of Poland did not provide for the rights of
individual farmers to form trade unions.
Between opposition and fitting in
The impossibility to form independent associations and express ones
views gave rise to various forms of social oppositions and fitting in in rural areas. Those two social attitudes together with political opposition
occurring now and then (1956, 1980-1981) complemented each other
and intertwined. Cases of opposition were mainly a reaction to those
moves of the state that constituted significant threats to the peasantry. In
the period of real socialism, the peasants feared the loss of their lands,
eradication of religion from their lives and deprivation of influence on
local institutions actions. The peasants opposition was particularly
strong against the PUWP policy in the period of forced collectivisation.
The opposition took many forms such as noncompliance with official
recommendations of the authorities, paying taxes with delay, limiting agricultural production, agitating against cooperatives, division of agricultural holdings and attempts of sabotage. Active opposition against
collectivisation was also employed. There were cases of rural activists
being beaten up and setting fire to cooperative buildings.
During the crisis of the communist system of governing the country in
1956, the peasants embarked on the process of closing of production cooperatives. They refused to go to work, divided the cooperatives property and wrote petitions to be excluded. The petitions started to flood in in
24
Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza a Solidarno 1980-1981. Tajne

dokumenty Biura Politycznego [Polish United Workers' Party and the "Solidarity" 1980-1981. Secret Documents of the Political Bureau], introduction Tomasz
Kozowski (Warszawa: Instytut Pamici Narodowej Komisja cigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2013), 366.
130 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
the middle of June 1956. Cooperatives closure was precipitated after the
8th Plenary Session of the Politburo of the PUWP (19-21 October 1956).
By the end of the year, the number of cooperatives had fallen to 15.8 %.25
Discontent was being caused by the obligatory deliveries of agricultural
produce, persisting in the countryside. The peasants found them unfair,
and the authorities failure to discontinue them was taken as a threat of
collectivisation. The peasants were not complying with the obligation of
deliveries and were refusing to accept orders to provide the required
products. The expected waiving of the obligation came as late as 1 January 1972. In the second half of the 70s, the peasants displeasure focused
on the issue of old-age pensions. By the end of 1978, about 250 k peasants appealed against the pension premiums imposed on them.26
The peasants were anxious about those moves of the party that might have
indirectly led to depriving them of their lands. When it became apparent
that a significant element of agricultural policy during countryside socialization is constituted by agricultural societies, the peasants started to approach them with reservations. Lack of clear information regarding this
subject bred rumours among the villagers and caused the spread of antiagricultural society propaganda by word of mouth. Peasants anxiety was
deepened when in 1973 Agricultural Society Cooperatives were called to
life, which took over all assets and property of agricultural societies.27
25
Meldunek z terenu w sprawie spdzielczoci produkcyjnej, sierpie 27, 1956

[Report from the Area of the Collective Farms, 27 August 1956], 237/VII-3860,
KC PZPR Wydzia Rolny (hereafter cited as KC PZPR WR), AAN, 98-99.
26
Andrzej Friszke, Opozycja polityczna w PRL 1945-1980 [The Political Opposition in Polish People`s Republic 1945-1980] (Londyn: Aneks, 1994), 540;
Stanisaw Stpka, Chopi wobec groby kolektywizacji rolnictwa w latach
1956-1970, [The Peasants Against the Threat of Collectivisation of Agriculture in the Years 1956-1970] in Wie w Polsce Ludowej [Countryside in People's Poland], ed. Grzegorz Miernik (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Akademii
witokrzyskiej, 2005), 116-117.,
27
Informacja. Stosunek chopw do FRR, lipiec 16, 1959 [Information. The Ratio
of Peasants to the FRR, 16 July 1959], 237/VII-3962, t.2, KC PZPR Wydzia
Organizacyjny (hereafter cited as KC PZPR WO, AAN), 36; Informacja o problemach wynikajcych z listw, skarg i interwencji do KC PZPR i instytucji partyjnych w 1978 r., marzec 1979 [Information About Problems Arising from
Letters, Complaints and Interventions to the Central Committee and Party Institutions in 1978, March 1979], XXVII/10, KC PZPR Biuro Listw i Inspekcji
Attempts at eradicating religion from community life were met with the
peasants opposition. Religion-related conflicts intensified especially in
the second half of the 50s and during the millennium celebrations. When
in 1956 the PUWP was struck with crisis, the society started to exert
pressure on the authorities to reinstate religious education. Under the parents pressure and as a result of resolutions of gromadas and national
poviat councils, in the school year 1956/57 reintroduction of religion as a
school subject began. However, it was not the party and state authorities
intention to stop the process of secularisation. In the summer of 1958, decisions were made which were supposed to lead to repeated removal of
religion from state schools. People started protesting. Petitions were being prepared and signed by people living in the countryside, less frequently in a few towns. They were addressed to the party-central
authorities, education inspectorates, and national poviat council presidiums. The resistance to the removal of religion from schools lasted until
1961. Full removal of religious education in schools was sanctioned under the act of 15 July 1961.28
One of the trends of social resistance of peasants to the party and the
communist system surrounded the state-Church conflict during the millennium celebrations. In rural areas, this trend involved manifestation of
attachment to the faith and the Church. It would appear that in the 60s,
people living in the countryside took the Catholic Church to be their protector and turned to the Church for guidance and support in their actions.
This phenomenon grew in strength when in October 1978 Cardinal Karol
Wojtya was elected pope. In the 80s, almost all fractions of the rural
"Solidarity" were established with the Churchs support. In their activi-
28
(hereafter cited as KC PZPR BLiI), AAN, 207; Pamitniki nowego pokolenia

chopw polskich. Materiay konkursowe, tom sygnalny [Memoirs of a New
Generation of Polish Peasants. Competition Materials], ed. Andrzej Budzyski,
Janusz Gmitruk (Warszawa: P.H.U. ARAL-DIMAX, 1996), 70.
Peter Raina, Koci katolicki a pastwo w wietle dokumentw 1945-1989
[The Catholic Church and the State in the Light of Documents 1945-1989],
vol. 1 (Pozna: W Drodze, 1994), 635; Hanna Kopka, Religia w szkoach
Polski Ludowej. Sprawa nauczania religii w polityce pastwa (1944-1961)
[Religion in Schools of Polish People's Republic. Case of Religion Teaching
in State Politics (1944-1961)] (Biaystok: Dzia Wydawnictw Fili UW, 1995),
170-171, 219.
132 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
ties, they often evoked religious symbols and social teachings of the
Church.29
The persistence of the communist system and the lack of real perspectives
for its change proliferated attitudes of adaptation and acceptance. The
changes of 1956 gave people hope for a change and facilitated gradual
coming to terms with the political reality. The peasants associated
Wadysaw Gomuka regardless of his real intentions with the process
of decollectivisation of agricultural areas. The period of rule of Edward
Gierek and people related with him contributed to the attitudes of adaptation and acceptance toward the system. The authorities made decisions
that benefited the development of agricultural production. The purchase
prices of cattle, slaughter animals and milk were increased. In 1972, the
obligatory deliveries of animals, grain and potatoes were discontinued.
The peasants were granted access to cheap loans and tax relief for investment in the field of agriculture.30
The peasants also benefited from the Peoples Poland. The Communists
took over and implemented some of the elements of the peoples party
program. The credit for agricultural reform, economic and social advancement of the peasants, and more opportunities of professional devel29
Uroczystoci milenijne w 1966 roku. Sprawozdania urzdw spraw

wewntrznych [Millennium Celebrations in 1966. Reports of Internal Affairs Offices], ed. Wanda Chudzik (Warszaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1996), 22-23, 92-94,
112-113; Krzysztof abd, Opozycja ludowa w okresie od stanu wojennego
do okrgego stou, [People`s Opposition during the Period Between Martial
Law and Roundtable Talks] in Dzieje i przyszo polskiego ruchu ludowego
[History and the Future of Polish Peasant Movement], vol. 2 Polska ludowa
(1944/45-1989) [Polish People`s Republic (1944/45 - 1989)], ed. Waldemar Paruch, Stefan Jzef Pastuszka, Romuald Turkowski (Warszaw: Ludowa
Spdzielnia Wydawnicza, 2002), 485-486.
30
Pamitniki nowego pokolenia chopw polskich [Memoirs of a New Generation of Polish Peasants], vol. IV, ed. Andrzej Budzyski, Janusz Gmitruk
(Warszawa: Wydawca P.H.U. ARAL-DIMAX, 1998), 41; Zygmunt
Hemmerling, Fiasko koncepcji dynamicznego programu rolnego i liberalizacji komunistycznego modelu sprawowania wadz krystalizowania si chopskiej opozycji (1971-1981), [The Fiasco of the Concept of a Dynamic
Agricultural Program and the Liberalization of Communist Governance Model
the Crystallization of Peasant Opposition (1971-1981)] in Wie polska 19441989 [Polish Countryside 1944-1989], ed. Zygmunt Hemmerling (Warszawa:
Orodek Bada Spoecznych, 1990), 85.
opment for young people with a rural background goes to them. Peasants
children could pursue career in politics, army, police, administration and
industry. In long-term assumptions, the authorities planned to sever old
social relations built on world-view and political similarities by way of
professional promotion.31
With respect to agriculture-related institutions and local authorities, the
process of adaptation manifested itself as dealing with the reality of
that time. Adaptation took different forms such as fictional divisions of
agricultural holdings and giving bribes to obtain products in shortage.
Obligatory deliveries and high taxes many a time lead to hiding the real
area of owned land. The adaptation to conditions of living in the system
of real socialism effected deep changes in the morality of the peasants.
Some standards of living in a society and principles of conducts underwent gradual relativization.32
Conclusions
The countryside was a difficult area for the communists to penetrate. In the
past, until 1947, the shape of the attitude of the peasants was influenced by
the peoples movement who exhibited hostile attitudes toward communists.
In the rural environment, there were no communist traditions. It was difficult to combine attachment to the land and a real acceptance of collectivisation. When in the second half of the 50s the administrative pressure
subsided and social life became more democratic, the peasants could oppose the development of the party in the countryside more openly. The
members of the PUWP became increasingly isolated from the rest of the
community; they were intimidated and beaten up. The party was viewed by
the peasants as a group of random people, unrelated to their community.
Therefore, the PUWP member did not enjoy a lot of respect in the rural ar31
32
Friszke, Opozycja polityczna w PRL, 69-70, 584.

Pamitniki nowego pokolenia chopw polskich. Materiay konkursowe, tom
sygnalny, 71; Grzegorz Miernik, Problem wsi i chopw w wietle korespondencji kierowanej do Biura Listw i Inspekcji KC PZPR z lat 19581970, [The Problem of the Countryside and the Peasants in the Light of the
Correspondence Addressed to the Office of Letters and Inspection of the Central Committee in the Years 1958-1970] in Wie w Polsce Ludowej [Countryside in People`s Poland], ed. Grzegorz Miernik (Kielce: Wydawnictwo
Akademii witokrzyskiej, 2005), 96-97.
134 _____________________________________________ Stanisaw STPKA
eas. The PUWP to an increasingly large extent was becoming a party of

state, economic and party bureaucracy the new ruling class.
In the course of the analysed period, the countryside was treated by the
party authorities in an inconsistent manner, and as a result of the peasants resistance to collectivisation, agriculture became a safe haven for
private property, escaping in this way the basic assumptions of the new
system. Material and spiritual basics of existence were threatened mainly
in the period of collectivisation and intensification of the conflict between
the state and the Church. In both cases, the threats were big enough to
make the peasants oppose the authorities to keep their lands and spiritual
values. In terms of the fundamental issue the attitude to communism
the peasants were against it due to its assumptions of activities related to
collectivisation and atheism. As the time passed, their direct relationship
with state institutions was no longer so unambiguous. In the field of contacts regarding everyday matters not resistance, but adaption characterised the peasants attitude in relations with the institutions of real
socialism.
United People`s Party Activists in the Central Power Elite

in Poland (1949-1989)
Piotr SWACHA
Introduction
At the beginning of the Second World War the Polish political peasant
movement was united in one party supported among the peasant masses.
At the end of Second World War in Poland existed two peasant political
parties. One of them was Peasants` Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe SL) led
officially by Wincenty Witos1, but in fact due to his serious illness, it was
under the leadership of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk former Prime Minister
of Polish Government in exile.2 It was a continuation of a party founded
in 1931 as the union of the Polish Peasant Party Piast (PSL Piast), the
Polish Peasant Party Wyzwolenie (PSL Liberation) and the Peasent`s
Movement (Stronnictwo Chopskie). During the war SL, (which had a
conspiracy nickname Roch) was active in the Polish underground since
the last months of the year 1939. The second political organization called
by themselves as a representative of Polish villages was the Peasant Party
Wola Ludu (Peoples` Will). It had been set up under communist auspices3 in February 1944 by rural activists who were closer to the left side
of Polish political scene before the war. SL Wola Ludu participated in
the Home National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa) since the foundation of that institution. They accepted the domination of communists and
perceived themselves as their loyal collaborator. On September 17, 1945
1
Romuald Turkowski, Ujawnienie si struktur politycznych Stronnictwa

Ludowego Roch powstanie Polskiego Stronnictwa Ludowego (1945-1946),
[Disclosure of the Political Structures of the Peasant Party Roch creation of
the Polish Peasant Party (1945-1946)] in Represje wobec wsi i ruchu ludowego
(1944/1945-1989) [Repression Against Village and Peasant Movement
(1944/1945-1989)], vol. 5, ed. Arkadiusz Indraszczyk, Mariusz Krzysztofiski
(Warszawa-Rzeszw: Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowgo, Instytut
Pamici Narodowej, 2014), 127.
2
Jzef Dancygier (and others), Sownik biograficzny dziaaczy ruchu ludowego
[Biographical Dictionary of the Peasant Movement Activists] (Warszawa:
Ludowa Spdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1989), 268.
3
Peter Brock, The Politics of the Polish Peasant, International Review of
Social History 2 (1955), 222.
136 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
they changed into Peasants` Party (with unofficial nickname Lubelskie), which was a part of the communist political tactic to create organizations similar to pre-war ones, but strictly subordinate to PZPR.4
Both parties in June 28, 1945 designated their representatives to the Temporary Government of National Unity. The Polish Peasant Party was formally in the coalition headed by Prime Minister Edward OsbkaMorawski5, but as they tried to carry on independent politics, they were
combated by security forces. Repressions against PSL increased after the
adoption of their own political position before the referendum in June
1946.6 Finally, the Polish Peasants Party became a part of the opposition
after the falsified elections held in January 1947.7 In the autumn of 1947,
Stanisaw Mikoajczyk, due to the information that he would be arrested
and charged with treason, decided to escape from Poland. Left-wing members formally reorganized the Polish Peasant Party, giving top positions to
politicians who led the internal opposition to the party`s former leader.8
In 1949, two years after Stanislaw Mikolajczyk`s secret escape from Poland,
the communists forced the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) to unite with the
pro-communist People`s Party (SL) and to form the United People`s
4
Antoni Mieczkowski, Polski ruch ludowy w latach 1944-1949, [Polish

Peasant Movement in the Years 1944-1949] in Dzieje partii i stronnictw
chopskich w Europie. W podzielonej Europie [The History of Peasant Parties
and Factions in Europe. In Divided Europe], eds. Jzef Ryszard Szaflik, Janusz
Gmitruk, Adam Koseski, Romuald Turkowski (Putusk Warszawa:
Akademia Humanistyczna im. A. Gieysztora, Ludowe Towarzystwo NaukowoKulturalne, Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, 2007), 143-144.
5
Stanisaw Stpka, Chopi wobec wydarze politycznych w Polsce (1956-1959)
[Peasants` Attitude to the Political Developments in Poland (1956-1959)]
(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo SGGW, 1999), 28.
6
Turkowski, Ujawnienie si struktur politycznych Stronnictwa Ludowego
Roch, 146-147.
7
Stpka, Chopi wobec wydarze politycznych, 21-22.
8
Tomasz Skrzyski, Wejcie do ZSL. Miejsce na scenie politycznej i losy
odrodzonego Polskiego Stronnictwa Ludowego w 1948 i 1949 r., [Access to
ZSL (United People`s Party) Reborn Polish Peasants` Party, its Place on the
Political Scene and Fortunes] in Wie i ruch ludowy w Polsce i Europie. W krgu
historii i tradycji [Countryside and Peasant Movement in Poland and Europe],
vol. 1, ed. Janusz Gmitruk, Arkadiusz Indraszczyk (Warszawa: Muzeum Historii
Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, WNH SGGW, Ludowe Towarzystwo NaukowoKulturalne, 2012), 534.
United People`s Party Activists in the Central Power Elite in Poland... _____ 137
Party (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe ZSL). The communists gave

ZSL the role of the so-called satellite party, without significant political
importance, but still it was formally a partner in ruling coalition. ZSL was
represented in all government branches and on all levels. Their political
dependency was not the same during the whole socialist period. They
made several attempts to obtain greater freedom of action, but until the
year 1989 they were PZPR`s collaborator.
Article purpose
The following article contains an attempt to examine the position of activists associated with the peasant movement in the central Polish political
elite (parliament`s authorities, government and State Council) during the
communism era. This theme belongs to the area of political elites studies,
whose characteristic feature is the multiplicity of approaches and definitions. Therefore, in this article the definition taken from M. Burton, R.
Gunther and J. Higley writings was adopted, which states that elite is a
collection of individuals, which, thanks to its strategic position in the key
(powerful) social organizations are able to shape the decision-making processes (political outcomes) on a regular and substantional basis. The elite
consists of the main decision-makers the biggest and the richest in resources organizations and movements: political, governmental, military,
professional, economic, communications and cultural. In this article, the
reaserch was subjected to only one part of the central power elite, deriving
from one party, who had their representatives in various state institutions.
Main research questions are: what were the socio-demographic features
of peasant activists in the central power elite (age, gender, place of birth,
education and profession)? Was there any common pattern of recruitment
to the central elite for them? How was this part of thee elite formed?
What was their political experience before taking public positions? How
were they connected in the relational network created by political elite
members?
The research for this study is based largely upon activists` biographies,
press articles and archival data mainly collected in the Museum of the
History of Polish People's Movement and The Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw. To explore a linkage between peasant movement
activists in the central political elite, the social network analysis technique
was used. It allowed to indicate how ZSL`s members were embedded in
138 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
the political elite network and who was the key player within the structure. The research objective is also to map an official type of ties between
members to examine the continuity of the ZSL`s representatives in the
central power elite.
Due to the fact that the character of research forced one to refer to multiple biographies, the footnotes form was modified. Cumulative data were
not supported by footnotes, as it would create a large volume of links on
almost every page. Footnotes were only used to recall scientific articles,
books and archival data. Sources of biographical collective information
about politics were placed in the table at the end of the article.
The study included data from the beginning of the ZSL`s representative
political career in the central power elite. This means that, for example, in
relation to the respondents` functions in the party, were included only
those who were held before the first successful entrance to the Council
State, government or parliament`s presidency. This is due to the fact that
the purpose of this analysis is to identify common socio-demographic
characteristics and restore the career path leading to the state elite.
ZSL members in authorities of parliament, government and State
Council
In the political system of the Polish People`s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa - PRL), the Polish United Workers` Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza - PZPR) had the significant role. The
communist party was the most important factor in the political process; it
controlled the access into decision-making centers for any other political
groups. The party system was ruled and dominated by PZPR, but officially also two other parties existed legally the United People`s Party and
the Democratic Party (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne - SD). Both had their
representatives in the central power elite. Despite the fact that the PZPR`s
main chief executive body the Political Bureau (Politburo) had the most
important role in creating state politics, the part of the political system
was unicameral Parliament (Sejm), as a legislative power, and the Councils of Ministers and State Council9 as an executive power. They were not
9
Due to the Constitution of the Polish People`s Republic it combined the legislative and executive power; The Constitution of the Polish People`s Republic, Dziennik Ustaw (Journal of Laws) 1952, nr. 33, position 232.
typical state decision making institutions, but their importance was

changing during the whole socialist period in Poland. For example the influence of the Prime Minister in the late eighties was wider than in the
seventies (Rakowski was the only one who first became a Prime Minister
and then the first Secretary of the Party).
Members of the Parliament were seen to be formally chosen in elections, but in fact they were nominated by PZPR`s executives who accepted every candidate for deputies. Due to the limited role of the Parliament,
described during this period as a voting machine, the ordinary deputy
could not be consider as a member of the central power elite. The position and signification of the ZSL parliamentary club authorities were also
very low, due to the fact that usually all clubs were voting in the same
way, consistent with the PZPR`s expectations. Therefore, only Marshals
and Deputy Marshals of Sejm were included as the figures involved in
the research. In the years 1949-1989, six ZSL representatives held the position of Parliament`s Marshal. Since February 1957, until the last PRL`s
Sejm elected in June 1989, the principal of Parliament was always a
member of a peasant party. Only during the first term of PRL`s Sejm (in
the years 1952-1956) did a ZSL representative hold the office of Deputy
Marshal.10 Two ZSL representatives served the position of Marshal for
more than one parliamentary term. There were: Czesaw Wycech during the second, third, fourth and fifth PRL`s Sejm term, and Stanisaw
Gucwa during the sixth, seventh and eighth term.11
The United People`s Party was always a part of the ruling governmental
coalition, but none of its members was a Prime Minister. Eight peasant`s
party representatives held the office of the Deputy Prime Minister (or
Second Deputy Prime Minister), they were: Antoni Korzycki, Stefan
Ignar, Zdzisaw Tomal, Longin Cegielski, Roman Malinowski, Jzef
Kozio, Kazmierz Olesiak and Czesaw Janicki. Only in Bolesaw
Bierut`s government in the years 1952-1954, did ZSL not have a repre10
11
Marshals: Wadysaw Kowalski (1947-1952), Czesaw Wycech (1957-1961,

1961-1965, 1965-1969, 1969-1971), Dyzma Gaaj (1971-972), Stanisaw
Gucwa (1972-1976, 1976-1980, 1980-1985), Roman Malinowski (19851989), Mikoaj Kozakiewicz (1989-1991). Deputy Marshal: Jzef OzgaMichalski (1952-1957).
The Polish People`s Republic (PRL) as the official name of the State was
adopted in Constitution approved on July 22, 1952. Therefore, the first term of
PRL`s Sejm started after the elections held on October 26, 1952.
140 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
sentative in this rank. The peasant party had the possibility of leading the
ministry of agriculture only in four governments.12
12
ZSL`s representatives in governments (1949-1989): First Jzef Cyrankiewicz`s

Government (1949-1952): Korzycki Antoni - Second Deputy Prime Minister,
Baranowski Wincenty - Minister without Portfolio, Dybowski Stefan - Minister
of Cultur and Art, Podedworny Bolesaw - Minister for Forestry, Putek Jzef Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Db-Kocio Jan - Minister of Agriculture and
Agricultural Reform, Szymanowski Wacaw - Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Bolesaw Birut`s Government (1952-1954): Podedworny Bolesaw Minister for Forestry, Szymanowski Wacaw - Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Db-Kocio Jan - Minister of Agriculture. Second Jzef Cyrankiewicz`s
Government (1954-1957): Ignar Stefan - Deputy Prime Minister, Pisula Feliks Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase. Third Jzef Cyrankiewicz`s Government (1961-1965): Ignar Stefan - Deputy Prime Minister, Gesing Roman Minister of Forestry and Wood Industry, Feliks Pisula - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase. Fourth Jzef Cyrankiewicz`s Government (1965-1969):
Ignar Stefan - Deputy Prime Minister, Gesing Roman - Minister of Forestry and
Wood Industry, Pisula Feliks - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase,
Gucwa Stanisaw - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase. Fifth Jzef
Cyrankiewicz`s Government (1969-1970; change of the Prime Minister in 1970,
until 1972 the office was held by Piotr Jaroszewicz): Tomal Zdzisaw - Deputy
Prime Minister, Gesing Roman - Minister of Forestry and Wood Industry,
Gucwa Stanisaw - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase, Popko Jerzy Minister of Forestry and Wood Industry, Koodziej Emil - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase. First Piotr Jaroszewicz`s Government (1972-1976):
Tomal Zdzisaw - Deputy Prime Minister, Popko Jerzy - Minister of Forestry
and Wood Industry, Koodziej Emil - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase, Skwirzyski Tadeusz - Minister of Forestry and Wood Industry. Second
Piotr Jaroszewicz`s Government (change of Prime Minister in the year 1980,
since Februray 18, 1980 until April 2, 1980 Edward Babiuch held the office):
Cegielski Longin - Deputy Prime Minister, Skwirzyski Tadeusz - Minister of
Forestry and Wood Industry, Koodziej Emil - Minister of Food Industry and
Food Purchase, Edward Babiuch`s Government (1980): Malinowski Roman Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Food Indusrty nad Food Purchase,
Skwirzyski Tadeusz - Minister of Forestry and Wood Industry, Jzef Pikowski`s Government (1980): Malinowskie Roman Deputy Prime Minister, Zaski
Jan - Minister of Food Industry and Food Purchase, Szelachowski Tadeusz Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Skwirzyski Tadeusz - Minister of Forestry and Wood Industry, Wojciech Jaruzelski Government (1981-1985): Malinowski Roman - Deputy Prime Minister, Zaski Jan - Minister of Food Industry
and Food Purchase, Skwirzyski Tadeusz - Minister of Food Industry and Food
Twenty-eight persons designated by ZSL were members of governments

created between the years 1949 and 1989. The last PRL`s Council of
Ministers was led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who became a Prime Minister
after contract elections in June 1989, which opened the road to transition from socialist system to democracy.
The United People`s Party was also represented in the State Council,
which can be described as a collective chief body of state power.13 Eleven
of ZSL`s representatives were members of the State Council for more
than one time. Jzef Ozga-Michalski held this office during seven terms
but only once as a Deputy Chairmen. Most often the position of Deputy
13
Purchase, Szelachowski Tadeusz - Minister of Health and Social Welfare,

Zbigniew Messner`s Government (1985-1988): Jzef Kozio - Deputy Prime
Minister, Cybulko Mirosaw - Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Mieczysaw
Rakowski`s Government (1988-1989): Olesiak Kazimierz - Deputy Prime Minister; Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Economy, Kozio Jzef - Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources. Tadeusz Mazowiecki`s
Government (1989-1991): Janicki Czesaw - Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of
Agriculture, Forestry and Food Economy, Bentkowski Aleksander - Minister of
Justice, Kamiski Bronisaw - Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, Kosiniak-Kamysz Andrzej - Minister of Health and Social Welfare.
State Council. Term 1947-1952 members: Jzef Nieko, Wadysaw Kowalski.
Term 1952-1957 members: Jzef Nieko, Wadysaw Kowalski, Bolesaw
Podedworny, Aleksander Juszkiewicz, Jan Domaski, Deptuty Chairman:
Czesaw Wycech and Stefan Ignar. Term 1957-1961 members: Kaziemierz Banach, Jzef Ozga-Michalski, Deputy Chairman: Bolesaw Podedworny, Secretary - Julian Horodecki. Term 1961-1965 members: Jan Db-Kocio, Kazimierz
Banach, Jzef Ozga-Michalski, secretary - Julian Horodecki, Deputy Chairman:
Bolesaw Podedworny. Term 1965-1969 members: Gesing Franciszek, Kazimierz Banach, Ozga-Michalski Jzef, secretary - Julian Horodecki, Deputy Chariman Bolesaw Podedworny. Term 1969-1972 members: Gesing Franciszek,
Banach Kazimierz, Jzef Ozga-Michalski, Stefan Ignar, secretary - Ludomir
Stasiak, Deputy Chairmen - Bolesaw Podedworny and Stanisaw Gucwa. Term
1972-1976 members: Aleksander Schmidt, Dyzma Gaaj, secretary - Ludomir
Stasiak, Deputy Chairman - Jzef Ozga-Michalski. Term 1976-1980 members:
Edward Duda, Jzef Ozga-Michalski, secretary - Ludomir Stasiak, Deputy
Chairman - Zdzisaw Tomal. Term 1980-1985 members: Emil Koodziej, Jzef
Ozga-Michalski, secretary - Jerzy Szymanek and Edward Duda, Deputy Chairman - Zdzisaw Tomal and Bolesaw Struek. Term 1985-1989 members:
Witold Lipski, Wadysaw Szymaski, secretary - Zygmunt Surowiec, Deputy
Chairman - Tadeusz Szelachowski.
142 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
Chairman was occupied by Bolesaw Podedworny four times during the

years 1957-1972.
Basic socio-demographic data (gender, age, place of birth, social
origin, education)
In the years 1948-1989, the central power elite included forty-five of
ZSL`s members. Recruitment patterns were changing during the years but
one feature was constant ZSL did not introduce to the elite even one
woman.
The age of the peasants politics during the first entrance to the central
power elite was diverse. Nineteen persons were housed in the age group
50-59 years old, which was the largest one. Seventeen agrarian party representatives can be defined as 40-year-olds. Seven had sixty years or
more, and only two had less than forty. The youngest person Jzef
Ozga-Michalski was thirty-three when he became a Deputy Marshal of
Sejm for the first time.14 The oldest debutant in State elite was Wincenty
Baranowski; he was seventy when he held the position of minister in the
first Jzef Cyrankiewicz`s government.15 The two youngest members of
the examined group (Ozga-Michalski and Juszkiewicz) gained the elite
status in the fifties.
Since the end of the war until the October 1956, which is the symbolic
date of the end of the Stalinism in Poland, fourteen persons from the examined group entered the elite. The largest group of ZSL`s representatives gained elite status in the eighties. It was due to the fact that during
the years 1980-1989 the governments were changing more often than in
earlier years, but also elections of June 1989 introduced major changes,
leading to political transformation.
The majority of the group declared peasant origin. But there were some
exceptions from this rule Kazimierz Banach described his parents as
members of the working class16, Jzef Putek`s father was a craftsman17,
Stefan Dybowski was a son of teachers18, Wacaw Szymanowski`s father
14
Dancygier, Sownik biograficzny, 304-305.

16
17
Dancygier, Sownik biograficzny, 335.
18
15
was a popular and respected artist.19 Roman Malinowski defined his social origin as a working-peasantry.20 It means the agrarian elite was almost unified, which is characteristic for the mass party. It has to be
mentioned that for most of the socialist period in Poland, ZSL as well as
Stronnictwo Demokratyczne (SD) had imposed the limit of members and
also there was official criterion for the social origin of candidates. Until
the year 1980 every member of ZSL should have had a peasant social
origin or had to be connected with the rural area by profession.21
The majority of ZSL`s activists were born in rural area. Most of them
were in the places that lay inside the present boundaries of the Third
Polish Republic. Only Wacaw Szymanowski was born in a city that was
not a part of Poland before and after the Second World War. Four persons were born in the areas that were incorporated by the Soviet Union
after the war22. If we consider only those members of the agrarian elite
born outside rural areas, we find that none of them was born in a city with
larger populations than 100,000 residents23. Among the present-day
Polish regions, the central and eastern part of the country was overrepresented as the geographical origin of the examined group. Detailed
data are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Geographical origin of elite members
Region
Dolnolskie
Kujawsko-Pomorskie
Lubelskie
Lubuskie
dzkie
Maopolskie
Mazowieckie
19
Persons
0
0
7
0
8
9
4

21
Janusz Wrona, ZSL w systemie politycznym PRL, [United People`s Party in
the Polish People`s Republic Political System] in Dzieje partii i stronnictw
chopskich w Europie. W podzielonej Europie, 277.
22
There were: Aleksander Bentkowski, Mikoaj Kozakiewicz, Jerzy Popko and
Aleksander Juszkiewicz.
23
The largest city in this group was Biaystok, where Roman Malinowski was
born in the year 1935.
20
144 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
Opolskie
Podkarpackie
Podlaskie
Pomorskie
lskie
witokrzyskie
Warmisko-Mazurskie
Wielkopolskie
Zachodniopomorskie
Born outside the borders of presentday Poland
0
3
4
0
1
2
1
1
0
Total
45
Source: own study based on biographical data
As a geographical origin of agrarian elite members, eastern and southern

Poland are overrepresented. The Majority of them were born in the polish
regions (dzkie, Lubelskie, witokrzyskie, Podlaskie, Mazowieckie)
that had existed before the restoration of the Polish Second Republic under the control of the Russian Empire.
ZSL`s representatives in the central power elite were well educated, especially when we consider the number of people who graduated from studies in Poland during the examined period. Forty agrarian elite members
had at least a masters degree. Among this group there were also six persons with a postgraduate academic degree (PhD) and five professors. The
type of higher education is shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Type of graduated studies
Type of studies
Economy
Physics
Agricultural
Medicine
Law & Administration
Political sciences
Social sciences
Persons
7
1
11
3
6
1
6
Pedagogics
Journalism
Total
4
1
40
Source: Own study based on biographical data.
The majority of the examined group members had an agricultural education, but there were also politicians who completed medicine or social
sciences. Four persons graduated from schools conducted by the Central
Committee of PZPR. Only two politicians from the whole group were
without some form of a secondary education.
Political experience
The majority of the ZSL`s representatives in the central power elite were
involved in political organizations at an early stage of life. Politicians born
before the restoration of the Second Polish Republic had a possibility to be
active in the political field before the Second World War. They mainly
joined youth and academic organizations dedicated to rural adolescent but
they were also members of various political parties. Among the youth organizations during the twenties and thirties members of the examined
group had organizational affiliations in the Rural Youth Union (Zwizek
Modziey Wiejskiej Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej ZMW RP) (Domaski,
Ignar, Wycech, Baranowski, Korzycki, Banach, Nieko, Ozga-Michalski)24
and the Academic Rural Youth Union (Akademicki Zwizek Modziey
Ludowej AZML) (Ignar, Db-Kocio).25 Only one person was a member
of the Polish Communist Youth Union (Komunistyczny Zwizek
Modziey Polskiej KZMP) (Dyzma Gaaj)26. During the interwar period
authorities of ZMW were against the cooperation with communists27. Due
to the fact that also representatives of PSL who constituently fought communists under Mikoajczyk leadership were often before the Second World
War members of ZMW and AZML, it was not an important feature leading
to the central power elite after the year 1949.
24
Dancygier, Sownik biograficzny, 93, 145, 444, 33, 193, 27, 284, 304.
Dancygier, Sownik biograficzny, 145, 84.
26
27
Henryk Cimek, Zwizek Modziey Wiejskiej Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej a
komunici w latach 1928-1939, [Rural Youth Union and Communists in the
Years 1928-1939] Rocznik Historyczny Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego 11 (1997), 92.
25
146 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
Before the unification of the political agrarian movement in the year

1931, older members of the examined group were more involved in the
Polish Peasant Party Liberation rather than the Polish Peasant Party
Piast. PSL Liberation was a leftist political party founded in 1915,
by socialist minded intellectuals.28 It postulated radical land reform and
cooperated in the Polish parliament with the socialists.29 Two of the examined group members Korzycki and Kowalski were also activists
with the Independent Peasant Party (IPP), an organization that separated
from PSL Liberation in the year 1924. IPP`s political program was
close to the communists conceptions. It postulated working class and
peasantry alliance, revolution as a method of changing social structure
and cooperation with the Soviet Union. In the year 1927 Korzycki and
Kowalski joined the Left Peasant Union Self-aid (Zjednoczenie Lewicy
Chopskiej Samopomoc ZLCh), which also had revolutionary character. Kowalski was also a member of the Polish Communist Party
(Komunistyczna Partia Polski KPP) after the year 1928 and finally during the Second World War, before he became first SL People`s Will
leader, he had joined the Polish Workers Party.30
An interesting recruitment path was passed on by the youngest politician who reached the elite status. Juszkiewicz hadn`t been active in politics before the year 1939, while Ozga-Michalski was a member of ZMW,
but both met in the first meeting of the KRN. Juszkiewicz had became
earlier a member of the Union of Polish Patriots (Zwizek Patriotw Polskich ZPP) an organization which was created by communists in Soviet
Union. Ozga-Michalski was a soldier of the Peasants Battalions31 (Bataliony Chopskie BCh) but also officially was one of the founders of
SL People`s Will.
28
Brock, The Politics of the Polish Peasant, 216.

Brock, The Politics of the Polish Peasant, 216; Zygmunt Hemmerling, PSL
Wyzwolenie w parlamentach II Rzeczpospolitej 1919-1931 [PSL Liberation in
Parliaments of II Polish Republic 1919-1931] (Warszawa: Orodek Bada
Spoecznych, 1990), 23.
30
Mirosaw Szumio, Dziaacze stronnictw ludowych w centralnej elicie wadzy
w latach 1944-1956, [Peasants` Parties Activists in the Elite Authorities during 1944-1956] in Dzieje partii i stronnictw chopskich w Europie. W podzielonej Europie, 158.
31
Peasant Battalions guerilla armed forces of SL Roch.
29
During the Second World War, eight persons from the group of the politicians who reached elite status before the October `56 had been representatives of SL Roch. They were: Banach, Ignar, Db-Kocio,
Domaski, Dybowski, Podedworny, Nieko and Wycech, but only Banach, Domaski, Nieko and Wycech became members of the Polish
Peasant Party.32 It doesnt mean that they were struggling against the
Polish Workers Party. In the years 1946-1947 they created an internal
opposition against Mikoajczyk`s political strategy, and were removed
from the PSL. After the Mikoajczyk`s secret escape from Poland they
reorganized the PSL and were nominated without opposition for president, vice president and secretary of this party. Banach and Wycech were
also cooperating during the war with the exile Polish Government in
London. They were respectively: a delegate of the government for the
Wolyn area, and a leader of the Department of Education and Culture in
Government Delegation in occupied Poland.33 That kind of past wasn`t an
obstacle in a later political career. In June 1962, when ZSL was forced by
PZPR to change their leader, Wycech became a new party president. Roman Zambrowski secretary of the Central Committee of PZPR commented on this case in following way: people like Ignar (former ZSL
leader) want to discuss with us and want to decide about politics, while
ex-PSL members are politicians who have lost everything and thats why
they are better to govern.34 For this reason Wycech was for PZPR`s leaders more acceptable than Ignar35. It means that communists could accept an
32
Szumio, Dziaacze stronnictw ludowych w centralnej elicie wadzy w latach

1944-1956, 154-155.
33
Dancygier, Sownik biograficzny, 27, 444.
34
Stanisaw Stpka, List wiceprezesw NK ZSL do Wadysawa Gomuki z 14
grudnia 1960 r. dotyczcy sytuacji w Zjednoczonym Stronnictwie Ludowym,
[The Letter of the Vicepresidents of the Polish People`s Party to Wladyslaw
Gomulka (14 december 1960) about the Situation in Polish People`s Party]
Studia Historyczne 3 (1999), 425.; Padziernik 1956, jego rola i znaczenie w
dziejach wsi. Wspomnienia uczestnikw wydarze [October 1956, its Role
and Importance in the History of Village. Memories of Participants], sygn. 0406, Archiwum Zakadu Historii Ruchu Ludowego [Archive of the Institute of
the Rular Movement History (hereafter cited as AZHRL), 126.
35
Despite the fact that Ignar was known as a leftist politician and even before the
war as a SL member he opted for the cooperation with communists.; Henryk
Cimek, Elity politycznego ruchu ludowego w II Rzeczpospolitej [The Political
Elite of the Peasant Movement in the Second Polish Republic] (Rzeszw:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2013), 208.
148 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
improper political past of agrarian party representatives but only when

they had changed their behavior and cooperated with the workers party
before the autumn 1947. Of course, a more typical path to the elite for the
politicians who entered this group before October `56 was determined by
the involvement in organizations subordinated by communists (in Soviet
Union or in occupied Poland) and by a high position in SL People`s
Will.
Persons who started their active political life after the year 1949 had to
pass through a less diverse path to the central power elite. A common
feature for all of the later ZSL`s representatives in central state institutions was membership in the Rural Youth Union Wici (RYU Wici).
In April 1947 RYU was taken over by politicians connected with SL
Lubeskie. Ignar became a president of the board, while Wadysaw
Jagusztyn and Ozga-Michalski held the positions of vice-presidents, and
Ludomir Stasiak was nominated to treasurer.36 In spite of subordination
of RYU to the ZSL, the organization was liquidated during the Stalinism
period, restored in the year 1957 and then again forced to unite with other
organizations during the years 1976-1980. Despite these changes, membership in RYU was almost a necessary precondition to achieving a high
position in ZSL and then in the central power elite. Probably, it was also
an important part of political socialization which then led to the formation
of the rural elite`s ideological orientation. In most cases, political involvement of the examined group started during student life.
The strongest path to the elite for this part of the examined group came
through high functions in the ZSL structure. Persons who were experienced in the peasant party authorities bodies had a better chance to join
the central power elite. Among thirty persons who entered elite after the
year 1956, only five were not members of ZSL`s Executive Committee,
Secretariat or Council. It was Jan Zaski, who as a scientist spent few
years abroad, and four among five agrarian politicians who entered
Mazowiecki`s government (Kosiniak-Kamysz, Bronisaw Kamiski,
Aleksander Bentkowski, Czesaw Janicki). The presence of those persons
in a central power elite was further evidence of ZSL`s elites replacement
at the turn of eighties and nineties. This change was not planned by the
agrarian party authorities. A prime example was the nomination of Czesaw
Janicki for the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture,
36
Mieczkowski, Polski ruch ludowy w latach 1944-1949, 149.
Forestry and Food Economy in September 1989. The chief of ZSL wanted Kazimierz Olesiak to keep those positions but Mazowiecki simply refused, arguing in the letter to Malinowski that those offices should be
held by a new politician.37
As it is apparent from the documents and relations, PZPR in some periods
had a decisive influence on the choice of the ZSL`s authorities. All members of the agrarian party`s main chief body were chosen by high representatives of the communist party. There are also sources confirming that
later this influence was crucial. For example in the year 1962, Ignar was
replaced by Wycech as ZSL`s chief due to the fact that he refused to
make changes in the management board of the agrarian party38. Also
Stanisaw Gucwa admitted that his leadership in the seventies resulted
from the actions of PZPR`s politicians.39
Connections between the elite`s members a social network
perspective
Social network analysis (SNA) is a research tool derived from sociology,
social psychology and anthropology. It focuses on identifying linkages
between individuals, giving an opportunity to present in graphical form
and analyze the network created by various relations.40 Characteristic for
a SNA perspective is the perception of social actors as interdependent rather than independent and autonomous.41 The central concept of this prospect is the network, symbolizing the environment shaping the capabilities
37
List, Tadeusz Mazowiecki do Romana Malinowskiego, Wrzesie 1989, Zbiory

Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego w Warszawie, sygn. 4871, brak
paginacji. (Letter, Tadeusz Mazowiecki to Roman Malinowski, September
1989, Collections of the Museum of the History of Polish People's Movement
in Warsaw, sygn. 4871, lack of pagination.)
38
Stpka, List wiceprezesw NK ZSL..., 126.
39
Romuald Turkowski, Ludowcy pod kierownictwem prezesa Stanisawa Gucwy
w okresie budowy rozwinitego spoeczestwa socjalistycznego w Polsce (19711980), [Peasant Party under the Leadership of President Stanislaw Gucwa during Construction of Developed Socialist Society in Poland (1971-1980)] in Wie
i ruch ludowy w Polsce i Europie. W krgu historii i tradycji, 583.
40
Wouter De Nooy, Andrej Mrvar, Vladimir Batagejl, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Cambridge: University Press, 2005), 3.
41
De Nooy, Mrvar, Batagejl, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek, 4.
150 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
and limitations of individuals.42 It consists of nodes, also known as actors

or objects43, which can be individual (for example one person) or collective (for example group or community) and the relations occurring between them.44
The subject of this part of the study is to determine the official links between ZSL`s members in the state power elite. These types of connections were established by common affiliation in the same term of a
collective state body, like State Council or government. The ties between
two different peasant`s party politics were present when they were, for
example, a part of the same cabinet. This kind of link is defined as binary
and symmetric, because it is impossible to indicate who initiates contact
(the relation just exists or not). The analysis included the strength of connections between two actors, due to the fact that some of ZSL`s representatives held their offices together in various state offices. The network
has a 1-mode character, which means that only relations between actors
are included (through institutional affiliation).
To present a characteristic of peasants party members in the central power
elite a few basic measures will be used. There are: density the ratio of the
number of existing ties and the total number of the possible ties45; degree
the number of direct connections that every node has46; distance the
length of the shortest path between the nodes47; the diameter the largest
direct distance between any pair of nodes48; closeness the average distance to the other nodes in the graph.49 The analysis was conducted at two
levels for the network as a whole and for the individual actors. The characteristic of the whole network is presented in the Table 3.
42
De Nooy, Mrvar, Batagejl, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek, 4.

Dominik Batorski, Micha Zdziarski, Analiza sieciowa i jej zastosowanie w
badaniach organizacji i zarzdzania, [Network Analysis and its Application
in the Study of Organization and Management] Problemy Zarzdzania 4
(2009), 159.
44
Kathrine Faust, Stanley Wasserman, Social Network Analysis. Methods and
Applications (Cambridge: University Press, 2007), 36-37.
45
Batorski, Zdziarski, Analiza sieciowa i jej zastosowanie w badaniach organizacji i zarzdzania, 172.
46
Faust, Wasserman, Social Network Analysis, 178.
47
48
Batorski, Zdziarski, Analiza sieciowa i jej zastosowanie w badaniach organizacji i zarzdzania, 172.
49
43
Table 3. Network`s cohesion measures

The name of measure
Average Degree
Components
Density
Average Distance
Diameter
Result
5.778
4
0.17
2.416
5
Source: Own calculations. Ucinet program was used (Borgatti,

S.P., Everett, M.G. and Freeman, L.C. 2002. Ucinet for
Windows: Software for Social
Network Analysis. Harvard,
MA: Analytic Technologies).
The density of the network is 17%; it has 340 ties for 1935 possible. The
central power elite average member is connected to five other actors. The
average distance for a politician to get to all other ZSL`s members is almost 2.5 (theoretically every network member needed 2-3 intermediaries
to reach every other) and the diameter is 5. Cohesion measures presented
in Table 3 specify that the network of contacts between ZSL`s representatives in the central power elite is divided into four components, which can
be perceived as indicators of the elite`s continuity or discontinuity during
the whole socialist period. The largest network part contains thirty-seven
actors, who held important state offices from the forties until the eighties.
The second separate group was formed in the eighties due to the peasants party politicians participation in Zbigniew Messner`s government
and Mieczysaw Rakowski`s government. The person who ensured the
continuity between those two cabinets was Jzef Kozio who as the only ZSL representative was a member of both governments. In the years
1985-88, he held the position of Deputy Prime Minister and during the
last cabinet before the Round Table Agreement, he was The Minister of
Environment and Natural Resources.50 None of ZSL`s participants of
both those governments held the post of Minister in the Tadeusz Mazowiecki`s cabinet, which started the system transformation.
One isolated actor is Mikoaj Kozakiewicz who was the Marshal of Sejm
elected in the so-called contract elections in the year 1989. Kozakiewicz
was the only ZSL representative who became a deputy in the first round
of elections51, so due to the PRL`s political tradition he was chosen as a
50
Using the SNA terminology we can say that he was the only one cutpoint in
the structure of official contacts between members of two governments.
51
To became a deputy after first round, a candidate had to achieve support from
more than 50% of voters in their voting region.; Act of April 7, 1989.
152 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
head of Sejm.52 The occurrence of four components means that one person and two other groups had no connections by common affiliation in
the central power elite with the majority of ZSL`s representatives. It can
also be interpreted as an indicator of generational and political change.
Gaps of connections occurred in the second half of the eighties, and the
largest separated group formed after ZSL decided to take a part in government created by Solidarity. The visualization of the network is presented in the Graph number 1.
Graph no 1. Network of ZSL`s representative official connections.
Source: own study based on biographical data. To prepare graph UCINET program was used.
Nodes symbolizing the politicians who had the most important position in
the network are marked by size and shape. For these purpose two
52
Parliamentary Election Law 1989-1993, Dziennik Ustaw [Journal of Laws]

1989, nr. 19, position 102.
Tadeusz Modawa, Ludzie wadzy 1944-1991: wadze pastwowe i polityczne
Polski wedug stanu na 28 II 1991 [Peoples of Power 1944-1991: the State and
Political Authorities of Poland as at 28 February 1991] (Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1991), 167.
measures of nodes` centrality and prestige were used degree and betweenness. A nodes`s shape depends on the number of direct individual
ties. Following scale was adopted: 1-6 diamond, 7 down triangle, 8
thing, 10 rounded square, 11 box, 13 circle, 15 square, 18 up triangle. The largest number of these kinds of ties had Bolesaw Podedworny
who, due to membership in two various governments and holding the offices in five different terms of Council State, was cooperating with eighteen
different elite members. Ties with more than ten ZSL representatives had
also Jzef Ozga-Michalski (fifteen), Stefan Ignar (thirteen) and Stefan
Gucwa (eleven). Degree is the simplest indicator of a node`s position in the
network. It assumes that the most central actor must be the most active in
the sense that he has the most ties to other actors in the graph.53
A more complex measure is betweenness. It counts how many times a
node connects two other who are not directly linked. The node which creates such connections is called a broker and it potentially might have
some control over the interactions between the two nonadjacent actors.54
On graph number 1, a node`s size depends on the number of this type of
tie. The bigger the size of node the higher number of betweeness it has.
As it is shown, according to this measure Bolesaw Podedworny
(173,116), Jzef Ozga-Michalski (143,750), Db-Kocio (117,324),
Skwirzyski (81,626), Szymaski (73,735) and Ignar (70,601) had the
central position in the network.
To indicate who was the most important and potentially influential person
in the group created by ZSL`s representatives the Ucinet core/periphery
tool was also used.55 The politicians who were in the core of the network
were Bolesaw Podedworny (coreness - 0.466), Jzef Ozga-Michalski
(0.404), Kazimierz Banach (0.248), Stefan Ignar (0.248), Zdzisaw Tomal
(0.233) and Emil Koodziej (0.217).
53

55
Simultaneously fits a core/periphery model to the data network and estimates
the degree of coreness or closeness to the core of each actor. This is done by
finding a vector C such that the product of C and C transpose is as close as
possible to the original data matrix. In addition a number of measures that try
to assess the degree to which the network falls into a core/periphery structure
for different sizes of core are calculated. See wider description:
http://www.analytictech.com/ucinet/help/1gl1dj.htm.
54
154 ________________________________________________ Piotr SWACHA
It is obvious that in such a network containing actors leading active political lives over many years that someone who had an important position
during the sixties had more of a chance of becoming a key player. It is
due to the fact that it is the middle of an examined period, so the person
who was active during that time had a possibility to reach older politicians as well as younger ones who had just started their careers. But as
we can see by analyzing main network indicators, also politicians who
entered the central power elite earlier and later then the sixties had important roles in the structure.
Conclusions
The most characteristic feature of ZSL`s representatives in the central
power elite was their homogeneity, especially when we consider those
persons who entered the group in the sixties, seventies and early eighties.
Agrarian political elite was made up of individuals with almost identical
social origin and similar ideological orientation, which of course was natural due to the nature of this mass party. Especially those who reached
elite status in the seventies and eighties and were too young to undertake
political activity before (or during) the Second World War had much in
common. It was caused by the fact that most of them had to take the same
path to the elite, beginning with their involvement in the post-war Rural
Youth Union, and by high positions in ZSL`s central authority organs.
Another common feature of the agrarian representatives was a high level
of education. In this case also the elite members who were born in the
middle of the twentieth century graduated from universities more often
than politicians who were active before the war. Nevertheless, we can`t
distinguish that it was a typical expert recruiting pattern which comprises absorption of academics by political life. The main reason is the
fact that most of the agrarian politicians who had at least a PhD before
the entrance to the elite had been also active, high ranking ZSL members.
It means that it is impossible to indicate which factor educational or political was more important.
More diverse were biographies of agrarian politicians who started their
political career before the Second World War. They had a possibility to be
members of various political parties but of course this group was dominated by politicians connected with radical leftists peasants organizations
and in some cases even with parties perceived of as crypto-communist.
Interesting was also the situation of ex-PSL members. Even high ranking
politicians of this party could reach elite status after the year 1949 but
they had to be a part of internal opposition against the Mikoajczyk`s political strategy before the autumn of 1947.
An interesting conclusion can be made when we consider the official
connections between members of the examined group as a social network. Besides analyzing the basic indicator for specifications on who was
the most central and at least potentially most influential person in the
whole agrarian elite, it can also give us the answer about group coherence
and continuity. The main conclusion is that until the eighties every ZSL
representative in the central power elite was linked by an official affiliation with each other. Nevertheless, in the last five years of the Polish
People`s Republic the whole network divided into four different components. Of course, the occurrence of two components were caused by the
consequences of June elections in the year 1989, but we can also observe
discontinuity of elite network four years earlier.
Art for arts sake how the Unnatural Attempts of

Transforming Peasants into Intelligentsia were Implemented in
Poland (1944-1956)
Marcin KRUSZYSKI
a. Introduction
A pioneer of the French political journalism and a declared counterrevolutionary, Jacques Mallet du Pan, made the following observation about
his country at the end of the 18th century: The duchess was married []
to a notary public [], a Parisian cannon became a printers apprentice, a
constitutional bishop was now a public servant. This is a complete social
strata reconstruction, and the majority of the French are getting used to
the present status quo.1 The driving force of the revolutionary processes
seemed to have no limit. Everything was made new, and disconnected
genetically from the old. The first and the second social strata practically
ceased to exist. Whereas the society, as if a shapeless mass, was being
formed freely in the hands of the current creators of reality like Maximilien
de Robespierre, Georges Danton and others. This conception of the revolution as a fundamental mechanism and method of reshaping the presentday order of the world was adopted later by the Bolsheviks.2 It was a
conception strengthened by the Marxist belief about the determined nature of the historical process.3 So even more powerfully than in the 18thcentury Paris, the Bolsheviks white was becoming black. Vladimir
Lenin built his political success from scratch, devoid of any significant
support of any Russian third state, except for the twenty thousand soldiers of the Red Guard. The working class emancipated to become the
1
Quoted after Jerzy Szacki, Kontrrewolucyjne paradoksy. Wizja wiata francuskich antagonistw Wielkiej Rewolucji 1789-1815 [The Counter-revolutionary
Paradoxes. The Vision of the World Represented by the Opponents of the French
Revolution 1789-1815] (Warszawa: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1965),
69.
Marek Woniak, Dowiadczenie historii. Kulturowy i spoeczny wymiar mitu
rewolucji [Historical Experience. The Cultural and Social Dimensions of the
Revolutionary Myth] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii CurieSkodowskiej, 2003), 93.
Francois Furet, Przeszo pewnego zudzenia [The Passing of an Illusion]
(Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen, 2015), 17.
Art for arts sake how the Unnatural Attempts of Transforming... ______ 157
axis of the coming transformation and tangible evidence in favour of the

principles of dialectic Marxism.
Yet, the leaders of the October Revolution aspired to do more than just
eradicate the remnants of the Ancien Rgime. A more elevated goal than
winning political control over a single state was to incite a global revolt,
with the view of creating a new man.4 This man would be a workingpeasant moderator of the whole life of the community cultural, economic,
etc. As presumed by Karl Marx, this new man would no longer follow his
particular group interests (class interests, in Marx terms), but would pursue general, universal public objectives.5 The problem with this conception
was that the new man did not subsume the whole of the ancient substance. For obvious reasons, neither the capitalist classes nor the intelligentsia could be incorporated within the realm of the new manhood. In fact, the
intelligentsia seems to be have been utterly ignored by the Marxist ideologists.6 Marx focused around the position of the proletariat and its social status
in the particular epochs. He wrote about the free and the enslaved; the patricians and the plebeians; the feudal lords and the peasants; the gild masters
and the apprentices7, that is in general about the oppressors and the oppressed. The dichotomy he used left no space for the intelligentsia.
On the contrary, Lenin a practicing Marxist and even more so Joseph
Stalin, despised the traditional intelligentsia. Not a single value of the intelligentsias ethos did suit the hegemonic model of the Communist society, devoid of class distinction: shaping public opinion, showing
patterns of social practices, independent perception of reality, nonconformism, thinking of the future and not only of now, a utilitarian
interest in improving human life, etc. Yet, the victorious dominant of the
4
5
Richard Pipes, Rewolucja Rosyjska [The Russian Revolution] (Warszawa:

Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996), XI.
Zdzisaw Cackowski, Gwne pojcia materializmu historycznego [The Major
Concepts of Historical Materialism] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ksika i
Wiedza, 1974), 415.
Hanna Palska, Ideologia komunistyczna a problem inteligencji, [Communist
Ideology and the Problem of the Intelligentsia] in Rzeczpospolita utracona.
Nastpstwa nazizmu i komunizmu na ziemiach polskich [The Lost Polish Republic. Consequences of Nazism and Communism in the Polish Lands], eds.
Jerzy Eisler, Konrad Rokicki (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Pamici
Narodowej, 2010), 132-133.
Karl Marx, Bourgeois a proletariusze, [Burgeois and Proletarians] in Karl
Marx, Fryderyk Engels, Selected Works, vol. 1 (Warszawa, 1949), 26-36.
158 __________________________________________ Marcin KRUSZYSKI
working-peasant alliance was not possible without extensive industrialisation and collectivisation of land. Stalin needed qualified staff to succeed.
This need underlay the centralized, top-bottom social transformation that
began in the 1930s in the Soviet Union, which was intended to change the
old intelligentsia into the specialized staff of service to the new economy.
The new specialist needed no theoretical background or theoretical
awareness. He was expected to possess a narrow domain of specialization, preferably in the realm of industry or agriculture. Obviously enough,
he needed to represent the right social background with his encoded experience of life among workers or peasants.8 Humanists, on the other hand,
neither built factories nor operated machines, which was a source of their
self-delegitimisation, as they were not able to add any significant value to
the newly-constructed world.
Utility was the primary criterion of classifying someone as a specialist,
while the main values of the specialists ethos were obedience, controllability and Communist voluntarism, that is a desire for any worker or
peasant to be able to meet any challenge; identification with the working
masses.9 This model of intelligentsia that is of a group of utilitarian
specialists was also implemented in Poland after World War II, drawing
upon the Soviet model.10 The idea was to implement (we deliberately
choose the vocabulary to show the technocratic approach to the matter at
hand) in practice the theoretical model, and to copy the methodology
needed for the implementation process. Even Lenin or Stalin had no divine powers to create things ex nihilo. Hence, to train rather than to educate thoroughly a specialist, they needed to hire some kind of a
8
Kendal Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin. Origins of the
Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1911-1941 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978), 159-187.
9
See: Hanna Palska, Nowa inteligencja w Polsce Ludowej. wiat przedstawie i
elementy rzeczywistoci [The New Intelligentsia of the Polish Peoples Republic.
The World of Imagery and the Elements of Reality] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
Instytutu Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1994), 58, 60.
10
Similar processes can be observed in other East-Central European countries under the Soviet domination. John Connelly, Zniewolony Uniwersytet. Sowietyzacja szkolnictwa wyszego w Niemczech Wschodnich, Czechach i Polsce
[Captive University: the Sovietization of East German, Czech and Polish Higher
Education, 1945-1956] (Warszawa: Instytut Historii Nauki im. Ludwika i
Aleksandra Birkenmajerw Polskiej Akademii Nauk: Oficyna Wydawnicza
Aspra-JR, 2014), 95 passim.
teacher. This is why they needed the old intelligentsia, at least until the
moment when the new intelligentsia product was ready. This new product
would reproduce automatically in the subsequent generations.
As for the Polish case precisely, we could distinguish two phases of the
process of producing the new intelligentsia: the embryo stage, when the
body of the mother (the old intelligentsia) was to enable the growth of a
new body a child (specialist); and the foetal stage, when the new intelligentsia specialist was to develop the distinctive morphological features
of the new species. No further developmental stages happened, though,
and a new man did not grow to have his infancy, childhood or adulthood.
In fact, the new Polish intelligentsia did not get out of the mothers
womb. The experiment terminated with the end of the Stalinist era in
1956. Thus, ultimately, the duchess did not get married to the notary
public; the bishop was not a public servant now, or, in other words, the
revolution which was theoretically proclaimed to have taken place did
not result in the ultimate trading of places until its very end. In addition,
in the Polish version of the experiment, a new specialist was to recruit
from the peasantry, as this social stratum was intended for transformation. It was because peasants were a dominant social group of the
time. The functioning of the peasants in the realm of the Polish academia
is subject to my brief analysis below in this article.11
b. The embryo phase (1944/1945 the turn of the 1950s)
Thus, we first have to talk about the transitional period, when members of
the inter-war intelligentsia were employed in the production of the new
specialist. In Poland, the specialists were to be recruited from among the
peasants. Historians refer to this time as a mild revolution12, which is a
11
One reason for our focusing on peasants is that we have already discussed the
functioning of the workers at the Polish universities. Marcin Kruszyski,
Wok dyskusji o przedwojennej inteligencji, uniwersytetach i wreszcie robotnikach na uniwersytetach (1945-1956), [The Debate on the Inter-war Intelligentsia, Universities and on the Workers as University Students (19451956)] in Robotnicy w PRL. Midzy fikcj a rzeczywistoci [Workers in the
Polish Peoples Republic. Between Facts and Fiction], eds. Sebastian Ligarski,
Pawe Szulc, Szczecin, in print.
12
See Piotr Hbner, Polityka naukowa w Polsce w latach 1944-1953. Geneza systemu [Research Policy in Poland, 1944-1953. The Origins of the System], vol. 1
(Wrocaw - Warszawa - Krakw: Zakd Narodowy im. Ossoliskich, 1992),
term employed by Jerzy Borejsza, a founder of the weekly Odrodzenie

[Revival] and a journalist with a keen interest in the cultural politics of
the state leaders of the time. Yet, Borejszas use of the notion of mild
revolution was specific in that he postulated a merger of the new with
the old, so It is particularly the rural areas [...] that should give our
country the next generations of officers, clerks, doctors, architects and
writers.13 What is more, this prominent representative of the Polish
Workers Party (PPR) emphasized that the peasants were bound to bring
the huge power of realism14 into academia. These words meant his lack
of appreciation towards the academic nature of the university, where
the word academic was understood in the most simplistic and primitive
way that is as dealing with pseudoscientific, futile and highly impractical investigations. The actions to transform the peasants into the new
intelligentsia were deemed an urgent need and as a process that should
begin without further delay. There was a lot of lost time to make up for.
Thus, the mildness of the revolution boiled down to the inevitable toleration of the old-day university professors.
One of them was Wadysaw Konopczyski, an outstanding historian of
the 16th-18th centuries. Making use of the situation that is of the absolute necessity for the Communists to rely on professors and to accept
them in their state Konopczyski made a courageous step and protested
against the Communist agenda. First of all, he refuted the reasonability of
120; Piotr Hbner, Stalinowskie czystki w nauce polskiej, [The Stalinist Era
Cleansing in the Polish Academia] in Skryte oblicze systemu komunistycznego.
U rde za [The Secret Face of the Communist System. The Roots of the Evil],
eds. Roman Bcker et al. (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo DiG, 1997), 213.; John
Connelly, Szkolnictwo wysze w Europie rodkowej i Wschodniej w epoce
stalinizacji, [Higher Education in East-Central Europe in the Stalinist Era] in
Skryte oblicze systemu komunistycznego, 227; Ryszard Hereczyski, Sptana
nauka. Opozycja intelektualna w Polsce 1945-1970 [The Trammelled Science.
The Polish Intellectual Opposition, 1945-1970] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
Naukowe Semper, 2008), 94; Krystyna Kersten, Nauka polska 1939-1956 wobec totalitaryzmw, [Polish Science against the Totalitarian Regimes, 19391956] in Krystyna Kersten, Pisma rozproszone [A Scattered Collection of
Works], selected and prepared for print by Tomasz Szarota, Dariusz Libionka
(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2005), 74.
13
Jerzy Borejsza, Rewolucja agodna, [The Mild Revolution] Odrodzenie [Revival], no 10-12, 15 January 1945, 1.
14
Borejsza, Rewolucja agodna, 1.
the idea of the mass exodus of the peasantry from the villages into academia. The scholar was afraid of the inevitable compromises in the quality of the academic education in the wake of such a policy. Next, he
showed his puzzlement with the persistent propaganda of bringing the
peasants to the university, as he found it impossible to recall any previous
formal constraint that could ban the Polish village youth from studying.15
Before 1939, studying was free of charge for anyone16. Konopczyski
was accompanied by other scholars. The geologist Professor Adam
Malicki commented briefly: Polish universities passed the test of time
and the system needs no change.17
The ruling Communists ignored voices like these, being fully engaged
into the implementation of their ideas imported from the East. The new
specialist, a member of the new intelligentsia, was intended to play a
role in the centrally-governed process of new social stratification, in
order to foster the planned, rapid social changes. This is why, rejecting all
pretences of rationality, the Communists decided to make a leap in time
and ignore any individual protesters like Malicki or Konopczyski, but
also of the peasants themselves, who were not asked if they were at all
interested in transforming their social status quo. As early as May 1945
Poland witnessed the rise of the so-called Introductory Year of Academic
Studies (WRS), which in 1949 was renamed into Preparatory Course
(SP).18 These courses offered what at best can be called a rudimental educational background, delivered to the youth that had no secondary educa15
Wadysw Konopczyski, Zadania nauki historycznej w Polsce dzisiejszej,

[The Objectives of Historical Sciences in Contemporary Poland] Nauka Polska. Jej potrzeby, organizacja i rozwj [Polish Science: Its Needs, Organization and Growth], Warszawa, XXV (1947), 156, 159.
16
Jarosaw Jastrzbski, Pastwowe szkolnictwo akademickie II Rzeczypospolitej.
Zagadnienia systemowe [State-controlled Higher Education in the Second
Polish Republic. Aspects of the System] (Krakw: Wydawnictwo Ksigarnia
Akademicka, 2013), 34.
17
Adam Malicki, Kilka uwag do dyskusji nad organizacj nauki polskiej, [Selected Remarks in the Debate on the Organization of Polish Science] ycie
Nauki [Life of Science] vol. 5, 1946, 337.
18
Dorota Gaaszewska-Chilczuk, Jacek Witold Wooszyn, Od przedszkolaka do
studenta. Kryteria selekcji spoecznej i politycznej w edukacji lat 1947-1956
[From the Kindergartener to the Student. Social and Political Selection Criteria in Polish Education, 1947-1956] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Pamici
Narodowej, 2012), 39-40.
tion, so that they could consequently continue with their higher education. The oversimplified didactic content of the pre-war mid-level secondary school was taught in just a few months and was more of a lie than
a leap in time. Still, there is one more thing worth mentioning here as a
peculiarity of its own. It is not about the questionable educational practices, but about the village youth themselves. Generally, the peasants who
were planned to be the main object of the educational revolution did not
meet the expectations posed by the Communist social engineers.
It turned out that the rural population did not show much of an atavistic
desire to take the possession of the Polish universities. The rural youth
did not storm academia, and they did not try to take revenge on the intelligentsia for some past grievances. The situation was in fact completely
opposite.
Table 1. Results of the recruitment procedure for the academic year
1948/1949. The youth from the rural background at a selection of Polish
universities
University
Uniwersytet Marii
Curie Skodowskiej w
Lublinie (UMCS)
Maria CurieSkodowska
University in Lublin
Uniwersytet
Warszawski (UW)
University of
Warsaw
Uniwersytet dzki
(U)
University of d
Number of
candidates
for the first
year of studies
Number of candidates from the

rural background
for the first year
of studies (out of
the total)
Total
number
of youth
accepted
for the
first year
Number of
students
from the rural
background
accepted for
the first year
1119
367 (32.79%)
860
316 (36.74%)
3503
653 (18.64%)
2279
439 (19.26%)
2912
483 (16.58%)
2258
392 (17.36%)
Uniwersytet
Mikoaja Kopernika
w Toruniu (UMK)
Nicolaus
Copernicus
University in Toru
Uniwersytet
Adama
Mickiewicza w
Poznaniu (UAM)
Adam Mickiewicz
University in
Pozna
Uniwersytet
Jagielloski (UJ)
Jagiellonian
University
1152
238 (20.66%)
1041
217 (20.84%)
2878
426 (14.8%)
2179
338 (15.51%)
4412
1126 (25.52%)
3150
803 (25.49%)
Source: Archives of New Records (henceforth as AAN), Ministry of Higher Education

(henceforth as MSzW), sig. 819. Statistical figures on the Polish students in the academic
year 1948/1949, c. 1, and the statistical calculations by the author.
Consequently, if candidates failed to rush to the universities, they also

failed to use the educational shortcuts. The introductory (WRS) and the
later preparatory courses (SP) were indeed dominated by the particular
social groups: youth from the rural background accounted for far more
than 50 per cent of the students of such courses.19 The problem, however,
was that a lot of them started such courses, yet few and far between graduated and were allowed to move up in the educational ladder. How to
explain this phenomenon?
The Communist voice of the nation, in its embodiment in the form of
Polish Workers Party, failed to simulate what the peasants thought and
felt. The planned behaviours were only ungrounded projections, imposed
forcefully in the top-bottom optics, and were not justified by the reality.
Only the artificiality of the policies became more than obvious. Social
19
Archives of New Records (AAN), Ministry of Education (henceforth as MOw.),

sig. 1489, MOw., Information on the Introductory Year of Studies at Higher
Education Institutions, 1949, no page numbering.
psychology labels a situation like this as the faulty generalization effect.20

It was assumed that the transformation of the principles of state functioning, brought about by the new rulers, would lead to the rise of the particular attitudes and behaviours. Yet, it turned out that the Polish children
from the rural background did not inherit the view that education is a life
necessity and the best way towards social advancement. Such patterns of
social change had not developed before 1939 and hence the peasants did
not feel any gratitude for opening higher education opportunities to them.
They came to the courses (WRS/SP) and left back to their environments.
In the academic space, the peasant student felt alienated and devoid of
the roots. He was an alien body there. Even more, as a body that was
forcefully, mechanically attached to the rest of the host body, without
ones own credit and without any serious consideration of the people
around. It was a popular fact (that is well-known by the candidates) that
there was a standardised opinion issued by the recruitment committees
that opened a path to academic studies. This document needed to contain
such clichs as: son of a small-size peasant; showing a positive attitude towards the current reality.21 An opinion like that was enough to
have a go as a university student.22
It is also clear that the Communists tried to desecrate the academic world,
which had not been open to anyone before, as if a Roman cathedral. After
1944, the university was to become profane, devoid of any mysticism or
magic of knowledge, available to an everyman, or at least open to him.
20
John Robbins, Joachim Krueger, Social Projection to Ingroups and Outgroups:

A Review and Meta-analysis, Personality and Social Psychology Review 9
(2005), 32-47.
21
E.g.: The Archives of the Maria Curie-Skodowska University in Lublin (henceforth as AUMCS), The Delegate of the Ministry of Higher Education and Science in the Field of Academic Youth in Lublin (henceforth as: Ministerial
Delegate), sig. 4, Lists of candidates enrolled for studies, 1948-1952, no page
numbering. See Gaaszewska - Chilczuk, Wooszyn, Od przedszkolaka do studenta, 114.
22
The incentive used to encourage learning in general, at least to the secondary level,
was a threat of a forced access to a kolhoz, if someone discontinued education.
This explains a relatively extensive growth of the lower level education in the
Polish rural areas. Dariusz Jarosz, Polityka wadz komunistycznych w Polsce w
latach 1948-1956 a chopi [The Policy of the Communist Regime in Poland towards the Peasants, 1948-1956] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo DiG, 1998), 353.
However, the question is if the Marxist rule from each according to his
ability, to each according to his need was at all applicable in the academic context. The rural youth were not intellectually as developed as
their peers from backgrounds other than the working-peasant (as was
also the case with the working youth) and the ruling Communists were
fully aware of this fact. Representatives of the Ministry of Higher Education (MSzW) visited the particular universities and the preparatory courses (SP) and they wrote alarming reports in the same vein as Professor
Konopczyski before about the falling level of academic education. The
ministerial representatives did not interpret this situation in terms of the
old intelligentsias sabotage caused by their capitalist narrowmindedness. They only observed the reality around them. One of the
ministerial officials was once listening to a spontaneous in fact, well
memorized beforehand debate on the topic: Working-peasant alliance
as the foundation for the reconstruction of the rural areas. In his report
from the meeting, the representative noted: The nature of the discussion
voices improper. A tendency to fictionalize the expressed views [...]
the participants memorized sets of economic figures and they did not understand anything of them [...] they were not able to explain the terms
they used.23 At the end of his report, the author dropped a veiled hint to
his supervisors that most probably the majority of the students he observed should never have been accepted at a university.
A particularly high percentage of failed exams and tests were noted in the
agricultural faculties, where the peasant was to be transformed into the
agricultural mechaniser. The rural youth were apparently laughing at
the theorizing approach to agricultural issues24. Their perception of agriculture and rural life was far from bookish theory. It was permeated by
the unchanged unified tribal culture that for centuries has been limited to
the self-contained economic model of producing food and resources to
support everyday existence. The traditional homogeneity of the Polish
peasantry, also fostered by the lack of access to education and of habits of
school attendance, strengthened the sense of isolation and distrust towards
23
AAN, MSzW, sig. 1779, M. Holtzer, Sprawozdanie z pobytu subowego w

Krakowie [Report on a Formal Visit to Cracow], 1949, k. 149.
24
AAN, MSzW, sig. 1482, Stenogram z konferencji rektorw i dziekanw szk
wyszych w Polsce [A Stenographic Report from the Conference of Rectors
and Deans of the Polish Higher Education Institutions], 21-22 December 1951,
k. 179.
intruders that planned to spoil the natural order of things. Taking all the
above factors into account, it cannot be surprising that ultimately a lot of
peasant students came back home, rejecting the alienation, and
reaching back for sense of locality and belonging. If the 20th-century
existentialists (Martin Heidegger; Jean-Paul Sartre) were right in seeking
the major problem of mankind in defining the sense of existence, in a
parallel way, we can observe that the peasant student was not able to
define this sense when at the university. He did not need the knowledge
that constructs the general outline of the sense of life. He was satisfied
with the empirical realm, allowing him to take current actions. This is
why a journalist, who in the early 1960s wrote a report for a Warsawbased journal on the life of the workers of state collective farms (PGR),
observed in an overt way that being a semi-illiterate when working
for the collective farm is hardly a weak point.25 It also turned out that the
rural youth who succeeded in their academic education were afraid of
coming back home, since on the one hand they were afraid of being
ridiculed by the locals and of being proclaimed traitors by them. It seems
that higher education rid the educated youth of their local identity, and
implied imminent ostracism by the rural community. To make matters
worse, the academic education was not interpreted by the locals as
knowledge or qualifications, since they believed these features could only
be developed in the field.
c. The foetal phase (1950-1956)
It is rather difficult to say if this phase at all happened, let alone determining its nature and scale. All we can say is that there were students from
the rural background at Polish universities. What is more, Poland was entering its first six-year economic plan (1950-1955), in which higher education was given a clear objective to deliver well-qualified personnel.
25
Quoted after Ewelina Szpak, Midzy osiedlem a zagrod. ycie codzienne

mieszkacw PGR-w [Between the Housing Estate and the Farm: the Daily
Life in the State Agricultural Farms] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2005),
69.
Table 2. Social composition of the group of students in all the years of

study in the academic year 1951/1952 selected universities
University
UMCS
UW
U
UMK
UAM
UJ
Students from the rural

background
32%
?
18%
19%
?
24%
Source: AAN, Polish United Workers Party (henceforth as PZPR), sig. 237/XVI-55, Department of Science at the Central Committee of PZPR an analysis of the domain of academic youth, 1952, c. 9
The question remains open to what extent did the Communist state succeed in using the tool of the university in forming a new specialist out of
the peasant candidate, imprinting in him the ethos of the new intelligentsia. Our research concerning precisely the Lublin-based university
UMCS shows that the students from the rural background tended to display two basic traits: political indifferentism, that is lack of interest in the
Communist political ideology, limited interest in political activities or
participation in party organizations like Association of Polish Youth
(ZMP) in faculties of agriculture, veterinary science, zootechnics; and
religiosity to put it in Communist terms.26 There are sound reasons to
believe that the peasant student retained a lot of his folk culture: religious beliefs, traditionalism, content and form of life characteristic of its
environment, while rejecting or showing distance and scepticism towards
the preferred patterns of behaviour. For example, a young student of
UMCS refused to participate in the May Day parades and was hesitant to
take part in all sorts of evening solemn party meetings. Hence, he rejected
the ritual of the Communist religion. He preferred hanging a sacred
icon in his dormitory room, which made the activists from ZMP utterly
26
On the cases in the Lublin-based UMCS, see Marcin Kruszyski, Uniwersytet

Marii Curie - Skodowskiej w latach 1944-1989. Zarys dziejw uczelni w
warunkach PRL [Maria Curie-Skodowska University in the Years 1944-1989.
An Outline of the History of the University under the Polish Peoples Republic] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Pamici Narodowej, 2015).
indignant. I am convinced that the case of UMCS can be extrapolated on

other cases to show the wider scale of the phenomena in question.
The official propaganda had it that the peasant children finally found their
space for living among the workers to free the Polish intelligentsia from
the dark ages of doubt, despair and demotivation.27 The leaders kept
posing ambitious objectives. In 1953, a meeting was held by the Central
Committee of PZPR on educating agricultural personnel at universities.
The members boldly claimed that academic education has a task of preparing specialists for the needs of the socialist economy. What is more,
they also demanded that the didactic content be permeated by Marxist
ideology and socialist educational influences.28 Yet, the reality was far
less optimistic. In a questionnaire submitted to students in Warsaw
(1954), one respondent from the rural background compared the leading
power of youth, that is the youth association ZMP to a prison where
nobody cared about the will of the imprisoned. The imprisoned was
forced to adapt and to accept Marxism-Leninism, which the respondent
personally abhorred.29 Another case was that of a student at the Main
School of Planning and Statistics (SGPiS). Being a son of a peasant, he
was publicly ridiculing the idea of forcing someone to become a student,
and of the whole Polish Peoples Republic as built on mirages and empty
propaganda.30
The peasant student as a social player defined his status quo and constructed his own worldview. He might even impose it on others. First and
foremost, he seemed to refuse to change (long dure?) and he expounded his arguments, trying to convince his environment (that is teachers) to
his views. The teachers at one of the preparatory courses (SP), after long
talks with the students, finally were ready to admit that peasants lack
appropriate school background, they are overworked in their agricultural
27
Stanisaw Dygat, Jeszcze o inteligenckim obrachunku, [More on the Issue of

Intelligentsia] Nowa Kultura [New Culture], no 24, 10 September 1950, 11.
28
AAN, PZPR, sygn. 237/XVI-12, Central Committee of PZPR, Notatka informacyjna o ksztaceniu kadr rolniczych na wyszych uczelniach [A note on the education of agricultural personnel in higher education institutions], 1953, k. 72.
29
AAN, MSzW, Informacja dotyczca wrogiej dziaalnoci na uczelniach [A note
on the reactionary activities in the higher education institutions], 1953, k. 63.
30
AAN, MSzW, Informacja dotyczca wrogiej dziaalnoci na uczelniach, 1953,
k. 63.
duties [...] and hence unable to learn a lot.31 Thus it finally turned impossible to make a leap in time and to lie by making a shortcut proposed
by a socialist school. University professors, specialists in basic and natural sciences, openly declared in 1952 that, without an extensive educational background and intellectual resources, no young man including
rural youth can become a specialist of any true value to economy.32
The declaration was an act of bravery at the time, as completely contradicting the logic of the omnipotent totalitarian state. Irrespective of how
realistic the official vision was, and irrespective how distrustful the peasant students were to the system, they were regarded as its integral part.
The motto that the peasant youth (working youth as well) needs academic
education was undisputable. There were precise regulations as regards the
so-called study discipline. A number of graduates, semester promotions
(e.g. 80 per cent of the first-year students were obligatorily promoted to
the second year) were centrally pre-established. All was to match the
plan, and its realization was top priority. The Communist rulers determined that by 1955, 45 thousand specialists should complete higher education, and the plan was realized.33 The vital problem of that system of
higher education was its a priori assumption that the very class awareness
should suffice as a substitute of qualifications, and serve as the base for
developing the academic superstructure. Yet, these assumptions faced a
challenge when it turned out that the class awareness of the Polish rural
population, as projected by the Communists, differs significantly from the
actual, folk culture of the Polish peasants.
A peasant son sent to a university hardly changed. Despite all these facts,
we still want to advocate the existence of the foetal phase of the specialist production per se (this time without mentioning his background).
First of all, as we have already shown, some peasant students did succeed
31
AAN, MSzW, sig. 1286, Wyjtki z protokow posiedze rad pedagogicznych

w Studiach Przygotowawczych [Selected notes from the conventions of the
pedagogical councils at the Preparatory Studies programmes], 1952, no page
numbering
32
AAN, MSzW, sig. 141, Protok z posiedzenia przedstawicieli szkolnictwa
wyszego z wadzami [Report from the convention of the representatives of
higher education with the state authorities] MSzW, 1952, no page numbering
33
Piotr Hbner, Nauka polska po II wojnie wiatowej idee i instytucje [Polish
Science after World War II: Ideas and Institutions] (Warszawa: Centralny
Orodek Metodyczny Studiw Nauk Politycznych, 1987), 100.
at the university. Some representatives of the rural youth were extremely

zealous not so much as students, but more as demolishers of the ancient
academic regime. As it turned out later, they were engaged in realizing
imposed political agendas and expectations. In the first half of the 1950s,
academia witnessed yet another attempt of reshuffling the old order. The
rulers ventured this revolution when they won full political control over
the state. The idea was to disturb the traditional model of master-andstudent, by putting these two viewpoints on a par. During party meetings, a student who also often was a deputy assistant, that is a junior researcher, could if he wanted openly criticise a professor and question
his competences, or even worse, accuse him of hankering for the old
times.34 This very last accusation automatically placed the given scholar
outside the security zone, protected by such slogans as: progressive,
popular, socialist, or leading, etc. As can be seen, a new member of
the Polish intelligentsia obedient and controllable was given other
tasks than the leading role in the industrialization and the collectivisation
of the country. Equipped with the truth monopoly, he took up the struggle
imposed on him against all kinds of reactionism, prejudice, or
bourgeois science.
Young people from the rural background found themselves in the leading
row of this roaring movement. It perhaps needs clearing up that the
sources of this phenomenon are not strictly genealogical in nature. With
the educational system programmed by the state in the particular way, it
came as no surprise that the majority of the avant-garde student leaders
were peasant students. At the same time, one has to keep in mind that
the statistical figures produced at the time must be approached with caution (hence the data in Tables 1 and 2 also need to be treated with reservation). All the figures produced were used for propaganda purposes and
they often had a propaganda effect. Yet, in the case of the roaring
movement, the underlying rationale boiled down to basic psychological
34
These phenomena were subject to our analysis in an earlier study. See Marcin
Kruszyski, Profesorowie, ktrzy nie ksztatuj wiatopogldu marksistowskiego, a wzdychaj do dawnych czasw. Epizod z dziejw polskiego
szkolnictwa wyszego w okresie stalinowskim na przykadzie lubelskiego
UMCS, [Professors Who Fail to Shape the Marxist Worldview and Hanker
for the Old Times. An Episode in the History of Polish Higher Education in
the Stalinist Era the Case of UMCS in Lublin] Pami i Sprawiedliwo
[Remembrance and Justice] 25 (2015), in print.
mechanisms. People who aspired to significant social roles discerned an

opportunity to evade the cultural norms and traditions; a way out of the
social roles they had had to play so far. Thus, they grasped the opportunity, easily falling victim to moral corruption. The self-affirmation of such
people was allowed for by the Communists, as it confirmed the congruence of the officially proclaimed social upward movement of the working and peasant class" with the reality around them. It also gave them a
stronger motivation for breaking the cultural codes with impunity.
Researching the psychosocial profile of the specialist of the Stalinist era
is a research postulate of today.35 A Polish law historian, Professor
Stanisaw Salmonowicz, who attended the Jagiellonian University in the
1950s, recalled people who found genuine pleasure in terrorizing our
professors, enjoying to the full the opportunity placed in their hands by
the Communists to shape the fates of what had traditionally been the academic sacrum.36 A petrographer at the University of Warsaw, Professor
Maria Turnau-Morawska, was afraid to lecture, as she felt under the
overwhelming control of the environment, which she perceived as revolutionary intransigent.37 A case of a roaring student at UMCS whom we
managed to spot in the relevant archives is Eugeniusz Hetman, a son of a
peasant from the region of Wodawa, who was utilized by the party to
produce opinions (!) about the professorial staff.38 The word utilize is
35
36
37
38
The studies so far have granted us insight only into the mental profile of the
members of the Communist youth association ZM See e.g. Mariusz Mazur,
Zetempowiec jako oficjalny wzorzec nowego czowieka okresu stalinowskiego, [A ZMP Member as an Official Model of a New Man in the Stalinist Era] in Organizacje modzieowe w XX wieku. Struktury, ideologia,
dziaalno [The 20th-Century Youth Organizations: Structures, Ideology, Activity], eds. Piotr Tomaszewski, Mariusz Woos (Toru: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikoaja Kopernika, 2008), 225-244.
Stanisaw Salmonowicz, ycie jak osio ucieka. Wspomnienia [Life
Runs Forward Madly Memories] (Bydgoszcz - Gdask: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Pamici Narodowej, 2014), 97.
The Archive of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (hecenforth as
APAN), Materials by Irena Turnau-Morawskiej (henceforth as Materials by I.
Turnau-Morawska), sig. 80, I. Turnau - Morawska, Mj pamitnik [My Diary],
manuscript, no page numbering.
On this person, see Marcin Kruszyski, Eugeniusz Hetman - sekretarz
Komitetu Uczelnianego PZPR Uniwersytetu Marii Curie - Skodowskiej w
Lublinie, [Eugeniusz Hetman, Secretary of the Academic Committee of
perhaps the best to describe the tactics that the Communists (PPR/PZPR)
used in relation to the working and peasant youth, who were allowed to
enter the academia against all the traditional rules.
Conclusions
Our explorations presented in this article can be concluded upon in a
handful of points:
- after 1944, the Polish Communists followed the Soviet model of rebuilding the socio-demographic profile of the traditional intelligentsia
and its function in relation to the society as a whole (a transformation
from the intelligentsia towards a group of specialists);
- it was planned! that the new intelligentsia should include youth of the
working and rural backgrounds, which at that time inevitably implied
a centrally-controlled academic recruitment boom among the rural
population;
- this planned reshuffling the social profile was to be a swift and rapid
operation, and the strategy of the educational shortcuts was employed to streamline the process;
- Polish historians have divergent opinions on how many stages of the
social reconstruction of the intelligentsia there were after World
War II. For the purposes of this text, the author distinguished two
stages;
- the peasant youth were expected to interpret a chance of entering academia in terms of social advancement, followed by the consequent repayment of this debt to the original class (to use Marxist terminology)
that the youth came from;
- however, this granted social privilege rather than being worked
out did not cause any sense of indebtedness towards the donors on
the part of the youth;
PZPR at UMCS in Lublin] in Partia komunistyczna w Polsce. Struktury

ludzie dokumentacja [The Communist Party in Poland. Structures Staff
Documentation], ed. Dariusz Magier (Lublin - Radzy Podlaski: Archiwum
Pastwowe w Lublinie, Radzyskie Stowarzyszenie Inicjatyw Lokalnych,
2012), 425-438.
- when treated in a technocratic way, peasant youth found it impossible

to accommodate within the academic space, which was culturally alien to them, and to accept the social roles imposed by the Communists;
- indeed, peasant youth often attended universities (as workers did, too),
but their cultural matrices remained uncorrected;
- only few such students discovered their vocation to become specialists, but also to be active players in the processes of the desecration of universities through the undermining of the primary
relationship between the master and the student;
- in general, the programme of shaping a peasant student into a specialist failed or encountered serious obstacles, and in this sense we can
refer to this process in terms of art for arts sake the Soviet example was an obligation that needed to be put into practice without remonstrance;
- the peasant student kept his political neutrality, which for the Communists was even worse than keeping loyal to their traditional cultural
profile;
- the Stalinist-era graduate was leaving the university as a formally educated specialist, whose knowledge was strictly limited to a particular
domain. He also displayed no class awareness understood in Marxist
terms;
- a member of the new intelligentsia, whether from the rural or working
background, did not gain his self-identity, as he did not know what
kind of intelligentsia he represented, what he was expected to represent, and who actually is a member of the intelligentsia.
Agrarian reforms and

collectivization of agriculture in Eastern Bloc
Attitudes of the Landowners in Poland towards the Communist

Decree of 6 September 1944 on the Execution of Land Reform
Miroslaw KUSEK, Robert ANDRZEJCZYK
Introduction
The Decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) on
the execution of land reform of 6 September 1944 was the main communist legal act on the basis of which the land reform in Poland after
World War II was executed. It was setting out main directions and principles of the land reform. According to the decree regulations, the State
Treasury was taking over ownership of land properties that were bigger
than the acreage threshold specified by the decree. The landowners deprived of their property by the communist authorities were often appealing this decision. The purpose of the article is to show, on the basis of
archival documents: whether landowners, under the provisions of the decree on the execution of land reform and legal acts binding in the pre-war
Poland (1918-1939), were exercising the right to appeal against administrative decisions on the nationalization of their properties; if so, what
were the appeals relating to and what was their efficacy.1
Problems with executing the land reform decree in connection with
livestock and deadstock of land properties' owners and lessees
The Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms Cabinet responsible
for general issues took a stand on taking over livestock and deadstock being property of land properties' lessees on the occasion of the case of
Iwona and Jerzy Borejsza.2 The provision of 11 section 2 of the Regulation
1
For more information on this subject, see: Miroslaw Kusek, Nieruchomosci

ziemskie i ich waciciele w postpowaniach administracyjnych z lat 19441950 wywoanych realizacj dekretu o przeprowadzeniu reformy rolnej [Land
Properties and their Owners in Administrative Proceedings 1944-1950 caused
by the Execution of the Decree on the Execution of Land Reform] (Krakw:
Eikon Plus, 2014).
2
Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw (AAN), Ministry of Agriculture
and Agrarian Reforms II (MR and RR II), ref. No. 420, Letter of the director of
the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms Cabinet to the Department of
Agricultural System Reconstruction, 19 December 1945, 84.
178 ________________________ Miroslaw KUSEK, Robert ANDRZEJCZYK
of the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms of 1 March 1945

was reading that livestock and deadstock being property of lessees is not
subjected to takeover and remains in their possession, provided that this
circumstance was confirmed by documents.3 In the case of absence of
lessees, preparing inventory-taking and protecting property not being subjected to takeover for the State Treasury was the obligation of the bodies
appointed to take over land properties. The Minister Cabinet was of the
opinion that the above regulation could not be subjected to a broad interpretation and consequently it was to be assumed that:
1. In cases when during war property was at the disposal of the German
occupation authorities, the lessee had the right to those pieces of livestock and deadstock, which were indisputable, confirmed by documents property of the lessee at the time when the property was at their
disposal (1 September 1939 or later).
2. In such cases, the lessee did not have the right to the so-called replacement stock, namely stock introduced to the property by the occupier.
3. The young livestock was a part of revenues of a farm, the earning of
which was related to some expenditures. For this reason and in connection with the content of 11 section 2 item c, which indicates
which part of revenues should be issued to the lessee, the young was
subjected to takeover for the land reform purposes. On the contrary,
the young livestock, which came after the property was taken over by
the State Treasury, was subjected to returning to the lessee.
4. The responsibility of the State Treasury for loss of stock (as confiscation by the Soviet military authorities), as a result of failure to issue it to
the lessee on the right date, was based on the provision of Article 245 of
the Code of Obligations. Article 245 was excluding this responsibility
in the case when the debtor proved that the object of benefits was lost
even if they fulfilled benefits in accordance with the deadline.4
On the other hand, in November 1947, the Land Fund Department of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform sent a letter to the General
Department of this Ministry on stock left in the property Falenice by the
3
4
Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland of 1945, 10, item 51.

AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420, Letter of the director of the Minister of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms Cabinet to the Department of Agricultural
System Reconstruction, 19 December 1945, 84.
Attitudes of the Landowners in Poland towards the Communist Decree... ___ 179
former owner of the property. In response, the General Department pointed out that the Legal Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian
Reform, in the opinion of 17 September 1947, stated that title to stock on
the land property, which, on the basis of Article 2 section 1 item e of the
decree on the execution of land reform, was taken over by the State
Treasury, provided that it belonged to the land property owner at the time
when the title to this property was taken over by law by the State Treasury. The stock was an integral part of the land property and, unless detailed regulations were providing for otherwise, its fate was the same as
of that property.5 It was confirmed clearly in Article 6 of the land reform
decree: The Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms assumes immediately the state management over land properties listed in Article 2,
along with buildings and the whole livestock and deadstock and agricultural companies located on these properties.6 The Legal Division was of
the opinion that from the structure of the decree on the execution of land
reform it could be concluded that title to properties intended, pursuant to
this decree, for the purposes related to land reform, are wholly taken over
by the state by law. Therefore, it seems that the moment of the State
Treasury taking over the title to these land properties along with stock
was 13 September 1944, as the day of publication and date of coming into force of the decree. As a result, the former owner who was leasing
property after 13 September 1944 was considered as usufructuary, without the title, and stock contributed to the property after that day was considered as the one that was not subjected to the decree.7
The Land Fund Department was of the same view as the Legal Division
that land properties meant for the land reform purposes were taken over
by the state by law as of 13 September 1944. On the contrary, it believed
5
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms General Department, J. Mikulski, to the
Land Fund Department, 10 December 1947, 219-221.
6
7
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420, Legal opinion of the Legal Division of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms on the return of stock located on
the property Falenice, taken over for the land reform purposes by the decree of
6 September 1944, 17 September 1947, 226; AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420,
Letter of the director of the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms
General Department, J. Mikulski to the Land Fund Department, 10 December
1947, 219.
that the issue of stock ownership should be decided by the moment

when the State actually takes over a property.8 The Land Fund Department was of the opinion that the State Treasury was taking over titles
both to stock belonging to the owner on 13 September 1944 and stock introduced to the property after that date. On the contrary, the opinion of
the Legal Division was extrapolating only from formal and legal premises. The Department justified its position on stock as follows: since stock
was an integral part of the property and was sharing its fate and since the
owner had and used property until its factual takeover by the state, it was
irrelevant whether stock was introduced to the property before or after 13
September 1944. It was adding that it is difficult to agree, relying only on
the legal fiction, that there is some important difference in the event of
owner managing property before and after 13. IX. 449 In addition, acknowledging that the moment when the State actually takes over land
property was decisive and was supported, in the opinion of the Land Fund
Department, by social considerations.10
The General Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms considered the Land Fund Department's position as incorrect and
upheld the opinion of the Legal Division of 17 September 1947.11 It considered the claim of the Land Fund Department, that the Legal Division
relied only on formal and legal bases, as incomprehensible. The Legal
Division was appointed to nothing else but to assess cases only from the
legal standpoint. Then, the General Department pointed to the fact that if
the above claim was to mean that the Legal Division applied wrongly the
formal and legal interpretation of the PKWN decree of 6 September
1944, the notion of this interpretation was unknown. Over that time, in
the science of law, the following was distinguished: grammar interpretation, based on the wording of a regulation; logical interpretation; systematic interpretation, based on the systematics of law; historical
8
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms General Department, J. Mikulski to the
Land Fund Department, 10 December 1947, 219.
9
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420, 219.
10
11
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420, Legal opinion of the Legal Division of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms on the return of stock located
on the property Falenice, taken over for the land reform purposes by the
decree of 6 September 1944, 17 September 1947, 226.
interpretation, including the past of law; teleological interpretation, taking

account of the purpose of a regulation and social interpretation, taking
account of social benefit.12 In addition, the Land Fund Department
wrongly interpreted the principle expressed by the Legal Division that
stock was an integral part of the property and shared its fate. The Legal
Division was referring this principle solely to stock belonging to the present owner, rather than to all stock located on the land property. The
General Department noticed at the same time that this principle was
clearly resulting from Article 10 and 12 of the new act on right in rem,13
which, certainly, was adopted also in the former right in rem regulations.14 Also the Land Fund Department's position, that the Legal Division based distinction of the situation of owner before and after 13
September 1944 on legal fiction, was unacceptable, since legal fiction is a
legal structure where the existing legal status is contradictory to legal
property reality or significant legal status.15
The General Department reminded that the legislator, apart from nonexpropriation of owners of land properties subjected to the decree on the
execution of land reform from the entire property, left them part of moveable property located on the expropriated property. Namely, items used
for personal use, even valuables, such as jewelry ( 11 of the ordinance of
1 March 1945 to the decree on the execution of land reform). Similarly,
authorities left them money resources. As a result, it may indicate that the
legislator's intention was not to expropriate of stock brought to the property after 13 September 1944, which, after all, could have been purchased
from above mentioned resources or from borrowed funds.16
12
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms General Department, J. Mikulski to the
Land Fund Department, 10 December 1947, 220.
13
Article. 10. Fixtures are moveable items belonging to the owner of the main
item that are necessary to use it in accordance with its intended use and remain
with it in the actual association corresponding to this purpose." and Article
12. Any legal actions concerning the main item, in particular disposal of the
main item, are effective also in respect of fixtures, unless from the legal action
or regulation of the Act it results otherwise. Journal of Laws of the Republic
of Poland of 1946, No. 57, item 319.
14
15
16
Finally, the General Department underlined that in the cases of the State
assuming the management of properties not just after after the publication
of the quoted decree of 6 September [19] 44, but at a later date the State
Treasury may be vested in a claim to the former owner that was using the
property in bad faith, for return of benefits obtained from the property or
for payment of the value of these benefit.17 This judgment was based on
the provisions on legal construction of unjustified enrichment (Article
123 and the following of the Code of Obligations) or the provisions on
possession contained in the right in rem law of 11 October 1946.18
The issues of properties excluded from the decree
on the execution of land reform
An example of the procedure of excluding land properties from the decree on the execution of land reform can be the case of the land property
Topolin - Zajc. The Voivodeship Land Office (WUZ) in Warsaw, on 10
July 1945, having examined the case files concerning excluding from
plotting of the land property Topolin - Zajc, situated in the commune of
Ruchna, the poviat of Wgrw, being the ownership of Stefan Rzca and
Regina Giewartowska, ruled that the property, total area: 61.3 ha, including 49.9 ha of arable land, was not subjected to plotting. The decision
was based on the following evidence: excerpt from 2nd section of the list
of mortgage of the land properties book "Property - Topolin", certificate
of the Board of the Commune of Ruchna of 26 June 1945, plan of land of
the property Topolin prepared by the land surveyor ukasz wicicki, letter of the Poviat Land Office in Wgrw of 9 June 1944 and opinions of
the Division of Agricultural Devices WUZ in Warsaw of 6 July 1945.19
The Land Office justified its decision as follows: Stefan Rzca and his
sister Regina Giewartowska had been, since 1933, co-owners of the farm
Topolin - Zajc, total area: 61.3 ha, including 49.9 ha were agricultural
17

19
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 1895, Excerpt of the ruling of the Voivodeship
Land Office in Warsaw to Stefan Rzca and the Representative of the
Temporary Government of the Republic of Poland for Land Reform in
Warszawskie Voivodeship, 10 July 1945, 18-19.
18
lands, including arable lands - 22 ha, meadows - 1.5 acres, pastures - 1.4 ha,
and orchard - 25 ha.20
The decision of the Warsaw Land Office in Misk Mazowiecki of 10 July
1945 was appealed, probably by the Voivodeship Representative for land
reform in Misk Mazowiecki to the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian
Reforms. The Minister of Agriculture, having examined the case, on 28
July 1945, decided to uphold the appealed decision. In the substantiation
of the decision, the Minister stated that the property Topolin - Zajc, owing to the occupied general area of 61.3 ha, including 49.9 ha of arable
land, as such, was not subjected to article 2 section 1 item e of the decree
on the execution of land reform. In the opinion of the Minister, some
doubt could be raised by the item half-enclave in forests ploughed in
sandy soils, total area: 1.75 ha, due to the problem of the category of soils
it was not clear whether it should be classified to agricultural land or forest land. Having analyzed the attached files, in the opinion of the Minister, the aforementioned enclave, according to the opinion of the Wgrowo
Forest Inspectorate State, the Poviat Land Office in Wgrowo and the
Division of Agricultural Devices of the Voivodeship Land Office in
Misk Mazowiecki, was justifiably treated as wasteland since it was not
suitable for cultivation.21
On similar grounds, the following properties were not subjected to the
decree on the execution of land reform: the property Gostolin, part of
possessions Baki and the land property Staw Wodawski. The property
Gostolin located in the commune of Zauski, in the poviat of Posk, was
divided in 1936, and titles to the divided lands were transferred to buyers
in mortgages in 1937. The Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms
stated that none of farms arising as a result of plotting of the property
Gostolin was subjected to Article 2 part 1 item e of the decree on the execution of land reform, since: plot No. 1, ownership of Jzef Woczawski,
total area: 52.0033 ha, consisted of 44.1993 ha of agricultural lands,
4.8440 of waters, 0.7075 ha of roads, backyard and 2.2525 ha of buildings.
20
The remaining area covered: forests: 5.6700 ha, habitat and courtyard: 1.5235
ha, half-enclave in forests ploughed in sandy soils, area: 1.7500 ha, AAN, MR i
RR II, ref. No. 1895, Letter of the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms
to: Voivodeship Representative for Land Reform in Misk Mazowiecki, Warsaw
WUZ in Misk Mazowiecki on excluding the property "Topolin - Zajc" from
plotting, 28 July 1945, 23.
21
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420, 23-24.
On the contrary, the other farms, plot No. 2, ownership of Kazimierz

Woczawski, No. 3 ownership of Natalia Woczawska and No. 4 ownership of Stanisaw Koakowski, covered the area of 15.29 ha each. According to the regulations of Article 2 part 1 item e of the decree on the
execution of land reform and 7 of the executive regulation of 1 March
1945 to this decree, these farms were not subjected to takeover by the
state treasury for the land reform purposes, regardless of changes made
by the German occupation authorities. The plotting of these farms after
World War II was inconsistent with the provisions, and the owners of
these agricultural farms were not entitled to apply before common courts
for restoration of the disturbed state of possession. As a result, the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, bearing in mind that grant deeds
were not served to new buyers of plots, cancelled the conducted plotting
of plots transferred to new buyers in 1937 from the property Gostolin and
ordered to transfer these plots along with the whole livestock and deadstock fully to the initial owners.22
Whereas, on 5 May 1945, the Voivodeship Land Office in Warsaw, having examined the case files, decided to exclude from plotting the land
property, plotted in 1919, part of possessions Baki in the commune of
Sabnie, in the poviat of Sokow Podlaski, being the ownership of Helena
Sikorska and the successors of Franciszek Sikorski. The President of the
Office, relying on Article 2 section 1 item e of the decree on the execution of land reform, ruled that the plot of land, total area: 16.7 ha being
ownership of Helena Sikorska, and total area: 39.5 ha being ownership of
Franciszek Sikorski, are not subjected to plotting.23
A similar position was adopted on 30 November 1945 by the Minister of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms. Relying on the assumption that it is required to consider as land property, as defined by the decree on the execution of land reform, each property beyond the administrative boundaries of
22
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 1895, Letter of the Department of the Agricultural
System Reconstruction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms
to: Voivodeship Representative for Land Reform in Misk Mazowiecki,
Warsaw WUZ in Misk Mazowiecki, on unlawful plotting of agricultural
farms created from the property Gostolin, Posk poviat, 23 July 1945, 25.
23
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 1895, Letter of the Voivodeship Land Office in
Warsaw to Helena Sikorska, 5 May 1945, 27; AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No.
1895, Letter of Helena Sikorska to the Voivodeship Land Office in Warsaw, 20
August 1945, 26.
cities, made a decision that the property, named "Staw Wodawski", since
located within the boundaries of the city of Wodawa, was not subjected
to the PKWN decree of 6 September 1944.24
Appeals due to unlawful plotting and the issue
of equivalent on this account
Owing to rush, messiness, difficulties in control and the lack of necessary
plans and excerpts from the mortgage register in many properties, plotting commissions, guided by hunger for land in many places, including in
the area of Warszawskie Voivodeship, plotted also land properties that
were excluded from plotting on the basis of Article 2 item e of the decree
on the execution of land reform25. The Voivodeship Land Office in Warsaw, relying on the provisions of 5 of the Regulation of the Minister of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reform of 1 March 1945 on executing the decree on the execution of land reform26 in relation to many already plotted
properties, was issuing rulings on excluding these land properties from
the decree on the execution of land reform and recommending that their
owners should assume possession of these properties.
Such proceedings of the Land Office were often causing quite a significant dissatisfaction among peasants in the area. New buyers of land had
already put much effort into its development, by conducting certain field
works, e.g. spring sowings. In addition, in most cases, peasants had already received land grant deeds, which were for them the most important
document, ensuring indisputable rights to the granted land. The legal
standpoint for the peasants who were granted the land was insignificant,
and certainly they would be very distrustful towards allocation of other
plots. As a result, the Government Representative recommended that the
already plotted parcels should not be returned to their former owners. As
compensation (equivalent), he was proposing issuing special certificates
to the aggrieved owners. On their basis, they could receive properties
24
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 420, Letter of the Legal Division of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms to the Department of the Agricultural
System Reconstruction, 8 May 1946, 37.
25
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 1895, Letter of the Representative of the Government
of the Republic of Poland for Sowing for Warszawskie Voivodeship to the
Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, 22 June 1946, 16.
26
Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland of 1945, No. 10, item 50.
with the same area in the Western Territories. In this way, the economic
and political problem would be solved, and the aggrieved landowners
would receive post-German properties.27
The estimations of the value of properties, both taken over for the land reform purposes and separated as equivalent on the basis of the Decree of 28
November 1945, were based on the regulations of the instruction of the
Minister of Agriculture and Land Reforms of 12 December 1946.28 Changes in this instruction were introduced by the Instruction of the Minister of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms of 19 August 1948.29 In addition, the
instruction of August 1948 was reading that in the case of separation of an
equivalent in the so-called Recovered or Western Territories (territory of
the former Free City of Danzig and the parts of pre-war Germany that became part of Poland after World War II) in exchange for lands taken over
in the Old Territories (territory of pre-war Poland excluding territories ceded to Soviet Union Eastern Borderlands), when classifying facilities to
economic circles, the following principles were followed:
a) 1st economic district in the Old Territories corresponds to the suburban
zone of the 1st and 2nd district in the Recovered Territories;
b) 2nd economic district in the Old Territories corresponds to the zone of
favorable economic conditions in 1st and 2nd district in the Recovered
Territories;
c) 3rd economic district in the Old Territories corresponds to the zone of
diverse economic conditions in the 2nd economic district in the Recovered Territories.30
27
AAN, MR i RR II, ref. No. 1895, Letter of the Representative of the Government
of the Republic of Poland for Sowing for Warszawskie Voivodeship to the
Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, 22 June 1946, 16.
28
Official Journal of the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms of 1947,
1, item 7.
29
National Archive in Krakw (AN Krakw), Voivodeship Office in Krakw II
(UW Krakowski II), ref. No. 3038, Instruction of the Minister of Agriculture
and Agrarian Reforms on estimating some land properties taken over for the
purposes of land reform and colonization and separated as equivalent, on the
basis of the Decree of 28 November 1945 (Dz. U. RP No. 57 item 321), 19
August 1948, 87-88.
30
National Archive in Krakw (AN Krakw), Voivodeship Office in Krakw II
(UW Krakowski II), ref. No. 3038, 87.
When regulating matters covered by the decree of 28 November 1945,

and which arose as a result of plotting of land properties, recognized later
as not subjected to the decree on the execution of land reform31, it was
often a case that owners of these properties were granted, as equivalent,
indivisible parts of these properties, the so-called residuary properties.
Provided that individuals entitled to compensation, former landowners,
waived of their claims vested in them on the basis of Article 2 section 1
of the November decree. In the opinion of the Ministry, not only was this
procedure conflicting with the intention and spirit of the decree of 28 November, but additionally caused dissatisfaction and conflict in the area.
Individuals granted with land from plotting were objecting takeover of
residuary property by the former owner, who, usually, was reporting
claims towards the individuals granted with land. As a result, the Minister
of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms ordered Voivodeship Offices not to
file with the ministry applications for equivalent, as provided for by the
November decree plotted residuary property, and belonging previously
to former owner of property.32 Then, the Ministry applied to Divisions of
Agricultural Devices of Voivodeship Land Offices to examine the situation within their voivodeship. The Voivodeship Office in Krakow, following the regulation of the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian
Reforms of 5 November 1947, sent a letter to the Departments of Agriculture and Land Reforms of the poviats of the Krakow Voivodeship.33
The Departments, until the end of November, presented reports with an
explanation to which owners of plotted land properties, located within
former poviat, and recognized as the decree on the execution of land reform were granted as equivalent, the so-called residuary properties.
31

AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Regulation of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms to Voivodeship Offices, Divisions of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, 22 October 1947, 3.
33
AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Krakow
Voivodeship Office, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, Division
of Agricultural Devices, to the Poviat Starosty, Department of Agriculture and
Agrarian Reforms, according to the distribution list, 5 November 1947, 1; AN
Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Regulation of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms to Voivodeship Offices, Divisions of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, 22 October 1947, 3.
32
In the Biaa poviat, two land properties, not subjected to the decree on the
execution of land reform, were plotted partially: of Edmund Schmeja
from Kty and Stanisaw Then from Bulowice (May Czaniec). The heirs
of Edmund Schmeja remained on the indivisible residuary property,
without any decision of the Land Office or the poviat Department of Agriculture and Land Reforms. On the contrary, the heirs of Alojzy Schmeja
were granted temporary usufruct, until drawing up the lease contract, 7 ha
of land the granted buyers waived off. In the case of Stanisaw Then, the
Land Office in Biaa, in April 1945, gave consent to using buildings
along with land excluded from plotting.34
In the Miechw poviat area, as equivalent, the former landowners received two residuary properties from the plotted land properties.35 By
way of the decision of the Minister of Agriculture and Land Reforms of
March 1946, approximately 3 ha were returned to the former owners of
the property Bukowska Wola, and in Luborzyca, also on the basis of the
ministry's decision of May 1947, approximately 6 ha of land along with
the mill were returned. In the Olkusz poviat, one residuary property was
transferred. The heirs of the former owner of the property Szczodrkowice, Jan Chrzanowski, received in July 1946 residuary property, approximate area: 5.5 ha.36
The starosties of Bochnia, Chrzanw, Dbrowa Tarnowska, Mylenice,
Nowy Scz, Nowy Targ, Tarnw and Wadowice were informing that in
the poviat area there were no cases of granting to the former landowners,
as equivalent, residuary properties in exchange for waiver of the rights
34
35
36
AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Biaa Poviat
Starosty, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, to the
Voivodeship Office, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms,
Division of Agricultural Devices, 18 November 1947, 7 -8.
AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Miechw Poviat
Division of Agricultural Devices, on the return to owners of the residuary
properties Luborzyca and Bukowska Wola, 14 November 1947, 19.
AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Olkusz Poviat
Division of Agricultural Devices, concerning the return of residuary
properties to owners, 18 November 1947, 27.
vested in them on the basis of Article 2 section 1 of the decree of 28 November 1945.37
Conclusions
On the basis of the analyzed archive material containing administrative
proceedings in the 2nd half of the 1940s in the cases concerning subjection of nationalized properties to the provisions of the PKWN decree on
the execution of land reform, where landowners were one of the parties, it
should be stated that landowners being expropriated were entitled to appeal against decisions on nationalization of their ownership, and they
37
AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Bochnia Poviat
Starosty, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, to the Voivodeship
Office, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, Division of
Agricultural Devices, 12 November 1947, 9; AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II,
ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Chrzanw Poviat Starosty, Department of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, to the Voivodeship Office Department of
Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, Division of Agricultural Devices, 20
November 1947, 13; AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the
Dbrowa Tarnowska Poviat Starosty, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian
Reforms, to the Voivodeship Office, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian
Reforsm, Division of Agricultural Devices, 10 November 1947, 15; AN Krakw,
UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Mylenice Poviat Starosty,
Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, to the Voivodeship Office,
Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, Division of Agricultural
Devices, 24 November 1947, 21; AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138,
Letter of the Nowy Scz Poviat Starosty, Department of Agriculture and
Agrarian Reforms, to the Voivodeship Office, Department of Agriculture and
Agrarian Reforms, Divsion of Agricultural Devices, 9 November 1947, 23; AN
Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Nowy Targ Poviat
Starosty, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, to the Voivodeship
Office, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, Division of
Agricultural Devices, 12 November 1947, 25; AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II,
ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Tarnw Poviat Starosty, Department of Agriculture
and Agrarian Reforms, to the Voivodeship Office, Department of Agriculture
and Agrarian Reforms, Division of Agricultural Devices, 11 November 1947,
29; AN Krakw, UW Krakowski II, ref. No. 3138, Letter of the Wadowice
Poviat Starosty, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, to the
Voivodeship Office, Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, Division
of Agricultural Devices, 20 November 1947, 31.
were exercising this right. Presented in the text cases of appeals of former
owners of land properties taken over for execution of the decree on the
execution of land reform related to: livestock and deadstock of owners
and lessees of land properties, properties excluded from the decree on the
execution of land reform, and unlawful plotting and the issue of equivalent on this account. In addition, from the analyzed archive material, it
can be concluded that landowners were appealing also in the following
cases: non-subjection of urban property and industrial plants to the decree, non-exceeded acreage, co-ownership of natural or legal persons, validity of a pre-war agreement with creditors.
The Ploughmens Front and the Land Reform

1
from 1945 in Romania
Sorin RADU
The Ploughmens Front was a peasant political organisation led by Prime
Minister Petru Groza2 and was considered by the Romanian historiography a comrade of the communists, a mass organisation led by communists, an annex of the communists or a crypto-communist
organisation. Between 1944 and 1947, the Romanian Communist Party3
had tried to emphasize the independence of action of the Ploughmens
Front due to the lack of adherence to communist ideas among the peasants; the revealing of the relationship between the communists and the
Ploughmens Front was assessed as a tactical mistake. However, the
activity of this organisation, starting from the 23 August 1944 until its
self-dissolution on 7 February 1953 was strictly supervised and coordinated by the Communist Party. Officially, the Ploughmens Fronts task
was to organize and mobilize the entire peasantry for its material and cultural improvement, but in reality the peasants had to be distracted from
the real intentions of the communists. The Fronts political weight would
1
This work was supported by CNCS UEFISCDI, project no. PN-II-RU-TE2012-3-0334 Communism in Romanian Countryside. Case Study: Ploughmens Front Propaganda (1944-1953).
2
In 1952, Groza was appointed head of state the President of the Executive of
the Great National Assembly, which, in fact, was a formal, powerless position
(Dorin Liviu Btfoi, Petru Groza, ultimul burghez. O biografie [Petru Groza,
the Last Bourgeois. Biography] (Bucureti: Compania, 2004).
3
Since its beginnings (1921), the party had changed its name many times: Partidul
Comunist-Socialist (The Communist-Socialist Party) (1921-1922); Partidul Comunist din Romnia (The Communist Party of Romania) (1922-1943); Partidul
Comunist Romn (The Romanian Communist Party) (1943-1948); Partidul
Muncitoresc Romn (The Romanian Working Party) (from February 1948, after
the absorption of the Social-Democrat Party until 1965), Partidul Comunist
Romn (The Romanian Communist Party) (1965-1989). Adrian Cioroianu, Pe
umerii lui Marx. O introducere n istoria comunismului romnesc [On Marxs
Shoulders. An Introduction to the History of the Romanian Communism]
(Bucureti: Curtea Veche Publishing House, 2007); Vladimir Tismneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003).
192 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
increase significantly after the formation of Grozas government (on the 6

March 1945), when, benefiting from the states logistical support, the organisation became an attraction point for the peasants. According to archival documents dating from 1948-1949, the Ploughmens Front had
approximately 1.5 million members, with organisations in nearly all rural
communities in Romania. The Ploughmens Fronts organisational expansion after World War II was directly supported by the Communist
Party. Communist leaders considered the Ploughmens Front as an extension of their own party in the countryside, a communist organisation developed to translate the meaning of the party theses imposed by the
communists on the peasants, especially those related to the socialist transformation of agriculture, in order to gradually gain strength, pave the way
for a communist society4 and neutralize the popularity of the National
Peasant Party (a party with a peasant ideology, but hostile to the USSR).5
Our article intends to describe the implication of the Ploughmens Front
in land reform from 1945.
Background of the Political Situation in Romania after WW II
For Romania, 23 August 1944 represented not only the final consecration
of the failure of the participation, along with Nazi Germany, of the war
against the USSR, but the start of a new political evolution, finalised with
its entrance under the Soviet sphere of influence and the imposition of the
popular democracy regime for four decades. In the first years after 1944,
in the presence on its territory of a major Soviet military contingent,
4
See: Sorin Radu, Tovari de drum: Frontul Plugarilor i Partidul Comunist

n anii 1944-1947, [Comrades: The Ploughmens Front and the Communist
Party, 1944-1947] Revista istoric, XXIII / 1-2 (2012), 107-138; Sorin Radu,
The Political Organisation of the Peasantry in Communist Romania: the
Ploughmens Front (1945-1953), Bulgarian Historical Review, 1-2 (2013),
79-101; Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeanc, Flavius Solomon, The Comrades,
Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe. The
Ploughmens Front in Romania, Historick asopis, 63 / 1 (2015), 113-135.
5
In July 1947, the main leaders of the National Peasantry Party were arrested, and
in August 1947 the party was dissolved. Another important left-wing organisation, The Social-Democrat Party of Romanian also disappeared by uniting with
the RCP, in February 1948. Gheorghe Onioru, Aliane i confruntri ntre partidele politice, 1944-1947 [Alliances and Confrontations between Political Parties, 1944-1947] (Bucureti: Fundaia Academia Civic, 1996), 255-278.
The Ploughmens Front and the Land Reform from 1945 in Romania ______ 193
Romania, like other Eastern European countries, experienced a series of

profound political, social, and economic transformations. The Soviet model
adopted by the Romanian communists as the only viable political and social guiding point6, and implemented under the close supervision of Soviet
advisers7, given the election results fraud of a decisive parliamentary poll8
and the coercive elimination of the monarchy and the violent repression of
all forms of resistance9, caused a true transfiguration of Romania.
In the tradition established by the Bolsheviks in the USSR, Romanian
communists and their political allies, in an attempt to ensure at least a
neutral, if not benevolent attitude by some segments of the population,
they turned to a whole set of propaganda engineers, targeting the countryside. In this sense, during the beginning of socialist transformation, the
agrarian reform initiated by the decree of 23 March 1945 was representative10, proclaiming private property as the foundation of Romanian agriculture, but in reality it represented a prelude towards passing under the
effective control of the state over the absolute majority of the arable land.11
6
Although the Romanian Communist Party had only a few hundred members
between Wars, after 23 August 1943 their number had increased significantly:
approximately 5,500 members in October 1944; 15,000 in February 1945; almost 43,000 at the end of April 1945. Comisia Prezidenial pentru Analiza
Dictaturii Comuniste din Romnia, Raport final [The Presidential Commission for
the Analyses of the Romanian Dictatorship, Final Report] (Bucureti: Humanitas,
2007), 55-56. For the general context of the beginnings of the Sovietisation of
Romania the role of the Romanian Communist Party, see: Cioroianu, Pe umerii
lui Marx; Tismneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons; Dennis Deletant, Romania
under Communist Rule (Iai, Oxford, and Portland: Polirom, 1999).
7
Dorin Dobrincu, The Soviet Counsellors Involvement in Post-war Romanian
Repressive and Military Structures, in Alexandru Zub, Flavius Solomon
(eds.), Sovietization in Romania and Czechoslovakia. History, Analogies, Consequences (Iai: Polirom, 2003), 157- 174.
8
For the elections from 19 November 1946, see: Virgiliu ru, Alegeri fr
opiune. Primele scrutinuri parlamentare din Centrul i Estul Europei dup cel
de-al Doilea Rzboi Mondial [Elections without Options. The First Parliamentary Votes from the Central and Eastern Europe after World War II] (ClujNapoca: Eikon Publishing House, 2005).
9
Raport final, 166-169.
10
Monitorul Oficial [The Official Monitory], Bucureti, 68 bis, 23 March 1945.
11
Dumitru andru, Colectivizarea agriculturii i problema agrar: repere socialpolitice, [The Collectivisation of Agriculture and Agrarian Question], in
Dorin Dobrincu, Constantin Iordachi (eds.), rnimea i puterea. Procesul
194 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
The idea of eliminating private land ownership and of the establishment

of the collectivism model in agriculture was, in Romania, part of a wider
range of ideas taken over from the Soviet model.12 Removing private land
property and the establishment of the agricultural collectivist model were
part of a wider range of ideas adopted (or imposed) by the Soviet model.
Even though the origin of these ideas were old and can be identified in
many of the utopian projects of the last two millennia, their manner of
application in Romania is closely related to the Soviet model of the socialist transformation of agriculture. Moreover, when the USSR occupied
Eastern Europe, it already had a strategy for sovietisation, which was to
be applied in all the states that came under its influence, and the collectivisation of agriculture represented a great part of this strategy.13
The collectivisation of agriculture process was preceded by a comprehensive land reform through which the new government tried to adjudicate
an important political capital among farmers, representing about 80% of
the countrys population. It is important to understand that the land reform was primarily political and only secondarily economic and social.
The Tradition of the Agrarian Reform in Romania
The first land reform in Romania was carried out in 1864 by ruler
Alexandru Ioan Cuza. The agrarian law abolished feudal servitude and
relationships. It represented a fundamental step towards the beginning of
12
13
de colectivizare a agriculturii n Romnia, 1949-1962 [The Peasantry and the

Power. The Process of Collectivisation of Agriculture in Romania] (Iai:
Polirom, 2005), 50.
Octavian Roske (ed.), Dosarul colectivizrii n Romnia. 1949-1962. Studiu
ntocmit de Comisia pentru cercetarea abuzurilor din Camera Deputailor
[The File of Collectivisation in Romania. 1949-1962. A Study by the Commision for Abuse Investigation from the Chamber of Deputies] (Bucureti:
Monitorul Oficial, 1992), 3. For more details about the Soviet model see
Hans Lemberg (ed.), Sowjetisches modell und Nationale Prgung. Kontinuit
und Wandel in Ostmitteleuropa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Marburg: Lahn,
1991); Dietrich Beyrau, Das sowjetische Modell ber Fiktionen zu den Realitten, in Peter Hbner, Christoph Klessmann, Klaus Tenfelde (eds.), Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus. Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit
(Kln, Weimar, Wien: Bhlau Verlag, 2005), 47-70.
Gail Kligman, Katherine Verdery, Peasants under Siege. The Collectivization
of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011).
the process of modernization of the Romanian state. Over 460,000 peasants

were given land lots with a surface of about 1.8 million hectares. After the
reform, the peasants came to own 30% of the agricultural land, while the
remaining 70% was owned by the great landowners and the state.14
The second land reform was accomplished in the context of World War I
and far exceeded the dimensions of the reforms from the neighbouring
countries, being recorded as the most extended process of this kind in the
entire post-war Europe. For the people it gained the valences of a true
agrarian reform, aiming to happily complete the success of creating United Romania. Meanwhile, in political circles in Bucharest it was seen as a
culmination of all the efforts to modernize the agrarian economy, undertaken by the government during the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century. The enactment of the agrarian reform between 1917
and 1921 was determined by three major factors: the sacrifices made by
peasants during World War I; fear of the penetration of Bolshevik revolution ideas among the peasantry, and the sincere desire of the ruling elite
in Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina to complete the unification of
Romanians in these provinces with Romania as well as their aim for a
broad redistribution of the land wealth in order to provide equal opportunities to the entire peasantry.15
As a result of land reform 1.4 million families were appropriated with
about 6,000,000 hectares of land. Thus, the share of smallholders increased to such an extent that properties up to 5 acres represented 82.7%
of the total area.16 It is important to note that the Romanian government
did not exclude peasants belonging to other ethnic minorities from the
appropriation process. Although the efforts for the implementation of the
agrarian reform were carried out by specialized state institutions, composed of experts in the field, the process was delayed unusually long because of the endless lawsuits filed by landowners against the decisions of
expropriation or the established damages amounts, and, also, because of
the disputes that occurred between the people from various villages, who
14
Iulian Oncescu, Ion Stanciu, Introducere n istoria modern a romnilor [Introduction in Modern Romanian History] (Trgovite: Editura Cetatea de
Scaun, 2009), 153.
15
For more information, see: Dumitru andru, Reforma agrar din 1921 n
Romnia [The Agrarian Reform from 1921 in Romania] (Bucureti: Editura
Academiei, 1975).
16
andru, Reforma agrar din 1921 n Romnia, 42-79.
196 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
had lost forests and pastures in order to meet the needs of the counterparts
from the neighbouring villages. During the late 30s there still were villages where the agrarian reform had not been finalised.17 The negative effects of this huge land redivision were immediate. In addition to the
absence of immediate legislative support to meet small households, peasants did not have their own capital for a long-term investment nor sufficient agricultural tools. In its turn, the global economic crisis had heavily
affected Romanian agriculture, initially manifested through an alarming
price drop, especially regarding cereals. The state intervened through the
promulgation of the conversion of agricultural debt law, in April 1934, as
the result of long debates initiated in 1931, the year when the crisis had
reached its peak.18
The inter-war Romanian economy characteristics were very similar to
those of the neighbouring countries. In 1930, 78% of the population was
employed in agriculture and its related services, given that in Bulgaria the
percentage was 80% (1934), 79% in Yugoslavia (1931), in Poland 65%
(1931) and 53% in Hungary (1930). The Czechoslovak state's situation
was somewhat better, where the population employed in the agricultural
sector covered only 38%.19 Given the percentages, it would have been
natural that the rural population played an important political role in these
countries, of course, through peasantry parties, however their evolution
between the Wars proved otherwise.
The Land Reform in March 1945
The agrarian reforms in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945 exceeded
their initial socio-economic nature, turning into a genuine political weapon
in the hands of Moscow patronage parties, especially interested in capturing the elective attention of the rural population. Chronologically, Romania
was the second of the countries from the future communist camp where
land reform was enacted, on 23 March 1945, after Poland (6 September
1944); then followed Czechoslovakia, on 21 May 1945, Yugoslavia, on 23
17
18
For more information, see: Keith Hitchins, Romnia 1866-1947 [Romania
1866-1947] (Bucureti: Editura Humanitas, 2013), 386-397.
19
ru, Noaptea moierilor, 9.
August 1945, Albania, on 29 August 1945, Germany under Soviet control

in October 1945, Bulgaria, on 12 March 1946, Hungary on 7 May.20
In turn, the Communist Party in Romania approached the agrarian matter
starting with the first issue of Scnteia (The Spark) magazine, on 21
September 1944, under the title of Freedom and Land for the Peasants,
a slogan inspired by the one used by the Russian Bolsheviks Land for
The Peasants, launched in the spring of 1917. Aware of the political importance of the future land reform, the communists supported the idea of
massive expropriations of the largest farms, accompanied by a redistribution of those areas towards the rural proletariat and peasantry. A few days
later, on 26 September 1944, the subject would be resumed with the
launch of a platform-project of the National Democratic Front program, a
document dominated by communist terms of opinions, while the ideas of
the other partner formations were considered as unimportant.21 Section 5
of its contents clearly stated the need for the immediate launch of the land
reform: For a most rapid recovery and development of the country the
program stated we must satisfy and legitimate the most ardent demands
of the Romanian peasantry, namely the achievement of a broad agrarian
reform, the expropriation of the agricultural estates larger than 50 hectares and the appropriation of this land to landless peasants or to those
who have little land. Those who fight against the German fascism front
should be favoured for appropriation.22
The communists' statement of intent went only so far to that point. Prudently, the following stages of the transformation of agriculture according
to the Soviet model, which were expected to be accomplished in the future, were silenced. The previous negative experience recorded by the
Soviets after the Bolshevik Revolution did not allow a direct approach to
such a delicate matter, which was why the strategy adopted by the communists was that of not mentioning the idea of collectivisation of agriculture, and even denying it vehemently if their opponents would have
brought it into question.23
20

erban Rdulescu-Zoner, Daniela Bue, Beatrice Marinescu 6 martie 1945:
nceputurile comunizrii Romniei [March 6, 1945: Beginnings of Romanian
Communization] (Bucureti: Editura Cavallioti, 1995), 122.
22
Scnteia [The Spark], no. 6, 26 September 1944, 1.
23
ru, Noaptea moierilor, 65-66.
21
198 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
On 23 March 1945, in less than two weeks after taking power, Petru
Groza's Government issued Law No. 187 for the land reform.24 The
measure was committed while the country was deeply affected by the
devastation of war and was engaged with armed forces on the western
front. This was added to the maintenance needs of the army Soviet occupation and to the internal economic recovery effort. However, among all
these priorities the directives sent by the Kremlin prevailed, which specifically demanded means of disintegration of the large estates.25
The expropriation enacted by the Communists through Groza's government actually meant a seizure of land from the owners. The peasants who
were given the confiscated land from the great landowners as allotment
plots were obliged to pay for it to the Ministry of Finance. So the land reform was not free, as the communist propaganda stated at the time.26
The agrarian reform from 1945 was hastily designed and poorly applied,
deliberately aiming at the impoverishment of the landowners who had
been hostile towards the Communist Party, on the one hand, and at creating economically non-viable agricultural holdings, so that the Communists could later justify the inefficiency of small private agricultural
properties and the need for the collectivisation of agriculture, on the other
hand.27 However, the land reform did not produce the expected result.
The land lots that peasants were given proved insufficient in size, their
owners were left without further agricultural inventory and soon a terrible
economic crisis was installed across the country, coupled with the famine
from 1946 (mainly caused by drought). The real goals pursued by communists were, on the one hand, attaining sympathy from the part of the
rural population to the detriment of the more important political opponent
the National Peasant Party and, on the other hand, excessive fragmentation of the agricultural land, so that they would later be able to claim the
fact that small farms were not profitable and, thus, prepare the process of
collectivisation. Through the agrarian reform in 1945, 1,057,674 hectares
24
Monitorul Oficial, nr. 68 bis, 23 martie 1945.

Dumitru andru, Reforma agrar din 1945 n Romnia [The Agrarian Reform
from 1945 in Romania] (Bucureti: Institutul Naional pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2000).
26
Dumitru andru, Reforma agrar din 1945 i rnimea german din Romnia
[The Agrarian Reform from 1945 and the German Peasantry in Romania]
(Bucureti: Institutul Naional pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2009), 9.
27
andru, Reforma agrar din 1945 i rnimea german din Romnia, 12.
25
were distributed to 796,129 peasants. On the completion of the land reform in 1946 there were over three million households with fewer than 5
hectares of land, which represented a 75% of all households.28
The German Minority in Romania and the Agrarian Reform
The agrarian reform, developed and applied by Petru Grozas government,
who strengthened his position through this law, was simultaneously an act
directed against members of the German community from Romania29 and
only secondly against landowners, as the Communists and the Ploughmens Fronts speech and propaganda implied.30 In 1945, about 75,000
ethnic Germans were deported to the Soviet Union for hard labour.31
The Germans from Romania were brutally excluded from the benefits of
the reform, being considered collaborators with the Nazis. Article 3 of the
land reform law project provided that Germans in Romania who had collaborated with Nazi Germany lost all their agricultural lands and properties. The Law Regulation for the Land Reform Appliance, no. 187 of
12 April 1945 (Article 3, paragraph c), stated very clearly that all equipment, livestock and other goods from both towns and villages belonging
to Romanian citizens of German nationality, who had been part of the
German Ethnic Group, as well as those who had supported the Nazi propaganda, became state property to be divided to ploughmen entitled to appropriation.32 Those who were guilty were left with 20 hectares, while
other landowners could keep 50 hectares of arable land, plus vineyards
and forests. Most often, the entire wealth of Saxon and Swabian peasants
was confiscated because of the confusing instructions, the ignorance and
personal interests of those involved in the reform implementation. According to some estimates, in early 1947 about 143,000 German families
28

Hannelore Baier (ed.), Germanii din Romnia, 1944-1956 [The Germans in
Romania, 1944-1956] (Sibiu: Editura Honterus, 2005), 11.
30
Baier (ed.), Germanii din Romnia, 1944-1956, 11; andru, Reforma agrar
din 1945 i rnimea german din Romnia, 12-13.
31
Hannelore Baier (ed.), Deportarea etnicilor germani din Romnia n Uniunea
Sovietic 1945 [The German Ethnics' Deportation from Romania to the Soviet
Union in 1945] (Sibiu: Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din Romnia, 1994).
32
Monitorul Oficial, no. 85, 12 April 1945; Baier, Germanii din Romnia,
1944-1956, 84-85.
29
200 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
with a total of 804,000 acres had been expropriated. It should be noted

that, in time, all German minorities were treated with the same hostility,
becoming subject to land and other properties dispossession. According
to some assessments, all German peasants from central and south-eastern
Europe were expropriated and lost approximately ten million hectares of
land, summing a total of 16.7 million acres of expropriated land. This fact
does not lessen Romanian government accountability, but only demonstrates the fact that they shared the same ideas and behaviour with their
counterparts from other countries.33
The Land Reform and the Comrades The Case
of the Ploughmen's Front
The main task of the Ploughmens Front was to implement the Communist ideology in the countryside, facilitating the process of communization of the Romanian villages, where the Communists were
extremely unpopular. During the following years, the Ploughmen's Front
increased its responsibility for agrarian policy in Romania, whereas, according to Moscow, its leader was considered the best politician to lead a
transitional government, dominated by the Communists, subject to the
Soviets, but, at the same time, formally resembling a democratic representative government, especially to Anglo-Americans. Today we know
the context of the formation, on 6 March 1945, of this government led by
Petru Groza. We note here that there were three other members of the
ploughmen's organisation present in this cabinet (Mihai Ralea the Department of Arts, Romulus Zroni the Department of Agriculture and
Constantine Agiu state under-secretary in the same ministry).34 Of
course, we must keep in mind that the government was not free in its
movements, that it was subjected to Soviet pressures, directly exerted by
33
Raport final, 360; Cosmin Budeanc, Efectele exproprierilor i naionalizrilor

asupra etnicilor germani: integrarea Cooperativele Agricole de Producie i migraia spre orae, n percepia romnilor, [Die Auswirkungen der Enteignungen und Nationalisierungen auf die Rumniendeutschen: die Integration in
die Landwirtschaftlichen Produktionsgenossenschaften und die Migration in
die Stadt in der Wahrnehmung der Rumnien] in Hannelore Baier, Abbrche
und Aufbrche. Die Rumniendeutschen nach zwei Weltkriegen. Tagungbeitrge (Sibiu: Editura Honterus), 71.
34
Lista noului govern, [Members of New Government] Scnteia, II, no. 161,
8 March 1945.
the Allied Control Commission and other factors, and that it was dominated by the communists who were overseeing the Prime Minister's loyalty to the Soviet Union; however, the members could apply drastic
government measures or favour certain interests within this framework.
The issue of the land reform was treated with great care by Petru Groza's
government. The day after their installation, on 7 March 1945, during the
first meeting of the new ministerial team, the president of the Ministers'
Council urged the completion of the land reform project, to provide the
legal basis for the division of land, which had already begun among peasants at the instigation of the communists and the Ploughmen's Front. For
example, on February 10, 1945 the Ploughmen's Front addressed the
peasants, urging them to start land division immediately. The manifesto
can be counted as an open call to the violation of the applicable laws and
an attack against private property35: It is the time for the land you work
belong to you, not the landowners. [...] This is how we all from the
Ploughmen's Front see things. And all the patriots united with us in the
National Democratic Front think the same. The appeal called for immediate implementation of the land division, because no one could trust
Rdescu's government and the representatives of the liberal or the National Peasant parties. Peasants were advised through the Ploughmen's
Front's organisations: a). to create a list of with ploughmen who owned
no or little land, so that each be given the lot due; b). to establish how
much land did landowners owned in their village; c). to ensure that the
inventory of agricultural estates were not subtracted, damaged or hidden
....36 Ploughmen were reassured that the only government that would
sincerely apply the agrarian reform was that of National Democratic
Front. The appeal also mentioned the intention to establish centres of agricultural machinery to be rented by the peasants for a small price, a
sooner peace, eliminating fascism in Romania, a policy of friendship with
the inhabiting peoples, which will ensure regaining Northern Transylvania
35
Dan Ctnu. Octavian Roske (eds.), Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia.

Dimensiunea politic, 1949-1953 [The Collectivisation of Agriculture in
Romania. The Political Dimension, 1949-1953] (Bucureti: Institutul Naional
pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2000), 31.
36
Apelul Frontului Plugarilor din 10 februarie 1945, [The Ploughmens Front's
Appeal from 10 April 1945] in Ioan Scurtu (ed.), Romnia. Viaa politic n
documente. 1945 [Romania. The Political Life in Documents. 1945] (Bucureti:
Arhivele Statului din Romnia, 1994), 136-137.
202 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
territory, and, not least, a friendship policy towards Soviet Russia, which
would result in the immediate return of the war prisoners from USSR and
the possibility to import tractors, agricultural machinery, cotton and others goods from the Soviet Union.37
In most counties, the Ploughmen's Front propagandists agitated peasants,
spreading profound unrest and dissatisfaction with the delay by the authorities of agrarian reform among them. Given that the country was engaged in war as an ally of the Soviet Union, legislating the agrarian
reform was not a priority for the government of Nicolae Rdescu, at that
point. The propagandists' message was that changing the government,
bringing a democrat prime minister to power, i.e. one supported by
Moscow, would have enabled a quickly approved land reform.38 On 6
March 1945 this would happen by appointing the head of the Ploughmen's Front, Petru Groza, as government leader.
The government led by Petru Groza approved the agrarian reform two
weeks after its appointment, a land reform that claimed, in a propagandistic manner, to be more democratic and more radical than that of the
bourgeois government from 1919-1921. In fact, in March 1945, in
many areas of the country, the peasants began to share their lands at the
urging of Communists and Ploughmens Fronts members. On a county
organisation level, the leaders of the Ploughmens Front would be directly involved in the implementation of the agrarian reform, in many cases
even the chairpersons of the allotment committees.39
The members of these committees were often directly interested in expropriation, and especially in land allotment, which led to many abuses.
All was possible due to the fact that the Ploughmen's Front, unlike the
Communist Party, managed to build in a very short time county, municipal and village organisations throughout the country, including in areas
where the majority belonged to national minorities (e.g., the counties of
Covasna and Harghita). Without exception, these organisational struc37
Scurtu (ed.), Romnia. Viaa politic n documente. 1945, 137-138; Manifestul Frontului Plugarilor, [The Ploughmen's Front Manifesto] Scnteia,
II, no. 136, 11 February 1945.
38
See the newspapers Frontul Plugarilor [The Ploughmens Front] and Scnteia.
39
Vasile Ciobanu, Sorin Radu, Nicolae Georgescu (eds.), Frontul Plugarilor. Documente, vol I (1944-1947) [The Ploughmens Front. Documents (1944-1947)]
(Bucureti: Institutul Naional pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2011), 38-40,
89-94.
tures were involved in the implementation of land reform, both from an

administrative perspective, the expropriation of estates and the appropriation of the peasants, as well as in terms of propagandistic exploitation of
this reform.40 The allotment subject and that of the land reform were the
main propaganda tools for organisational expansion and the coagulation
of the Ploughmen's Front's organisations.41
The one who would coordinate the implementation of the land reform
was Romulus Zroni, Vice Minister of the Ploughmen's Front, Minister
Agriculture and president of the Central Committee for the Agrarian Reform. Being a poorly educated politician, Petru Groza's man's yard, he
would become famous for his blunders, becoming the subject and target
of many political jokes particularly enjoyed at that time. However, he had
some propaganda success, being extremely active as Minister, and effectively engaging in the land distribution process. On the other hand, the
press also presented him as a propagandist, publishing materials about his
activities or photos with him driving the first tractor that litters the land
possessed by the landowners until recent42 or talking to peasants.
The Communist Party, particularly through the voices of Ana Pauker and
Gheorghiu-Dej, established that the main political task of the Ploughmen's Front was to promote among the rural environment the idea that the
agrarian reform was supported by the Communists for the purpose of
eliminating exploitation and social injustice.43 The Ploughmen's organisations had to persuade peasants that the Communist Party did not oppose
private property, that it supported their allotment.
40
41
42
43
Nicolae Georgescu, Sorin Radu, Refacerea politic i extinderea organizatoric a Frontului Plugarilor n anii 1944-1945, [The Political Restoration and
Organisational Extension of the Ploughmens Front, 1944-1945] Studia Universitatis Petru Maior. Historia 9 (2009), 198-214.
See the propaganda brochure: Ce trebuie s tie un lupttor al Frontului
Plugarilor [What Must a Fighter of the Ploughmens Front Know?] (Bucureti:
Editura Frontul Plugarilor, 1945).
Srbtorirea victoriei plugarilor din Romanai, [Celebration of the Ploughmens Victory in Romanai County] Scnteia, II, no. 190, 6 April 1945.
Ciobanu, Radu, Georgescu (eds.), Frontul Plugarilor. Documente, vol I (19441947), 68-70; Primul Congres general al Frontului Plugarilor [The First General Congress of the Ploughmens Front] (Bucureti: Editura Frontul Plugarilor,
1945) 59-65.
204 __________________________________________________ Sorin RADU
Another fundamental objective of the Ploughmens Front established by

the Communists was that of recruiting as many organisation members as
possible from among the peasants, in order to shield them from the political influence of the National Peasant Party.
The first post-war congress of the Ploughmen's Front was held with great
pomp in June 1945 at a Bucharest gathering with an impressive number
of peasants (approximately 10,000). One of the lines of action of the organisation established on this occasion was the agrarian reform. In this
regard, the Ploughmen's Front propagandists had to return to villages to
explain the importance of the agrarian reform to the ploughmen and mobilize peasants towards supporting Groza's government, but also to ward
off fears that the Communist Party aimed at achieving agricultural collectivisation. The latter subject had been heavily publicized by the communists' opponents, particularly the National Peasant Party.44
Although the Communists' control over the Ploughmen's Front was extremely strict on a central leadership level, this did not happen on a larger
scale, within the county organisations. Many local leaders, not understanding the relationship of subordination of their organisation to the
Communist Party, manifested excesses of independence, claiming that
the Ploughmen's Front would be entitled to coordinate on its own the effective implementation of the land reform, especially the appropriation of
peasants, through village committees. Prime Minister Groza himself was
criticized for not clarifying this situation. This resulted in the formation
of an opponents' group within the Ploughmen's Front the so-called
group from Deva. They believed in private property and thought that
the Ploughmen's Front should have its own political path, its own mission: to improve the political and social peasants' organisation and, opposing, at the same time, to the Communists' attempts to confiscate the
organisation. This attempt of group autonomy within the Ploughmen's
Front was quickly suppressed by the Communist Party after winning the
elections in November 1946 by fraud.45
44
45
Primul Congres general al Frontului Plugarilor, 1945.

Radu, Tovari de drum: Frontul Plugarilor i Partidul Comunist n anii
1944-1947, 107-138.
Conclusions
The land reform was primarily political and only secondarily economic
and social. This involvement, as well as the Fronts leaderships statements in favour of supporting private property, made honestly in 1945,
would bring an extraordinary political capital in the coming months and
years, and registered a real influx of new members in the organisation. It
is important to understand that the peasants, ever since the interwar period, associated the Communist Party with land expropriation and collectivisation, and that was why the Ploughmens Front seemed a more
attractive alternative to them, closer to the their simple philosophy, as
their universe was built around the idea of land ownership and the Orthodoxy principle. The Front seemed to support this kind of values; the peasants did not seem to understand its subordination to the Communist Party.
In our opinion, the Ploughmen's Front had an important role in the implementation of the communist structures within the rural world and
hence the application of the agrarian reform. Beyond the fact that the project came from Moscow, designed according to a general scheme applied
in other countries, even beyond the agrarian policy of the Communist
Party of Romania, which pursued the creation of inefficient small farms
to demonstrate more clearly the necessity of collectivisation, Ploughmen's Front and Petru Groza's government hold their share of political
and moral responsibility.
After the Communists gained the entire political power in 1948, the political role of the Ploughmen's Front gradually decreased, similar to that of
the other fellow travellers. In March 1949, the Communist Party decided
to initiate the collectivisation process of agriculture, as the small farms,
out of which 400,000 had been created through the land reform, were unproductive. Although the Ploughmen's Front had sustained individual
property in favour of the peasants until 1948, it had now appropriated the
slogan of the necessity of collective farms, a fact which could only alienate itself from its members. The political party led by Petru Groza would
be dissolved by the Communists in February 1953.
State Agricultural Farms in Polish Agriculture the Origin

and Social-Economic Consequences
Magorzata MACHAEK, Stanisaw JANKOWIAK
Characterizing the functioning of the public sector in Polish post-war agriculture usually begins with 1949, or the establishing of State Agricultural Farms. It is usually mentioned by the way, that SAFs came to
existence as a result of unification of State-Owned Collective Land Property, State Horse-Breeding Plants and State Plantations. The existence of
those three types of state farms, as short as three years, usually remains in
the shadow of turbulent events related to the implementation of land reform, mass population migrations and development of western and northern lands. The circumstances of creating SAFs were, in turn, dominated
by dramatic events related to implementation of exhausting collective
farming programs. However, during the first post-war years there had
been made key decisions regarding state assumption of major parts of
former German landed estates in the northern and western areas. They
were of crucial meaning for both the social-economic situation in agriculture in the newly obtained areas, and the meaning of SAFs in the agricultural economy of the whole state.
The Origin of State Agricultural Farms
The idea of creating the public sector in Polish agriculture not only did
not arise as great emotions as collective farming did, but was also supported by the majority of political groups and scientific environment.1 It
was known that proper functioning of agriculture required also proper
functioning of specialized farms aiming at supplying appropriate seed and
breeding material.2 Such farms, although not numerous, existed also before the Second World War.
1
Leopold Gluck, Rada Naukowa dla Zagadnie Ziem Odzyskanych (19451948), [Scientific Council for the Issues Related to the Recovered Territories
(1945-1948)] Kwartalnik Historyczny 3 (1979); Magorzata Machaek,
Przemiany wsi zachodniopomorskiej w latach 1945-1956 [Transitions of West
Pomeranian Countryside in Years 1945-1956] (Szczecin: Muzeum Narodowe
w Szczecinie, 2012), 114-124.
Wodzimierz Dzun, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne w rolnictwie polskim w
latach 1944-1990 [State Agricultural Farms in Polish Agriculture in Years
State Agricultural Farms in Polish Agriculture the Origin... ____________ 207
The land reform announced by the Manifesto of the Polish Committee of

National Liberation in July 1944 provided for parceling out landed estates
of above 50 hectares, and above 100 in Greater Poland and Pomerania.
Detailed rules of the land reform were contained in the Decree of September 6th, 1944. Article no. 16 stated that part of the land would be excluded from parceling out in order to create model farms for the sake of
raising the level of agricultural economy, for agricultural and common
schools and other important tasks of general interest.3 A list of those
farms had to be specified by the head of the Department of Agriculture
and Land Reforms in consultation with provincial national councils.
Among the areas that could be subject to land reform in 1944, great landed estates were relatively not numerous. The situation changed diametrically in spring 1945, when Greater Poland and Pomerania were liberated
and former German lands east of Oder and Lusatian Neisse were taken
over by the Polish administration. In these areas, the number of landed
estates was considerably larger and they included larger acreage. There
also were no serious ownership problems, as the land owned by Germans
was liable to confiscation. Also social resistance did not arise. In Greater
Poland and Pomerania a hunger for land occurred in a smaller degree
than in the East only a small percentage of the countryside population
were landless or small farmers. The result of such a situation was relatively little interest in parceling out. Folwark laborers attitudes were peculiar in Greater Poland and Pomerania. Before the war, yearly collective
agreements ensured good working conditions and high salaries. Sizes of
the plots the laborers could obtain within the land reform were unsatisfactory to them. Farms of 5 to 7 hectares were considered a lowering of the
social standard. The majority of folwark laborers would rather be manor
employees for a constant salary than start self-reliant farming from
scratch. In Greater Poland and Pomerania a lot of land remained non-
1944-1990] (Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk Instytut Rozwoju Wsi i Rolnictwa, 1991), 7.
Manifest PKWN, [Manifesto of the Polish Committee of National Liberation] in Dokumenty programowe polskiego ruchu robotniczego 1878-1984
[Program Documents of Polish Labour Movement 1878-1984], ed. Norbert
Koomejczyk, Bronisaw Syzdek (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1986), 348.
208 ___________________ Magorzata MACHAEK, Stanisaw JANKOWIAK
parceled land and landed estates that left in the hands of the state were
considerably larger than in the East.4
The situation in former German lands became even more challenging for
the Polish authority. Before 1945 over a half of the lands were large estates of more than 100 hectares.5 They determined the character of agriculture in these areas. At the beginning, part of them came under the
administration of land offices, while others were taken by various institutions and offices (communal authorities, security offices, etc.). The largest landed estates as well, as those in the best condition were used for the
sake of supplies for armed forces, especially the Soviet army.
The problem of development of numerous landed estates that used to belong to Germans emerged to the new authority very soon. The population-related issues were crucial for the decisions regarding them. The
decision on Germans deportation had already been made, and they had
to be replaced by Poles. As a result of the changes of the borders, especially the USSR's assumption of large Polish territory, Poles from the east
had to be settled in the new lands. The authorities also planned that inhabitants of overcrowded villages in central and southern Poland who did
not obtain lands within parceling out resulting from the land reform
would find their new homes there.
At the beginning, aiming at creating as many farms for displaced Poles as
possible, the authorities strove to parcel out the estates quickly. With the
progress of the migration it was becoming more visible that the newcomers unwillingly settled on large estates. Despite intense encouragement,
the settlers preferred to run individual farms and were not interested in
4
Stanisaw Jankowiak, Reforma rolna, [Agrar Reform] Biuletyn Instytutu

Pamici Narodowej 1 (2002), 27-28.
5
Wodzimierz Stpiski, Wie pomorska w drugiej poowie XIX i na pocztku
XX wieku, [Pomeranian Countryside in the Second Half of the 19th and the
Beginning of the 20th Century] in Historia Pomorza [The History of Pomerania], vol. IV (1850-1918), part I: Ustrj, gospodarka, spoeczestwo, [Government, Economy, Society] ed. Stanisaw Salmonowicz (Toru: Instytut
Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2000), 149-151; Stanisaw ach, Przeksztacenia ustrojowo-gospodarcze w rolnictwie ziem zachodnich i pnocnych w
latach 1945-1949 (studium historyczne) [Governmental and Economical Transitions in the Agriculture of Western and Northern Areas in Years 1945-1949
(Historical Study)] (Supsk: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna, 1993), 61.
the prospect of working as agricultural laborers.6 This meant that only a

few folwarks would be parceled out. Technical difficulties related to total
parceling out large estates (often above 1000 hectares) are also worth
paying attention. Although the land could be easily divided, parceling out
residential buildings and outbuildings was considerably difficult. The only solution could be erecting new buildings for each newcomer, which
was impossible due to financial reasons. Insufficient population of western and northern lands was also an argument against parceling out.7 Simultaneously, a quick launch of agricultural production was necessary for
economical and social reasons (the need to ensure food for the state destroyed by war).
At the end of the war, the Germans' escape from the lands taken over by
Poland had already led to the situation in which large numbers of landed
estates were left by former owners and workers. Besides, due to increased
recruitment into German army, in 1944 the land was not farmed. Adding
huge devastation resulting from war and stationing of Soviet and Polish
armies, the general condition of lands in the west and the north directly
after the end of the war was dramatically bad.
The problem of abandoned and decaying landed estates, which occurred
in the whole northern and western territory, encouraged the authorities to
establish a state institution the purpose of which was their administration
and development. In November 1945 the State Agricultural Management
6
Pismo w sprawie uporzdkowania dyspozycji wiksz wasnoci roln na

Ziemiach Odzyskanych [Letter Regarding Regulation of the Management of
Larger Landed Estates in the Recovered Territories], box 1636, Pastwowe Nieruchomoci Ziemskie Zarzd Centralny w Poznaniu (hereinafter cited as PNZ
ZC), Archiwum Akt Nowych (hereinafter cited as AAN), 1-2. Tadeusz Biaecki,
Pastwowe Nieruchomoci Ziemskie 1946-1949 na Pomorzu Zachodnim,
[State-Owned Collective Land Property 1946-1949 in Western Pomerania] in Od
Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich do restrukturyzacji i prywatyzacji
Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych na Pomorzu Zachodnim. Materiay z sesji
naukowej z 23 czerwca 2006 r. [From State-Owned Collective Land Property to
Restructuring and Privatization of State Agricultural Farms in Western Pomerania. Materials from Scientific Session on June 23rd 2006], eds. Kazimierz
Kozowski, Lech Paasz (Szczecin: Archiwum Pastwowe, 2006), 34.
Marek Ordyowski, Wie dolnolska w latach 1945-1956. Wadza a spoeczestwo [Lower-Silesian Countryside in Years 1945-1956. Authority and Society] (Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo AWF, 1999), 45.
of Lubusz Land (SAMLL) came to existence. It was led by engineer

Witold Maringe, former manager of Seed Action Plenipotentiary Office
in Pozna. In a short time, the Agricultural Management took over more
than 250 landed estates of above 100 hectares that were arranged into 46
complexes.8 W. Maringes idea consisted in concentrating all weak forces
into the landed estate that was in the best condition; other neighboring
ones were only preserved from further degradation.
Establishing of State-Owned Collective Land Property
Satisfactory results obtained by SAMLL became an argument for creating
a larger institution that would embrace all western and northern lands. As
soon as in 1946, State-Owned Collective Land Property was created.
Witold Maringe took charge of its management. The most important and
ultimate aim of SOCLP was running specialized farms called farming
culture centers. They had to plant particular plant species, breed highquality material and take charge of animal breeding for the purposes of
the whole agriculture.9 In the initial period they also had to develop selected landed estates in order to prepare them for parceling out. A task of
great importance was to develop fallow lands, numerous in the north and
the west.
In former German lands nine SOCLP districts were created.10 Their borders
coincided with those of voivodeships in order to facilitate cooperation
with administrative authorities. There were two exceptions Szczecin
8
Wadysaw Rogala, Dziaalno Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich

(1946-1949), [The Activity of State-Owned Collective Land Property (19461949)] Rocznik Muzeum Rolnictwa w Szreniawie 5 (1972), 31.
9
Protok z przebiegu obrad Zjazdu Dyrektorw Zarzdw Okrgowych PNZ na
Ziemiach Odzyskanych odbytego w Poznaniu w dniach 6 i 7 czerwca 1946 r.
[The Protocol of the Assembly of Directors of Local Boards of State-Owned
Collective Land Properties in Recovered Territories in Pozna on June 6th and
7th 1946], box 60, PNZ ZC w Poznaniu, AAN, 1-19; Pismo ZC PNZ do Ministerstwa Rolnictwa i Reform Rolnych z 17 kwietnia 1946 r.[ Letter of the Central Authority of State-Owned Collective Land Property to the Ministry of
Agriculture and Agrar Reforms from April 17th 1946], box 45, PNZ ZC w
Poznaniu, AAN, 45-46.
10
Projekt podziau Ziem Odzyskanych na Okrgi Pastwowych Nieruchomoci
Ziemskich [The Project of the Division of Recovered Territories into Districts of
State-Owned Collective Land Property], box 45, PNZ ZC w Poznaniu, AAN, 1.
and Olsztyn voivodeships. In each of them, due to the large area and
number of landed estates, two district managements were created. As
soon as in April 1946, the activity of SOCLP embraced also old lands.
Six new district managements were created there for Warsaw with
Biaystok, d, Bydgoszcz, Pozna, Cracow and Lublin with Rzeszw.
The numbers of landed estates in these districts were, however, considerably lower than in the new lands and problems regarding their development were also lesser.11
The landed estates began to be taken over immediately after the establishing of SOCLP. In northern and western lands at the beginning only part of
the lands was possible to be taken over. The estates of best quality and with
the best equipment were occupied by the Soviet army. When after few
months they were taken over by Polish authorities, they were already in
disastrous condition devastated and devoid of livestock and equipment.
In spring 1946 SOCLP owned 5,610 landed estates. As many as 4,210 of
them were situated in northern and western lands (1,270 thousand ha of
the total of 1,570 thousand were the new lands).12 In subsequent months
the possession of SOCLP was changing dynamically further landed estates were taken over, while others were subjected to parceling. The arrangement of landed estates in 1948 has been illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1: Arrangement of landed states of SOCLP in July 1946
District
Eastern Masuria
Olsztyn
Gdask
Koszalin
Szczecin
Lubusz Land
11
Number
of landed
estates
507
718
462
677
775
248
Number of
complexes
41
43
78
59
62
45
Total acreage of
SOCLP farms (in
hectares)
131237
229 000
163 580
214 783
280 293
90 022
The Cracow District was liquidated in June 1947 due to a low number of landed
estates. Rogala, Dziaalno Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich, 52.
12
Witold Maringe, Eugeniusz Englicht, Pastwowe Gospodarstwa Rolne (zarys
rozwoju w kolejnych okresach), [State Agricultural Farms (The Outline of
the Development in Particular Periods)] Zagadnienia Ekonomiki Rolnej 34/4
(1959), 38.
Jelenia Gra
Wrocaw
Opole
TOTAL recovered
territories
TOTAL old territories
431
622
No data
4 728
54
72
No data
518
102 571
167 363
No data
1 459 249
1 287
Uncounted organization
in progress
330 257
Source: Sprawozdanie z dziaalnoci Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich za miesic

lipiec 1946 r. ref. 32, Pastwowe Nieruchomoci Ziemskie Zarzd Okrgowy w Szczecinie, Archiwum Pastwowe w Szczecinie.
The data in the table above are not precise as they are based on incomplete figures. However, they clearly show concentration of great landed
estates in the new territories.
The size of the acreage that had to be taken over by SOCLP in western
and northern lands was not assumed at the beginning. Only in 1946 was a
decree of agricultural system and settlement in so-called recovered territories and former Free City of Danzig issued. Ten percent of the total
acreage of the farms in western and northern lands was designed for state
purposes. However, these numbers soon turned out to be not final. In
1947 the acreage of farms for SOCLP was increased firstly to 1,100 thousand, and then to 1,200 thousand hectares.13 Also in subsequent years
SOCLP took over fallow lands, lands handed over by State Land Fund
and abandoned peasant farms.
The management of SOCLP attempted to avoid taking over additional
farms, as they were conscious of growing difficulties with their development.14 According to the assessment of the Central Management of
13
Patrycy Dziurzyski, Osadnictwo rolne na Ziemiach Odzyskanych [Agricultural Settlement in the Recovered Territories] (Warsaw: Ludowa Spdzielnia
Wydawnicza, 1983), 128.
14
Protok konferencji w dniu 10 stycznia 1947 r. w sprawie ustalenia roli i zada orodkw kultury rolnej w administracji PNZ, odbytej przy wspudziale
zaproszonych przedstawicieli nauki [The Protocol of the Conference on January 10th 1947 Regarding Setting the Role and Tasks for Agrar Cultural Centres
in the Administration of State-Owned Collective Land Property, Held in the
Presence of Invited Representatives of Scientific Environment], box 52, PNZ
ZC w Poznaniu, AAN, no pagination.
SOCLP, the acreage of 55 thousand hectares would be sufficient for elite

plant breeding, and around 375 thousand for cereals, seed potatoes and
seed corns. Specialized farms of the whole country needed not more than
480 thousand hectares in general.15
Apart from demographic issues, including too small number of inhabitants of villages in the new lands and, as a result, little interest in parceling, political factors also played an important role in taking decisions to
hand over the land to SOCLP. In the first years after the war it was still
supposed that a peace conference would be held to establish the final
borders in Europe. Therefore Polish authorities strove to show that they
were capable of full development of former German territories. In this
situation, developing excessive acreages was determined by the authorities as the main objective, although taking over abandoned and decaying
landed estates by SOCLP was a necessity that was ineffective from the
economic point of view.16
A large number of landed estates waiting for development was the reason
for which staff issues were one of the most important problems for
SOCLP. There were too few both white- and blue-collar workers to fulfill
the needs of constantly growing institution. In 1946 the Central Management of SOCLP estimated that launching minimum production in farms
of the new lands required ca. 70 thousand employees.17 The recruitment
began in summer 1946. Its results were, however, unsatisfactory. In 1949,
W. Maringe assessed that a settlement of 24 thousand families in the
whole western and northern area would be necessary to liquidate demographic deficit.18
15
Rogala, Dziaalno Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich, 144.

Machaek, Przemiany wsi, 42.
17
Pismo Zarzdu Centralnego PNZ w Poznaniu do Ministerstwa Rolnictwa i
Reform Rolnych z 4 marca 1946 r. [Letter of the Central Authority of StateOwned Collective Land Property in Pozna to the Ministry of Agriculture and
Agrar Reforms from March 4th 1946], box 312, ZC PNZ w Poznaniu, AAN,
14; Henryk Duda, Pastwowe Nieruchomoci Ziemskie w Opolu (1946-1949).
Zarys monograficzny [State-Owned Collective Land Property in Opole (19461949). A Monographical Outline] (Opole: Instytut lski, 2006), 134.
18
Przeszkody utrudniajce PNZ dojcie do samowystarczalnoci [Obstacles in
Achieving Self-Sufficiency by State-Owned Collective Land Property], box
84, PNZ ZC w Poznaniu, AAN, 2-7.
16
The vision of working for state farms, especially in so-called recovered

territories, seemed unattractive to the majority of the newcomers. Although the authorities attempted to persuade them that the state farm employees were the avant-garde of the country society, financial and social
conditions offered by state farms did not meet their expectations. As a result, SOCLP employed random, unqualified workers. Little interest in
settlement in state farms in former German lands was caused also by a
feeling of insecurity, presence of the Soviet army and a general feeling of
temporariness of the situation resulting from the fact that the western
border had still not been ultimately fixed.
At the beginning, functioning of numerous farms was possible only due
to employing German laborers. In the first months of SOCLP they were
the majority of the staff. As most of them had worked there before the
war, they knew the conditions and were well prepared for their jobs and,
at first, worked diligently, as far as what can be confirmed by the reports
of SOCLP inspectors.19 The demand for their work remained at the same
level in subsequent years; therefore many of them remained in their positions also after the end of the displacement action in 1949. Even in the
mid-1950s in several state farms, especially in Koszalin voivodeship, the
majority of staff was still Germans.20 The presence of German workers
19
Sprawozdanie z inspekcji zespou gi pooonego w pow. biaogardzkim w

wojewdztwie zachodniopomorskim Dyrekcji Koszaliskiej przez inspektora
Dziau Rolnego CZ PNZ Z. Lechickiego w dniach 10, 11 i 12 sierpnia 1946 r.
[The Report of the Inspection of the gi Section in Biaogard District in
Westpomeranian Voivodeship of the Koszalin Management executed by
Agricultural Inspector of the Central Authority of State-Owned Collective Lad
Property Z. Lechicki on August 10th, 11th and 12th 1946], box 373, PNZ ZC w
Poznaniu, AAN, no pagination.
20
Maciej Hejger, Niemieccy robotnicy rolni na Pomorzu Zachodnim po drugiej
wojnie wiatowej, [German Agricultural Labourers in Western Pomerania
after World War II] in Dzieje i przyszo polskiego ruchu ludowego [The
History and the Future of Polish Peoples Movement], vol. II: Polska Ludowa
(1944/45-1989) [Peoples Poland (1944/45-1989)], eds. Waldemar Paruch,
Stefan Jzef Pastuszka, Romuald Turkowski (Warsaw: Ludowa Spdzielnia
Wydawnicza, 2002), 365-373; Stanisaw Jankowiak, Wysiedlenie i emigracja
ludnoci niemieckiej w polityce wadz polskich w latach 1945-1970
[Displacement and Emigration of German Population in the Policy of Polish
Authority in Years 1945-1970] (Warsaw: Instytut Pamici Narodowej, 2005),
392; Bernadetta Nitschke, Wysiedlenie czy wypdzenie? Ludno niemiecka w
Polsce w latach 1945-1949 [Displacement or Banishment? German Population
was economically justified, but unfavorably perceived by Polish settlers.

Poles unwillingly settled in landed estates inhabited by Germans and cohabitation led to numerous conflicts.
The managing staff was well trained. Witold Maringe as well as many
members of the Central and District Managements of SOCLP had qualifications and experience gained before the war. The members of the management mainly originated from landed gentry and, like W. Maringe
himself, had lost their manors as a result of the land reform.21 They recognized, however, that development of former German landed estates was a
Polish reason of state so they quickly decided to work for SOCLP. At the
beginning, the authorities tolerated this state by giving W. Maringe independence in the matter of human resources. It was recognized that difficult
economical situations of the country required usefulness of pre-war professionals regardless of their social backgrounds. However, this lasted for a
short time. Since 1947 gradual verification of the staff was in progress.
People of improper social background or improper political views
were gradually dismissed or arrested on a charge of sabotage, economical
abuse, alleged or actual wastefulness or insufficient economical results.
In 1948 the arrests were more and more frequent. Radio and press
launched a witch-hunt against the management of SOCLP. The management of the SOCLP Koszalin District was taken to the Military District
Court in Szczecin and the trial had a political character. The punishments
were extremely severe from several years of imprisonment to capital
punishment. Similar trials were held in other regions. In 1949, after the
authorities decided to transform SOCLP into State Agricultural Farms,
the creator and general director of SOCLP Witold Maringe was also arrested and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Similar charges were
leveled against other arrested members of the Central Management.22
21
22
in Poland in Years 1945-1949] (Toru: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszaek, 2004),

244; Machaek, Przemiany wsi zachodniopomorskiej, 295.
Eugeniusz Koczowski, Moja praca w Pastwowych Nieruchomociach
Ziemskich w Poznaniu (1946-1949) [My Work for State-Owned Collective
Land Property in Pozna (1946-1949)] (Pozna: Wydawnictwo Akademii
Rolniczej, 1996), 27.
Note, box 61/222 vol. 8, Archiwum Instytutu Pamici Narodowej w Szczecinie
(hereinafter cited as AIPNSz), 151; Biuletyn Zarzdu Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich no 17 (1948) [The Bulletin of the Authority of State-Owned
Collective Land Property no 17 (1948)], box 748, Komitet Wojewdzki Polskiej
State Agricultural Farms

The turn in agricultural policy that occurred in 1948 concerned also the
state sector in agriculture. At the beginning of the subsequent year, State
Agricultural Farms were created. State-Owned Collective Land Property
was absorbed by the new institution and their structure was changed. The
necessity of these changes was officially explained by poor results of the
institution. In fact, the aim was to get rid of politically inconvenient persons related to W. Maringe and to centralize the management.23 On the
occasion of organizational transitions, considerable staff changes were
implemented. Since then, membership of the party and social background
were the most important criteria of advance. Not qualifications, but
membership of the party or a recommendation of Polish Labor Party/Polish United Workers' Party decided on assuming a position.24
SAFs were to play an important role in implementation of the six-year
economical plan in agriculture. It was assessed that the pace of production increase in this sector would be larger than that of the whole agricultural economy. The value of the agricultural production had to grow by
even 168% in relation to 1949, with 123% in planting and 353% in animal breeding.25 According to the assumptions of party and state authorities, SAFs had to:
1. be highly efficient socialist companies supplying the population with
basic agricultural goods cereal and meat factories;
Partii Robotniczej w Szczecinie, Archiwum Pastwowe w Szczecinie (hereinafter cited as APSz); Radosaw Ptaszyski, Sdziowie Wojskowego Sdu Rejonowego w Szczecinie i ich wyroki. Studia i materiay [The Judges of Military
District Court in Szczecin and their Sentences. Studies and Materials] (Szczecin:
Instytut Pamici Narodowej, 2008), 35. In 1956 W. Maringe was exculpated.
Machaek, Przemiany wsi, 196.
23
Protok z konferencji w sprawie poczenia PNZ, P[astwowych] Z[akadw]
H[odowli] R[olin] i P[astwowych] Z[akadw] Ch[owu] K[oni] odbytej w
dniu 28 stycznia 1949 r. [Protocol of the Conference Regarding the Union of
State-Owned Collective Land Property, State Horse-Breeding Plants and State
Plantations on January 28th 1949], box 237/XII-150, Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej, AAN, 45.
24
Duda, Pastwowe Nieruchomoci Ziemskie, 51-70. Compare also: Machaek,
Przemiany wsi, 190-198.
25
Journal of Laws, no. 37 (1950).
2. be a model of socialist organization of agricultural production. Their

example had to be an argument for great, collective production against
individual farmers, a testimony to what can be obtained by modern
technology, large area, socialist organization;
3. become centers of farming culture producing agricultural means of
production for the whole agriculture, supplying individual and cooperative farming with breeding and sowing material. Their example had
to affect closer and farther neighbor farmers.26
At least until the end of 1970s, the directions of agricultural production in
the state sector were established centrally, without considering possibilities or technical conditions of particular farms. SAFs had to implement
tasks for the whole agriculture, such as developing fallow lands.27 The
administrative-commanding system caused that managements of particular farms were in a considerable degree incapacitated and could not take
independent decisions regarding production, salaries or social activities.28
Imposed indications rarely took local technical conditions into consideration. In 1970s, when, as a result of concentration of farms, multi-plant
companies and conglomerates were created, the managing structure of
SAFs was even more extended, and, as a result, less efficient.
Despite considerable financial outlays and preferential treatment regarding production device supplies, results achieved by the majority of SAFs
were inferior to those of individual farms and cooperatives. It resulted
from system errors related to central planning and management. Various
26
Tadeusz Rychlik, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne, [State Agricultural Farms]

in Rolnictwo w trzydziestoleciu Polski Ludowej [Agriculture in Thirty Years of
Peoples Poland], ed. Franciszek Kolbusz (Warsaw: Pastwowe Wydawnictwa
Rolnicze i Lene1974), 285.
27
Karol Gawowski, Narodziny i rozwj Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych
w Polsce Ludowej, [The Beginning and Development of State Agricultural
Farms in Peoples Poland] in Wie i rolnictwo w Polsce Ludowej [Country and
Agriculture in Peoples Poland] (Pozna: Muzeum Narodowe Rolnictwa i
Przemysu Rolno-Spoywczego w Szreniawie, 1990), 163. See also:
Wodzimierz Dzun, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne w procesie przemian systemowych w Polsce [State Agricultural Farms in the Process of System Transitions in Poland] (Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk Instytut Rozwoju Wsi i
Rolnictwa, 2005), 17-19.
28
Augustyn Wo, Pastwowa gospodarka w rolnictwie w okresie transformacji
systemowej, [State Economy in Agriculture during the System Transformation] Wie i Rolnictwo 2 (1994), 28.
instances of the Polish United Workers' Party had decisive influence on

SAFs economy and enabled the security apparatus and Civic Militia to
supervise SAFs.29
Efficient tools of motivation for better work, discipline and responsibility
for the effects of work, as well as the company's property were lacking in
the central management system.30 In fact, the farmers had no influence on
economical situation and decisions regarding their farms at least until early 1980s. Narrow specialization caused them to feel no relation between
their own work and the results achieved by the whole farm. State property, which had to be a common good, quickly became a good of no one.31
The workers felt no responsibility for neglecting or stealing it. On the
other hand, if the state farm together with all its possessions constituted
common property of the staff, it was commonly assumed that the workers
had the right to have it on their disposal and treat it as their own. In practice, such an approach resulted in an increase in negative phenomena
such as wastefulness and theft.32 Investing in particular farms did not depend on their production results as SAFs obtained funds from the state
budget. It also covered various losses.33 Extended social security benefits
for the workers were particularly charged to SAFs. They were a form of
reward for low salaries. SAFs organized also cultural and educational activities, health care, kindergartens and commuting to schools for children.
29
Pismo PUBP w Gryficach do kierownika Wojewdzkiego Urzdu do Spraw

Bezpieczestwa Publicznego w Szczecinie z 25 lutego 1955 r. [Letter of the
Security Office in Gryfice to the Manager of Voivodeship Security Office in
Szczecin from February 25th 1955], box 008/49, AIPNSz, 84.
30
Protok z odprawy dyrektorw zespow Okrgu Szczecin-Pnoc zwoanej
w dniu 17 maja 1950 r. [Protocol of a Meeting of Directors of Szczecin-North
District Sections Held on May 17th 1950], box 366, Zjednoczenie Przedsibiorstw Pastwowej Gospodarki Rolnej, APSz, 45-63.
31
Ewelina Szpak, Midzy osiedlem a zagrod. ycie codzienne mieszkacw
PGR-w [Between a Housing and a Farm. Everyday Lives of SAF Population]
(Warsaw: Wydawnictwo TRIO, 2005), 98.
32
Dzun, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne, 23. AAN, Ministerstwo Pastwowych
Gospodarstw Rolnych, box 9, O wynikach analizy dziaalnoci finansowogospodarczej Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych za rok 1952 w wietle
kontroli Ministerstwa Kontroli Pastwowej [About the Results of Analysis of
Financial and Economical Activity of State Agricultural Farms in Year 1952
in the Eye of an Audit of the Ministry of State Controlling], no pagination.
33
Rychlik, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne, 320.
Simultaneously, a majority of the workers took considerable care for their

own plots and livestock. It often meant harm to the animals belonging to
SAFs, as the employees used to steal their feed in large amounts.34 The
management of SAFs had, however, no effective tools to fight such practices, as wastefulness or lack of discipline. Workforce deficits created favorable conditions for the low efficiency and demanding approaches of
the employees. It was easy to get a job in SAF, and a worker dismissed
from one farm quickly could find a position in another one.35
Mass rivalry had to be a way of increasing effectiveness of the workers in
the 1950s. However, despite a great propaganda campaign and efficient
financial stimuli for the best workers, top-down actions brought only
temporary effects.36 Award bonus systems also brought little results.
They were not related to the effectiveness of particular farms, therefore
influenced efficiency of SAFs in a minor degree.37
The distribution of State Agricultural Farms did not change within the
whole postwar period. A vast majority of them were situated in western
and northern territories and their number was systematically increasing.
All the abandoned and undeveloped lands were also taken over by SAFs.
They reached the greatest acreage in the late 1980s. When in so-called
old lands a few percent of the farms belonged to the state (e.g. Kielce or
Lublin voivodeships), in the new lands this percentage oscillated between
30 and over 50. The Szczecin, Koszalin, and Supsk voivodeships, that is,
Western Pomerania, had the highest rates.
34
Protok z IV Okrgowej Konferencji Sprawozdawczo-Wyborczej Zwizku

Zawodowego Pracownikw Rolnictwa odbytej w Szczecinie dnia 1 marca
1953 r. z udziaem delegatw i goci zaproszonych [Protocol of the 4th District
Reporting and Electoral Conference of Farmers' Trade Union Held in Szczecin
on March 1st 1953 with the Presence of Representatives and Guests], box 1,
Zwizek Zawodowy Pracownikw Rolnictwa, APSz, no pagination.
35
Protokoy posiedze egzekutywy. Protok z posiedzenia egzekutywy w dniu
12 lutego 1951 r. [Protocols of the Sessions of the Executives. Protocol of the
Session of the Executive on February 12th 1951], box 59, Komitet Powiatowy
PZPR, APSz, 12.
36
Protok z kontroli zesp[ou] Kobacz, przeprowadzonej w dniach 1 i 2 sierpnia 1952 r. [Protocol of the Audit of Kobacz Section Executed on August 1st
and 2nd 1952], box 31, KW PZPR Wydzia PGR, APSz, no pagination.
37
Dzun, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne w procesie przemian, 20.
Table 2: Acreage of farms of SAF in particular voivodeships

Years
Voivodeship
1981
Thousand
hectares
Warsaw
Biaa Podlaska
Biaystok
Bielsko-Biaa
Bydgoszcz
Chem
Ciechanw
Czstochowa
Elblg
Gdask
Gorzw Wielkopolski
Jelenia Gra
Kalisz
Katowice
Kielce
Konin
Koszalin
Kracow
Krosno
Legnica
Leszno
Lublin
oma
Lodz
Nowy Scz
Olsztyn
Opole
Ostroka
%*
19
21
28
6
157
29
40
20
198
95
176
74
48
45
13
27
233
11
37
106
97
10
13
5
6
310
156
7
1990
Thousand
hectares
9,2
5,6
4,6
3,2
26,2
11,5
8,3
5,5
50,0
24,5
48,6
36,1
10,8
13,8
2,2
7,1
57,0
4,9
15,3
42,2
32,9
2,0
2,9
4,9
2,2
44,7
29,4
1,7
%*
17,2
22,0
34,1
5,7
144,3
27,2
39,6
18,8
187,7D
87,2
170,1
60,8
46,6
42,7
14,3
23,9
221,7
10,9
33,2
99,9
90,9
8,4
11,6
5,4
5,5
296,9
151,0
4,2
Pia
Piotrkw Trybunalski
Pock
Pozna
Przemyl
Radom
Rzeszw
Siedlce
Sieradz
Skierniewice
Supsk
Suwaki
Szczecin
Tarnobrzeg
Tarnw
Toru
Wabrzych
Wocawek
Wrocaw
Zamo
Zielona Gra
POLAND
165
9
23
176
46
9
7
9
8
12
191
186
307
9
7
65
77
18
164
38
161
3677
40,5
2,3
5,8
32,3
17,8
1,8
2,4
1,5
2,3
3,9
55,5
34,5
57,5
2,4
2,4
17,7
30,7
5,6
39,7
7,7
45,0
19,4
154,5
8,5
20,2
173,0
43,8
9,2
11,4
8,6
7,7
12,5
179,8
174,3
297,2
9,9
7,1
61,6
74,9
17,5
151,0
35,8
152,0
3490,6
*participation of SAF lands in the total acreage of lands in particular voivodeships

Source: Rocznik Statystyczny Rolnictwa i Gospodarki ywnociowej 1982 [Statistical
Yearbook of Agriculture and Food Economy 1982] (Warsaw, Gwny Urzd Statystyczny, 1982), 72; Rolnictwo i Gospodarka ywnociowa 1986-1990 [Agriculture and
Food Economy 1986-1990] (Warsaw, Gwny Urzd Statystyczny, 1992), 81.
SAFs had to be model socialist farms providing food supplies for the
town and avant-garde of economical and social changes in the country.
However, in common opinion they became a synonym of bad management. Despite numerous organizational changes and reforms aiming at
improving their functioning, they were subordinate to a centralized management system that had a bad influence on their efficiency and on the
attitudes of their workers.
Food production was the priority task of SAFs, executed regardless of the
costs. Apart from production, they were charged with a variety of additional tasks for the employees and the whole village society. To enable
SAPs to fulfill all their commitments, a system of concessions, as well, as
direct and indirect subsidies was implemented. Despite, or maybe because of it, a vast majority of the state farms performed in constant deficit, but did not become bankrupt, as the state covered the losses.
Production at any cost was a dogma in SAFs. Imposed plans forced them
to increase it constantly regardless of the real costs. Therefore it was necessary to create a complex system of subsidies covering the losses resulting from SAFs' economical and social activities.38
Attempts to reform the functioning of SAFs were made in the early 1980s
by involving them in the rules of the reforms of 1981/1982.39 There was
an emphasis on the need to ensure self-reliance to SAFs with maintaining
their subordinate role towards the whole agriculture and the whole complex of social responsibilities towards the employees.40 Implementing the
reform meant also withdrawal of state subsidies that supported the production of SAFs. Further organizational changes were made in order to
make the managing system more efficient.41 It influenced self-reliance of
the farms, however, they were still dependent on central planning.
A decrease of the acreage was a measurable effect of reforms of 19811989. It was a direct result of improving the methods of managing and adjusting the surface areas to real production possibilities. The employment
was reduced by ca. 6% (493 thousand in 1981 and 463 thousand in 1989).42
This decrease was mainly related to liquidation of units that were not related to the production directly, for example renovation and building teams.43
38

Monitor Polski, no. 16 (1981). The reform embraced SAFs erlier than other
branches of economy. Dariusz T. Grala, Reformy gospodarcze w PRL (19821989). Prba ratowania socjalizmu [Agrar Reforms in Polish People's Republic
(1982-1989). The Attempt to Rescue the Socialism] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo
TRIO, 2005), 125.
40
41
Zofia Kaprzyk, Leszek Winiewski, Pastwowe Gospodarstwa Rolne w latach
1981-1988 [State Agricultural Farms in Years 1981-1988] (Warsaw: Instytut
Ekonomiki Rolnictwa i Gospodarki ywnociowej, 1990), 4.
42
43
39
Due to a rise in prices of agricultural produce the financial situation of

SAFs became temporarily better, however, critics point out that the income generated at that time occurred only in reports (so-called paper income).44 Seeming improvement of the economical conditions of SAFs
paradoxically influenced an increase in their problems. The workers demanded a raise in salaries and increasing funds for social purposes and
they were not interested in investing. The managers of the units who were
willing to fulfill payment expectations of the employees were forced to
raise loans that deepened existing difficulties.
The system transformation that began in Poland in 1989 started the process
of replacing administrative-commanding economical management by market mechanisms. Its result was liquidation of SAFs that were unable to adjust to new managing conditions.45 Marketization involved releasing prices,
growing inflation and the state market was opened on competition from
foreign goods. State farms were unable to fight off competition from foreign cheap food and lost accounting liquidity. There occurred difficulties in
the sale of agricultural produce, farms debt increased and growing prices of
means of production prevented the farms from modernization. A rise in interest rates caused lack of fund for repayment.46 Despite those difficulties,
expectations of the employees were growing.
Deteriorating economical conditions of the majority of the state farms became a decisive argument for their liquidation. With their organizational
44
Dzun, Pastwowe gospodarstwa rolne w rolnictwie polskim, 95-105.

Wodzimierz Zgliski, Problemy rozwoju obszarw popegeerowskich (ocena i
podane kierunki zmian). Ekspertyza wykonana na zlecenie Departamentu
Polityki Regionalnej w Ministerstwie Gospodarki i Pracy w 2005 r. [The Issues
Related to the Development of Post-SAF Areas (Assessment and Desired
Directions of Changes). Expertise Commissioned by the Regional Policy
Department of the Ministry of Agricultural Economy and Labour in 2005]
(Warsaw, 2005), 2. www.nsrr.gov.pl/NR/rdonlyres/06E2D2A6-8133-4A1C853A-E2DC53E638C1/13102?zglinski_problemy_obszarow_wiejskich.rtf
[access: 30.05.2015].
46
Zdzisaw Witos, Od Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich do restrukturyzacji i prywatyzacji Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych, [From
State-Owned Collective Land Property to Restructuring and Privatisation of
State Agricultural Farms] in: Od Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich do
restrukturyzacji i prywatyzacji Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych na Pomorzu Zachodnim. Materiay z sesji naukowej z 23 czerwca 2006 r., 9.
45
structure, technical equipment and lack of staff's preparation to market

conditions SAFs were unable to function in the new economical reality.47
According to numerous researchers, not only the economy, but also political factors had decisive meaning.48
However, there emerged basic questions of the future of the possessions
of liquidated SAFs and their employees. It occurred that there was no
demand for land, especially in regions of the highest concentration of
SAFs. Family farms were not interested in taking over former SAPs lands
due to a lack of capital and possibilities to use comfortable loan conditions. Workers of liquidated SAFs were also not interested in taking over
the farms. There were suggestions of commercializing the farming companies and privatization by employee share ownership, parceling in order
to improve the structure of family farms or to re-privatize, but those ideas
gained little support.49
According to the act of 1991 part of SAFs were transformed into whollyowned companies of the Treasury, others were liquidated.50 The Agricultural Property Agency of the Treasury was created in order to transform the
agriculture. Within less than two years it took over almost 5 million hectares of lands, most of which (ca. 3.4 million hectares) were situated in
northern and western voivodeships (West Pomeranian 708,000 ha, Warmian-Masurian 698,000 ha, Lubusz 280,000 ha, Greater Poland
438.000 ha, Lower Silesian 404.000 ha, Pomeranian 394.000 ha). The
total of lands that were taken over was nearly 19% of all the farms in the
47
Anoni Leopold, Wojciech Zitara, O koncepcji przeksztace byych pastwowych gospodarstw rolnych inaczej (polemika), [About the Concept of
Restructuring Former State Agricultural Farms a Different View (Polemics)]
Wie i Rolnictwo 2 (2003).
48
Compare Wodziemierz Dzun, Likwidacja PGR przesanki, cele, metody
(Gos w dyskusji), [Liquidation of SAF Premises, Aims, Methods (A Debate Opinion)] Wie i Rolnictwo 2 (2003); see also: Augustyn Wo, Polityka
rolna w warunkach liberalizacji rynku (1990-1991) [Agricultural Policy in the
Conditions of Market Liberalization (1990-1991)] (Warsaw: Instytut
Ekonomiki Rolnictwa i Gospodarki ywnociowej, 1992).
49
Andrzej Czyewski, Aleksander Grzelak, Janusz Jankowiak, Transformacja
pastwowego sektora rolnego w Wielkopolsce na tle sytuacji oglnej [Transformtion of State Agricultural Sector in Greater Poland in the Eye of the General Situation] (Pozna: Akademia Ekonomiczna, 2001), 27, 45.
50
Czyewski, Grzelak, Jankowiak, Transformacja pastwowego, 48.
whole country. It is worth mentioning that SAFs constituted ca. 32% of all
privatized companies in Poland. Together with the land, the Agency took
over 330 thousand flats, real property and movables, buildings for industrial, marketing and service purposes, but also financial obligations.51
Restructuring and privatization of SAFs had no considerable influence on
agricultural structure in the villages. The interest of family farms in lands
and possessions of former SAFs was little. Hopes for establishing new
family farms also failed. The greatest interest in purchase or lease of former
SAFs lands occurred in larger farms (of the area above 50 hectares).52
Social aftermaths of SAFs liquidation
The situation of SAFs employees and their families was changing dynamically with restructuring and privatization of the farms. At the beginning
of the transformation in the state sector, agriculture employed ca. 460
thousand workers (together with their families they were a community of
around 2 million).53 The liquidation of SAFs, especially in western and
northeastern voivodeships, where participation of the state sector in agriculture was at the highest rate, meant not only liquidation of their jobs but
also ruined their whole world.54 SAFs used to guarantee their workers and
their families total social and economical security. Together with liquidation of SAFs part of village infrastructure, e.g. kindergartens, day-care
rooms, shops, disappeared. Even visiting a doctor or farming a small plot
became problematic. Although the employees were allowed to purchase
flats they rented, for many of them this solution was inconvenient, as it
could reduce their potential mobility. The former rate of employment became excessive in new economical conditions because, among others, of
technological progress. As soon as after three years of managing with
51
Zgliski, Problemy rozwoju obszarw popegeerowskich, 4.

53
54
Anna Giza-Poleszczuk, Witold Kociesza-Jaworski, Spoeczne aspekty
likwidacji Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych: raport socjologiczny z bada
ilociowych i jakociowych [Social Aspects of the Liquidation of State
Agricultural Farms: Sociological Report of Quantity and Quality Research],
http://www.mpips.gov.pl/gfx/mpips/userfiles/File/Analizy/pgr/Zalacznik_pgr_
4.pdf [access: 20. 05. 2015], 7.
52
accordance to the rules of the market, former SAF farms decreased their
employment rates into ten times lower.55
Part of former SAFs workers found non-agricultural jobs, started their
own businesses or retired. The most numerous group, that of lower educated and narrow-specialized worker, found themselves in the worst situation. They found it difficult to find new jobs in their accommodation's
vicinity, and the commuting possibilities were becoming more limited
due to liquidation of ineffective communication connections. This group
of former SAF employees remained unemployed for a long time becoming beneficiaries of social care and a symbol of negative aftermaths of
SAFs liquidation.56 The number of these people is constantly decreasing
due to achieving retirement age by them.
Social consequences, like unemployment and impoverishment of postSAF groups, are most frequently referred to by the critics of the liquidation and privatization of SAFs. They remark that former SAF areas are
still characterized by a lower level of economical development and increase in various negative phenomena57. The defenders of the liquidation
decision, on the other hand, emphasize that it was necessary (although
they admit that the very process could be implemented in a different way
and embrace a longer period), and after a transitional period companies
established on the basis of former SAFs began to bring profit.58
55
Irena Dryll, Polityka publiczna w sytuacjach ekstremalnych: rynki pracy na

obszarach popegeerowskich, [Public Policy in Extreme Situations: Labour
Markets in Post-SAF Areas] Dialog. Pismo Dialogu Spoecznego 1-2 (2009), 5.
56
Maria Halamska, Ludzie z PGR. Marginalizacja, [People of SAF. Marginalization] Nowe ycie Gospodarcze 15 (1999), 34.
57
Zgliski, Problemy rozwoju obszarw popegeerowskich, 3. See also:
Magorzata Gajowiak, Deficyt kapitau spoecznego na popegeerowskich
obszarach jako bariera zrwnowaonego rozwoju polskiej wsi, [Deficit of
Social Capital in Post-SAF Areas as an Obstacle for Balanced Development of
Polish Countryside] Folia Pomeranae Universitatis Stetinensis, Oeconomica
299 (2013), 71-80; Magorzata Dziubiska-Michalewicz, Problemy bezrobocia
i ubstwa na terenach byych Pastwowych Gospodarstw Rolnych, [The
Issues of Unemployment and Poverty in the Areas of Former State Agricultural
Farms] Report no. 220, http://biurose.sejm.gov.pl/teksty_pdf_04/r-220.pdf
[access: 20. 06. 2015].
58
Adam Taski, Przemiany ustrojowe byy korzystne dla gospodarki
ywnociowej, [System Transitions Were Beneficial for Food Economy]
Basing on the results of research, sociologists claim that the unemployment was caused by, beside economical factors, certain features of the
environment of former SAFs workers, especially learned helplessness
caused by the fact that within years (or rather three generations) they got
used to having their jobs and social security benefits ensured and their
lives (accommodation, healthcare, entertainment) organized by the employer. Besides, the exceptional role of SAFs in the economy was instilled in them, which increased frustration after the liquidation. The
majority of them did not benefit (or did but not much) from the political
transition.59 It turns out that liquidation of SAFs became a life failure for
numerous blue-collar workers, as they found themselves helpless facing
requirements of new economical reality and unprepared to face new
challenges. [] Furthermore, within years from the liquidation of state
agriculture, it is visible that disadvantageous phenomena which emerged
in post-SAF communities, are becoming constant.60
Creating and the over-forty-year-long existence of State Agricultural
Farms caused serious economical, social and cultural aftermaths nationwide, but affecting mostly western and northern lands. However
western lands absorbed a great number of the displaced, but these who
decided to settle in the villages were not numerous enough to successfully
develop all the agricultural areas. In the political and social-economical
reality of the time there was no optional solution to develop those lands
apart from their assumption by the state. The great economical and social
experiment functioning of State Agricultural Farms turned out to be
generally unsuccessful.
http://wyborcza.biz/biznes/1,100969,16083389,Tanski__przemiany_ustrojowe_
byly_korzystne_dla_gospodarki.html#ixzz3FGumfMY4 [access: 20 06. 2014];
Jzef Wilkin, Polskie rolnictwo opaca si dotowa, [It Is Worth to Subsidize
Polish Agriculture] http://wyborcza.biz/biznes/1,100969,16068282,Wilkin_o_25
_leciu__polskie_rolnictwo_oplaca_sie_dotowac.html#ixzz3GVVRXuGR
[access 20.06. 2015].
59
Dryl, Polityka publiczna w sytuacjach ekstremalnych, 5.
60
Elbieta Tarkowska, Katarzyna Korzeniewska, Modzie z byych PGR-w.
Raport z bada [Youth of Former SAFs. Research Report] (Warsaw: Instytut
Spraw Publicznych, 2002), 5-6. Research conducted in 2002 on three postSAF centres including West-Pomeranian.
Communist Agriculture between Ideological Rigidity

and Economic Rationality the Case of Private
Agricultural Sector in Slovenia/Yugoslavia
arko LAZAREVI
Introduction
A recent study focusing on the reputation of professional farmers in Slovenia
in the second half of the 20th century underlined a highly critical attitude
of the Slovenian public towards farmers as a social and economic class as
its most important finding. Nearly half a century of public opinion research
shows that the Slovenian society considers farming to be among the least
reputable professions. Another belief that stands out is that activity in
both farming and the non-agricultural sectors or the service industry is
harmful. Slovenia has a significant number of the so-called mixed farms,
where the small size of the farm's estate forces the owners to supplement
their income through regular employment in non-agricultural trades. The
public opinion holds these part-time farmers responsible for the unused
farmland and the neglect of the traditional agricultural environment. They
are also considered less productive in regular employment due to excessive fatigue.1
This rather negative view of the farming profession is a result of various
social, cultural and economic factors, as well as certain historical experiences and a general and long-standing attitude towards farmers and agriculture. The present paper will thus try to present the formation of the
agricultural policy under the Slovenian and Yugoslav communism, which
was the main factor that has determined today's reputation of the farming
profession. Specifically, the paper will focus on the role and place of the
private agricultural sector within the communist agricultural policy. To introduce the topic, the paper begins with a summary review of the situation
in Slovenian agriculture prior to World War II and of the communists' ideas for its development. This will be followed by the presentation of various phases of the communist agricultural policy after 1945 that led to the
abandonment of the ideological hard line and the gradual recognition of
1
Nika Razpotnik Viskovi, Miha Serunik, Ugled kmekega poklica in polkmetov

v slovenski drubi po drugi svetovni vojni, [The Reputation of Slovene Peasants
in Slovene Society after the World War II] Geografski vestnik 85/1 (2013), 25-36.
Communist Agriculture between Ideological Rigidity... _________________ 229
peasants and private agricultural production as an integral part of the

country's agricultural sector with important implications for the principles
of the agricultural policy. An analysis of ideological discourse2 will thus
be necessary, as it will allow us to explain the gradual changes and provide their broad political context.
1. Slovenian Agricultural Heritage
Slovenian agricultural policy within the Yugoslav country of the interwar
period can be easily summarized in a few bullet-points: increasingly welleducated peasantry, utilization of all internal reserves, and gradual subsidized specialization and introduction of new crops and technology that
would enable a gradual increase in commercial viability as well as the
quality, quantity and profitability of the agricultural production. Parallel
to these activities, agricultural cooperatives were promoted as a means for
the agriculture to adapt to the demands of the capitalist production.
It is common knowledge that Slovenia was still a predominantly agricultural region in the interwar period, when as much as 60% of the population lived on farming. At the same time, Slovenia was dominated by
small farms, with almost 60% of all farms covering less than 5 hectares
of land. On the other hand, the number of large farms, i.e. those with over
50 hectares of land, was noticeably low. They represented just over one
percent of all farms; however, the reader should not presume these were
large estates, as most of them covered up to 100 hectares of land.
The unfavourable land holding structure was compounded by the overpopulation of the countryside. The density of the agricultural population
was among the highest in Yugoslavia, as an average square kilometre of
arable land was populated by 190 people, in comparison to 144 elsewhere. Furthermore, the population density on arable land was among the
highest in Europe as well, with a similar ratio only to be found in Switzerland and, to some extent, in Italy. The density and the percentage of
the farming population were particularly high in the Styrian and Prekmurje districts. It should be noted that the farmland in these regions also
tended to be the most fragmented.
2
As an example of such ideological discourse, we will be using the work of the

leading Yugoslav ideologue Edvard Kardelj titled Problemi socialistine politike na vasi [Problems of Socialist Policy in the Countryside] (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zaloba, 1959).
230 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
The overpopulation of the Slovenian countryside was the result of the inadequate development of other sectors, lack of technological improvements and insufficient increase in productivity in industry that could no
longer employ all the "surplus" population from the countryside. Additionally, foreign countries were closed to these people, forcing them to
stay at home. The overpopulation of the countryside also had an adverse
effect on agricultural technology, as the abundance of capable workers
meant that there was no stimulus for peasants to modernize. Manual work
thus remained predominant in the Slovenian agriculture, with farmers
consequently facing great physical demands, which is closely reflected in
the data on the equipment of the Slovenian farms with agricultural machinery and tools, which was, to put it mildly, very modest.
The low level of mechanization of the Slovenian farms, as well as the insufficient use of chemical and other fertilizers, resulted in inefficient and
unprofitable production clearly reflected in the low crop yield, especially
in comparison to the general European environment. While it is true that
the Slovenian agriculture was much more productive than the Yugoslav
average, its results were still poor when compared to agriculturally and
otherwise developed countries of Western Europe.
The structural inconsistencies of the Slovenian agriculture were also reflected by the high indebtedness of the farming population, which also
resulted from the destructive consequences of the Great Depression, during which the agricultural prices decreased by up to 50 percent. The indebtedness was a reflection of the Slovenian agriculture in general, as the
ranks of the indebted were dominated by small farms that were unable to
meet the standards of a market economy. After the Great Depression that
nearly halved agricultural incomes, even mid-sized farms were unable to
achieve the surplus income necessary for increasing the production
through specialization and introduction of new technologies, which
would consequently increase their income and improve living standards
of the farming population.
Such trends of course threatened to cause great economic, social and political upheavals, and the true extent of the problem is revealed in the telling fact that as much as three quarters of all peasants in the Slovenian
countryside sustained their families on farms with less than ten hectares
of land, without even taking into account the unfavourable land holding
structure. Moreover, if we change our viewpoint and consider all indebted farms in Slovenia whose share was approaching 40% and mainly
consisted of small farms we can conclude that as much as a quarter of

the Slovenian population at the time was approaching certain economic
ruin. And this was certainly a population much too large for the government to remain indifferent and not intervene. The intervention was made
even more necessary by the fact that these multitudes could not emigrate
or seek employment in the industry. The promulgation of the Peasants'
Protection Act (Zakon o zaiti kmetov), the moratorium on agricultural
debts in 1932, and subsequent legislation thus essentially preserved the
existing land holding structure.3
In the interwar period, the Communist Party was banned from all public
activities and thus forced underground. Its membership and influence
among the peasantry corresponded to that fact. Prior to World War II, the
Communist Party had no coherent agricultural programme to speak of.
The Soviet agricultural policy was widely accepted as a role model by the
Party and not given much thought. Throughout the interwar period, the
Communists thus only drafted a single programme, in 1920. In that year,
the Party held a congress that resolved the dilemma of doctrine (ideology)
regarding the admission of peasants into their ranks. The reality of the
agrarian structure and the fact that peasants represented the absolute majority of the population did not leave them with many options. They explicitly decided to admit peasants into the Party's ranks because of their
"revolutionary potential". Starting with the ideological assumption of the
"natural alliance" between the working class and the peasantry (because
of the inevitable proletarianization of the peasants!), the Communists
paid great ideological and political attention to the peasantry, particularly
from the 1930s onward (the Great Depression!). In accordance with their
instructions, the Communist authors began writing "scientific" (Marxist!)
interpretations of the economic and political situation of the peasantry, or
"exposing the exploitative nature of capitalism". However, their examinations, though sometimes written at an enviable intellectual level, never
arko Lazarevi, Slovensko kmetijstvo od zemljike odveze do druge svetovne vojne, [Slovene Agriculture from the De-feudalization up to World War II]
in Zbornik ob 100 letnici Kmetijskega intituta Slovenije,[Proceedings of the
100th Anniversary of the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia] ed. Slavko Gliha
(Ljubljana: Kmetijski intitut Slovenije, 1998), 13-30.
232 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
went further than to critique the current conditions in the countryside in

the context of the received pattern of interpretation.4
2. A Time of Ideological Rigidity
As the Communists came to power in 1945, agriculture, as well as all other
aspects of peoples' lives, began seeing a different, more intense passage of
time than before the war. Changes occurred rapidly. The only thing still in
common with the pre-war period was the physical space, while everything
else, i.e. the forms of manifestation, the concepts and the factors of political
and economic change, was significantly altered. In the initial period, the
well-thought-out legislation and the rule of law were replaced by actions
based on revolutionary principles in all aspects of life in the community.
The new regime's main objective was to establish Communist rule, with the
Communist Party gaining a monopoly in all aspects of life. These revolutionary objectives also defined the regime's actions.5 However, in Slovenia's
case, another fact has to be taken into account. In May 1945, Slovenia was
the last Yugoslav region to be liberated. By that time, the Yugoslav government had already become experienced in assuming political power and taking over the economy in other parts of Yugoslavia. This was particularly true
in Serbia, which was liberated as early as late 1944. The mechanisms and
4
arko Lazarevi, Kmeki dolgovi na Slovenskem Peasant Debts in Slovenia

[Peasant Debts in Slovenia] (Ljubljana: Znanstveno in publicistino sredie,
1994), 92-93. What's interesting is that the period following World War II also
saw the publication of a literary version of the Communist interpretation of the
Slovenian economic history prior to World War II. It was published immediately after World War II. The book in question, Jamnica (Ljubljana, 1945) by
acclaimed Slovenian author Lovro Kuhar (Preihov Voranc), subtly reinforced
the prescribed ideological pattern for the correct interpretation of the economic
history. The work was definitely non-commissioned, as the author was a prominent and powerful Slovenian/Yugoslav communist with an outstanding talent
for writing who is still remembered as a fine author of literature. Voranc wrote
the novel after a thorough study of the pre-war economic and social situation,
as well as from his personal experience. However, Jamnica also presents a onesided party line Communist interpretation of the economic situation with a
clearly biased, even dismissive presentations of the economic conditions prior
to World War II and an open tendency for exposing the structures and mechanisms of the unjust past.
5
Ale Gabri, The Bolshevization of Slovenia, Slovene Studies, 28 (2006), 79-94.
methods for the consolidation of power were developed in Serbia and later
implemented in other parts of Yugoslavia as they were liberated.6 In Slovenia, the process was comparatively quick and took place during the summer of 1945, in a period of a few months.
The interpretation of the events during the summer of 1945 in Slovenia
(and Yugoslavia) must also include the perspective of a centrally planned
economy. The new regime was never shy about its main objective, i.e. the
establishment of a centrally planned economy following the Soviet example. This was to be an economy based on state ownership, wherein
private economic initiative and property would be completely absent.
Such an economic system needed an extensive administrative apparatus
to oversee the economic entities and manage the economic processes.
And it is at this point that our main argument already has to be made, i.e.
that the political and administrative processes that followed World War II
were intended to limit and abolish private property in its broader sense
and to seize the property of economic entities. During this process, the
terms economic collaboration and war profiteering and the penalties
that accompanied them were widely used, or abused, in order to establish
control over the economy as quickly as possible, which was indeed
achieved as early as in 1945. However, due to international circumstances, the state had not yet initiated a comprehensive nationalization of the
economic entities and other assets within the country's borders at that
time. The processes of the widespread nationalization of the remaining
economic entities were thus somewhat postponed.7
However, if the ideas on nationalizing the economic entities in the nonagricultural sector were clear, that was not the case in agriculture. To be
more specific, there were no dilemmas regarding the elimination of the
institutional structure or the basis of the pre-war agriculture. The new regime quickly removed the institutional framework within which loans
used to be given to farmers, i.e. the pre-war banks and credit unions. Prewar cooperatives and the agricultural extension service were also eliminated. The regime abolished the market as a coordination mechanism and
6
Jera Voduek Stari, Prevzem oblasti 1944-1946 [The Takeover of Power]

(Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zaloba, 1992), 31-83.
7
Joe Prini, Nadomestitev individualnega podjetnitva z dravnim v industriji, trgovini, gostinstvu in obrti, [The Substitution of Private Entrepreneurship
in Industry, Trade and Craft] Prispevki za novejo zgodovino 34 (1994), 97106, 97.
234 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
set new relative prices that were even more detrimental to agriculture
than those before World War II. By eliminating these institutional forms,
the regime radically altered the macroeconomic context for the activities
of the private farmers. In fact, private agriculture was thoroughly crippled
and subjected to state control and direction. One of the most important
measures for achieving this, and one with significant political consequences, was the cancellation of the pre-war agricultural debts. The overindebtedness of the farming population was an acute problem prior to
World War II. Due to its serious social and economic implications, overindebtedness gradually became a sensitive political issue. Since Communists considered indebtedness to be the most obvious example of the
injustice of capitalism, there was no dilemma after the war. The government passed the Final Liquidation of Agricultural Debt Act as early as
October 1945. Like other measures, the Act contained certain revolutionary elements. Debt was cancelled unconditionally for all who participated
in the Communist liberation movement as well as their relatives and partly for all supporters, while others had to pay off the remainder of their
debts, but with no interest.8
On the other hand, numerous questions arose regarding the land owned
by small farmers. If the peasants were labelled as (political or classbased) collaborators with the occupying power (wealthy landowners and
members of the German minority), there was no question about what
should happen. The property of those peasants was seized with no reservations as early as during the summer of 1945. The situation was different regarding the peasants who made up the majority of the partisan
forces and the supporters of the liberation movement. Furthermore, 80%
of the Yugoslav population at the time was agricultural, which posed a
great political challenge to the Communist regime that had only just consolidated its power. These dilemmas were resolved through the agrarian
reform and colonization, which had the same role as the nationalization
of property in non-agricultural sectors. The agrarian reform was initiated
by an act passed in August 1945. Though it was evident from the very
beginning that the intervention in the ownership relations in agriculture
was primarily a political act, it later became clear that it would also have
serious economic implications. The reform had two objectives. On the
one hand, the political effect was achieved by allotting seized land to
8
Lazarevi, Kmeki dolgovi, 160-162.
peasants with meagre holdings. On the other hand, land was transferred
into state ownership to establish state agricultural enterprises. The fundamental criterion for the seizure of land was the principle of personal
cultivation of land. Land was supposed to be seized from all farmers
whose estates were large enough to warrant hiring workers. This would
fulfil two important ideological criteria. Firstly, it would satisfy the principle that the land belongs to those who work it. And secondly, it would
uproot the capitalist relations in the countryside. The capitalist relations
the countryside, this great ideological point that would remain a concern
for the regime for at least two decades after World War II, were supposed
to be effectively eliminated by establishing state farms from the pool of
the nationalized land and by forcing a myriad of small farms into an economic reliance on the state agricultural sector through new, socialist
cooperatives.
The agrarian reform regulated the following categories of agricultural real
estate: 1. large estates, 2. land owned by banks, businesses, joint-stock
companies and other private establishments, 3. land owned by churches,
monasteries and other religious establishments, 4. excess land owned by
owners other than landowners, 5. excess land owned by farmers, 6. land
that was left without owners or known heirs during the war.9 Such
measures served both class-related and national objectives. Most wealthy
landowners, generally of feudal ancestry, were of non-Slavic origin,
members of the German and Hungarian minorities, many of whom were
not even citizens of Yugoslavia. The maximum land ownership was set at
45 ha of all land or 35 ha of arable land. Everything above this threshold
was nationalized regardless of the ownership.
The reach of the Yugoslav agrarian reform was limited. It included only
11.7% of all agricultural land and only 5% of arable land. This was of
course due to largely fragmented agricultural real estate even prior to
World War II. Half of the seized land was allotted to small farmers or
those without land, 18.3% was transferred to state farms and 2.6% to the
General Agricultural Cooperatives. The average size of a land allotment
9
Zdenko epi, Spreminjanje lastnitva zemlje po drugi svetovni vojni (Agrarna reforma med politinim in ekonomskim), [The Land Ownership Changes
after World War II (Agrarian Reform as Economic and Political Tool)] in
Prevrati in slovensko gospodarstvo v 20. Stoletju [Political Changes and Slovene Economy in 20th Century, 1918-1945-1991] ed. Neven Borak, arko
Lazarevi (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zaloba, 1996), 145-159.
236 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
was 2.5 ha10 and it was not possible to receive more than 5 ha in any case.
The land was distributed to 316,415 peasants' families (16% of all prewar farms). This certainly indicates an even further fragmentation of the
agricultural property. The reason for this is that the agrarian reform only
applied to 8%11 of the agricultural land surveyed in the pre-war census.
Out of those farms from which land was seized, 67% were owned by the
members of the German minority, 25% exceeded the maximum land
ownership threshold, and in 8% the ownership was indeterminable due to
the war. The predominance of the political rationale was obvious. The
agrarian reform was also accompanied by colonization, which was carried out both at the federal level and at the level of individual republics.
At the federal level, colonization took place in areas with farmland left
over from German nationals. This abandoned land was settled by 21,166
poor peasants' families (approximately 160,000 people) from other hilly
and mountainous parts of Yugoslavia. Individual republics also colonized
abandoned land with peasants from elsewhere within their territory, but
the extent of such internal colonization was relatively limited.12
The situation in Slovenia was the same as in the rest of Yugoslavia. By
far the major part (67%) of the expropriated farms was owned by the
members of the German minority, and a significant number (16.7%) was
contributed by judicial seizures that were the result of the proceedings
against individuals accused of collaboration, speculation or similar. The
farmland owners who had supplemented their income with other, nonagricultural activities were also well represented (11.6%) among the expropriated. The agricultural land owned by various Church-controlled
farming institutions accounted for 4.1%. The fragmented nature of the
land holding structure in Slovenia is further attested by the fact that the
share of farms included in the agrarian reform and larger than 35 hectares, including large estates, was not much higher (4.5%). All in all,
there were only a couple hundred large agricultural holdings that could be
10
Dragan Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva [Twilight of Peasantry] (Beograd:

Ekonomika, 1987), 27.
11
Calculations based on 1931 statistical data, cf. Jozo Tomasevich, Peasants,
Politics and Change in Yugoslavia (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1955), 384. The survey census in 1931 counted 1,985,725 farms of different
sizes in Yugoslavia. The rate of fragmentation was high, since as much as
88.3% of these farms possessed less than 10 ha of land.
12
Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva, 27-28.
called large estates. The Slovenian authorities were less generous than the
federal government, allotting only 13.4% of the seized land to peasants
and colonists who were generally settled on the land previously owned by
the displaced German minority. This is understandable, as arable land was
scarce in Slovenia. Most of the seized lands were forests (63.5%), which
the state kept for itself. Only a tenth of the land was assigned to the statecontrolled agricultural holdings. All in all, the state kept almost three
quarters of all agricultural land and forests included in the agrarian reform. The agrarian reform contributed to the further fragmentation of the
agricultural holdings. Following the agrarian reform, the number of farm
households increased by 27% compared to the pre-war period.13
From the political point of view, the maximum agrarian threshold of 35
ha or 45 ha was set rationally. Under different circumstances, it would
have allowed some of the farmers to benefit from the economy of scale
and thus to modernize their farming technology and achieve greater profitability. However, this was not what the regime had in mind for private
farming. From the political perspective, the agrarian reform was a success. By asserting the class principle and redistributing the land, the regime obviously won approval from the majority of the people. The
agrarian reform was also a success from the perspective of the regime's
ideology. According to these ideological interpretations, the agrarian reform instituted various measures to curtail the economic extent of private
farming, effectively undermining the "reproduction of the capitalist relations" in the countryside.14 On top of that, private farmers were forbidden
from buying mobile machinery, hiring workers and engaging in any kind of
trade.15 The regime's objective was to make state farms and cooperatives
13
Zdenko epi, Oris pojavnih oblik kmetijske politike v letih 1945-1960,

[The Overview of the Agricultural Policy 1945-1960] in Preteklost sodobnosti: izbrana poglavja iz slovenske noveje zgodovine, [Chapters from the Modern Slovene History] ed. Zdenko epi (Ljubljana: INZ, 1999), 179-180.
14
The words of one of the leading Slovenian Communists expressing his belief
that the agrarian reform was a major blow to the capitalist elements in the
countryside were typical. At the same time, the ban on agricultural trade and
other crafts eliminated what used to be the main means of speculation and
exploitation. Cf. Mateja oh Kladnik, Kulaki procesi v Sloveniji med letoma
1949 in 1951, [Kulaks processes in Slovenia 1949-1951] (Ljubljana: SCNR,
2012), 14.
15
Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva, 32
238 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
the backbone of crop and livestock production. Such intentions are made
particularly evident by the principles and practices of the agricultural policy implemented in the first three post-war years.
However, from the economic perspective, the agrarian reform was a failure. Agriculture as a whole declined. The elimination of large farms and
holdings also meant that those agricultural entities that were capable of a
cost-effective production of crops and livestock for the market were also
eliminated. The organization level and economic impact of the newly
formed state farms and agricultural cooperatives were still far from what
the regime had intended. The fragmentation of agricultural holdings had
its consequences. Farming was a physically demanding job because of the
low level of farming technology used, and most peasants produced little
more than necessary for their own families' survival and to buy some essential consumer goods. Consequently, the provision of food products
was hampered despite the regulated (rationed!) supply to the population.
Increased autarky and interruptions in the supply were a direct consequence of the agrarian reform.
Finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, the authorities decided to use increasingly repressive measures to enforce the agricultural
policy, which resulted in economic, social and, last but not least, political
tensions in the countryside. Similar to other underdeveloped communist
countries, agriculture in Slovenia served two purposes. Firstly, it was
supposed to provide food for the populace. And secondly, in addition to
this essential role, agriculture was also supposed to be a source of funds
for financing the planned development of industry. The manifestations of
this policy were dual as well. The food production aspect of agriculture
was reflected by the policy of compulsory purchase and supply of crops
and livestock. And at the macroeconomic level, administrative regulation
of the relative prices greatly increased the disparity between the values of
agricultural products relative to the values of industrial products. This
was of course to the detriment of agriculture, which consequently determined the living standard, the social situation and the social status of the
peasantry. Tampering with the relative prices was further influenced by
an arbitrary system of progressive taxation of private farmers. Agriculture
was thus pushed into a situation where it had to provide means for the industrial development of the country. In other words, the industrialization
of the country was to be supported by a marked depreciation of agricultural labour and a low standard of living for the farming population.
Starting immediately after the war, the policy of compulsory purchase

and delivery of products meant that the agricultural production was determined by the plans drafted by the authorities in accordance with the
anticipated (planned!) food requirements within the system of rationed
supply. The primary administrative bodies of the regime precisely determined the amount of crops, livestock, meat, lard, milk, and other products
individual farmers would have to provide to the state at the (maximized!)
prices set by the administration. Farmers tried to avoid the compulsory
purchase and supply at maximized prices in various ways. If the compulsory quotas were not met, local authorities responded with physical force.
In addition to using direct physical force upon the actual implementation
of compulsory purchase and supply, a number of farmers were accused of
speculation and prosecuted.16
The agrarian reform was supported by the ideology and practice of socialist cooperatives. Although the agrarian reform had created state-owned
agricultural holdings, private farming still formed the backbone of production. Cooperatives were developed as a link that would facilitate the
involvement of private farmers in the "socialist agricultural policy". The
purpose of the cooperatives in the ideological imagery and in their practical execution would be twofold. Their nature would be economical and
ideological, i.e. political. By bringing together private farmers, the cooperatives would help increase production. And from the ideological standpoint, they would provide a spirit of community, of socialist
cooperation, and thus form a political bastion against wealthier farmers.
Various types of cooperatives were envisioned (purchasing-selling cooperatives, production cooperatives, credit, renovation cooperatives, machinery pools, wine-making and dairy cooperatives, etc.), however,
universal cooperatives, or General cooperatives, proved by far the most
popular, providing trading, production and other services for their members. These universal cooperatives formed an absolute majority as early
as 1947. In 1949, Slovenia had 1160 of them, virtually one for every village. They were at the centre of all economic activities in the countryside.17 In the early post-war period, cooperatives were thus general and
more or less voluntary. These organizations facilitated the exchange of
goods, not according to the commercial principles but rather the principles
16
17
oh Kladnik, Kulaki procesi, 10-14.

epi, Oris pojavnih oblik kmetijske politike v letih 1945-1960, 182.
240 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
of planned distribution. They were basically rural markets where products

were traded within the context of a rationed or guaranteed food supply.18
Such cooperatives were the result of polemics and disagreements among
the Communist Party brass regarding the most appropriate agricultural
policy. The proponents of rapid collectivization immediately after the war
were not few in number. However, the moderates prevailed, seeing collectivization as the ultimate goal, but one that needs to be reached gradually and with gentler measures. They believed that cooperatives offered
such gentler path, which would first attach, and later incorporate, the
peasantry into the socialist (state-controlled) agricultural sector.19 In 1947
and following years of debate, the leading ideologue Edvard Kardelj explicitly defined the starting point. Yugoslavia was to take off on a specific path towards the collectivization of villages through agricultural
cooperatives, which would allow us to achieve more than the Russians
did with collectivization.20
This point of view was still favoured in 1947 and 1948, i.e. in the time of
the first five-year plan. The turning point in agricultural policy occurred
in 1949. It is commonly thought that the reasons for the shift included
Yugoslavia's dispute with the Soviet Union in 1948, i.e. the Cominform.
One of the main Soviet critiques was associated with the Yugoslav collectivization, which the Communists failed to execute or plan in accordance with the Soviet role model. They followed their own path, an
independent agricultural policy that nevertheless had clear class-related
connotations. By banning all private trade in 1948 and introducing new
agricultural principles, the regime greatly limited the feasibility of agricultural management. The regime established a new trading system for
18
Savo ukanovi, Selo i seljatvo u agrarnoj politici Jugoslavije [Villages and

Peasantry in the Agricultural Policy of Yugoslavia] (Beograd: Privredni
pregled, 1977), 109.
19
Melissa K. Bokovoy, Collectivization in Yugoslavia: Rethinking Regional
and National Interests, in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist
Eastern Europe, ed. Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper (Budapest, New
York: Central European University Press, 2014), 293-299.
20
Zdenko epi, Spor z informbirojem in jugoslovanska kmetijska politika,
[The Cominform and the Agriculture Policy in Yugoslavia] in Jugoslavija v
hladni vojni: Yugoslavia in the Cold War, eds. Jasna Fischer, Ale Gabri, Leonid Gibianskii, Edith S. Klein, Ronald W. Preussen (Ljubljana, Toronto: Institute of Contemporary History, University of Toronto), 327.
farmers and their agricultural products. So-called linked trade was introduced. In practice, this meant that the farmers' supply of industrial
consumer goods was linked to their surrender of their products to cooperatives. In this regard, the authorities treated farmers of different status differently. Small farmers were rewarded for their cooperation with the
socialist sector with a number of economic benefits. On the other hand,
larger, wealthier farmers were plainly discriminated against, both regarding the price of their products as well as their supply with industrial
goods. This was a clear illustration of the specific path towards collectivization. The regime did not try to conceal that fact either. Even in autumn 1948, i.e. six months after the Cominform resolution, Edvard
Kardelj unequivocally reiterated that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
does not intend and never intended to force the new socialist forms upon
the peasants and other minor producers. Kardelj expressly rejected the
so-called kolkhoz agricultural policy.21 He agreed that this could be the
ideal, however, the reality in the countryside was different. Very few
farmers were willing to enter into such arrangement of agricultural production. In 1949, prior to the great collectivization campaign, the Yugoslav peasant work cooperatives, a variation on the Soviet kolkhoz, only
involved 3% of all farmers, and the total area of joined holdings was
small as well.22
The starting points of the agricultural policy are made even clearer by the
words of Boris Kidri, one of the top Party leaders. In mid-1948, Kidri
unequivocally rejected a quick collectivization, or, as he put it, the
frontal charge against the kulak. For that would mean starvation in the
following year, as it controls 40% of the production. Furthermore, we
have no cooperatives or machinery to start working the soil with a higher
level of mechanization. The path to take is thus not a frontal charge, but
rather an attrition, eradication of the kulak speculation and accommodation of the working peasants. In the parlance of the period, working
peasants included small and mid-sized farmers.23 In light of these
straightforward principles, it is surely valid to ask: how come such a shift
occurred in 1949? What circumstances had changed for the Communists
to modify these strong beliefs?
21
epi, Spor z informbirojem in jugoslovanska kmetijska politika, 328

Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva, 37.
23
epi, Spor z informbirojem in jugoslovanska kmetijska politika, 329.
22
242 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
The plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of

Yugoslavia in January 1949 was decisive. Because of the combined circumstances of international economic isolation, major economic problems, problems with the food supply, ideological accusations from the
Soviet Union as well as pressures from within the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia, the plenary session decided upon a more rapid collectivization and the final elimination of kulaks as a rural social category and,
consequently, the capitalist relations in the countryside.24 The question
of the extent to which this was the result of the schism with the Soviet
Union remains controversial. However, it is certain that the authorities
were hoping to increase the agricultural productivity by pressuring the
peasants and through the collectivization. With the Cominform schism,
the Yugoslav agriculture found itself in an extremely precarious position.
Peasants were under pressure to immediately increase production in order
to meet the needs of the rapidly increasing urban population. At the same
time, the government did not have enough capital assets to boost technological development and thus increase agricultural production. Faced with
this situation, the authorities thought they could increase the production
of crops and livestock through agricultural reorganization. Collectivization was therefore not merely an attempt to convince the Russians that the
Yugoslav Communists had not strayed from the Stalinist line after all, but
would also show that the benefits of the economy of scale were also applicable in the case of agricultural collectivization.25
After the decision, the spring of 1949 saw the process of collectivization
proceed quickly. The number of peasant work cooperatives was rapidly
increasing. The system anticipated four types of cooperatives. What they
all had in common was that the peasants would invest all their means of
production into them, except their residential buildings, a small piece of
land surrounding the house that the peasants were allowed to keep, small
tools, and goats and sheep (livestock!). The typology of cooperatives was
based on the ownership and the compensation for the use of the land after
the peasant's admission into the cooperative. In cooperatives of the first
type, peasants retained the formal ownership of land, leasing it to the cooperative and receiving rent. Rent was only paid for surface areas of up to
24
25
epi, Spor z informbirojem in jugoslovanska kmetijska politika, 331-333.

Jojn B. Allcock, The Collectivization of Yugoslav Agriculture and the Myth of
Peasants Resistance (University of Bradford: Postgraduate School of Yugoslav Studies, Bradford Studies on Yugoslavia, 4, 1981), 24.
4 ha, again indicating attempts to follow the class principle. In cooperatives of the second type, peasants remained owners of their land and received interest on the rent for the land they had invested. In cooperatives
of the third type, peasants, although retaining ownership of their land, no
longer received any compensation for it, neither rent nor interest. Cooperatives of the fourth type were the most politically desirable, as peasants
transferred ownership of their land to cooperatives for no compensation
at all. Members of the cooperative were obliged to invest all their farming
tools, livestock and agricultural buildings into the cooperative. Peasants
found this hard to accept. The historians' verdict is clear. Collectivization
included the expropriation of the peasants and the nationalization of their
property without any transfer of land ownership. The cooperative members'
families were only allowed to keep up to 1 ha of land, i.e. the land surrounding the homestead used for personal needs, a small number of livestock (one cow with her calves, pigs for the needs of the family, five sheep,
poultry, up to 10 beehives, etc.). Members of the cooperative were obliged
to work the land for a modest compensation, their productivity was assessed against set standards, and the workers were organized in brigades.26
Collectivization reached its peak in 1951. The cooperative structure that
had formed reflected great regional differences. These were caused by
different levels of general economic development and different political
approaches to promoting the cooperatives. Even a cursory look at the statistics reveals great differences.
Table 1: Peasant Work Cooperatives (PWKs), June 195127
Serbia
Croatia
Slovenia
26
27
No. of PWK
No. of
households
2,083
1,574
381
178,728
68,934
8,592
Share of Average land

arable land
per PWK
(in %)
(in ha)
20.2
461
14.3
203
10.7
208
epi, Oris pojavnih oblik kmetijske politike v letih 1945-1960/ The Overview of the Agricultural Policy 1945-1960, 184; Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva/ Twilight of Peasantry, 36.
Melissa K. Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists: Politics and Ideology in the
Yugoslav Countryside, 1941-1945 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1998), 148.
244 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH)
Macedonia
Montenegro
Total
1,505
69,821
21.2
247
981
440
6,964
76,987
26,722
429,784
91.5
76.8
23.6
568
307
348
Table 2: Types of Peasant Work Cooperatives, June 195128

Type Yugoslavia Serbia Croatia Slovenia BiH Macedonia Montenegro
I.
1,014
219
197
262
332
4
II.
2,146
979
597
64
448
22
36
III.
3,436
627
734
30
723
923
399
IV.
368
238
46
25
2
36
1
Total
6,964
2,083 1,574
381
1,505
981
440
The difference between the developed and the underdeveloped Yugoslav

republics is immediately apparent. It is obvious that the collectivization
was more extensive and visibly dominated by comprehensively collectivist forms of cooperatives in underdeveloped regions. Macedonia and
Montenegro, two republics of only minor economic relevance, stood out
in this regard. At the other end of the spectrum was Slovenia, the economically and technologically most developed republic where only 5% of
the farming population participated in cooperatives, contributing only a
minor share of agricultural land for cooperative use. Another interesting
aspect of Slovenian cooperatives is their membership in respect to the
size of their members' holdings. Most members were small farmers, while
farmers with large holdings had a hard time joining cooperatives. Compared to agricultural holdings in Macedonia or Montenegro, which were
markedly fragmented, this was a pattern also confirmed in other Yugoslav regions. Another noticeable pattern is that the basic cooperative
types prevailed in the developed regions, while more advanced forms of
collectivity predominated in the underdeveloped regions. At the level
of political discourse, this confirmed the dogmatic classification of peasants into working peasants (small farmers) and kulaks. The ideological
construct that was thus supported was that the working class was allied to
small farmers. Large farmers, labelled kulaks, were excluded from this
28
alliance. Because of the political connotations of these terms, they had a

significant impact on everyday life, as collectivization was accompanied
by frequent use of force. Indeed, the Yugoslav collectivization is thought
to have been among the most violent in the communist Eastern Europe.29
According to political declarations, peasants would join the cooperatives
voluntarily, but the reality was different. The collectivization involved
economic, politically ideological, and psychological violence. Most peasants were not willing to join cooperatives under the given conditions.30 If
it was at all possible, the peasants tried to avoid joining the cooperatives
and resisted them in many ways, primarily because of their ownership
and property structures. Their strategies and practices for adapting to
and/or resisting political pressures have been extensively documented and
could be boiled down to the oft-used phrase the power of the powerless.31 However, even after the peasants had been forced into the system
of cooperatives, their resistance did not end, but was rather transformed
into a passive resistance within the system. Before joining a cooperative,
usually of the first type, peasants typically sold off their excess crops and
livestock or slaughtered the latter. They were joining cooperatives with
minimal assets. Reports are also known that these peasants paid more attention to their own land than to the land owned by the cooperative.
Moreover, the cooperative assets were sometimes used by peasants to
29
For a detailed look at the comparative aspects of the Eastern-European communist collectivizations in agriculture see Nigel Swain, Eastern European
Collectivisation Campaigns Compared, 1945-1962, in The Collectivization of
Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe, 497-534.
30
31
The message of this motto and the Slovenian zeitgeist of the late 1950s was
skilfully described in the early 1980s by Tone Partlji in his popular play My
Dad, the Socialist Kulak. The play showcases Slovenian agricultural policy
throughout the process of collectivization. Partlji uses humour to depict the
discrimination faced by the peasants in the first decade of Communist rule.
The play concludes with the following dialogue reminiscent of the good soldier vejk:
Dad: But it's still not right, all this isn't right... I mean, for them to give the land
and then take it away again, for us not to know what we're allowed to say and
what not... It's not right that they interrogate... You know, I played dumb today
at the interrogation and they sent me home... It's not right that we have to be
dumb so we are left alone...
Mom: We're not going to change the world, Joa...
246 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
work their own land. Such actions, which were unplanned and unconnected, represented a form of everyday resistance by the peasants that did
not require them to openly or symbolically defy the regime.32 These politically pragmatic and rational actions, such as joining the cooperative and
then either working or not working for its benefit, undermined the economic success of the collectivization.33 The peasant work collectives
were therefore economically rather inefficient.34 The reaction of the authorities was harsh. As the collectivization proved to be an economic failure, the use of force by the government intensified. In some cases, peasants
went so far as to mount an armed resistance against the compulsory collectivization, for example in the north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina. The
Bosnian revolt was quickly and ruthlessly quashed by the military, resulting in numerous casualties and prison terms for the rebels. However, it
had far-reaching political implications.35
As already mentioned above, before the collectivization peasants had
been most often prosecuted under the legislation against speculation and
economic sabotage. With the start of collectivization, the authorities added accusations of crimes against the cooperatives. The Cooperatives Act
itself stipulated punishments for cases of injury to cooperative assets,
damage caused to the reputation of cooperatives, and interference with
the establishment of socialism in the countryside. Such offences carried
sentences of imprisonment, forced labour, confiscation of property and, in
extreme cases, even death. Particular attention was paid to those who would
resist joining cooperatives or encourage others to do so. Such offences carried sentences of up to five years imprisonment with forced labour and,
32
For a detailed look at the everyday forms of resistance see James C. Scott,
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Form of Peasant Resistance (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985), XV-XVI, 28-41.
33
Allcock, The Collectivization of Yugoslav Agriculture and the Myth of Peasants Resistance, 29-37.
34
Desimir Tochitch, Collectivization in Yugoslavia, Journal of Farm Economics 41 (1959), 26-42.
35
For more information about numerous and very diverse strategies and practices for avoiding collectivization, particularly in Serbia, Croatia and to some extent Bosnia and Herzegovina, see the illustrative article by Bokovoy,
Collectivization in Yugoslavia, 300-317; see also Melissa K. Bokovoy,
Peasants and Partizans: Politics of the Yugoslav Countryside, 1945-1949, in
State-Society Relations in Yugoslavia, 1945-1992, eds. Melissa K. Bokovoy,
Jill A. Irvine, Carol Lilly (London: MacMillan, 1997), 115-138.
depending on the circumstances, confiscation of property. The threatened

punishments served as a deterrent to pre-emptively reduce the peasants'
resistance. The Slovenian prosecution services received almost 4,000 reports accusing individuals of the criminal acts of letting arable land go
unsown, failing to report crop yields or cultivated land, failure to surrender all or part of the harvest, covert slaughter of livestock, etc. What
stands out is the structure of the accused and the convicted by final
judgement. The class logic was impossible to conceal: most of the accused and convicted were classified as mid-sized or large farmers. Large
farmers were also most often convicted for allegations of economic injury
to cooperatives. In 1949-1951, there was notable prosecution of peasants
who resisted the collectivization of agriculture and did not want to join
the cooperatives or who allegedly sabotaged them. Again and again, such
peasants faced confiscation of everything they owned.36
Regarding the situation in Slovenia, publications from the mid-1960s indicate that the majority of peasants experienced compulsory collectivization as decidedly undesirable and were ambivalent in their values. One of
the authors of such statements, Joe Punik, whose frank words earned
him a long prison sentence and who later emigrated from Slovenia, came
from a rural environment and always remained connected to it. He felt,
and experienced as his own, all the psychological hardships felt by the
farming population and all the shifts in the structure of the peasants' social values. This allowed Punik to convincingly present them to the public. His essay on agricultural policy thus reads as follows: Peasants were
sent to prison for failing to meet the norms of compulsory supply or for
unlawful slaughter without really considering themselves delinquent. The
same was true for the sale of foodstuffs on the black market. For this, a
peasant had a single rationale: as he was unable to obtain essential industrial products needed for his operation, he tried to obtain them in exchange for food products. The peasant's conflicts with the authorities
occurred in the economic arena, and the ruthlessness of the activists in
the field, who represented the government both in the peasant's eyes and
in their own, was followed by a significant degree of intentional ruthless36
As an interesting fact, let us point out that an initiative, albeit an ultimately unsuccessful one, was started in Slovenia as early as 1970s, i.e. still under the
Communist regime, to rehabilitate the peasants convicted during the time of
collectivization, claiming that the convictions were unjust. oh Kladnik, Kulaki procesi, 69-104.
248 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
ness by the peasant himself. Any talk about the general needs of the society and food shortages in the cities fell on deaf ears, as the peasant was
experiencing lacks and needs of his own. He thus experienced the repressive measures carried out by the authorities as pure oppression, which,
on the one hand, released him from traditional and formal loyalty, and
clearly undermined his system of moral values on the other. This is the
only explanation why going to prison (because of compulsory supply,
trade on the black market, illicit slaughter or cooperative matters), which
had always been considered a disgrace by peasants, now lost its mark of
shame and condemnation and became a grim objective reality, which the
peasant might have cursed but was also powerless against, just as he was
powerless against hail, frost and drought. No wonder then that peasants,
experiencing the society in such way, slipped into delinquency contrary to
their traditional norms and started resisting the authorities and their
regulations, carrying out illicit slaughter, trading on the black market
and sometimes even limiting his efforts in working the land and forgoing
cost-effective management.
Certain mechanisms arose in this period that still determines the attitude of
the farming population towards the authorities and the official agricultural
policy. However, these are actually new elements in peasants' mindset. Any
agricultural planning that fails to account for these characteristics will be
doomed to failure and the peasants will consider it as pure oppression.
These are our dues to the past and everything that was committed after the
war. These social and political consequences will determine the future development of agricultural production and the production relations in the
countryside. They are indispensable for understanding the actual situation
and today's conflicts in our agriculture.37
3. Facing Reality and Liberalization
Due to economic and political failure of the collectivization, its implementation was "suspended" as early as 1951. Representatives of the regime quickly acted to suppress inordinate expectations. For example,
Boris Kidri warned in his Skopje speech on 16th July 1951 that a return
of capitalism into agriculture would be prevented by all means necessary.
Kidri did not mince words in his direct and stern address of private
37
Joe Punik, Izbrano delo [Selected Works] (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga,

2003), 35-36.
farming. He was echoed by Tito, who openly admitted in a speech given

in September 1951 that the collectivization was not initiated and carried
out for two or three years only to be discontinued. Tito argued that as
long as Yugoslavia had a centrally planned economy, agriculture could
only be organized around a predominant number of large land holdings.38
Both leading Communists thus promised changes, but only in the approach, not in the final objective. Following the suspension of the collectivization, the realization that changes were necessary was quickly
accepted. In 1953, the collectivization was officially stopped. Laws were
changed to allow peasants to leave the Peasant Work Cooperatives with
impunity. This created an avalanche, as peasants left the cooperatives en
masse. The Peasant Work Cooperatives met their pitiful end or were converted into General Agricultural Cooperatives. As in all agendas after
1945, the purpose of the authorities' action was twofold, political and
economical. After years of violence that had alienated the peasants, it was
essential to somehow appease them. The leading Party ideologue Edvard
Kardelj thus wrote: In a country with backwards peasantry such as ours,
the problem of aggregation and socialization of land may be approached
in two ways, using two different methods. Either through a general collectivization of the land based on simple cooperative work, with the intention of an eventual gradual technical reconstruction of the agriculture, or
through social investments into modern means of production within the
appropriate cooperative organizations, achieved through appropriate
methods of land aggregation, wherein the extent and the economic significance of these means in the agricultural production should steadily increase. We have chosen the second option, firstly because it guarantees a
constant increase of production and productivity, and secondly because it
suits the direct material interests of the peasantry and is thus the politically more expedient option. Furthermore, we must not forget that the
capitalist developments in the countryside have had 150 years to teach
our peasants to consider everything only through the lenses of financial
benefit, meaning that the farmers will not be likely to thoughtlessly accept
any collectivist system that would fail to convince them economically. To
such peasants, collectivization is the same as expropriation. In our country,
such method would therefore provoke an open clash between the socialist
38
Allcock, The Collectivization of Yugoslav Agriculture and the Myth of Peasants Resistance, 19-20.
250 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
state and the working peasant. However, it is true that a situation could
arise, wherein the general political circumstances, i.e. the internal or external relations between classes or political forces, could force a socialist
country to utilize the method of general collectivization based on the simple
cooperation. This is particularly possible in cases where the economic potential of the socialist factors is not sufficient to restrain the development of
the capitalist tendencies that are the inevitable result of the haphazard
nature of the fragmented ownership. In such circumstances, a direct and
material state control of the countryside is a historical necessity, a precondition for the existence of the socialist state. The collectivization becomes the economic method for implementing such control. To a certain
degree, this applies even to the historical role of our collectivization in
the form of work cooperatives in 1948. In terms of economy, the collectivization was unsuccessful. However, it is a fact that this process, together
with the measures carried out alongside the reorganization of the work
cooperatives, has finally uprooted capitalism from our countryside. We
should therefore ask ourselves whether the new circumstances, where in
these same political factors had lost their influence, warrant the use of
the same method which would doom us to serious economic defeats
for no other reason than to fulfil some dogmatic scheme. It is perfectly
obvious that to do so would be absurd (my emphasis - L).39 Kardelj's
conciliatory words were supported and formalized by the 1957 resolution
of the Federal Assembly to implement future agricultural policies without
forceful interference with the individual ownership of land.40
The somewhat lengthy passage quoted above explains the reasoning of
the Yugoslav authorities that led them to change their approach into one
that could be defined as mostly pragmatic. Within the framework of
wide-reaching reform efforts aimed at the gradual discontinuation of the
central planning, the agricultural policy saw some changes as well. However, these were mostly related to the attitude towards the peasantry, rather than to the policy as such. In this regard, the recognition of the
peasants' economic interests proved a big step forward, as private farmers
were acknowledged as a legitimate economic subject with their own interests. This also implied the acknowledgement of the economic value
and potential of the private agriculture and opened doors to a different
39
40
Kardelj, Problemi socialistine politike na vasi, 14-17.

Veselinov, Sumrak seljatvay, 50.
way for regulating the relationships within agricultural production. However, the fundamental point remained unchanged. Agricultural production
had to be based on the state-controlled agricultural sector that would lead
the technological transformation and increase productivity. The reorganized and modified cooperative sector would complement the state-run
farms and act as a mechanism for involving peasants in the so-called socialist relations of production. However, additional measures were taken
to safeguard these socialist relations of production and prevent the reproduction of the capitalist relations. As collectivization was discontinued, the extent of the land ownership maximum was changed as well. A
supplementary nationalization of land was carried out, as well as a supplementary agrarian reform. From 1953 onward, peasants were only allowed to own 10 ha of land. Everything above the threshold was
nationalized, and the peasants were compensated in accordance with the
estimated profitability of the real estate. As a rule, the nationalized land
was given to state-owned agricultural holdings and, to a lesser extent, to
cooperatives.41
The new concept was termed socialist cooperation. One of its characteristics was a more balanced development. The discriminatory attitude
towards agriculture was changing. The necessity of significant investments in agriculture was no longer challenged. In Slovenia, for example,
the decade from 1952 to 1962 saw an 8,000-fold increase of investments
into agriculture. This piece of data by itself is a good indication of the
dismissive attitude towards investments in agriculture after 1945. It also
explains why the agricultural policy after 1945 was unsuccessful and unable to achieve its objectives without resorting to violence. From the private farmers' perspective, what was important was the new system of
socialist cooperation, as well as the assurance that the state would not interfere with the farmers' ownership rights any more. The general agricultural
cooperatives became solely economic organisations. The socialization of
land remained cooperatives' ideological goal, but was now based on a
foundation that would respect the peasants' private property. In practice,
the focus was on the economic interests and increasing the extent of the
agricultural production. Cooperatives were increasingly transformed into
socialist-style enterprises. They provided peasants with various services:
machinery, reproduction materials, professional management, loans, etc.
On the other side, peasants contributed work on their land in the form of a
41
Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva, 32.
252 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
certain amount of crops they were contractually obliged to sell to the cooperative. The recognition of the peasants' economic interests meant that
they were free to do as they pleased with the remaining produce. As organizers of the agricultural production, the cooperatives established companies
that dealt with purchasing, processing, exporting, etc., crops, livestock and
other products. The new approach proved to be a success: peasants accepted the cooperatives and the production was increasing. Interestingly, these
forms of cooperation were predominantly entered into by the peasants
whose holdings approached the maximum size. This was quite understandable, as such peasants were able to utilize their farms more thoroughly in
this way. In Slovenia, this form of cooperation included as much as 44% of
all peasants, which was significantly above the Yugoslav level (25%). The
economic potential of such cooperation was considerable as well. For example, private farmers contributed as much as a third of all wheat production and a quarter of potato production in Slovenia.42
The relaxation of ideological rigidity towards private farming continued,
accompanied by the liberalization of the Yugoslav socialist economy.
Even so, the system was designed in such way that its economic and social measures kept the peasantry within the system of the socialist cooperatives. From the mid-60s onward, significant investments were made
into the development of the state-run agricultural companies to increase
their efficiency and production, and to modernize them as well as provide
them with better equipment. By and large, the economic relevance of private farming was decreasing. This process was accompanied by deagrarianization, and the problem of rural overpopulation gradually became less
relevant. However, massive migrations of the rural population also decreased the social importance of the peasants. Large numbers of people
moved from villages to cities, seeking employment in the industry and
the service sector. Following the opening of borders in the 1960s, a large
number of people emigrated from the countryside to Western Europe.
In political discourse, class rarely made an appearance anymore and
wealthy farmers were no longer feared. Gradually, the peasants' status became comparable to that of other people, e.g. craftsmen. In 1967, the last
remaining restrictions regarding the purchase of heavy machinery and other
equipment necessary for agricultural production were finally lifted. Peasants were now able to buy modern equipment without any restrictions, as
42
epi, Oris pojavnih oblik kmetijske politike v letih 1945-1960, 187-188.
long as they had money. This opened the door to the modernization of
private farming, enabling many peasants to somewhat modify their previously involved participation in the socialist cooperation with the cooperative sector. The peasants were allowed to participate in the market
independently by selling their products directly to end customers. These
changes again brought up the issue of the land ownership maximum, as
the threshold, set at 10 ha, gradually became very limiting. For this reason, the constitution of 1974 already anticipated the possibility of peasants leasing additional holdings but the details of the regulation were to
be determined by the republics. The possibility of leasing land, in theoretically unlimited extent, certainly opened doors towards ambitious entrepreneurship in private farming. Of course, it was all within the existing
communist framework. The main restriction, as in other sectors, was the
limit on hiring workers, whose numbers could only be very low. The agriculture as a whole also benefited from a favourable correction of the
relative prices.43 Until the 1980s, the pricing policy in the agriculture was
fundamentally characterized by the transfer of accumulation from agriculture to industry. This was accompanied by changes in the tax system,
which was gradually becoming more favourable to the peasantry. Following the discontinuation of the collectivization, wherein the above-average
tax burden placed on the peasants served to capture accumulation, gradual changes made the tax system comparatively favourable to private
farmers, substituting politically arbitrary progressive tax bases with a system that taxed cadastral income after subtracting the material costs of
production. However, in 1971 Slovenia and Croatia switched to a system
that taxed the peasants' actual income. The elements of economic discrimination against the peasantry outlined above also affected the profitability and efficiency of the production. In Slovenia (and elsewhere in
Yugoslavia), the profitability and efficiency of the private agricultural
sector consistently lagged behind the state-run agricultural sector, both
due to pricing policies and to administrative restriction of investments on
private farms. The difference between the sectors' relative increase of
production became particularly significant from the 1960s onward, to the
disadvantage of the private agriculture.44
43
Ivan Loncarevic, Prices and Private Agriculture in Yugoslavia, Soviet Studies 39 (1987), 628-650.
44
J. Turk, The Aggregate Econometric Model of Slovenian Agriculture from 1951
until the Process of an Overall Economic Transition, Zbornik Biotehnike
254 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
The mentioned elements of the economic emancipation were also joined

by the social emancipation of the peasantry. By far the most important
milestone on this road was the introduction of the social insurance for the
peasants. Up until 1965, peasants were excluded from the system of free
health insurance and were not allowed to get their own insurance either.
They had to pay all their medical costs in cash out of their own pockets.
The situation was no different with pension and disability insurance.45
These circumstances of course spurred deagrarianization and the creation
of the so-called mixed farms, as peasants sought employment at nearby
factories while still working their land. The peasants and their family
members thus acquired all the rights arising from health, pension and accident insurance. This phenomenon was particularly common in Slovenia, where the 1960s marked the beginning of a policy of the polycentric
development and dispersed industrialization.46 From 1965 onward, health,
pension and disability insurance was ensured for all peasants who were in
any way involved with the cooperative system. On the other hand, peasants who did not participate in the cooperatives could sign a contract for
health, pension and disability insurance with the competent state agencies, but had to pay it on their own in full. A general social insurance for
all peasants was instituted as late as in 1979.47 Slovenia, however, was
fakultete 68 (1996), 81-89; tefan Bojnec, Proizvodna funkcija jugoslovenske

poljoprivrede, [Production Function of Agriculture in Yugoslavia] Ekonomska
analiza 15 (1991), 79-90; Mieko Nishimizu, John M. Page, Total Factor Productivity Growth. Technological Progress and Technical Efficieny Change: Dimensions of Productivity Change in Yugoslavia, 1965-78, Economic Journal 92
(1982), 920-936; Michael L. Boyd, The Performance of Private and Cooperative
Socialist Organization: Postwar Yugoslav Agriculture, The Review of Economics
and Statistics 69 (1987), 205-214; Richard A. Hofler, James E. Payne, Efficiency
in Social versus Private Agriculture Production: The Case of Yugoslavia, The
Review of Economics and Statistics 75 (1993), 153-157.
45
Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva, 30, 62, 104-106.
46
Colin Thomas, Industrial Development in Agrarian Communities: Case Studies from Slovenia, Geografiska Annaler 70 (1988), 227-237; Joe Prini,
Neven Borak, Iz reforme v reformo: slovensko gospodarstvo 1970-1991, [Slovenian Economy 1970-1991] (Ljubljana: Faculty of Social Sciences, 2006).
47
Veselinov, Sumrak seljatva, 108-109.
ahead of Yugoslavia and introduced social insurance for peasants a little

earlier.48
Conclusions
The present paper focused on the status of the private farming in Communist Slovenia and, consequently, Yugoslavia. Before Communism,
peasants were the principal social class of the Slovenian national ideology. And how could it be otherwise, since Slovenia remained an agrarian
society, both in the economic and social sense, right until World War II.
The assertion of peasants and agriculture into the ideological and political
imagery was associated with the structural shifts that occurred from mid19th century to World War II. Just as it had been in other parts of Europe,
the appearance of agriculture in the social imagery had more than one
dimension as it coincided with the admission of multitudes to politics
thanks to the expansion of the right to vote. All this resulted in a new political balance and a different perception of the social structure, while also
affecting the formation of agendas in various sub-systems. Affirmation
and approval could now only be gained by adapting the strategies and
practices of public political actions and by formulating the development
priorities for the economy and society. All these changes were brought
together in a public discourse that was not allowed to discriminate against
the masses of peasants and placed them at the very heart of national ideology instead.49
The years after World War II, however, were a completely different matter and represented a turning point for the categorization of the agricultural population. The system placed the proletarian the proletarian as
the dynamic pole of national history at the heart of the new ideology,
including the national ideology, In this context, peasants were internally
differentiated, and only the working peasants (i.e. the small and poor
ones!) were admitted into the Communist ideological imagery. The others
48
49
Breda lavs Kotomaj, Razvoj pokojninskega in invalidskega zavarovanja

kmetov na Slovenskem [The Development of Pension System for Peasants in
Slovenia] (Koper: University of Primorska, Faculty of Management, 2008).
arko Lazarevi, Slovenski kmeki svet med fikcijo in gospodarsko
zgodovino (Impresije iz imaginarijev kmekega sveta do druge svetovne
vojne), [Slovene Peasants World Between the Fiction and Economic History
(Imaging the Pesants World up to the WW II] Prispevki za novejo zgodovino
54/2 (2014), 45-48.
256 ____________________________________________ arko LAZAREVI
were excluded from it due to their peasant character. This had a significant impact on the treatment of peasants as economic operators, as individuals, and as a social class. The establishment of the Communist
regime and the implementation of the system of central planning thus radically changed the circumstances of agricultural activity and of the peasants themselves. This happened similarly as in other Communist EasternEuropean countries, only a little earlier.50 It could be said that the agricultural policy after 1945 was based on the peasants being economically, socially and politically discriminated against, which doubtlessly had a longterm impact on the public image of the agriculture as a sector and of the
peasantry as a social class. The unequal political and administrative
treatment of different sectors of the economy in the Slovenian (Yugoslav)
version of the socialism doubtlessly produced some undesirable results. If
the success of a given agricultural policy is to be gauged using the most
basic economic indicators, e.g. the amount of food produced or cost per
produced unit, the verdict is clear. In the long term, Slovenian (Yugoslav)
agricultural policy was unsuccessful as it failed to ensure self-sufficiency
in food, while the costs per unit produced were high in spite of the fact
that the labour of peasants and other workers in farming was woefully
undervalued. Due to its poor economic results, Slovenian (Yugoslav) agricultural policy underwent a number of reforms in the four decades of
Communist rule. However, the reforms only ever changed the tactics,
while the strategy remained the same.
The agricultural policy was based on the Marxist interpretation which
stated that peasants would ultimately be unable to endure as small producers because of the concentration of land holdings and the monopolization of the production in the form of large estates. And it was precisely
this inevitability of the peasants' proletarianization in the capitalist system
that was used as a justification for the principles of the Communist agricultural policy in Slovenia (Yugoslavia).51 The ideologues of the Yugoslav agricultural policy were additionally basing their ideas on the
premise that private agriculture (no matter its scale) would continually
open doors to the reinforcement of the capitalist relations in the country50
51
Karl-Eugen Wadekin, The Place of Agriculture in the European Communist

Economies: A Statistical Essay, Soviet Studies 29 (1977), 238-254.
Slava Partli, Znanost v agrarni politiki Jugoslavije, [The Science in Yugoslav Agricultural Policy] Teorija in praksa 26 (1989), 428-434.
side, a dynamic contrary to the tendencies of the Communist Party.52 It is

thus clear that regardless of any changes in the following decades, the
fundamental goal of the agricultural policy was either the elimination of
the peasantry as a separate social class as in the early period, or its political, social and economical confinement within narrow production boundaries. The first approach was prevalent in the period immediately after the
war, the second in the following thirty years. The first period could be defined as starting with the 1945 agrarian reform and ending with the discontinuance of the collectivization in 1953 or mid-1950s. The policy of
this period was markedly discriminatory, even biased against peasants as
individuals and peasantry as a social category. The second period could
be defined as coming face to face with reality. Initially, this was a time
when peasants were merely tolerated, as the goal of their elimination
from the economy was still being pursued; however, the elimination was
supposed to be gradual, achieved mostly through economic pressures rather than political or administrative oppression. A very important mechanism in this regard was the new system of socialist cooperatives. It was
obvious that the regime had realized that private farming would be impossible to eliminate, save through an extreme use of force. Moreover,
the agricultural question as a political issue lost much of its relevance.
The reason for this was the radical decrease in farming population due to
urbanization, i.e. the transition of peasants into industry, as well as emigration from the 1960s onward. From the mid-1950s, the private agricultural sector was undergoing a gradual liberalization. Private farmers were
given the right to private land ownership (although limited to 10 ha) and
were acknowledged as legitimate economic subjects with the right to pursue their own economic interests. They were free to modernize their
technology and allowed to independently participate in the market, and a
new tax system was introduced that was more transparent and more favourable. This was accompanied by the social emancipation of the peasantry in the framework of the Communist system. And although it was a
long time coming, they finally acquired the right to health, pension and
disability insurance.
52
Three Waves of Collectivization in one Country (Interactions

of Political Practices and Peasants Resistance Strategies
in Hungary in the long 1950s)
Zsuzsanna VARGA
The 20th-century history of rural society in Hungary can be interpreted as
a permanent struggle for the holding and the repossession of landed property. Both world wars were followed by land reforms, the latter one in
1945 was more radical and small peasant farming became dominant. In
1949 collectivization began, and as a result cooperatives had replaced individual farms by 1961.1 In the early 1990s, following the change of political regime, the establishment of agriculture based on private property
dominated the agenda. It is obvious that the second half of the century
was particularly dramatic for the rural society, and especially the long
decade that saw three violent waves of collectivization.
For the Eastern European countries at the end of the 1940s, it was compulsory to follow the Soviet blueprint in every area. The multi-party system
had been replaced by the hegemony of the communist party.2 Industry and
trade saw the completion of a nationalization process, the switch to planned
economy was underway. The socialist reorganization of agriculture, actually meaning collectivization, was also on the agenda. Peasantry had been
essentially the only social group possessing a significant amount of private
property, and therefore its survival had been less dependent on the state.
The existence and persistence of smallholders, however, had been in contradiction with the ideology of the communist party.
In 1949, the Hungarian party leadership going by expectations from the
Soviet Union estimated that 3 to 4 years would be sufficient to break
the will of the peasantry. The first wave of collectivization took place between 1949 and 1953, in the atmosphere of the Cold War with Stalin still
1
In Hungary the full name of the socialist cooperative was mezgazdasgi termelszvetkezet which translation is agricultural producers cooperative. In
western academic works there is another widely used term: collective farm. In
my paper I prefer to use cooperative.
The name of the communist party in Hungary between 1945-194: Hungarian
Communist Party (HCP), between 194-1956: Hungarian Workers Party
(HWP), between 1956-1989: Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (HSWP).
Three Waves of Collectivization in one Country (Interactions... ___________ 259
alive and in power. Even though the communist party managed to break
the strength of the wealthy stratum of rural society they proclaimed kulaks, it had failed to force the majority of the peasantry to join cooperatives. The failure of the first campaign became apparent following the
death of Stalin. At the time of the government led by Imre Nagy (19531955), a large number of the cooperatives that had been established forcefully were dissolved. Following a further turn in Soviet politics in early
1955, the HWP restarted collectivization in the autumn of that year. This
attempt, however, had lost momentum in just a few months time, by the
summer of 1956. After the revolution of 1956, this was followed by another wave of decollectivization, about two thirds of all cooperatives had
been dissolved. From 1957-1958 on, efforts to end the socialist reorganization of agriculture had gained support within the socialist camp. The
new party leadership in Hungary led by Jnos Kdr, seizing power following the repression of the revolution of 1956, was bound to demonstrate its loyalty to Moscow. A further campaign, coming after two failed
attempts, however, was a great risk. Finally, giving way to international
pressure to adjust to the example of other socialist countries, the party
leadership relaunched collectivization in the winter of 1958-1959, and it
had managed to complete it by 1961.
The key to understanding why the peasantry had undertaken this lengthy
and dramatic struggle lies in the attachment to family-owned small-scale
farms. Holding on to landed property is not only due to the fact that it
was the means to earn a living, but landed property also defined the local
social status of the family.3 As an experience passed on from one generation to the next, peasants believed that the only thing that ensured social
status and recognition was to have a family farm representing economic
independence. According to the rules of village life, the person the community honoured most was someone who had been his own master all his
life, meaning, never having to do wage work for someone else.
The above-mentioned suggests that in the form of collectivization, the leaders of the Hungarian Workers Party had been given a task that not even the
Soviet Communist Party had a working formula for.4 The situation in the
3
Edit Fl, Tams Hofer, Proper Peasants. Traditional Life in a Hungarian Village (Chicago: Aldine Publ. Comp., 1969), 40-58.
4
Nikolai A. Ivnicki, Velikii Perelom: tragedia krestanstva. Kollektivizaciia i
raskulacivanie v nacale 30-h godov. Po materialam Politbro CK VKP(b) i
260 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
Soviet Union was rather different from the one in Hungary. In the Soviet
Union all land was nationalized in November 1917, which meant that there
were no peasants with private property to force into the collective in the
late 1920s and 1930s.5 As a further significant difference, a large number
of Hungarian peasants had had extensive knowledge on market conditions.
The Stalinist model of collectivization was, thus, only partially applicable
to the Hungarian peasantry that consisted largely of smallholders.6 This
fundamental problem has not been paid due attention to in the Hungarian
literature of either before or after the political transition.7 In my paper, I am
undertaking a systematic analysis of the means of violence and coercion
(economic, administrative, criminal, psychological, physical, etc.) beside
the persecution of the kulaks taken over from the Soviet Union that had been
committed by the party-state with the purpose of liquidating the private
OGPU), in Sudbi rossiskovo krestanstva (Moskva, Rosspen, 1995), 249-297;
Lynne Viola, Collectivization in the Soviet Union: Specifities and Modalties,
in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements, eds. Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper (Budapest-New York: CEU Press, 2014), 49-78.
5
Roger P. Bartlett ed., Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia:
Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990); Pavel N. Zrijanov, Pozemelnie otnoseniia v russkoi
krestanskoi obschine vo vtoroi polivine XlX nacale XX veka, in Sobstvennost na zemlu v Rossii: istoria i sovremennost, ed. Dmitrii F. Aiatskoi
(Moszkva: Rosspen, 2002), 153-195.
6
Considering the issue of the existence of the Soviet model, I agree with Nigel
Swains argumentation: until Stalins death the Soviet model was a Stalinist
model. However, after 1953 this model changed, it became a moving target,
a changing set of features, due to the Krushchevs reforms. Nigel Swain,
Eastern European Collectivisation Campaigns Compared, 1945-1962, in The
Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe, 497-534.
7
Ferenc Donth, Reform s forradalom [Reform and Revolution] (Budapest:
Akadmiai, 1977); Jzsef . Kovcs, A paraszti trsadalom felszmolsa a
kommunista diktatrban. A vidki Magyarorszg politikai trsadalomtrtnete, 1945-1965 [The Elimination of the Peasantry in the Communist Dictatorship. The Political Social History of the Rural Hungary, 1945-1965]
(Budapest: Korall, 2012); Jzsef Nagy, A paraszti trsadalom felbomlsnak
kezdetei, 1945-56 [The Disintegration of the Peasant Society, 1945-56] (Budapest:
Napvilg, 2009); Sndor Orbn, Kt agrrforradalom Magyarorszgon [Two
Agrarian Revolutions in Hungary: Democratic and Socialist Agrarian Transformation, 1945-1961] (Budapest: Akadmiai, 1972).
property and the means of produce of peasants.8 Closely related to this is

the analysis of the reactions of the assaulted peasant society to these
drastic interventions from the state.9 How did the experience gathered
during consecutive collectivizations and decollectivizations change the
strategies of self-defence and survival among the peasantry during the
long decade of the 1950s? Aiming to find answers to such questions, my
research framework encompasses the process of Sovietization on the one
hand, and forms of national path-dependencies on the other.
Shedding light on the lengthy and interrupted process of collectivization
required multi-layered and systematic research. Due to the functioning of
the communist dictatorship, the starting point was corporate materials of
leading bodies of the HWP and the HSWP stored in the National Archives of Hungary as well as documents of the Agricultural Department
of the party centre. I also involved minutes of the Ministry of Agriculture
and studied materials in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State
Security. Remaining and previously scarcely studied documents of the
Agricultural Anti-Sabotage Department proved to be of great scientific
value. Beyond the national archives I also studied documents in a number
of local archives. The combination of macro- and micro perspectives
helps us to avoid the perception of party-state and peasantry as monolithic ones. The collection of data included contemporary press releases, too.
I also made use of oral history by conducting interviews in the counties
Ngrd and Pest.
David L. Hoffmann, Cultivating the Masses. Modern State Practices and Soviet
Socialism, 1914-1939 (London: Ithaca, 2011); Peter Holquist, State Violence
as Technique. A Logic of Violence in Soviet Totalitarianism, in Landscaping
the Human Garden. Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework, ed. Amir Weiner (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press,
2003), 19-45.
9
For more on the peasants defence and survival strategies, see: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalins Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after
Collectivisation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994);
James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivisation and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
262 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
Collectivization Decollectivization I
Concerning the property relations of the socialism, it is well known that
the core of the value system was expropriation of the expropriators, in
other words, to organize society on a basis of public (state and cooperative) instead of private ownership.10 When and where the communist party seized power, the process of replacing private ownership with public
ownership got accelerated. In industry, nationalization made it possible to
eliminate market relations very quickly, and to introduce a centrally controlled system of production and distribution in which the quality and
quantity of production by the now state-owned companies were prescribed by plan directives. Thus the planned economy came into being.11
The situation was totally different in agriculture, where peasant land
ownership showed a never before experienced extensiveness after the
WWII in the Eastern European countries.12 In Hungary, a country of large
estates in the interwar period, the land reform of 1945 had brought a radical change to the structure of landed property. As large and middle-sized
estates were redistributed, the number of small farms grew significantly,
with their number exceeding 2 million.13
With the intensification of the SovietAmerican confrontation, the demands from Moscow were clearly articulated for the acceleration of Sovietization in the region.14 Following the Cominform resolution condemning the
10
One of the fundamental axioms was stressing that the state ownership was superior over the other cooperative, private forms of ownership. In socialist
agriculture state farms represented this type. See more on this: Jnos Kornai,
The Socialist System. The Poltical Economy of Communism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992), 62-90.
11
Kornai, The Socialist System, 110-130.
12
Erik Mathijs, An Historical Overview of Central and Eastern European Land
Reform, in Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Central and Eastern
Europe, ed. Johan Frans Maria Swinnen (Aldershot: Ashgate Publ., 1997), 3354; Nigel Swain, Zsuzsanna Varga, Postwar Land Reforms in Comparative
Perspective, t Kontinens [Five Continents] 11/1 (2013), 141-158.
13
Sndor Szakcs, From Land Reform to Collectivization (1945-1956), in
Hungarian Agrarian Society from the Emancipation of Serfs (1848) to the Reprivatization of Land (1998), ed. Pter Gunst (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 257-267.
14
Ivn T. Berend, Central and Eastern Europe 1944-1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 3-39;
Yugoslav Communist Party in June 1948, it became obvious for the other
parties that they should put the collectivization on the agenda as soon as
possible. Most countries took initial measures in 1948 and began the fullscale collectivization campaigns in 1949.15 The exception was Eastern
Germany (Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany), not yet an independent
state when the Cominform line changed. Stalin allowed the campaign
there only in 1952.16
At the end of 1948 and the beginning of 1949 there was a controversy
emerging within the leadership of the Hungarian Workers Party on the
agrarian policy to be followed. In the course of the debate, the policy of
Mtys Rkosi (the first secretary of the HWP) and Ern Ger (the secretary responsible for the economic policy), who were willing to satisfy
Soviet demands even at the price of radical moves, clashed with the
stance taken by Imre Nagy, who was the leading agrarian expert of the
Party. Nagy warned of the dangers and negative consequences of rapid
and aggressive collectivization. He stressed that the vast majority of the
Hungarian peasants were sceptical about the idea of kolkhoz.17 In order to
avoid economic and social disturbances, he recommended a long and
gradual multi-sectoral transition. For his views Imre Nagy was labelled as
right wing and revisionist, and in September 1949 he was expelled from
the Politburo.18
The decision left no doubt as to the further direction of the HWPs agrarian policy. On 3 March 1949, the Political Committee (PC) of the HungaJoseph Rotschild, Return to Diversity. A Political History of East Central Europe
since World War II (3rd ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 125-146.
15
Swain, Eastern European Collectivisation, 497-534.
16
Arnd Bauerkmper, Lndliche Gesellschaft in der kommunistischen Diktatur.
Zwangsmodernisierung und Tradition in Brandenburg 1945-1963 (KlnWeimar-Wien: Bhlau Verlag, 2002), 123-157; Elke Scherstjanoi, SEDAgrarpolitik unter sowjetischer Kontrolle, 1949-53 (Mnchen: Oldenbourg
Verlag, 2007), 103-153; Jens Schne, Frhling auf dem Lande? Die Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2005), 40-72.
17
In the Soviet Union kolkhoz was a general term (actually an abbreviation for
kollektivnoie hoziaistvo) which covered the different types of collective farms
(TOZ, artel, commune). As with the mass collectivization the artel became
the preferred form, the term kolkhoz became a synonim for artel. Swain,
Eastern European Collectivisation, 507-508.
18
Jnos M. Rainer, Imre Nagy: a Biography (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 48-52.
264 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
rian Workers Party passed a resolution declaring that the transition from
small peasant farming to large-scale collectivized farming was to be accomplished in the course of the first five-year plan (1950-1954).19 The
agriculture was not only subordinated to the interests of industrial development, in fact, following the Stalinist example it was considered a sort of
inner colony.20
The Party had all the necessary means for putting the new agricultural
policy into operation. The background of institutions and decrees in connection with compulsory deliveries and taxation had been in existence for
years. The compulsory delivery system inherited from the war economy
appeared a particularly appropriate device.21 Following the Stalinist
doctrines regarding the need to restrict the activities of village exploiters,
a series of government decrees restricted the economic opportunities open
to the kulaks.22 Not only were they deprived of the right to the free use of
their land, but the process of expropriating the tools of production (chiefly
19
Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Orszgos Levltr (National Archives of Hungary,

hereafter cited as MNL OL) M-KS 276. f. 53. cs. 22. .e. Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg (PB) 1949. mrcius 3-i lsrl. [Minutes of the PC of HWP] 3
March 1949. Agenda 2. Javaslat a mezgazdasg tves tervre. [Proposition
on the agricultural part of the first five-year plan].
20
Pl Germuska, Socialist Miracle? Hungarian Industrial Development Policy
and Economic Growth, 1950-1975, The Journal of European Economic History 42 (2013) 87-134; Stephan Merl, The Role of Agriculture in Soviet Industrialization, in Communist Agriculure. Farming in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe, ed. Karl-Eugen Wdekin (London, New York: Routledge,
1990) 3-22.
21
Judit Tth, Padlssprsek kora. A beszolgltats Pest megyben [The Age of
Attic Cleansing. Obligatory Deliveries in Pest County] (Budapest: Pest Megye
Monogrfia Kzalaptvny, 2011); Zsuzsanna Varga, Wartime Agricultural
Policy in Peacetime: A Case Study of Hungary, 1940-1956 in War, Agriculture, and Food. Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s, eds. Paul Brassley,
Yves Segers and Leen Van Molle (New York: Routledge, 2012), 96-110.
22
A kulak was a person whose land reached or exceeded 14.25 hectares (ha), or
whose net cadastral income reached or exceeded 350 gold crowns. In Hungary, the value of land was traditionally expressed in a conventional value unit,
the gold crown. MNL OL MKS 276. f. 54. cs. 14. . e. A Titkrsg elterjesztse a kulk meghatrozsra [Proposition of the Secretariat on the definition of the kulak] 14 October 1948.
tractors and threshing machines) also began.23 This was related to efforts
to establish a state monopoly over the mechanised tools of production in
Hungarian agriculture, following the Stalinist model. The establishment
of a network of machine and tractor stations served the same purpose.24
It is important to stress that from the summer of 1948 not only the economic repression of the kulaks began, but at the end of the year Jnos
Kdr, the Minister of the Interior responsible also for the Secret Police
(the abbreviation in Hungarian: AVH) created the so-called kulak beater groups, which meant new types of repressive techniques.25 During the
next years the taxes (land tax, agricultural development contribution,
house tax, property tax, general income tax, social security contributions,
etc.) and compulsory delivery quotas imposed on the kulaks were set so
high that in practice they could not be met. Failure to deliver, however,
meant the imposition of default supplements and punitive interest, while
inability to pay could result in the auctioning off of property, imprisonment or internment.26
The incredibly high delivery quotas, combined with punitive sanctions,
had driven the kulaks into economic bankruptcy by 1950-1951. Recognising their attachment to their land and former lifestyle to be hopeless, they
surrendered their land to the state en masse, encouraging their children to
look for work outside agriculture. The proportion of land owned by kulaks
fell by 70 per cent compared to 1948, and by 1952 more than one-third of
the kulaks had become entirely landless. As a result of their exodus from
the land, the combined area of the state reserve lands which was, in
reality, fallow land more than doubled in 1952.27
Although the strength of the wealthy peasantry was shattered as a result
of the states anti-kulak campaign, the broad mass of the peasantry could
neither be forced nor persuaded to abandon private farming. Only the
23
Jzsef Nagy, A kulkkrds s megoldsa az 1948-1953-as vekben, [The

kulak Question and its Solution, 1948-1953] Mltunk [Our Past] 44/3 (1999),
41-97.
24
Szakcs, From Land Reform to Collectivization, 271-277.
25
Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (hereafter cited as BTL)
2.1. XI/8. BM Kollgiumi lsek anyagai [The meetings of the Political College of the Ministry of Interior] 1 December 1948, 7 March 1949, 16 March
1949.
26
See more on this Judit Tths contribution to this volume.
27
Nagy, A kulkkrds s megoldsa, 86-88.
266 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
landless and some of the poorest peasants showed any interest in collective
farming. It was in the Great Plain, predominantly in Bks, Csongrd, Hajd and Szolnok counties, that the first collective farms were formed.28 The
vast majority of landed peasants was reluctant to join farming cooperatives
voluntarily.29 What they had seen as POWs in the Soviet Union or heard
about the structure and the functioning of the kolkhoz assured them, that
they had swapped bad for worse. By giving up their private farming they
had lost their means of subsistence, and within the new conditions of cooperative farming their income; their mere existence became uncertain, not to
mention the new, subordinate position they had to face.
This was one of the main reasons why the HWP did not even attempt to
eliminate the peasant landed property. It was a distinctive feature of the
collectivization not only in Hungary. As Nigel Swain pointed out: In the
majority of the countries of Eastern Europe, there was no attempt in the
1940s or thereafter either to nationalize the soil or to create cooperatively
owned land. Land ownership remained formally with the peasants.30 We
should add that cooperative members could not sell, donate or lease their
lands. It means that the owners' rights along with the right of inheritance were abolished, and the principle of land-ownership rights was
only acknowledged in the form of the payment of land rent.31 What really
entailed the destruction of the traditional peasants attachment to their
parcels was the land consolidation, in other words commassation. The
problem for the non-collectivized peasants was the land offered by the
28
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 53. cs. 81. . e. Jegyzknyv a PB 1951. augusztus 23i lsrl. [Minutes of the PC of HWP] 23 August 1951. Agenda 1. Ger Ern
tjkoztatja a mezgazdasg helyzetrl [Ern Gers Memorandum on the
Situation of Agriculture].
29
Jzsef . Kovcs, The Forced Collectivization of Agriculture in Hungary,
1948-1961, in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern
Europe, 215-221.
30
Swain, Eastern European Collectivisation, 503.
31
In Hungary, the new land law in 1967 created the collective ownership of land.
Thereafter, three kinds of landed property existed: land owned by the state, by
a cooperative, and by private individuals. The ratio of private land within the
land cultivated by cooperatives steadily decreased, while the ratio of cooperative-owned land increased. Zsuzsanna Varga, The Post-Socialist Transformation of Land-Ownership Relations in Hungary, in Contexts of Property in
Europe. The Social Embeddedness of Property Rights in Land in Historical Perspective, eds. Rosa Congost, Rui Santos (Turnhut: Brepols, 2010), 268-271.
local land consolidation committee was usually of lower quality. Exchange effectively became a type of expropriation. From the autumn of
1949 until 1953 more than 4000 commassation procedures were performed in nearly 2300 villages, effecting more than 2 000 000 hectares.
As a consequence, fleeing from the land became characteristic.32
There was another common feature of the Eastern European collectivization campaigns, namely the permissible types of cooperatives. While in
the Soviet Union after the Model Charter of 1935 the artel became the
only allowed type of collective farms, in the Soviet bloc initially a choice
of simpler forms of cooperatives was permitted.33 In Hungary for example three types of producer cooperative groups were introduced (Type I,
II and III). The difference between these three types of cooperative
groups was based on the amount of communal production and the manner
in which the harvest was shared. On Type I farms the members sowed
jointly, but harvested individually, and kept their harvested produce for
themselves. On Type II farms, the members cut the harvest on an individual basis but then pooled it. Type III groups operated on an entirely
cooperative basis, distributing the surplus in relation to the amount of
work performed. The latter one was the equivalent of the artel.34
Those who joined the artel-type cooperatives were obliged to surrender
their tools of production and animals to the collective and to carry out all
work tasks (apart from work on household plots) as members of brigades
and work teams. The model charters of the cooperatives strictly defined
the operational scope of both the organization and its membership.35
What were the strategies of survival members had developed in- and outside the cooperatives?36 Village families had had to consider the means of
32
33
34
35
36
Levente Sipos, A hazai fldtulajdoni s fldhasznlati viszonyokrl, 19451989, [Land Ownership and Land use in Hungary, 1945-1989] Agrrtrtneti
Szemle [Agrarian History Review] 36/1-4 (1995), 493-509;
Robert William Davies, The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930 (London:
Macmillan, 1980), 1-14, 56-67.
Trvnyek s rendeletek hivatalos gyjtemnye, 1950 [Official Collection of
Laws and Ordinances, 1950] (Budapest: KJK, 1951), 385-387.
Karl-Eugen Wdekin, The Soviet Kolkhoz: Vehicle of Cooperative Farming
or of Control and Transfer of Resources, in Cooperative and Commune, ed.
Peter Dorner (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 95-116.
An interesting way to track down the survival strategies applied in- and outside agricultural cooperatives is reading the monthly and weekly reports sent
268 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
subsistence outside the cooperatives. If there had been a possibility to

find a job in the industrial sector, the most valuable worker in the family
took it on, and his wife or an elder member of the family was the one to
join the cooperative. This person took only the amount of work upon
himself in the cooperative that assured him the ownership of a household
farming. If the householder had not been able to find a job in the industrial sector, they had to seek other possibilities of work outside the cooperative. They could, for instance, do illegal day labour, work at constructions
or take on seasonal work at a state farm in the neighbourhood. In these
cases, they had got paid right after finishing work.37
As to survival strategies inside the cooperatives, members attempted to
take on work that would bring them as many work units as easily as possible.38 This method did work since labour norms had not been settled
proportionally. Although there had been some relatively light work that
had been worth less work units, they could achieve much more by surpassing the norm than by doing hard physical work, which, though earning
them more units, had not brought them any extra payment when exceeding the quotas. As former cooperative leader and minister of agriculture
by the County Committee of HWP to the Agricultural Department of HWPs
Central Leadership on the one hand, and the reports sent by the Agricultural
Department of County Council Committee to the Department of Agriculture
on the other. Another source of important information is the reports made by
the county commissaries to the Cooperative Council. Magyar Nemzeti
Levltr Hajd-Bihar Megyei Levltra (Hajd-Bihar County Archive of the
National Archives of Hungary, hereafter cited as MNL HBML) 24. f. 1. fcs. 9.
.e. 2. fcs. 13. .e. 18. .e.; Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Ngrd Megyei
Levltra (Ngrd County Archive of the National Archives of Hungary,
hereafter cited as MNL NML) 26. f. 2. cs. 1949-1951. 70. . e.; Magyar
Nemzeti Levltr Zala Megyei Levltra (Zala County Archive of the National
Archives of Hungary, hereafter cited as MNL ZML) MDP Zala M. Biz. ir.
2.fcs. 50..e, 63. .e., 64 .e; 1.f.cs. 26. .e.
37
Jzsef Nagy, A paraszti migrci irnyai s okai az tvenes vekben, [Directions and Reasons for the Migration of Peasants in the 50s] in Hatalom s trsadalom a XX. szzadi magyar trtnelemben [Society and Power in Hungary
in the 20th Century], ed. Tibor Valuch (Budapest: Osiris, 1995), 647-661.
38
Martha Lampland's excellent monography from a bottom-up perspective gives
an account on the villagers' resistance to socialist intusion in their lives. See
Martha Lampland, The Object of Labour. Commodification in Socialist Hungary (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 144-231.
Pl Losonczi put it: I would not be pleased myself working in a cooperative where I had troubles earning one single work unit a day [...] All this
was not a question of pride but a question of production norms applied
improperly.39
There had been a further powerful incitation for farmers to get as many
work units as they could. During the year they only knew the planned
value of work units, the true value had not been revealed until final accounts at the end of the year. This had made the cooperative member believe that the volume of his own income share depended on the number of
the work units he had finished.40 As a result of such poor work, produce
had grown less, hence, distributable income dropped, which, in turn, had
the value of work units sink. The following year, cooperative members
obviously tried to achieve even more work units, which had led to even
worse quality, consequently, the value of work units sank even lower.
This interaction kept on recurring year after year. They had made some
efforts to reverse this tendency, but without much success.41
Considering the above mentioned, it is little wonder that labour discipline
had become such an eminent problem in collective farms. In contemporary records you could bump into phrases like unfortunately not all the
farmers come to work regularly, or hacking had been finished behind
time today since a group of the farmers stayed longer for no good reason, or a group of the cooperative members were absent from collective
work in its hardest phase because of household farming activities. Not
only was the appropriate working morale missing on these farms, but
they lacked almost every other element of efficient production (such as
machines, professional skills, organization, etc.) as well. This absence in39
Jzsef Benke, A Barcsi Vrs Csillag Tsz hsz ve [Twenty Years from the
History of Red Star Cooperative in Barcs] (Budapest: Kossuth, 1968), 73.
40
Many farm histories contain interesting details about these problems. For best
examples see: Pter Halsz, A termelszvetkezeti mozgalom trtnete Aptfalvn [The History of the Cooperative Movement in Aptfalva] (Budapest:
Akadmiai, 1975); Lszl Koml, Csaba Kovcs, A kzs s egyni rdek a
Cegldi Nagy Sztlin Termelszvetkezetben [The Individual and Group Interests in the Great Stalin Cooperative in Cegld] Agrrtrtneti Szemle [Agrarian History Review] 21/3-4 (1979), 453-488.
41
Problems of work unit and labour day are discussed in: Nigel Swain, Collective Farms Which Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),
42-44.
270 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
dicates that only a tiny portion (10-13 per cent) of the investment provided
for under the first five-year plan actually ended up in agriculture.42
The impact of these difficulties could be seen in the economic results as
well. Although the authorities publicly claimed that the performance of
the cooperatives far surpassed that of the backward private farms, the
actual situation was the direct opposite. The newly established, continuously expanding cooperative farms were incapable of compensating for
the shortfall in production. It is important to refer to the enormous exodus
from the land (the abandoning of land, the offering of land to the state on
a massive scale, etc.). By 1953 570,000 hectares were left uncultivated.
The quantity of agricultural production during the five-year plan with
the exception of the positive year 1951 did not reach the levels of the
last pre-war year, 1938. The production of bread grains, which was of crucial
importance in public alimentation, showed similar tendencies. Animal
stocks exceeded pre-war levels, by a few percentage points, for the first
time in 1950. However, following the decline in 1951, the levels of 1950
could only be reached and surpassed by the middle of the decade.43
Although by the turn of 1952-1953 the situation in the agrarian sector had
become dramatic, the subjugation of the peasantry to arbitrary and coercive measures did not result in open resistance.44 It seems especially striking if we take into account the mass revolts in Romania, Yugoslavia and
even in Bulgaria.45 By the turn of 1952-1953 the situation in the agrarian
42
Ivn Pet, Sndor Szakcs, A hazai gazdasg ngy vtizednek trtnete 19451985. I. (Az jjpts s a tervutastsos irnyts idszaka 1945-1968 [The
History of Four Decades of Domestic Economy, 1945-1985. vol. 1, The Period of Rebuilding and Command Economic Planning, 1945-1968] (Budapest:
KJK, 1985), 160.
43
Pet, Szakcs, A hazai gazdasg ngy vtizednek trtnete 1945-1985. I, 204212.
44
Gyngyi Farkass recent research shows some interesting exceptions from the
Eastern part of Hungary. Gyngyi Farkas, A nyrcsaholyi asszonytntets
[Women Demonstration in Nyrcsaholy] in Nyrcsaholy trtnete s
nprajza [History and Ethnography of Nyrcsaholy], ed. Lszl Cservenyk
(Debrecen: 2012), 27-51.
45
Constantin Iordachi, Constana, the First Collectivized Region: Soviet Geopolitical Interests and National and Regional Factors in the Collectivization of
Dobrogea (1949-62), in Transforming Peasants, Property and Power: the
Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania, 1949-1962, eds. Constantin
Iordachi, Dorin Dobrincu (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009), 103-139; Melissa
sector had become threatening in its consequences for the whole of Hungarian society.
At the time of Stalin's death in the spring of 1953, economic and social
tensions were so high within the entire Socialist bloc that corrections became inevitable.46 The leaders of the Kremlin - despite the power struggles among them agreed that the tensions that had accumulated in the
previous years should be alleviated as soon as possible. Hungarian party
and state leaders were ordered to Moscow, where they were informed of
the New Course between 13 and 16 June 1953. Mtys Rkosi was instructed by Moscow to retain his position as the Partys secretary-general,
but to relinquish his prime-ministership to Imre Nagy.47
It is very interesting to recall how the Soviet leadership saw the Hungarian agriculture in the summer of 1953. Malenkov: [...] The facts at our
disposal reveal that the situation in agriculture is not good. The level of
animal husbandry is not improving. Quite the contrary: it is deteriorating.
As for the cooperatives, the situation there is no better. We know that between 8000 and 10000 families left the cooperatives last year. [...] There
were excessive regulations concerning compulsory deliveries. [...] Many
peasants are being sentenced by the courts for not fulfilling their obligations towards the state.48
Beria: [...] The cooperative sector in Hungary would work much better if
the Central Leadership and the Government paid more attention to agriculture. [...] Peasants would not leave agriculture to work in industry.
Peasants would not be hugely in debt towards the state. According to our
figures, this debt amounts to 400 million forints. Peasants would not be
unaware of how much they need to deliver next year. Comrade Imre
Nagy was expelled from the Politburo because he suggested that the cooperative movement should be developed more slowly. He should not
Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists. Politics and Ideology in the Yugoslav
Countryside, 1941-1953 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), 4754; Mihail Gruev, Collectivization and Social Change in Bulgaria, 1940s-1950s,
in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe, 333-372.
46
Mark Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939-2000 (London: Arnold, 2004), 63-85.
47
Rainer, Imre Nagy, 64-65.
48
Gyrgy T. Varga, Jegyzknyv a szovjet s a magyar prt- s llami vezetk
trgyalsairl, [Minutes of the Negotiations between the Soviet and Hungarian Party- and State Leaders, 13-16. June 1953] Mltunk [Our Past] 37/2-3
(1992), 238.
272 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
have been. The comrades at the head of the Central Leadership and the
Council of Ministers do not know the villages well enough, nor do they
even want to know the villages well enough.49
The Imre Nagy Government promised a programme to raise living standards
and eliminate disruptions in supply, at a time when there were shortages
of virtually everything. The key concept of the New Course policy was
to reduce industrial, and in particular heavy industrial, investments, and to
redirect the resources thus released into agriculture, branches producing
consumer goods, and house construction.50 At the same time, the hardships involved in making mid-year corrections in 1953 inherently limited
changes in investment policy. It was also obvious that the structure and
technical standards of industry were so distorted that rapid correction was
impossible.
The leaderships main emphasis was on agrarian policy. Accordingly, the
Council of Ministers passed almost 50 decrees on agriculture within a
few months in the second half of 1953. These measures were indicative
of a genuine turnaround, the recognition that an increase in agricultural
production and in the willingness of producers could only be achieved if
the party-state abandoned its former administrative measures, allowing
more ground for goods and money relations and encouraging the interest
of producers.
The tax and delivery burdens on agricultural producers were reduced.
Fines for failure to deliver were abolished, and part of the accumulated
delivery and tax arrears were written off. The kulak lists were abolished.
In December 1953 a new decree on compulsory delivery set out the regulations for delivery for three years in advance, making farming more predictable. Farming leases were allowed up to 14.25 hectares, and
regulations were even passed on the returning of lands that had been
abandoned or surrendered after 1951. The fees payable to tractor stations
were also reduced.51
49
Varga, Jegyzknyv a szovjet s a magyar prt- s llami vezetk trgyalsairl, 239.

50
51
Zsuzsanna Varga, Agrarian Development from 1945 to the Present Day, in
History of Hungarian Agriculture and Rural Life, 1848-2004, ed. Jnos Estk
(Budapest: Magyar Mezgazdasgi Mzeum, 2004), 251-253.
The measures passed by the Imre Nagy Government eased the situation
of every agricultural producer. In the majority of the decrees, the cooperatives enjoyed greater benefits than individual farmers. Thus the complete collapse of the cooperative system was avoided, but not its largescale dissolution. While in the past it had not been possible to leave a cooperative within three years of joining, in the second half of 1953 this restriction was lifted and a significant number of members decided to leave.
Furthermore, a cooperative could be disbanded with the consensus of
two-thirds of the membership. In the second half of 1953, some 688 of
the 5224 cooperatives were disbanded, followed by a further 255 in 1954.
The 376000 membership of the cooperatives fell by 126 000 by the end
of 1953, and by a further 20000 in 1954. The 1 620 000 hectares of collectively cultivated land registered in mid-1953 fell by 477 000 hectares
by the end of the year, and by 61 000 hectares during 1954.52
The policy of the New Course again raised hopes among the peasantry:
around 200 000 private farms returned to individual farming. The series
of agrarian political measures not only improved the situation of the
peasantry but, with the expansion of the food supply, it also resulted in
favourable changes in every stratum of the population. In 1954 the pace
of house construction accelerated, and public consumption increased by
almost 20 per cent compared to 1953.53 The effect of these measures was
in sharp contrast to the exploitative policy of the previous years, which
had demanded permanent sacrifices.
Collectivization Decollectivization II
The policy of the New Course as discussed earlier started on an initiative from Moscow and its future was determined by the interests of the
Soviet superpower. At the turn of 1954-1955, West Germany joined
NATO, modifying the Soviet Unions policy: the development of heavy
and military industry once again came to the fore.54
In January 1955 the Hungarian leadership was ordered to Moscow, where
Imre Nagy in particular was criticised for what the Soviets had advised
52

54
Lszl Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War (Budapest-New York: CEU Press,
2004), 235-238.
53
274 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
him to do in the summer of 1953, and for the very things that had characterised Soviet practice in 1953-1954. The main element of the criticism
was that the policy of living standards had been overemphasised, thus the
development of industry, and of heavy industry in particular, had been
neglected, while in the villages the organization of cooperatives had been
ignored and support given to the stabilisation of small peasant farms. 55
Let me quote from the minutes of the meeting just as to indicate the atmosphere: Voroshilov [] We must not look at the political and economic issues of the country exclusively from the viewpoint of the
peasantry. There are still a great number of smallholders producing goods
in Hungary. [] These peasants reproduce capitalism each day. Landed
property in Hungary is not nationalized. You are certainly mistaken and
represent wrong views in case you ignore all this.56
Molotov went on: [...] In July 1953, Comrade Nagy argued in a speech
that members should be allowed to leave agricultural cooperatives. (Interruption by Comrade Nagy: This was not my idea. We were given advice
from here. Dobi even spoke out against it.) Indeed, in his speech Beria
did give such advice, but after Berias arrest we warned you to think
things over again and to be cautious. Comrade Nagy talked with pathos
about leaving the cooperatives, which makes things even worse.57
Here stands a criticism made by Khrushchev to Imre Nagy that amounts
to a threat. [] Why did you abandon the construction of the metallurgical plant in Stalin City? We criticised you for excessive industrialisation, but industrialisation must be carried out rationally, not abolished. If
there is no industrialisation, if there is no significant machine industry,
we will be unable to compete with the enemy. Whether or not there is a
war, industry must be developed. There may be enough bacon, but if
there are no aeroplanes there will be trouble.58
Since Imre Nagy was not willing to perform self-criticism on his return, he
was firstly labelled once again as right-wing and revisionist, then relieved
55
Jnos M. Rainer, Kroly Urbn, Konzultcik. Dokumentumok a magyar s

szovjet prtvezetk kt moszkvai tallkozjrl 1954-1955-ben, [Consultations. Documents of two Meetings of the Hungarian and Soviet Party Leaders
in Moscow] Mltunk [Our Past] 37/4 (1992), 141-148.
56
Rainer, Urbn, Konzultcik, 142.
57
58
of all his offices. On 18 April 1955 the National Assembly relieved him of
his office as prime minister, and on 3 December he was excluded from the
Party. Andrs Hegeds became the new head of government, thus in the
spring of 1955 the Stalinist line of Rkosi and Ger became dominant.59
With the economic policy measures passed in 1955, Rkosi and his followers returned to the pre-1953 line in practically every area. Resources
for renewing the coerced development of heavy and military industry
could only be provided by cutting public consumption and by an increased draining off of agricultural income. Accordingly, the delivery and
tax burdens on agricultural producers were increased, and the three-year
ban on leaving cooperatives was reintroduced.60 These steps served as
preparations for a new collectivization campaign. The controversy surrounding this issue had sharpened among the party leadership. As mentioned earlier, following the death of Stalin, an opportunity arose to
criticize the pre-1953 agricultural policy, especially the adaption of the
Stalinist model that had been absolutely strange to Hungarian conditions.
These criticisms resurfaced during the preparation for the following, already second wave of collectivization. At the sessions of the Committee
for Agricultural Cooperatives Ferenc Erdei, Lajos Fehr and Ferenc
Donth kept pointing out the severe economic and social problems that
had arisen as a result of the first collectivization.61
The judgement of the agricultural cooperatives functioning on after 1953
was a further point of controversy. The issue was that many cooperatives,
giving way to the needs of the members, had agreed to modify the ground
principles of the Stalinist model charter. They departed from the system
of work units and gave members a larger area of household plots than authorized in the original regulation.
Representatives of the dogmatic wing did not care about the criticisms,
nor did they approve of the initiatives coming from below mentioned earlier. The party leadership made the decision on restarting collectivization
by ignoring all these motions. At the session of the Political Committee
held on 26 May 1955 and that of the Central Leadership on 7-8 June the
59

Varga, Agrarian Development, 254-255.
61
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 93. cs. 508-513. . e. A PB ltal kikldtt Termelszvetkezeti Bizottsg lseirl kszlt jegyzknyvek, 1954-1955 [Minutes
of the Sessions of the Committee for Agricultural Cooperatives, 1954-1955].
60
276 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
Rkosi and Ger clique laid out the objective to be achieved: 50 000 to
60 000 families had to be incorporated into the cooperatives by the end of
that year.62 By the end of the following five-year plan (until 1960), they
reckoned on some half a million new entries by smallholders and middle
peasants and an arable land of about 2,5 million hectares.
In the first 7 to 8 months of 1955, about 21 000 - 22 000 families had
joined the cooperatives, while in the same period some 7000 to 8000 had
left or were expelled.63 The official party newspaper, Szabad Np celebrated this as an upswing: Our cooperative movement is, by all appearances, continuing a healthy progress following a nearly two-year
hiatus. The socialist sector is gathering ground in agriculture. [] The
dominance of large-scale farming is only ignored or denied by those who
wish to bury their heads in the sand like an ostrich so as not to see or
hear.64 [Italics in the original.]
In reality, however, landed peasants kept away from cooperative farming.
The experiences of the former campaign, as well as those of dissolving cooperatives were still in recent memory. There had been particularly strong
resistance from those who left the cooperatives in 1953 and made a great
sacrifice to restart their own farming. Upon leaving the cooperative they
were charged a proportionate part of the cooperatives total debt, which
meant a huge burden for them. Many of them were just able to repay their
share of the debt by 1955, when collectivization was restarted.
62
63
64
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 53. cs. 233. . e. Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg

1955. mjus 26-i lsrl [Minutes of the PC of HWP] 26 May 1955. Agenda
1. Hatrozati javaslat a mezgazdasg szocialista tszervezsnek s a
mezgazdasgi termels fellendtsnek feladatairl [Suggestion for a Resolution on the Socialist Reorganization of Agriculture]; MNL OL M-KS 276. f.
52. cs. 30. . e. Jegyzknyv a Kzponti Vezetsg 1955. jnius 7-8-i lsrl
[Minutes of the Central Leadership of HWP] 7-8 June 1955. Agenda 1. A
mezgazdasg szocialista tszervezsnek s a mezgazdasgi termels
fellendtsnek tovbbi feladatai [Further Targets of the Socialist Reorganization of Agriculture].
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 53. cs. 515. .e. A KV Mezgazdasgi s Szvetkezeti
Osztly jelentse a Termelszvetkezeti Bizottsgnak a termelszvetkezetek
szmszer fejlesztsrl [The Report of the Agricultural Department of the Central Leadership to the Committee for Agricultural Cooperatives] August 1955.
A fellendls j jelensgei a termelszvetkezetekben, [New Phenomena of
Upswing in Agricultural Cooperatives] Szabad Np [Free People] 31 July 1955.
According to archival sources, the party staff in the countryside was not
as eager to fight battles as in the times before 1953, either. On the one
hand, many party officials grew hesitant as a result of the criticism and
sporadic punishments in 1953. On the other, many party members were
not so eager to help reorganize cooperatives, since they themselves had
been engaged in farming. The party leadership, however, expected them
to set an example by joining the cooperatives immediately.
The figures mentioned above were significantly lower than the ones expected by the political leadership. On its session held on 11 August 1955,
the Political Committee, establishing that the development of the cooperatives went too slow, instructed the party and state organizations to double
their efforts in order to more effectively develop cooperatives. They believed that under the present circumstances [] a much larger development is possible than the one achieved by most counties. Furthermore,
they announced that it would be desirable to accomplish the full annual
development by late September, for that enables intensive joint work in
autumn.65 As a further firm expectation, only cooperatives of the Type
III resembling the Soviet kolkhoz most were allowed to be developed.
Previous measures of administrative coercion were reintroduced. Land
consolidation (commassation) was ordered in 200 villages with a tight
schedule to be accomplished by the end of summer. Peasants saw contracts of lease for land reserved by the state terminated by administrative
measures.66 Simultaneously, they aimed at increasing burdens on individual
farmers, forced collection of tax and delivery arrears as well as transfer
without prior notice became frequent.
In September and October 1955, the collectivization campaign got under
way in the western part of the country, too. Cooperative villages were established by the dozens in the counties Somogy, Zala and Vas. One way
to achieve this had been to have agitators regularly invade a village and
65
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 53. cs. 243. .e. 2. Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg
1955. augusztus 11-i lsrl [Minutes of the PC of HWP] 11 August 1955.
Agenda 2. Az FM, a Termelszvetkezeti Tancs s a KV Mezgazdasgi
Osztlya kzs jelentse a termelszvetkezetek szmszer fejlesztsrl s a
tagosts elksztsrl [Joint Report of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Cooperative Council and the Agricultural Department of the Central Leadership
on the Cooperative Development and the Preparation of Land Consolidation]
66
278 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
have them push peasant families until they agreed to sign the declaration
to join the cooperative. As a result of the intensive agitation and coercion,
in 1955-1956, the number of cooperatives as well as their membership
was on the rise again. In the second half of 1955, the number of cooperatives grew by 450, and the number of new member families grew by
67000. What is more, the annual land development plan had been overfulfilled by 40000 acres by November.67 The party leadership led by
Rkosi came to the conclusion that they could proceed with the reorganization in 1956 at a higher pace than originally planned.
By the spring of 1956, however, it became clear that the party leadership
had to face a growing resistance from the peasantry. A sign of this was
the late and only partial fulfillment of their compulsory deliveries.68 Another form of massive resistance was the precondition of members forced
to enter in the autumn to take up work no earlier than next spring. In fact,
peasants did all they could to balk the handover of their livestock and
their equipment. They also resisted establishing a common work organization. A report by the Agricultural Department of County Council of
Zala County from July 1956 depicts it as follows: They evade common
work by claiming that they had been forced into the cooperative. [...]
They observe each other on a county level, they run an almost organized
information network and evade common work through consequent delay,
finding excuses [] They insist that in case they do not take up common
work within six months, their signature lapses and is no longer valid.69
In the summer and autumn cooperatives began to disband spontaneously,
which constituted a mass rejection of collectivization. By the end of September, the Political Committee had to discuss the critical situation of a
number of western counties.70 There were some 12 cooperatives from the
67

Netta Nagy, Peasant Behaviour Forms and Survival Techniques in Villages of
the Homokhtsg Region in the Years of Compulsory Produce Delivery,
1945-1956, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 58/1 (2013), 37-56.
69
MNL ZML 57. f. Zala Megyei Tancs VB Mezgazdasgi Igazgatsg iratai,
1953-1956. [Documents of the Agricultural Department of County Council of
Zala County,1953-1956] 12. .e. Jelents a tsz-ek jelenlegi helyzetrl [Report
on the Current Situation of the Cooperatives] 2 July 1956.
70
For a detailed account on the specialities of this region, see: Csaba Kli,
Bekerts s trsadalmi ellenlls. A parasztsg kollektivizlsa Zalban,
[Surrounding and Social Resistance. The Collectivization in Zala County] in
68
county Baranya where members were considering dissolving and

there were more members leaving the cooperative than usual. Reports
from the western county Gyr even went as far as saying that a whole
series of villages see their cooperatives dissolve [], that will cause
trouble on a national level. The county Vas was also on the agenda,
where the situation got critical in some 20 villages.71
It was no accident that it was exactly these counties that saw a particularly strong resistance by peasants. As already mentioned, it had been this
part of the country where the organization of cooperatives had been particularly coercive. It is suggestive that even the summary report sent to
the Political Committee had acknowledged this: The fact that there is a
tendency to leave these cooperatives should be a warning to us. The excessive measures applied last year (not only the violence but also a number of cooperatives being established without the economic basis and
proper preparations) had and still have a detrimental impact on the cooperative movement. In many villages we did not manage to regain the trust
of the peasantry. In certain villages of the aforementioned counties the
situation got even more intense in the last few days.72 The party leadership deemed the situation so severe that they backed out. They authorised
individual exits from the cooperatives, in spite of the valid rules that allowed exits only after a three-year cooperative membership.
From early 1956, signs of crisis became increasingly apparent in political,
social and economic life. The Hungarian societys dissatisfaction with the
changing policies and unfulfilled promises of the party leadership further
increased following the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist Party,
71
72
llami erszak s kollektivizls a kommunista diktatrban [State Repression

and the Collectivization in the Communist Dictatorship], eds. Sndor Horvth,
Jzsef . Kovcs (Budapest: MTA BTK Trtnettudomnyi Intzet, 2015),
181-202.
MNL OL M-KS 276.f. 53. cs. 304. . e. Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg
1956. szeptember 28-n tartott lsrl [Minutes of the PC of HWP] 28 September 1956. Agenda 2. A KV Mezgazdasgi Osztlynak jelentse Vas,
Gyr, Zala, Somogy s Baranya megyk egyes termelszvetkezeteiben tapasztalhat kilpsi trekvsrl. [Report of the Agricultural Department of the
Central Leadeship on Exits from Certain Cooperatives in the Counties Vas,
Gyr, Zala, Somogy and Baranya]
MNL OL M-KS 276.f. 53. cs. 304. . e. Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg
1956. szeptember 28-n tartott lsrl.
280 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
held between 14 and 25 February 1956, at which alternative paths towards

the building of Socialism were legalised. This reinforced the beliefs held by
various strata of Hungarian society, since during the one and a half years of
the New Course followed by the Imre Nagy Government, they had experienced the possibility of other roads towards the building of socialism
than that represented by the Rkosi and Ger clique.73
Unrest within various groups of society and increasing participation in
public life also became apparent in connection with agrarian problems.74
This was manifested in the lectures, and the related passionate debates,
held throughout the country.
My interviews made it clear that this atmosphere had an impact even on
those experts and politicians who, being members of the leadership, were
trying to find a way out from the worsening critical situation.75 Nevertheless, the party leadership did not have enough time to act and implement
the political and economic reform measures that had been long overdue.
The political-economic crisis culminated in October 1956. The revolution
and fight for independence started on 23 October 1956 with student
demonstrations and subsequent armed clashes in Budapest and other big
cities. A few days later the revolution arrived in Hungary's villages and the
village communities succeeded in organizing themselves within a very
short time.76 The government quickly assessed the peasants demands. In
73
Magdolna Barth, Magyar-szovjet kapcsolatok az SZKP XX. kongresszustl

a forradalomig, [Hungarian-Soviet Relations from the 20th Congress of Soviet Communist Party until the Revolution] in VH-Politika-1956 [Secret police-Politics-1956], ed. Imre Okvth (Budapest: BTL, 2007), 13-44; Csaba
Bks, Jnos M. Rainer, Malcolm Byrne eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: a History in Documents (Budapest: CEU Press, 2002), 1-13.
74
Jnos Keser, A XX. kongresszus nhny tanulsga a magyar mezgazdasg
szmra, [Some Lessons from the 20th Congress on Hungarian Agriculture]
Szabad Np [Free People], 14 April 1956.
75
A szerz interjja Dimny Imrvel, 2012. janur 31 [The authors interview
with Imre Dimny, 31 January 2012]; A szerz interjja Pl Jzseffel, 2011.
jnius 8 [The authors interview with Jzsef Pl, 8 June 2011].
76
Attila Szakolczai, Lszl . Varga, eds., A vidk forradalma, 1956 [Revolution in the Countryside, 1956], vol. I (Budapest: 1956-os Intzet and Budapest
Fvros Levltra, 2003); ed. Attila Szakolczai, A vidk forradalma, 1956
[Revolution in the Countryside, 1956], vol. II (Budapest: 1956-os Intzet and
Budapest Fvros Levltra, 2006).
his speech on 28 October, Prime Minister Imre Nagy also mentioned that
the Government would put an end to the grave violations of the law with
respect to the cooperative movement and land reallocations, and would
draw up a wide-ranging plan for boosting neglected agricultural production. Two days later, the compulsory delivery system was abolished.77
In less than a week, on 4 November, a second intervention by the Soviet
army sealed the fate of the Hungarian revolution and war of independence. The Soviet-sponsored Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant
Government that was subsequently formed was headed by Jnos Kdr.
The new Government encountered general dissent, armed opposition and
strikes throughout the country.78
The fate of the 1956 revolution was to teach definitive lessons both to the
society and to the policymakers in Hungary. The Hungarian people had to
realize that they could not count on the help of the western countries and
that the country was destined to remain as part of the Soviet block for the
foreseeable future. At the same time Hungary's new leadership realized
that they had to avoid the sort of abuses that had led to the revolution of
1956. The most important lesson the leaders of the Hungarian Socialist
Workers' Party drew from the revolution was that the building of socialism could not come at the expense of the living standards of the rural
and urban masses. The accomplishment of the policy of living standards,
however, kept depending largely on food supply. All this had made the
development of agricultural produce and, in connection to this, the incitation of farmers a strategic factor. This new line got confirmed by the Soviet
leadership, as after 1956, Hungary had been treated as a country of high
priority. This special treatment also meant a higher level of tolerance.
The only thing the Soviet Union insisted on was internal stability. Otherwise, in tactical questions it showed remarkable flexibility.79
77
Istvn Papp, A Begyjtsi Minisztrium az 1956-os forradalom idejn s a

beszolgltatsi rendszer felszmolsa 1956-57- ben, [The Ministry of Delivery during the Revolution of 1956 and the Abolition of the Compulsory Delivery System] in 1956 okai, jelentsge s kvetkezmnyei [Reasons, Importance
and Consequences of the Revolution of 1956], eds. Lajos Pl, Ignc Romsics
(Budapest: Magyar Trtnelmi Trsulat, 2006), 267-289.
78
Bks, et al., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 364-370.
79
Bks, et al., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 376- 378.
282 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
This situation may explain why the government proved to be open to

remedy the main abuses in agriculture. The Revolutionary Workers and
Peasants Government totally disapproves of the defective agricultural
policy of the last years, forcing the organization of cooperatives, forcing
farmers to join in, all the procedures that had led to a several-year-long
regression of the Hungarian agriculture. [...] The government is firmly
determined to support the farmers efforts by any possible means to revive agricultural produce and is ready to offer economic aid for cooperatives and individual farmers as well.80
Of the new measures the abolition of compulsory deliveries was the most
significant, as it occasioned a sharp break with the Stalinist model.81
Compulsory deliveries had been considered an integral part of the socialist
system, and Hungary was the first socialist country to take the step of
abandoning them.82 Instead of using economic compulsion, the state was
now establishing commercial relations with the agricultural producers,
peasants and cooperatives, and trying to give them market incentives to
produce more food. The significance of all this was that market forces
were being applied, albeit to a limited extent, in one of the main sectors
of the post-1956 Hungarian economy.83
As a result of these measures, two-thirds of the existing collectives dissolved themselves and several hundred thousand private agricultural units
started functioning in their place. The general trend was for formerly
landed peasants to leave the collectives and for those who originally had
little or no land to remain on.84 The dissolution rate of cooperatives varied greatly by county and region. The area that saw the most change was
the southwestern region (the counties of Zala, Somogy, Baranya and Vas)
and the counties least affected were those of Csongrd, Bcs and Heves
in eastern Hungary.85
80
Magyar Kzlny [Hungarian Gazette], 27 November 1956, 579-580.

Laws and Ordinances, 1956] (Budapest: KJK, 1957), 62.
82
Karl-Eugen Wdekin, Agrarian Policies in Communist Europe (The HagueLondon: Allanheld, Osmun-Nijhoff, 1982), 65.
83
Varga, Wartime Agricultural Policy, 105-106.
84
Kovcs, The Forced Collectivization, 222-225.
85
MNL OL 288.f. 28/1957/11..e. A Fldmvelsgyi Minisztrium jelentse a
termelszvetkezeti mozgalom helyzetrl [Report of the Ministry of Agriculture on the Situation of Collective Farms] 4 February 1957.
81
At the end of 1956 it was not only those people who said no to the regime of kolkhozes who left the collectives but also those who, lacking
other economic opportunities, had felt compelled to stay on. It soon became apparent that the collectives that had survived found that their
members wanted them to function differently from the way they had
functioned up to then. This amounted to a wholesale abandonment of the
Stalinist-style model of collectivized agriculture.86 A report from the
county of Hajd-Bihar, written at the end of 1956, announced that: [...]
agricultural cooperatives wish to follow the route of free farming and intend to introduce a new order that grants them total autonomy from machine stations and the bank. It is their most sincere wish that there should
be no fixed patterns or a unified model charter at all, but merely a loose
framework.87
Collectivization III
In the first half of 1957 it seemed that the Hungarian Socialist Workers
Party, similarly to the Polish United Workers Party, expected Hungarian
agriculture to become diverse in its organization in the long run.88 By the
end of 1958, however, the agrarian policy of the HSWP took a sudden
turn in response to a change affecting the fraternal countries. Acting on
a motion coming from the Soviet Union, the socialist bloc countries now
resolved upon completing a process that would transform the entirety of
small-scale farms into large-scale production units.89
86
For more detailed information on the history of subsisting or reformed cooperatives after November of 1956, see: Zsuzsanna Varga, Politika, paraszti
rdekrvnyests s szvetkezetek Magyarorszgon 1956-1967 [Politics, the
Assertion of Agrarian Interests and Cooperatives in Hungary, 1956-1967]
(Budapest: Napvilg, 2001), 17-57.
87
MNL HBML XXIII. 2. 4.k. Jegyzknyv a Hajd-Bihar megyei Tancs
Vgrehajt Bizottsgnak lsrl [Minutes of the County Council in HajduBihar] 4 December 1956.
88
Dariusz Jarosz, The Collectivization of Agriculture in Poland: Causes of Defeat, in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe,
113-146.
89
The resumption of collectivization in the Eastern European countries was connected to the resolution adopted at the congress of communist and workers
parties in November 1957. Concerning proprietorship the formulation was
clear; the fact that the countryside had not yet fully adopted social conditions
284 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
In 1958 as a consequence of the second decollectivization, nearly 80 percent of the Hungarian peasantry worked in the private sector. In this situation, a new acceleration of collectivization meant that the earlier
promises of the HSWP made to the peasantry had to be broken.90 Secondly, the Party had to cope with the fact that the memory of the forced collectivization campaigns of the past was still vivid among both the
peasants and party functionaries. The latter had not forgotten the failures
of these campaigns. But the new collectivization campaign was important
as the Kdr regime felt obliged to demonstrate its ability to rule Hungary
according to the wishes of the Kremlin.
The new wave of collectivization was preceded by a great debate within
the HSWP in which two positions soon emerged.91 The Ministry of Agriculture lead by Imre Dgei, held highly dogmatic views, and on every
question insisted on a strict implementation of the pre-1956 policy. In
contrast, the Partys agricultural department now vehemently criticised
the pre-1956 agrarian policy. Working alongside the Central Committee
(CC), Lajos Fehr, who headed the Agricultural Department of the CC
when setting out the HSWPs agrarian political line, professed a desire to
avoid past errors and to respect peasant interests.92
was a major obstacle in the building of socialism. The inequalities between
industry and agriculture, between towns and countryside were deemed very
harmful and were to be eliminated as soon as possible. See: Az emberisg bkjrt, jvjrt. A szocialista orszgok kommunista s munksprtjainak
nyilatkozata, Moszkva, 1957. november 14-16 [For Mankind's Peace and Future. A Declaration of Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries,
Moscow, 14-16 November 1957] (Budapest: Kossuth, 1957), 22-24.
90
Zsuzsanna Varga, The Impact of 1956 on the Relationship between the Kdr
Regime and the Peasantry, 1956-66, Hungarian Studies Review 1-2 (2007)
155-176,
http://epa.oszk.hu/00000/00010/00041/pdf/HSR_2007_1-2_155176.pdf.
91
Bianca L. Adair, The Agrarian Theses and Rapid Collectivization: Accommodation in Hungarian Agriculture, 1956-1960, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 17/2 (2001), 131-147; Levente Sipos, Reform s
megtorpans. Vitk az MSZMP agrrpolitikjrl (1956-1958), [Reform and
Baulking. Debates on the Agrarian Policy of the HSWP, 1956-1958] Mltunk
[Our Past] 36/2-3 (1991), 188-197.
92
Lajos Fehr (1917-1981) was a secretary of the Central Committee responsible
for the agricultural sector. Later his task was to supervise agriculture as a vice
Prime Minister, thereby becoming one of the leaders of the agrarian lobby.
Using the various means of state repression, the party leadership was
compelled to make significant concessions in the process. Following the
proposals of the Agricultural Department unlike the earlier collectivization drives, the new campaign was not aimed at the poor strata of the
peasantry. It set out mainly to win over the wealthier strata in the villages, by promising concessions or even by menaces or occasionally violence. Once branded as kulak, they could now enter the cooperatives and
even the leadership of them. It was common for a local farmer to become
the chairman. The cooperative was obliged to pay rent on land brought
into collective ownership, which still belonged on paper to the peasants.
Each cooperative member received a minimum of 0.57 hectares of land
for household use. The produce of this provided for the household and
left a surplus that gave cash income, since the produce of household land
could be freely sold. It was also an important advance to extend pension
rights and social insurance to cooperative members.93
Such reformism was rejected by representatives of dogmatic left-wing
views and after the 3-day session of the Central Committee in December
1958, they came to the fore in agrarian policy.94 If left to the voluntary
decision made by individual peasants, socialist reorganization of agriculture would come about on planet Mars sooner than in Hungary said
Jnos Kdr, first secretary of the HSWP at a meeting held for local party
officials at the time of restarting collectivization in early 1959.95 The
campaign from January to March, however, had brought unexpected results. Some 1000 agricultural cooperatives got established by the end of
March, which saw the number of members rise threefold and the total area
grew two and a half the size it had been in late 1958.96 Nevertheless, if
93
See more on the new techniques of persuasion, Pl Romny, The Completion

and Partial Dismantling of Collective Agriculture, Hungarian Agrarian Society, 299-327.
94
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 4. cs. 20-21. .e. Jegyzknyv a Kzponti Bizottsg
1958. december 5-7-i lsrl [Minutes of the CC of HSWP] 5-7 December
1958.
95
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1959) 2. .e. Kdr Jnos felszlalsa az 1959.
janur 14-n tartott aktvalsen [Speech of Jnos Kdr at a Meeting for Local Party Officials, 14 January 1959].
96
Mezgazdasgunk a szocialista tszervezs idejn, 1958-1962 [Our Agriculture in the Time of Socialist Reorganization, 1958-1962] (Budapest: KSH,
1963), 147.
286 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
we read through contemporary reports submitted to the Agricultural Department of the Central Committee or to the Agricultural Anti-Sabotage
Department (No. II/7) of the Ministry of Interior, we can see that despite
impressive numeric results, the party leadership faced severe difficulties.97
Behind most of these difficulties stood the various forms of peasants resistance.
Most problems arose from the peasants forced into cooperatives insisting
that they would start the common work no earlier than in the autumn. All
the propagandists cared about was getting peasants to sign their admission documents but peasants were intent on gaining some time. Half of
the cooperatives established in early 1959 functioned like that, which
means that a total of 500 cooperatives existed only formally.98 Families in
these cooperatives kept running the farm individually in the springsummer of 1959. Taking up common work later than being admitted was
a form of resistance by the peasants that had proven effective. The first
two waves of collectivization already saw examples of peasants joining the
cooperative in the autumn and taking up work only the following spring
or joining in the spring and starting actual work no earlier than in the
autumn. This method had won them time and in the months in between
they did all they could to delay and put off work.
Methods involved new members keeping away from statutory meetings,
thus failing it due to deficient participants. In many cases, statutory meetings saw debates between local party leaders and peasants of such vehemence that participants left during the meeting, making it impossible for
the cooperative to be officially established. Statutory meetings saw hell
break loose when members started to reclaim their declarations of admission. In some cases they openly declared that the collectivization campaign had been coercive, that they had been threatened or forced to join
97
Zsolt Krahulcsn, Party/State/Security. Formal Party Direction of the Secret

Police in Hungary in the Early Kadar-Era (1956-62), in Big Brothers Miserable Little Grocery Store. Studies on the History of the Hungarian Secret Services after World War II, eds. Gyrgy Gyarmati, Maria Palasik (Budapest:
Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security LHarmattan, 2012),
215-231.
98
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1959) 6. .e. A Fldmvelsgyi Minisztrium
jelentse a kzs gazdlkodst mg nem folytat termelszvetkezetekrl
[Report from the Ministry of Agriculture on Cooperatives not Yet Engaged in
Common Farming] 30 June 1959.
the cooperative. In other cases women complained that their husbands

had signed the statement but it was invalid, since the land had been registered on their names. In a number of cooperatives, the leaders themselves
resigned, claiming that neither they, nor the members are willing to do
common work in the autumn.99
In some villages, members collected signatures for a petition to regain
their statements. They hoped for better chances in case they acted in an
organized way. They also set up a committee with the purpose of negotiating with representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture in Budapest or
the local party committee to authorize exits from the cooperatives. There
were also examples of more tumultuous actions to reclaim statements.
Organizing group exits from cooperatives was deemed the most common
form of anti-cooperative crime by the Agricultural Anti-Sabotage Department in 1959. In their report to the Political Committee, regarding the
protests, they declared: [] adverse elements aimed at putting women
and men aged 70 to 80 in the forefront, they are expecting that they
would not be subjected to administrative measures. Most demonstrations
were organized by adverse elements by spreading false information. They
frequently spread the rumour saying now it is allowed to leave cooperatives, but you have to request it in an organized way.100
A further important way of resistance for new members was to prevent
their livestock and farming tools from handing over to the cooperative.
Once a cooperative had been set up, the local council sent new members
a notice on the establishment of common funds. In many cases, peasants
returned the letter of notice to the sender. Farmers often did not let members of the inventory commission into their house or even if they did let
them in, they did not agree to sign the inventory record. A number of
conflicts arose during the establishment of common fields.101
99
BTL 1.6. 77-2/1526/1959. Jelents a tsz-ek ellen irnyul ellensges

tevkenysgrl [Report on Anti- cooperative Activities] 2 September 1959.
100
1959. szeptember 15-i lsrl [Minutes of the PC of HSWP] Agenda 2. Jelents a tsz-ek ellen irnyul ellensges tevkenysg alakulsrl [Report on
the New Tendencies of Anti-cooperative activities].
101
1959. szeptember 15-i lsrl.
288 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
Once starting common work could no longer be avoided, the resistance

by peasants took a different shape: it continued within the cooperative.
The most apparent sign was that new members kept away from common
work. In a number of cooperatives, especially in the western counties,
work discipline is loose. Members who had previously been working on
their own farms from early in the morning until late in the evening are
now not willing to work more than eight hours a day even in periods
when there is the most work to do [] It is partially due to this loose discipline that, on a national level, some 15000 hectares of corn remained
unhoed and that in some western counties, the threshing of corn had been
finished as late as in the first days of October.102
Members also tried to continue to look after their own livestock themselves. As an indicator of their success: one third of all livestock delivered
to cooperatives, some 42 per cent of all cows and 52 per cent of all horses,
temporarily remained in household plots.103 Members tried to prolong this
situation by stalling common investments. They also tried to prevent the
cooperative from picking up credits to start constructions. As members had
in recent memory, the only way for individual members to leave a cooperative in 1953 and in 1956 was to pay a proportionate part of the cooperatives total debt. They also did not spend the money they had received for
their livestock and their tools, preparing to, as the law allowed them to,
leave the cooperative after three years and repurchase their goods.
The reorganization in early 1959 took rural society, so to speak, by surprise. The next campaign, starting in the winter of 1960, however, gave
them some more time to prepare; however according to party reports in
many communities it was widely believed that a new push to organise
collectives would be launched in the autumn, as in other socialist countries.104 Individual farmers made great efforts to sell their most valuable
102
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1959) 9. .e. Jelents a tsz-ekben a mezgazdasgi munkk helyzetnek vizsglata sorn szerzett tapasztalatokrl [Report
on Experiences Gained during the Inspection of Agricultural Work in Cooperatives] November 1959.
103
Mezgazdasgunk a szocialista tszervezs idejn, 1958-1962, 174-175.
104
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1961) 2. . e. Jelents a Magyar Rdi s Televzi levelezsi rovathoz rkez levelekrl, elssorban a mezgazdasg
szocialista tszervezsvel kapcsolatban [Report on the Letters Sent to the
Correspondence Department of the Hungarian Television and Broadcast,
Mainly on the Socialist Reorganization of Agriculture] June 1961.
livestock and even some of their farming equipment in the autumn

months. They also accumulated a stack from their harvested crop.105
There had been other ways for individual farmers to prepare for the upcoming campaign. They gathered together and made a deal that none of
them would join the cooperative, and thereby disabling local party officials. In other cases, they discussed the conditions upon which they
would join the cooperative. Who should they elect as a leader, how large
household plots should be, etc. Solidarity and the sense of holding out together were also reinforced by strengthening ties to relatives living in
nearby villages.106 This flow of information also helped families learn
about working possibilities in the neighbourhood or even further away.
Due to the low income, it was no use for all family members to join the
cooperative.107
The mechanisms of defence and the strategies of survival developed in
the early 1950s underwent a quick revival in the course of the third wave
of collectivization that occurred in the winter of 1958-1959.108 However
careful rural families were in trying to establish strategies of survival and
self-defence, the start of actual reorganization brought an unexpected
turn. The party leadership learning from the lesson of the 1959 campaign ordered officials not to let new members delay the organization
of the common farm and the start of common work. The resolution-draft
submitted to the Political Committee read: Experience confirms that it is
neither the efficient nor the right way of organization to allow months go
by between the establishment of a cooperative and the start of common
farming. Members of the cooperative practically keep on doing individual
105
Kovcs, The Forced Collectivization, 230.

All this is well captured in the following volumes based on oral history: Aliz
Mtyus, Katalin Tausz, Maga-ura parasztok s uradalmi cseldek [Peasants
Who Were Their Own Masters and Servants in Manors] (Budapest: Magvet,
1984), 52-68; Tibor Szenti, Parasztvallomsok [Confessions by Peasants]
(Budapest: Szzadvg, 2008), 130-173.
107
Average income from common farming was 11 400 forints in 1959, this fell
to 8 400 forints in 1960. Varga, Politika, 73.
108
Tibor Valuch, Changes in the Structure and Lifestyle of the Hungarian Society in the Second Half of the XXth Century, in Social History of Hungary
from the Reform era to the End of the Twentieth Century, eds. Gbor Gyni,
Gyrgy Kvr, Tibor Valuch (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004),
533-553.
106
290 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
farming in this extended period. Such cooperatives actually have to be

organized twice.109
Jzsef . Kovcs made a detailed list of the methods of terror and violence were used during collectivization by party agitators: First, there
was administrative coercion, which included: citations; dismissing individuals, relatives, or family members from their jobs; military conscription; and threatening to exclude or excluding children from school.
Second, there was verbal, psychological pressure, and intimidation,
which included: threats by the council president over loudspeakers; misrepresenting agitators as a Soviet officer, policeman, or prosecutor
followed by orders to sign membership; forcing minors to sign membership agreements; searching dwellings; destroying personal property such
as furnishings, vehicles and equipment; cutting the tails off horses; and
confiscating food and beverages. Third, there was physical violence,
which included: arrests on the street or at night by police, the Workers
Guard, armed civilians and other people educators; torture by standing
up on one foot; stepping on feet; kicking, pulling of hair and ears, banging heads on tables and on walls; pulling of noses and genitals; use of
boxer and truncheon; running in an overcoat; sweating by the stove; beatings of the candidate and his family; humiliation of women and removal
of their clothing; armed threats to wives while beating their husbands;
beating of feet by rubber hose; and forcing victims to take glowing embers from the stove in their bare hands.
Following the physical-psychological torture in the council building or
the house of culture, the second phase of the process was a friendly, polite conversation with a familiar person, usually a local administrator,
who assisted in signing the declaration of membership. Although atrocities were widespread in all counties, even reports of such acts were
enough to force people to join collectives.110
109

1959. oktber 6-i lsrl, [Minutes of the PC of HSWP] Agenda 1.
Hatrozati javaslat a tsz-mozgalom tovbbfejlesztsre [Proposal for further
development of the cooperatives].
110
Kovcs, The Forced Collectivization, 231-232.
The changing tactics of collectivization applied by the party-state made

peasants turn to different forms of resistance and adaptation.111 What is
obvious is the greater significance of signing the admission statement,
which made future members more resistant against the propagandists of
the cooperative organization. State security services reported a growing
number of extraordinary anti-cooperative incidents. Such were threats
and assaults on cooperative leaders and propagandists, as well as threat
mail, graffiti and the circulation of leaflets. From many villages the collective farm members had sent letters with their complaints to the various
organs of the party-state.112 Demonstrations organized by members to reclaim their statements were considered the most dangerous. In the first
three months of 1960, state security services reported on some 13 anticooperative actions.113
Since there had been no chance to stall common work, peasants took a firmer
stand to protect their goods. The preparation of inventories was marked by
harsh conflicts. As a common phenomenon, new members delivered livestock of poor quality, little yield or bad health to the cooperatives while preserving the better part of their livestock for household plots.114
111
112
113
114
See a local example from this period: Balzs Czetz, Kollektivizls Fejr
megyben a forradalom utn, [Collectivization in the County Fejr after the
Revolution of 1956] in llami erszak, 111-135.
See more on this, Csaba Kovcs, Panaszok a kollektivizls befejez hullmnak idszakbl, [Complaints from the Final Phase of the Collectivization] Mltunk [Our Past] 58/3 (2013), 207-251.
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1960) 22. .e. A Legfbb gyszsg sszefoglal jelentse a termelszvetkezetek trvnyes s alapszablyszer
mkdsnek, valamit a termelszvetkezeti mozgalom ellen irnyul
bncselekmnyek feldertsi, nyomozsi, vdemelsi, tlkezsi gyakorlatnak vizsglatrl. [Summary Report Made by the National General Attorneys Office on the Investigation on the Functioning of the Cooperatives
Functioning Lawfully and in Accordance with the Statutory Rules as well as
on the Investigative, Law Enforcement, Accusational and Judgmental Practice
of Anti-cooperative Crimes] 2 July 1960.
Considering the chaotic conditions in stock-farming (lack of space and fodder, etc.) it is no wonder that 1960 saw a significant die-off in livestock.
Compared to the first six months of 1959, the number of perished animals
grew 2.5-fold, which means 400,000 piece. In horse- and pig-stock, the increase was threefold. MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1960) 25. .e. Elterjeszts az MSZMP llamgazdasgi Bizottsga rszre a serts s
292 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
Household plots in general, grew more valuable. New members tried to

allocate as much livestock there as they could and a larger area of land
than laid down in the statutory rules of the cooperative, too. These endeavours were registered as widespread forms of resistance of the peasantry
by the National General Attorneys Office. There is hardly a cooperative
to be found where the household plots of certain members does not exceed
the maximum size of 0,57 ha. Vine-lands are larger than their authorized
maximum size.115
The party leadership was, thus, not entirely satisfied with the 800 cooperatives that had been newly established in 1960. Most cooperatives were
burdened by initial difficulties and shortages of labour. Only in 1960 was
the total number of farmers leaving the agricultural sector close to 150
000. Considering the fact that most of the workers who quit the agrarian
sector were men, the proportion of women grew significantly during the
period of reorganization: from 26 per cent in 1958 to 38 per cent at the close
of 1961. Moreover, discipline problems had grown worse. A significant part
of registered farmers (25-60 per cent) did little or no work at all for the
cooperative, due to a lack of personal interest.116
The leaders of the HSWP were in a tight spot. In order to promote a
growth in agricultural produce lacking the amount of money and the
level of mechanization required they needed the diligence and ambition
of the Hungarian farmers badly, not to mention the buildings and the instruments of production used temporarily in the household plots. It became clear that they had to come to an agreement with farmers. The
cooperative members had been allowed to keep more breeding animals in
their household plots than earlier, to return to sharecropping, to be paid
premiums in kind and so on. My interpretation of this process is learning
szarvasmarha-tenyszts s rutermels helyzetrl, valamint a szksges intzkedsekrl [Draft Submitted to the Economic Department of the HSWP on
the Situation of Pig - and Cattle-Breeding and Produce as well as the
Measures Required].
115
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1960) 22. .e. A Legfbb gyszsg sszefoglal jelentse (See footnote 102.)
116
The average amount of work done by the members in cooperatives decreased
year by year: the number of work units per farmer family went from 390 in
1958 to 301 in 1959 and then to 169 in 1960. Mezgazdasgunk a szocialista
tszervezs idejn, 1958-1962, 147.
from the peasants.117 Initiating and implementing the corrective policy in

1960 were increasingly well organized by an agrarian lobby, in which Lajos
Fehr, Ferenc Erdei, Jnos Keser, Ern Csizmadia and Jnos Hont were
prominent.118
In the winter of 1960-1961, when the collectivization drive ended, the
number of cooperative members had increased by 300 000, reaching a top
of 1 200 000 by early 1961. This meant that, at the beginning of campaign about 80 per cent of farmers had still run individual farms, at the
end of it, about 75 per cent of them had become cooperative members.119
On 17 February 1961, the HSWPs Central Committee issued a communiqu to inform the public that a turning point had been reached in the transformation of Hungarian agriculture, Following industry, Socialist relations
in agriculture have also become dominant.120 The statistical data reflects
that turnaround. In 1961 there were 271 state farms, approximately 4 200
cooperatives and almost 165 000 individual farms registered.121
Concluding remarks
The situation that emerged by 1961 was rather peculiar in Hungary. The
party-state had just completed the task of collectivization and immediately came a massive influx of requests to exit the cooperatives. By this, I do
not mean those requests that came as a result of annual discharges.122
117
For a full discussion of this special learning process see my chapter: Zsuzsanna
Varga, The Appropriation and Modification of the Soviet Model of Collectivization: The Hungarian Case, in The Collectivization of Agriculture in
Communist Eastern Europe, 437-469.
118
Zsuzsanna Varga, Az agrrlobbi tndklse s buksa az llamszocializmus
idszakban [The Rise and Fall of the Agrarian Lobby in Hungary during the
State Socialism] (Budapest: Gondolat, 2013).
119
120
Henrik Vass, gnes Sgvri, eds., Az MSZMP hatrozatai s dokumentumai,
1956-1962 [Resolutions and Documents of the Hungarian Socialist Workers
Party, 1956-1962] (Budapest: Kossuth, 1973), 497-501.
121
122
Most peasant families forced to join the cooperatives between 1959 and 1961
had to see their existence become uncertain, although on varying levels of income. Those who had not been satisfied with the income received for common work requested their exit, claiming that the cooperative is unable to
provide for their living. Cases like this were reported from local organizations
294 _____________________________________________ Zsuzsanna VARGA
They could easily be dispatched by saying that the three-year exit ban
was still valid. From the summer of 1961 on, the requests became legal;
for those who joined the cooperative in early 1959, the end of the third
year was approaching.123 On the possibility of leaving the cooperative,
the legally binding Decree No. 7. of 1959 orders as follows: The intention to leave the cooperative must be reported to the management at least
six months prior to the end of the economic year. The request shall be decided upon by the general assembly.124
Efforts to leave the cooperatives became massive from the summer of
1961 on, primarily in the western counties but it later spread to other regions of the country from early 1962 on. According to the reports from
the annual discharge meetings, income problems persisted which resulted
in a new wave of exit requests.125 The scope of this resistance made this
an issue to discuss on the level of the party leadership. On 19th April
1962 the Political Committee called upon Lajos Fehr to have county secretaries issue a report on local exits and entries.126 We must not allow a
123
124
125
126
in the counties Borsod, Fejr, Gyr, Heves, Somogy, Szolnok, Vas and
Veszprm. MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1961) 6. .e. A Mezgazdasgi
Osztly jelentse a PB szmra a tsz-ek zrszmadsrl [Report by the Agricultural Department Submitted to the PC on the Annual Discharge of Cooperatives] 15 April 1961.
BTL 1.6. 67-1721/1961. A mezgazdasg terletn 1961 els fl vben
tapasztalt ellensges elemek tevkenysge, a tsz-ek fertzttsge, a kilpsi
szndkok tapasztalatai [Activities of Adverse Elements, the Involvement of
Cooperatives, Exit Intentions in Agriculture in the First Half of 1961] 2 August 1961.
A mezgazdasgi termelszvetkezetekre vonatkoz jogszablyok [Legal
Regulations Concerning Agricultural Cooperatives] (Budapest: KJK, 1959),
8-9.
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 28. cs. (1962) 9. .e. Feljegyzs az egyes megyk
szvetkezeteiben jelentkez kilpsi hangulatrl s az ezzel kapcsolatban tett
intzkedsekrl [Memorandum on the Intentions to Leave Cooperatives and
Measures Taken Concerning it in Certain Counties] 9 April 1962.
1962. prilis 19-i lsrl. [Minutes of the PC of HSWP] Agenda 2. Jelents a
termelszvetkezetekbl val ki- s belpsek helyzetrl [Report on the Entries into and Exits from Cooperatives.] 19 April 1962.
part of the members leave the cooperatives, since this would open the
gate to a massive outflow and would involve dire consequences.127
As a result of this, further sharp conflicts were to be expected on the
countryside. The agrarian lobby, emerging as a new mediator between the
representatives of political establishment and the peasantry, played an
important part in preventing this. They managed to persuade the highest
ranks of the leadership of making concessions to the peasantry during the
collectivization permanent instead of only temporary. In the first half of
the 1960s, more and more local initiatives got transferred from the category banned or tolerated into the category favoured and this had
significantly widened the scope of cooperatives.128
In the implementation of the pragmatic agrarian policy the greatest problem was caused by the fact that the local measures concerning remuneration and work organization were largely inconsistent with the Model
Charter. Since the Hungarian political leadership did not wish to confront
the basic doctrines of the Soviet model, local reforms and measures had
been authorised for many years only in practice. The initiatives coming
from the grass roots got finally legalized by the new Cooperative Law
(III/1967), just on the eve of the New Economic Mechanism, introduced
in 1968.129
By this time, what gained special significance was that the agrarian lobby
managed to get approval from the party leadership to import the
achievements of the Green Revolution from the West. The ways through
which closed production systems from the West could be adapted to a sovietized agricultural system is, however, the subject of another study.
127
MNL OL M-KS 288. f. 5. cs. 267. . e. MOL M-KS-288. f. 5/263. . e.

Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg 1962. jnius 12-i lsrl [Minutes of the
PC of HSWP] Agenda 5. Jelents a tsz-ekbl val kilpsi trekvsek vizsglatrl. [Report on the Investigation on Members Intention to Leave Cooperatives.]
128
Varga, Politika, 87-107.
129
Varga, Politika, 141-150.
Complaints from the Final Period of Hungarian

Collectivisation
Csaba KOVCS
I, hereby, announce that I left the agricultural cooperative called Dzsa
Npe in Alsnyk a year ago after handing in my notice orally and thereby terminating my employment. [] I consider it my duty to explain my
present announcement. In the spring of 1959 I signed the application for
membership like the other farmers in Alsnyk due to fear and to avoid
harassment. I worked in the cooperative for half a year but I couldn't
bear it any longer. Last year they promised a work unit of 35 Ft,1 but I
only received 20 Ft, this year the same amount was promised, but it will
even be less. I cannot live on promises and in uncertainty through the
whole year. [] Our state has not made medieval laws. Land workers
are not bound by the laws of Werbczi2 any more if they cannot earn
their living off the land. The Labour Code is considered a rule regulating every labourer in the country. Point f of Chapter 1 of Article 30 of
the LC ensures me the right to terminate my employment and in extreme
situations Chapter 1 of Article 36 of the LC provides opportunity to quit
the employment on one's own initiative.3 This eloquence did not move
1
The members of cooperatives were expected to achieve a certain number of

work units, the different work processes were worth different number of work
units. Afterwards at the end of the year the members were given salary in
cash and in crops from the annual income of the cooperative based upon the
work units collected by them; certainly, of course before the salary was paid,
the obligations due towards the state had to be fulfilled.
2
Istvn Werbczy lived in the 15th-16th centuries and worked as a legal expert
and statesman. The work mentioned by the complainant was the Tripartitum
compiled at the beginning of the 16th century, which contained the customary
laws and regulations of Hungary.
3
Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Orszgos Levltra [National Archives of Hungary],
XIX-K-1-o, Fldmvelsgyi Minisztrium, Bejelentsek Irodja [Ministry of
Agriculture, Complaints Office] hereafter cited as MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o ,
B-10/1960. Box 48. Instead of the complete names of the people mentioned in
the complaints discussed in this study, only initials are given here to protect
their personal rights and even the initials have been changed. For the same reason, place names are retained but sections indicating or referring to exact addresses or the location of a plot have been omitted.
Complaints from the Final Period of Hungarian Collectivisation _________ 297
the official working in the Ministry of Agriculture. According to the reply, a law issued in 1959 and the decree governing its execution were relevant here, and according to them, this person could not terminate his
employment for at least three years. The statements of this announcement
about decreasing wages and a declining standard of living were not exceptional. Even writing letters of complaint cannot be regarded as an exceptional phenomenon, therefore I intend to describe and analyse this
type of source in connection with the last wave of establishing cooperatives in Hungary between 1958 and 1961.
The features of agricultural policy after 1945
From 1949 on, the Magyar Dolgozk Prtja (Hungarian Workers Party),
which was in complete control, aimed to change the social, industrial and
agricultural features of the country, following the Soviet pattern. In agriculture (like in industry) the main aim was to change the proprietary system. On the way to achieve this, due to the measures against those who
worked in agriculture (obligatory deliveries and taxes, the latter ones
were much higher in the case of private farmers, especially those who
were considered kulaks4) the number of private farms decreased by approximately 400,000 between the end of 1948 and the summer of 1953
4
The term kulk became widely used in Hungarian Communist language usage
since 1948. This expression was to indicate the relation of wealthy peasants to
the tools of production. This notion was created in accordance with the theory
of the fight of classes and was planted into practice in the tax policy. In 1948
those who had a land property of at least 15 hold [an old Hungarian measure of
area] (about 8.63 hectares) or whose income reached 150 aranykorona
[aranykorona gold crown is a measure of value defining the profitability, i.
e. the quality and the location, of a plot] were obliged to pay a contribution to
develop agriculture. As this measure affected a considerable number of the
middle-scale farmers, in 1949 the limit of contribution payment was raised to
25 hold (about 14.38 hectares) and in the same year it was incorporated in the
criteria that their income should reach 350 gold crowns. Netta Nagy, Peasant
Behaviour Forms and Survival Techniques in Villages of the Homokhtsg
Region in the Years of Compulsory Produce Delivery, 1945-1956, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 58/1 (2013), 42; Judit Tth, Padlssprsek kora. A
beszolgltats Pest megyben [The Age of Attic Cleansing. Obligatory Deliveries in Pest County] (Budapest: Pest Megye Monogrfia Kzalaptvny,
2011), 18-19.
298 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
when the first wave of collectivisation took place, and the percentage of
private property fell to two thirds. At the same time, the number of co-ops
grew to more than 5,000 with as many as 370,000 members. Peasants
who were pressed by the state either joined the co-ops or went to work
for state farms, but most of them, 360,000 people, found jobs in industry.5
After Stalin died, the pressure was eased and during the first presidency
of Imre Nagy, taxes and obligatory deliveries were reduced and overdue
taxes and obligatory deliveries were partly cancelled. It became possible
for co-op members to quit at once; therefore they began to leave co-ops in
great numbers.6 After Rkosi regained power in 1955, collectivisation became the main aim again in agriculture,7 which was stopped by the revolution and war of independence in 1956.8
The third wave of co-op organisation and its consequences
In Hungary the last stage of organising co-ops took place under the new
government9 after 1956, from the end of 1958 to 1961. People were encouraged by agitators to join cooperatives. In some cases even hundreds
of agitators visited a settlement paying a visit to the chosen farmers or ordering them to come to the council and tried to persuade them to join the
cooperative by promises, threats or if these were not successful, by physical
5
Ignc Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest: Corvina Kiad,

Osiris Kiad, 2010), 276-278; Zsuzsanna Varga, Agrarian Development from
1945 to the Present Day, in History of Hungarian Agriculture and Rural Life,
1848-2002, eds. Jnos Estk, Gyrgy Fehr, Pter Gunst, Zsuzsanna Varga
(Budapest: Argumentum Kiad, Magyar Mezgazdasgi Mzeum, 2003), 236240.
6
Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, 293-296. On the changes in agricultural policy, see: Varga, Agrarian Development, 240-242.
7
Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, 297-298.
8
On the changes in agriculture between 1948 and 1956, see: Jzsef . Kovcs,
The Forced Collectivization of Agriculture in Hungary, 1948-1961, in The
Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and
Entanglements, eds. Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper (Budapest, New
York: Central European Universitiy Press, 2014), 215-221.
9
The era between 1956 and 1989 was called, after its leader, Kdr regime.
Jnos Kdr after WWII for some years was the minister of internal affairs,
then after the revolution and war of independence in 1956 he was the first secretary, later the secretary-general of the Party.
means.10 The agitators paid special attention to the kulaks, the farmers
who served as models for the community and who had been the targets of
the earlier social and economic measures of constraints, trying to persuade them to join the cooperative.11 The advantages of this changed
strategy can be seen when a village community is examined, according
to which the agitators agitated along the power lines of the social structure of the village, so they tried to persuade those farmers who were
wealthy to join the co-op. When such a farmer joined, the less wealthy
famers who were connected to him both by social and by work relationship followed suit.12
Compared to the first two waves of co-op organisation, the third wave
was somewhat different because after a while those who controlled agriculture did not copy the Soviet model in a servile way.13 The political
changes in the leadership of the agricultural sector at a country level
brought about a change of direction different from the earlier one, which
had been due to a greater emphasis on the policy affecting the standard of
living and the solution to the problems of food supply. In 1960 the standpoint represented by Imre Dgei, the Minister of Agriculture and his deputies was replaced by that of the Mezgazdasgi Osztly (Agricultural
Department) led by Lajos Fehr, which worked together with the Magyar
Szocialista Munksprt Kzponti Bizottsga (Central Committee of the
Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, hereafter cited as HSWP CC); Dgei
was dismissed at the beginning of 1960 and Pl Losonc took his place.
10
11
12
13
On the personal experiences of the wave of co-op organising, see: Kovcs,

The Forced Collectivization, 229-232.
Tibor Valuch, Magyarorszg trsadalomtrtnete a XX. szzad msodik felben [The Social History of Hungary in the Second Half of the 20th Century]
(Budapest, Osiris Kiad, 2001), 196.
Zoltn Tagnyi, A falukzssg a vltoz trsadalomban. Esettanulmny
Varsny pldjn, [The Village Community in the Changing Society. A Case
Study of Varsny] in A falu a mai magyar trsadalomban, [The Village in the
Contemporary Hungarian Society] ed. Andrs Vgvlgyi (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1982), 344; Tagnyi, A falukzssg a vltoz trsadalomban.
Esettanulmny Varsny pldjn.
On the last wave of collectivisation and its differences from the earlier ones,
see: Zsuzsanna Varga, The Appropriation and Modification of the Soviet
Model of Collectivization: The Hungarian Case, in The Collectivization of
Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements,
433-465.
300 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
Since it was the standpoint of Fehr and his colleagues that was carried
out, it became easier to choose the leaders of the cooperatives (compared
to the earlier practice, the leaders were more acceptable to the community, e. g. those who used to be big farmers could also become leaders), to
control co-ops, to create a work system and more favourable conditions
were set up for private plots and for the remuneration of those working in
co-ops.14 The government tried to make the co-ops attractive in several
ways, for example from 1949 on, the social insurance was gradually extended comprising benefits, child care allowance, old age pension and
sick-pay to those who worked in co-ops. However, the value of these
benefits was reduced by the fact that they were lower than those paid to
workers and employees.15
Due to collectivisation, the number of co-op members went up from
170,000 in 1958 to 1.2 million in 1962, whereas the number of private
farmers plummeted from more than 1.6 million to 145,000; later their
number went on decreasing and went under 100,000.16 The change in
employment structure, social mobility and together with them commuting
and migration gained momentum. The instability of the income coming
from agriculture was one of the main reasons of migration; therefore the
families whose existence was undermined had to seek new sources of income. A considerable part of the agricultural society went to find jobs in
industry, as after the forced industrialization there was demand for work14
15
16
Further details on the change of course in collectivisation, see: Zsuzsanna

Varga, Politika, paraszti rdekrvnyests s szvetkezetek Magyarorszgon
1956-1967 [Politics, the Assertion of Agrarian Interests and Cooperatives in
Hungary 1956-1967] (Budapest: Napvilg Kiad, 2001), 58-71.
Zsuzsanna Varga, Mit r a munks, ha paraszt (is)? A falusi munkssg s a
hatalom a Kdr-korszakban, [What is a Worker Worth if They Are Peasants
(too)? Village Workers and the Power in the Kdr Era] Korall 13/49 (2012), 45.
For more details on the effect collectivisation had on society, see: Valuch,
Magyarorszg trsadalomtrtnete, 197-200.; Tibor Valuch, Kzsgnkben
nagy elrehaladst rtnk el a szocializmus ptse tern. A trtneti parasztsg s az letmd vltozsai Magyarorszgon a hatvanas vekben, [There
Has Been Great Progress in the Building of Socialism in Our Village. The
Historical Peasantry and Changes in Lifestyle in Hungary in the sixties] in
Mlt szzadi htkznapok. Tanulmnyok a Kdr-rendszer kialakulsnak
idszakrl [Daily Life in the Last Century. Studies in the Formative Period of
the Kdr Regime], ed. Jnos Rainer M. (Budapest: 1956-os Intzet, 2003),
129-176.
force in the factories. It was also typical that co-ops had to cope with
workforce shortage as it was mainly the men able to work who left agriculture and it was women, elderly people hoping for old age pension and
sick people demanding sick pay who joined the cooperatives. Allotting
private plots also made many people remaining in the villages join the coops.17 It was part and parcel of forced collectivisation that many people
felt that compared to their earlier status as private farmers, being an employee in a co-op or a factory was a loss of prestige.
The series of works on the elimination of peasantry published in Szzadvg
in 2003 presents the processes affecting those working in agriculture due to
the waves of collectivisation. I do not intend to discuss these works written
by the representatives of different social sciences; I only want to focus on
a final conclusion drawn by them. The events that took place in the agricultural sector between 1958-1961 brought about a basic change in the
lives of village people as peasants disappeared both in terms of history
and social statistics (the former structure of villages and even families
underwent a change) and many things were lost that were accumulated by
this social group in terms of knowledge, values and work organisation.18
17
18
According to Act 7 of 1959, each co-op member with a household who preformed a certain number of work unit had the right to maintain a household
plot. It could have been maximum 1 hold (about 0.57 hectare) and in the beginning the number of animals allowed to be kept was also limited. While in
the 1960s official economic politics considered private plots as a temporary
and forced concession, it was not only maintained in the next decade, but it also caught on. Meanwhile its characteristics also changed, from self-sufficient
they became commodity producers for the market. At the end of the decade
small farmers made a considerable part of the production in several sectors of
agriculture (concerning pigs, grape, fruit and vegetable growing they gave
more than 50-60% of the production. Their share of some small animals or in
prime vegetables was over 80 or even 90%). Jzsef Molnr, A hztji,
[The Household Plot] in Magyarorszg agrrtrtnete [Hungarys Agrarian
History], eds. Istvn Orosz, Lajos Fr, Pl Romny (Budapest: Mezgazda
Kiad, 1996), 631-643.
Tibor Valuch, A trtneti parasztsg vltozsai az 1960-as vekben,
[Changes of the Historical Peasantry in the 1960s] Szzadvg 8, no. 1, j folyam no. 27 (2003), 3-29; Imre Kovch, A magyar trsadalom paraszttalantsa eurpai sszehasonltsban, [The Elimination of Peasantry in
Hungarian Society Compared to Europe] Szzadvg 8, no 2, j folyam no. 28
(2003), 41-65; Lszl Laki, Trs s folyamatossg, [Break and Continuity]
302 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
Concerning the effect co-op organisation had on the collective identity of

Hungarian peasantry, two things have to be noted: on the one hand, the
self-image is made up of several factors,19 and as most private farmers
lost its main support, their land, the self-identification of many was shattered. On the other hand, when the self-image of a group is weakened or
destroyed in the case of some members, the self-identification of the
whole group is at risk, since as Jan Assmann writes: The collective or
we identity is the image that a group has of itself and with its members
associate themselves. It therefore has no existence of its own, but comes
into being through recognition by its participating individuals.20 Therefore we can talk about the disappearance of historical peasantry as a result of collectivisation, and after the change of the political system it
could not have been restored by transforming the proprietary system due
to the changed lifestyle and living conditions.
Szzadvg 8, no. 3, j folyam no. 29 (2003), 87-92; Gbor Gyni, Paraszt:
mit jelent s mi jelentsnek a hatra? Megjegyzsek Kovch Imre: A magyar trsadalom paraszttalantsa eurpai sszehasonltsban cm
tanulmnyhoz, [Peasant: What Does It Mean and What Are the Limitations
to Its Meaning? Notes on the Study Called The elimination of peasantry in
Hungarian society compared to Europe by Imre Kovch] Szzadvg 8, no. 3,
j folyam no. 29 (2003), 71-76; Istvn Harcsa, Paraszttalants egy fogalom szletse, [The Elimination of Peasantry the Birth of a Notion]
Szzadvg 8, no. 3, j folyam no. 29 (2003), 77-85; Gyula Benda, Hossz
tv folyamatok s rvid tv ingadozsok, trsadalomstatisztikai vizsglatok
s loklis kutatsok. Hozzszls Kovch Imre s Valuch Tibor
tanulmnyhoz, [Long Term Processes and Short Term Fluctuations, Social
Statistical Analyses and Local Researches. Observations Concerning the Study
by Imre Kovch and Tibor Valuch] Szzadvg 8, no. 4, j folyam no. 30
(2003), 99-102; Imre Kovch, Paraszttalants: krdjelek s vlaszok.
Vlasz Harcsa Istvnnak, Laki Lszlnak, Gyni Gbornak s Benda
Gyulnak, [The Elimination of Peasantry: Question Marks and Answers. An
Answer to Istvn Harcsa, Gbor Gyni and Gyula Benda] Szzadvg 8, no. 4,
j folyam no. 30 (2003), 105-108.
19
On the change of identity, see: Gyrgyi Bindorffer, Ketts identits. Etnikai s
nemzeti azonossgtudat Dunabogdnyban [Dual Identity. Ethnic and National
Sense of Identity in Dunabogdny] (Budapest: j Mandtum Knyvkiad
MTA Kisebbsgkutat Intzet, 2001), 20.
20
Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization. Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (New York: Cambridge Universitiy Press,
2011), 113-114.
Apart from the social and economic impacts, the forced change in the agricultural sector left its traces in other ways too, the suffering party
was/could have been hurt mentally too during the socialist reorganisation
of agriculture. This phenomenon, which became well known owing to
Pl Juhsz psychiatrist and his colleagues, was called co-op neurosis from
the early 1960s on.
In the village of Csengersima in Szabolcs-Szatmr-Bereg County the experts tried to find out whether the neurosis (a mental illness accompanied
with depression) was present, and after the illness had been diagnosed,
they examined the reasons of it. The research was induced by the new
lifestyle and the changed employment status following the organisation of
cooperatives from 1958 on. Analysing the year 1961, the experts concluded that the problems that arose from the organisation of cooperatives
were among the reasons for neuroses the sick people were suffering
from.21 The neurosis triggered by the co-ops was discussed in a separate
study, its conclusion was based on the examination of several phenomena: a) the change of the standard of living (among those suffering from
neurosis there were some whose standard of living increased but in most
cases it fell after the collectivisation), b) the issue of the end of material
independence and the changes in the ways of gaining material wealth, c)
the evaluation of adaptability due to the hierarchy set up during the mass
production in big farms, d) the satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the leaders
of the co-op, e) the dissolution of the former family, work and other
structures, f) the new way of assessing people different from the earlier
ones, g) the uncertainty and tension resulting from the merger of the cooperative of the researched village and that of its neighbour, h) the issue
of dismissing those who proved to be inadequate to lead, i) the isolation of
those who remained private farmers.22 These aspects are very important
21
Pl Juhsz, A falusi betegek neurosisnak krokai, [The Causes of Neurosis in

the Case of Village People] Ideggygyszati Szemle 17/2 (1964), 37-44; Pl
Juhsz, Egy kelet-magyarorszgi falu laki neurzisnak szociogn krokai,
[The Socio-genic Causis of Neurosis in the Case of the Inhabitants of a Village
in Eastern Hungary] Magyar Tudomny 77, j folyam 15/2 (1970), 93-101.
22
Pl Juhsz, A mezgazdasgi termelszvetkezeti mozgalom a falusiak neurzisnak szempontjbl, [The Movement of Agricultural Cooperatives from
the Point of View of Village People Suffering from Neurosis] in Pszicholgiai
tanulmnyok VII, [Psychological Studies VII], ed. Dr. Pl Gegesi Kiss (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1965), 247-253.
304 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
since many of them will appear in the later part of this work when grievances are discussed.
If I try to evaluate and draw a conclusion of the reorganisation of those
who worked in agriculture, in my opinion, what happened to Hungarian
peasantry can be considered a shock concerning its importance. Tams
Kisantal defined the notion of shock as it is used by historical sciences: a
historical event can be considered shocking if it cannot be integrated in
an already existing identity forming or supporting narrative by a community without problems as the event itself questions the need for such a
narrative.23 Certainly, I do not say that all changes cause shocks, but
without doubt the new phenomena superseding the old ones often cause
serious shocks.
The negative effects of co-op organisation were faded for a long time, or
to be more precise, the Kdr government considered the atrocities committed against private farmers a sensitive topic to be avoided both officially and unofficially. Although I do not discuss the memory of the
events, it has to be noted that as those who suffered the atrocities could
not mention the events in public, these memories were suppressed for a
long time. This suppression was revealed by the democratic political
course after 1989, when the memories of forced co-op organisation were
allowed to surface.24
23
24
Tams Kisantal, Tll trtnetek. brzolsmd s trtnetisg a holokauszt

mvszetben [Survivor Stories. The Way of Depiction and History in the Art
of the Holocaust] (Budapest: Kijrat Kiad, 2009), 35.
The memory of collectivisation was emphasized in many of the works that
were sent in for the grant for peasant autobiographies announced by the
Lakitelek Foundation in 1991. The contrast between the concept of the Kdr
era and that of the times after the change of regime are clearly shown by the
fact that the peasants' autobiographies written before 1981 hardly discussed
the 2 or 3 decades after 1945, they compressed that period into a couple of
sentences. More details on the grant announced by the Lakitelek Foundation,
see: Emlkezem, hogy rm is emlkezzenek... A Lakitelek Alaptvny
199l-es paraszti nletr plyzatra berkezett anyag elemzse, [I Remember to Be Remembered The Analysis of the Material Sent in for the
Grant for Peasant Autobiographies Announced by the Lakitelek Foundation in
199l] Etnographia 105/1 (1994), 247-268.
Private complaints caused by collectivisation

1. The characteristics of complaints and other submissions
Similarly to the other authorities, the Ministry of Agriculture also had an
office of complaints which was called Complaints Office. This department functioned within the Secretariat of Ministry (it was called Presidential Main Department until 1950); the Secretariat began to work in
1945, but the Complaints Office was only established in 1953. In 1957,
after the Secretariat was reorganised, the Complaints Office was closed
and it was only reopened in 1960. In the second section of my work I intend to discuss part of this torrent of complaints, or to be more exact the
documents of one year, and then I am going to analyse them according to
aspects to be detailed later.
I have chosen the complaints received in 1960 as the basis of my investigation. The reason to choose this year was that it was the first year of the
collectivisation wave between 1958 and 1961 from which some letters of
complaint have been preserved in the documentation of the Complaints
Office. Most complaints written in 1960 contain the grievances suffered
in 1959 and 1960, but there are complaints among them about the earlier
waves of collectivisation. In that year 167 complaints were sent to the
Complaints Office of the Ministry of Agriculture altogether, or that is the
number of complaints that can be found there, but I am focussing only on
129 of them as these are the ones dealing with the grievances of the complainants suffered during the third wave of co-op organisation. I also intend to investigate the collective complaints made by the collective body
of co-op members or some of them where the complainants write the activities they complained about, which are related to the leadership or the
colleagues responsible for the finances, causing them material damage.
However, the 129 cases do not cover the same number of complainants;
their number is much higher as it occurred several times that a complaint
was related to many complainants. In one case the complaint was written
in the name of 34 claimants,25 in another case26 the whole collective of a
co-op made a complaint. Among the 129 cases chosen by us there are
several made by private farmers not just those written by co-op members.
25
26
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, To-29/1/1960. Box 48.

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Me-21/1960. Box 48.
306 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
Before introducing the material, it is worth examining whether there were

really so many complaints sent to the Complaints Office in 1960, and if
not, what the real number of complaints could have been. One can infer
the number of complaints indirectly from the number of cases other institutions had to face in any of the years of the co-op organisation between
1958 and 1961. Some newspapers and the Hungarian Radio and Television were flooded with letters of complaint connected to agriculture and
co-op organisations, and those were usually forwarded with the request
for investigation enclosed to the Ministry of Agriculture. The daily paper
called Szabad Fld in its editorial report written to the Department of Agriculture of the HSWP CC mentioned about the period between 4 and 8
January 1960 that the number of incoming letters have increased disproportionately, the majority of which was related to problems with co-ops.
The report summarized the contents of 37 letters.27 Szabad Fld also reported to the head of the Department of Agriculture of the HSWP CC on
17 March 1961: On average we receive 70-80 letters, and sometimes
even more. The letters addressed to doctor Buga /10-12 every day/, and
the ones sent to the column Beszljk meg (Lets Discuss This) whose
number often reaches 10-15 a day are not included. Most letters reflect
the practical problems connected to the socialist reorganisation of agriculture. The report contains excerpts of 82 individual cases, and in three
cases it describes in short some problems broached by several correspondents.28 On 24 February 1961 the Hungarian Radio and Television
also sent a report to the Department of Agriculture of the HSWP CC related to the problems of co-op workers. The report was written based upon 257 letters and investigations.29 The Hungarian Radio and Television
wrote another report on the problems of co-ops dated to 12 July 1961
compiled from the letters sent to the correspondence column. The report
describes the complaints received in that year up to that time, 581 letters
were processed for the letter.30 Although the above-mentioned numbers
27
Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Orszgos Levltra (National Archives of Hungary),

M-KS-288. f. 28, Magyar Szocialista Munksprt Kzponti Szervei,
Mezgazdasgi Osztly (Central Organizations of Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, Departure of Agriculture) hereafter cited as MNL OL, M-KS-288.
f. 28. , 1960. Box 16.
28
MNL OL, M-KS-288. f. 28/1960. Box 16.
29
MNL OL, M-KS-288. f. 28/1960. Box 16.
30
MNL OL, M-KS-288. f. 28/1960. Box 16.
do not reflect in every case the 1960 situation, but concerning that they
were written for the same reason, they are telling about the number of
complaints in the whole period. Therefore in my opinion it is likely that not
the whole corpus of complaints from 1960 were registered in the archive.
There are several Hungarian experts who dealt with some of the complaints issued between the beginning of the one party system and the third
wave of co-op organisation. I would like to mention some of them briefly. I consider it an important aspect of processing the letters and submissions whether the author mentions if there was an investigation in a
particular case discussed by them and if so, what its outcome was. Concerning the method of using them those works are in the majority where
the authors intend to demonstrate their point by using the above mentioned type of sources. The letters of complaint discussed by Zsuzsanna
Varga in her work describing and analysing the directives of agriculture
after 1956 and the circumstances of the third wave of organising co-ops
date from 1961 and were sent to the Hungarian Radio and Television and
Szabad Fld. The letters were written after the annual statement and
some of them illustrate the desperate and helpless situation of the co-op
members after the annual report of the co-ops.31 Although the author
mentions that the columnists of the two institutions had the cases investigated by the local organs competent in them, she does not discuss the results of the investigations in the cases. The enumeration continues with a
compilation of the letters written to Mtys Rkosi32 between 1948 and
1956 edited by Andrs K and Lambert J. Nagy.33 Apart from the introduction the authors do not analyse the letters as according to them, the
correspondence speaks for itself.34 The authors indicate if the findings of
the investigation in a case are attached to the letter and if newer documents have been found in the case besides the letter, they are also published. Jzsef . Kovcs makes use of the opportunities provided by the
letters. In one of these writings he analyses the communication activities
of two groups (one of them was supporting the system, the other was opposing it) in the period between 1957 and 1961 demonstrating them on
concrete examples; however, in most cases the findings of the investiga31
Varga, Politika, paraszti rdekrvnyests, 73-75.

The Main, later the First, Secretary of the Party.
33
Andrs K, Lambert Nagy J., Levelek Rkosihoz [Letters to Rkosi] (Budapest: Maecenas Knyvkiad, 2002).
34
K, Nagy J., Levelek Rkosihoz, 9.
32
308 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
tions are not published by the author.35 He also discusses letters of complaint in a sub-chapter of his monography on the elimination of peasant
society. In this particular chapter the communication of those writing
about the problems and violence that occurred between 1957 and 1961
during the socialist reorganisation of the agriculture is described and
analysed. The reports written by the editorial staff from the letters of
complaint sent to the daily paper called Npszabadsg, which was considered to be the mouthpiece of the party, the Hungarian Radio and Television and to Szabad Fld, which were sent to the competent party
organs, constituted the main sources of the work. In the aforementioned
cases (supposedly they cannot be found in the archives) no answers or investigation findings can be read.36 Istvn G. Vass work is also a publication of sources. Following a short introduction, the author publishes
complaints written by those related to agriculture and sent to the secretariat of Imre Nagy during his first presidency.37 Although the complainants
complained about the measures taken against them by the authorities (the
council or the law court), the secreteriat of the prime minister delegated
the right to take measures to the same authorities. The following lines can
be read about the findings of the newer investigation: In the documents
examined by us there is no trace of the secretariat of the prime minister
questioning the findings of the lower authorities or obliging them to initiate a new investigation.38
35
Jzsef . Kovcs, Az alvetettsg racionalizlsa. Levlrk kommunikcis gyakorlata 1956 utn, [The Rationalisation of Subordination.
Communication Practice of Letter Writers after 1956] Korunk Harmadik folyam 21/3 (2010), 62-68.
36
Jzsef . Kovcs, A paraszti trsadalom felszmolsa a kommunista diktatrban. A vidki Magyarorszg politikai trsadalomtrtnete 1945-1965
[The Elimination of Peasant Society in the Communist Dictatorship. The Political Social History of the Hungarian Countryside 1945-1956] (Budapest:
Korall, 2012), 367-382.
37
The head of several ministries between 1945 and 1952, Prime Minister between 1953-1955 and during the revolution and war of independence in 1956.
38
Istvn G. Vass: Parasztpolitika papron s a valsgban 1953-1954 forduljn.
Panaszlevelek Nagy Imre miniszterelnkhz, [Peasant Policy on Paper and in
Reality at the Turn of 1953-1954. Letters of Complaint Addressed to Prime
Minister Imre Nagy] ArchvNet 9/5 (2009): http://www.archivnet.hu/ hetkoznapok/parasztpolitika_papiron_es_a_valosagban_19531954_fordulojan.html
(Date of download: 4 September 2012).
I think it is worth describing the general procedures. After a complaint

reached the Complaints Office, it was summarized then the Office forwarded the complaint to the competent office for further investigation.
The investigation was carried out and the decision was made by the Department of Agriculture of the Executive Committee of the Town or District Council in the first instance; if a complainant was not satisfied with
the sentence, their complaints were forwarded to the Department of Agriculture of the Executive Committee of the County Council, against whose
sentence there was no appealing.39 The authority competent in a case usually based their decision on an investigation conducted on the site; in
many cases even the reports written on the investigation have been preserved, which can contribute with precious data to our knowledge of the
case or in some case the complainants themselves. After the report had
been written, a decision was made, which was sent either by the Agricultural Department of the Executive Committee of the Town or District
Council or by the County Council in different forms both to the complainant and to the Complaints Office. Many people protested against the
decisions even in the second instance, but these could only exert a psychological pressure at most as is shown by the following case. After a
complainant urged the authorities to change their former decision many
times both in person and by sending letters, the official gave the following response: Moreover, we have to add that the complainant is a staid
letter writer, who ignores the advice and information given by the land
arranging office, and his obstinacy and letters of complaint even hinder
the arrangement of his own case instead of helping to conclude it.40
2. The formal characteristics of complaints and reports
It may be the simplest way of describing complaints if the formal and
content characteristics are separated. Firstly, let us see the way the complaints were sent to the ministry. In 53 of the 129 cases a letter of complaint was sent to the addressee.41 In 17 of the 53 cases the letters are
39
There were some exceptional cases when the decision was not made by the
Department of Agriculture of the Executive Committee of the District, Town
or County Council. In these cases the complainant could turn to a law court.
40
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Be-2/1960. Box 48.
41
In 4 of the 53 cases after sending a letter, the complainant appeared in the
Complaints Office in person, sometimes at the beginning of the case, sometimes during the investigation.
310 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
missing, although according to the particular file they were available at a

certain stage of the case. Twenty-eight of the 36 letters that still exist
were handwritten, and 8 were typed. There are two other major groups of
complaints concerning the way they reached the addressee, one is reporting in person and the other is when it is not clear whether the complainant
reported their grievances in person or in a letter. One person made the
complaint on the phone.42
Not all complainants turned directly to the Complaints Office; many sent
their reports directly to the ministry and then it was forwarded within it.
Several people wrote to newspapers (in 2 cases to Szabad Fld and in 1
case to Npszabadsg) or to the Press Department of the Radio and Television of Hungary (in 7 cases) and the addressees, requiring investigation
in the cases, forwarded the submissions to the appropriate place. In the
latter group there are two complainants that sent their complaints to numerous forums, probably hoping for a better judgement. One of them sent
his report to the Ministry of Agriculture, the Complaints Office, the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, the programme of the Hungarian Radio and Television called Vlaszolunk hallgatinknak (Replies to Our
Listeners) and the Editorial Office of Heti Hrlap (a weekly magazine).
The letter was forwarded to the Complaints Office, although they received a copy as an addressee.43 Another correspondent who sent letters
to several addresses sent a letter to the National Cooperative Council44
(there was another complainant sending a letter to this address), the Hungarian Radio and Television and even to the government.45 There were
some who sent their complaints to the state party I have found three
such reports. Two claimants turned directly to Jnos Kdr asking for
42
In 4 cases the complainant turned to the authorities in different ways at the different stages of the case, both in person and in letter. In one of the cases where
it is impossible to detect the way a complaint reached the Complaints Office,
the complainant urged the arrangement of the case in a letter.
43
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Na-12/1960. Box 48.
44
The organisation was founded in 1951 was to develop co-ops, to improve their
land farming methods, to protect and increase the common property of the cooperatives and to renew the basic rules of cooperatives. A magyar llam szervei
1950-1970 [Organizations of the Hungarian State 1950-1970], ed. Beatrix
Boreczky (Budapest: Magyar Orszgos Levltr 1993), 444.
45
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Sza-32/1960. Box 48.
investigation and then the submissions were forwarded to the Complaints

Office.46
With regard to the long list of addressees the question may arise whether
the greater publicity provided by the press, the radio, the television and
the state party could have resulted in a more favourable judgement. Apart
from the letters addressed to the minister and the head departments of the
ministry, there were 15 cases that received a great publicity, and in 4 cases the decision was favourable, and in 7 cases the final decision was unfavourable to the complainant and in 4 cases where the complaint was
made up of several sections, the decision was partly favourable and partly
unfavourable to the complainants. So, greater publicity did not mean a
positive assessment automatically. However, it may seem to be a little
schematic to look at the proportion of favourable and unfavourable decisions this way if one does not take into consideration that those seeking
remedy for their grievances were not always satisfied with the decisions
held favourable for them by the agricultural department of a county or
district council. One claimant for example complained that he had lent
some money to the co-op, but the co-op did not pay it back. After the investigation the co-op announced that it is willing to pay the aforementioned sum if the claimant could prove his statement or the leaders, who
were no longer in their former positions at the time the complain was issued, would give a written receipt of the debt.47 There is a complaint
where there were several claimants and in the case of some the decision
was positive but in the case of others it was unfavourable for them.48
Therefore in 27 cases of the 129 it can be stated that the decision was favourable for the claimant, and in 61 cases it can firmly be stated that the
decision was unfavourable for the claimants. In 3 cases the submission is
available but the result of the investigation and the decision made in the
case are not attached to the file. In some cases the Complaints Office did
not make a decision but only took a position in the question and although
it favoured the claimant, the decision is not known. In such a case according to the claimant, the leaseholder of her land joined the co-op and the
obligations connected to the land lease were taken over by the co-op, but
46
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, J-8/1960. and MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ko-15/1/1960.

Box 48.
47
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ba-9/1960. Box 48.
48
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ki-3/1960. Box 48.; MOL, XIX-K-1-o, Ne-6/1960.
Box 48.
312 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
did not fulfil them and the lender did not receive her due. The reply said
that the plaintiff had already sued the co-op earlier and during the trial
they came to an agreement with the co-op, so the case does not concern
the Complaints Office. Moreover, it adds that if the co-op continues to
fail to fulfil the agreement reached at the court, the claimant should turn
to the court again.49
Some of the submissions cannot be considered complaints but requests or
questions: in one of them someone asks the Ministry of Agriculture to allow him not to join the co-op in that particular economic year due to his
poor health, and that he would like to work on his private farm and he
would like the agitators not to harass him. According to the answer, if he
joins the co-op, he will receive a job in accordance with his health condition, so he can manage.50 Another person asked about the damages due
for the alfalfa sowed by him but reaped by another. According to the answer, if someones plot was incorporated into the co-ops land, the crops
on it should be evaluated and the damages should be paid according to
the value of use and further information can be given by the agricultural
department of the district council.51 It can also be stated that several cases
were left unresolved, so after it was reported, the case was not solved by
the investigation or even if it cast light to some offence or law infringement, those responsible were not found or the case took a different course
and due to it, the roles changed. (To understand these cases better, one
should glean from the texts what might have happened in the time between the report was issued and the case was closed.) Mrs. Cs. D., for example, was given two replacement plots during the settlement of land
properties. She was working on them, but according to her statement, the
president of the local co-op wanted to take away her plots and therefore
he acted and spoke rudely to her while she was working. while she
was hoeing before the eyes of her two children and her 72-year old father, he pushed her violently. She wore the traces of this violence on her
arm for several days. Once she turned to the district council with her
complaint, where they sent a message with her to the president of the coop, saying that they are starting to be fed up with his behaviour. The president answered to the message that she might as well go to the ministry, he
takes orders from no one. According to the investigation, the following
49
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, S-18/1960. Box 48.

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Bo-32/1960. Box 48.
51
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, V-7/1960. Box 48.
50
things happened: the claimant received two real estates of 2 and 3 hold
(about 1.15 and 1.72 hectares) respectively in two villages (Tenk and
Erdtelke), which means 5 hold (about 2.87 hectares) altogether. In Tenk
she did not cultivate her new plot but she sowed part of her former plot,
which had been incorporated into the land of the co-op; the rest of the
land was cultivated by the co-op. In Erdtelke the president of the co-op
led the claimant out of her former plot as she began to cultivate that instead of her new plot. Therefore the action of the co-op president was justified. During the investigation it has been proved that the claimant has
a difficult and quarrelling nature and she swore both at the president of
the co-op and the workers of the council and called them servants several
times. She stated that she did not know what they made her sign but she
admitted to signing the aforementioned documents [the documents with
the lot number of her original land and that of the land given in exchange
for it - Cs. K.]. Certainly this argumentation is unacceptable. According
to the record made with the claimant during the investigation, she stated
that she had no objection to either the action of the co-op or that of the
Executive Committee of the Council. I do not consider the action of the
co-op president unlawful or against the rules as the claimant did not
want to stop cultivating the land sown by him unlawfully despite several
warnings. In my opinion, the president of the co-op acted lawfully in this
case, protecting the rights of the co-op. According to the report written
by the Deputy President of the Executive Committee of Erdtelke, only
two complaints were made against the president of the co-op, both by
private workers. He is not rude to the private farmers and if he should
speak to them in a stronger tone, it can be traced back to the behaviour
or attitude of the private workers.52 It cannot be clarified exactly what
happened in the time between the case was reported and the investigation,
but it is likely that the claimant was convinced by persuasion or she
withdrew her claim seeing the cooperation of those against her.
It has turned out that some letters were not written by the claimants themselves. In some of these cases the difficulty to write letters and the incorrect spelling indicates old age and/or the lack of education.
In other cases the claimant is not the same person as the one who suffered
injustice and the complaint was put in words by a child or any other relative of the person concerned. Please, find attached the letter written to
52
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, D-08-1960. Box 48.
314 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
us by Mrs. B. K., a resident in Budapest at the following address [], in

which she relates the following events. Her mother joined the co-op
called Kossuth with her land of 900 ngyszgl [about 0.43 hectare] in
Heves. She was not allowed to retain it as a household plot, but she was
given a land of corn somewhere else instead. The claimant noted that the
village council gave the above-mentioned land of her mother to a private
farmer. She considers this procedure unjust and requests that the aforementioned land near accommodation road [] in Heves should be given
to her brother K. Cs. a resident in Bocsond at [] instead of another
private farmer. If it cannot be given to her brother, it should be given to
her mother from the next economic year on.53 It was not unique when
the office concerned found out that the person suffering injustice did not
even know about the submission of a complaint. In one of the cases the
claimant complained that the co-op in Balatonberny wanted to take
away the horse from his mothers stable. However, according to the investigation, the claim is unjustified as the complaint was not written by
the claimant but someone else asked to do this by her mother. The mother
admitted to this and asked the investigation to be stopped. What really
happened cannot be clarified without the help of the protagonists or those
who knew the case well, but it is telling that according to the records
written only a day earlier, the mother had stated that she had talked with
her son about the actions to be taken. With regard to this, it can be presumed that the mother changed the number of those concerned in the
complaint in the interest of her son. The investigation also found out
that the complaint was written by an ex-land owner who works in the village as a cantor trying to undermine the authority of organisations and
state organs and helping to mislead the authorities.54 It can be supposed
that in many cases the claimants asked others to write the complaints for
them because it was easier for the person writing the complaint to use the
language expected by the offices and furthered by the system due to their
qualifications or positions. Discussing the possible sources of social history written in the first half of the 1950s, Gyngyi Farkas mentions applications. In one of them, an officer of the VH (State Security Authority)
writing the report says about the former chief registrar of the settlement
53
54
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ko-24/1960. Box 48.

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ki-25/1960. Box 48.
that at present he is the main legal advisor of the kulaks in the village, an eager writer of submissions and applications.55
3. The characteristics of the contents of complaints and reports
According to the literature discussing correspondence and the history of
letter writing, official correspondence has one direction, i. e. after a particular institution orders, warns or informs, addressees do not answer
the communication directed towards them.56 Compared with the abovementioned ones the claimants turning to the Complaints Office carried
out a two-way communication since the letter of the claimant is followed
by a reply, which contains unique features too, besides the conventional
elements characteristic of the given process. Below I would like to give a
short analysis of some characteristic features of the language used by one
of the parties, namely the claimant, which can be considered content
characteristics.
Taking a letter in our hand, it is the addressee or the form of address that
is conspicuous. The letters of complaint are often addressed to the Minister of Agriculture himself: Dear Comrade Minister of Agriculture57,
and among the addressees one can find the Ministry of Agriculture too58,
With all respect, I ask the Ministry of Agriculture.59 In another case that
is to be discussed in detail below, the Dear Editorial Board of Npszabadsg is addressed by the president of a council who sought to justify
his deeds,60 and another letter writer addressed the President of National
Board of Cooperatives.61 The writer of the above mentioned letter addressed a concrete person whom he called comrade in accordance with
55
Gyngyi Farkas, gynkjelentsek, kihallgatsi jegyzknyvek, krvnyek.

A trsadalomtrtnet-rs lehetsges forrsai, [Agent Reports, Minutes of
Hearings, Applications. The Possible Sources of Social History Writing] Aetas
21/4 (2006), 167.
56
Vilmos Keszeg, Alfabetizci, rsszoksok, populris rsbelisg [Alphabetization, Writing Habits, Popular Literacy] (Kolozsvr: Kriza Jnos Nprajzi
Trsasg Babe-Bolyai Tudomnyegyetem Magyar Nprajz s Antropolgia
Tanszk, 2008), 226.
57
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, E-5/1960. Box 48.
58
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, B-10/1960. Box 48.; MNL Ol, XIX-K-1-o, Be12/1960. Box 48.; MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Cs-22/1960. Box 48.
59
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Cs-19/1960. Box 48.
60
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Bu-16/1960. Box 48.
61
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, D-10/1/1960. Box 48.
316 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
the spirit of the age;62 besides the writer of this letter, there were other
complainants too who used the title comrade at the beginning of their letters. Some letters did not contain address forms at all. One of the letters,
although it was addressed by the claimant to Szabad Fld hoping for
greater publicity, is more like an application sent to an official place:
Undersigned Cs. K., 71-year old resident in Bokros63
Concerning the ending of the letters, it can be considered common that
the letters are ended only with a signature64 or with the signature with the
expression Yours faithfully added65. By just looking over the address
forms and endings briefly, it is conspicuous that some of the complainants who worked in agriculture acquired the language furthered by the
system, or in some cases they may have identified themselves with it; besides the address comrade the following letter ending expressions can be
found. Having repeated our request we remain in patriotic respect66,
with regards from a comrade67; remaining with regards from a comrade68; looking forward to your reply with regards from a comrade69;
Requesting Your action and answer, I send my regards as a comrade.70
In the complaints the expressions and figures of speech characteristic of
the times of the state party can be seen elsewhere too. They can show,
although very rarely, what was the purpose of the letter writers by using
the language created by the dictatorship. Reading one of them, the above
mentioned president of a council, it seems very likely that apart from trying to prove that he was right, the letter writer tried to show that he identified himself with the system and tried to identify his opponent for the
system and to stigmatize him when describing his case he mentions that
the farmer who he has a dispute with over his plot: leads the life of a
62

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ba-9/1960. Box 48.
64
Some cases where the letters of complaint contained only signatures: MOL,
XIX-K-1-o, Ba-9/1960. Box 48; MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Be-10/1960. Box 48.
65
This ending formula can be seen in the letters attached to the following case
files: MOL, XIX-K-1-o, B-10/1960. Box 48; MOL, XIX-K-1-o, J-7/1960. Box
48.
66
67
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Bo-32/1960. Box 48.
68
69
70
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, D-10/1/1960. Box 48.
63
declassed proletaire, [highlighted by author - Cs. K.] does not work and
has debts of thousands of forints that cannot be exacted.71 As opposed to
him, in the case of the letter writers the use of figures of speech rather
suggests an adaptation.72
Analysing the contents of the letters it can also be observed that the officers did not consider the submissions only cases to be solved but they also
commented on them led by their inner conviction or officially. Thats
what happened in the case when the writer of the submission did not only
describe her complaint (she complained that she was a private farmer,
however, her plot was incorporated into the land of the co-op saying that
she lived together with her younger brother, who joined the co-op and no
plot was given to her in exchange for the land taken away), but she also
made remarks on the activities of the president of the council. Wherever
I go or wherever I turn to, the president of the Council of Aptfalva is always ahead of me...; Well, the Council is so honest here. This is underscored with red by the official jotting down the following remark next
to it: it exhausts the notion of slander.73 It was common that neither the
co-ops nor their leaders were treated with great respect. In another case
the claimant complained that his wife, who was a member of the co-op,
looks after five children, so they promised her that she could stay with
them, however, the co-op is continuously forcing her to take part in the
production and they do not take into consideration that she is often ill.
Moreover, he also complained that the co-op took away some livestock
and three sheaves of crops from his household plot. According to the investigation, the co-op could not enforce its earlier promises and only
those were not to work that could prove that they were ill or old and his
71

Analysing the work of the American Soviet expert, Stephen Kotkin, Sndor
Horvth writes on the Bolshevik language used in the USSR that people acquired this ritual way of speech applied in everyday life to achieve their aims
and they applied it later. Sndor Horvth, A mindennapi szocializmus s a
jelenkortrtnet. Nzpontok a szocialista korszak kutatshoz, [Everyday
Socialism and Present Day History. Point of View for the Research of the Socialist Era] Szzadvg 11, no. 2, j folyam no. 40 (2006), 22-23. On the above
mentioned work, see: Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkley - Los Angeles - London: University of California Press, 1997),
198-237.
73
72
318 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
wife had taken part in cultivating their land earlier. The co-op acted in
accordance with the regulation when it took both the livestock and the
crops. Finally, when the case was considered closed, the agricultural department of the executive committee of the district council added: The
disputes and arguments between Your wife and the leaders of the co-op
are caused by Your wife, who does not keep the basic regulation and tries
to denigrate the president and the other leaders spreading the rumour
that they are embezzling thieves and all this is nothing else but slander
against the leaders. It creates distrust between the members and the leaders, which hinders cooperation.74 An anti-coop attitude can also be observed in the case when the claimant complained that her husband was
excluded from the cooperative because of a quarrel with the president.
The exclusion, as the decision was made by the general meeting of the
co-op members, was righteous, says the report written after the investigation. That person was not excluded because of the quarrel with the president, but due to his notorious drinking after he had been warned several
times. It was also noted that he scolded the co-op several times when he
was drunk, and he had not shown up at work for days.75
Looking for further points of view, the social background of the person
issuing a complaint to the Complaints Office can also be examined. I
thought that before a thorough analysis of the sources, it is practical to
divide the claimants into two major groups, the group of private farmers
and that of co-op members (the supporting and regular members are not
separated)76. However, after the cases were inspected more thoroughly, it
turned out that this issue cannot be solved so simply, because there is a
group, although only few people belonged here, which was constituted by
those were neither co-op members nor private farmers. Taking it into consideration, it can be stated that the same number of co-op workers and private farmers, both in 63 cases, turned to the Complaints Office, altogether
126 (or to be more exact that is the number of submissions as it happened
in several cases that some complainants handed in their complaint together),
74
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, L-16/1960. Box 48.

76
There were two types in the statuses of co-op members: the regular and the
supporting members. The lands and livestock of both groups were incorporated into the co-op, but while a regular member had other duties too(for example to work for the proper number of work units), a supporting member had
no duties of this type.
75
which makes up 48.83% in both groups concerning all the cases. Apart
from them, the Complaints Office dealt with 4 cases (which make up
3.1% of all cases) where the claimants belonged to neither group; and this
picture is refined more if we take 1 case where the complaint can be connected to both co-op members and to private farmers. Certainly, by dividing letter writers into two groups, the circle of complaint writers is
simplified. Namely the majority of the co-op members (except for those
who received old age pension or permanent treatment or those who were
waiting to be granted them) were agricultural workers, but in the case of
private farmers the situation was not so simple. Some of them had their
fingers in several pies (so they were commuters), i.e. their main income
did not come from agriculture, and they only cultivated land besides their
other job in another branch of the economy.77 (The assessment of commuters fluctuated between two extremities in the era. According to one,
they are unreliable and backward both politically and culturally, so their
group must be eliminated. According to the other, their existence is favourable from an economic point of view, so one neednt try to eliminate
them, and with the progress of socialism their group will disappear.)78 In
one case for example the claimant complained that although he was not a
member of the co-op as he was a dikereeve and earlier he had been an industrial worker, the co-op took his land and did not give him replacement.79 In some cases they indicate that they rely on the income from the
land as a secondary income and therefore they ask for a decision as soon
as possible. (The income gained from several sectors, i. e. agriculture and
industry, made it possible for those living in villages to start to become
wealthier after they recovered from the shock caused by collectivisation.
As a result, from the second half of the 1960s houses were modernized,
new houses were built and a lot of durable goods such as furniture, refrigerators, other kitchen tools, TVs etc were purchased.)80 [The complainant 77
On the phenomenon of commuters, see: Varga, Mit r a munks, 37-57.

The discourse on the assessment of commuters, see: Eszter Zsfia Tth, Fekete
vonat, Cspl Gyuri, A prtfogolt Ingzk a dokumentumfilmekben, [Black
Train, Gyuri Cspl, The Protg Commuters in Documentaries] Eszmlet
20/77 (2008), 50-57.
79
80
Tibor Valuch, From Long Houses to Square. Changing Village Living Conditions in Sixties Hungary, in Muddling through in the Long 1960s. Ideas and
Everyday Life in High Politics and the Lower Classes of Communist Hungary,
78
320 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
Cs. K.] appeared at the council of the village on 19 January and enquired
about the processes concerning land. Then two people who were unknown to her told her to sign a printed paper that was placed in front of
her. The claimant signed it without reading it, she cannot see properly
without glasses, trusting that [her case - Cs. K.] would be arranged according to her request. She wanted to lend her land to the co-op as she
needs the income. At the moment she works as a cleaning lady for the External Trading Company, so she has a low salary. She requests a investigation of the circumstances of the offer [the offer of the land as a benefit
for the state - Cs. K.] and she would like it to be repealed.81 The deception that can be seen in this case (like the physical atrocities to be described below) can be considered an element of the means of dictatorship,
reflecting the abuse of power committed by the agitators and their trust in
their indemnity even if someone reports them. This phenomenon was not
exceptional. Another complainant who lived and worked in Budapest
complained that when the co-op had been founded in the village, her plot
had been taken over by the co-op, but she had not received a replacement
plot, although she had already sought remedy at the village, the district
and the county organisations. She also mentioned that her 81-year old
deaf mother lives in the village of Flpszlls, and reportedly she was
made to sign different declarations, but neither she nor her mother can
tell what was in the declaration. The investigation came to the conclusion that the claimants mother joined the cooperative after signing the
application for entrance, and it is not true that her mother did not know
what she signed during the agitation, although the aforementioned elderly lady can be considered mentally capable. Moreover, as the aforementioned plot was taken into the co-op by her mother through her joining,
the land-surveyors and the land registering officers of neither the village
council nor those working at the county department of the FTH [State
Office of Cartography and Geodesy]82 can show her replacement plot.83
ed. Rainer Jnos M., Gyrgy Pteri (Trondheim: The Institute for the History
of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Budapest Program on East European Cultures and Societies, 2005), 135-159.
81
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Mo-5/1960. Box 48.
82
The organisation was founded in 1952 and worked independently until 1967.
The institute carried out surveys to create maps for the state for economic and
educational purposes, organised scientific geodesic researches and controlled
In the case of the 4 claimants who were neither private farmers nor co-op
members, no common feature can be detected except that they were all
connected to agriculture. The most complicated case that has already
been mentioned more times cannot be considered a complaint. The submission was sent by the president of a council who wrote a letter to
Npszabadsg, and the newspaper forwarded it to the Complaints Office.
The writer of the letter asked if he was right when during the arrangement
of the land a private farmer wasnt left on his own land to continue working there, so the principle of staying in the same place was not applied. It
happened because that person offered his land but did not hand in the
signed documents to the council, so it was not valid. However, his land
was given to someone else in the meantime. The sender of the submission
mentioned that he did not allow scything (and selling) the crops on that
piece of land because it was not used by him at the time of harvest. Up to
this point one could say that it is a common case, a local leader wanted to
justify his deeds. However, the rest of the process differed from the normal ones as the system did not protect this cog-wheel in its machine. During the investigation it turned out that the aforementioned resident did not
sign the declaration of offer, but he received permission to scythe and use
the crops, so the action of the president of the council was unjust. The
plot could not be given back to its owner as it had already been given to
someone else, so he would be given a replacement plot somewhere else.
It also came to light that the writer of the submission committed abuses
against others too, and there are several legal processes in progress
against him.84 In the following case that can be considered unique the
complainant was the president of one of the co-ops in Kajdacs, but the
co-op did not want to pay his salary. The complainant first wrote to the
agricultural department of the executive committee of the county council,
then to the leaders of the co-op two times. The agricultural department of
the executive committee of the county council obliged the co-op to pay
his salary, but it only planned to do so after the annual report of 1960, i.
e. in 1961 because they had financial difficulties and they had informed
the claimant about it several times.85 In the third case two brothers comthe making of the nationwide land register. A magyar llam szervei 19501970, 143-144.
83
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, O-4/1960. Box 48.
84
85
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ki-35/1960. Box 48.
322 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
plained that after their parents had joined the co-op, they were also
obliged to do so, although they had been working as trained unskilled
workers for a bridge constructing company, which had already sent their
time books to the co-op. At the end of the investigation they made a note
that the claimants had already complained at other forums, so by the time
any proper measure could have been taken, the aforementioned co-op had
solved the problem giving back their time books to the complainants.86 In
the last case a railway worker complained that although his son had not
joined the co-op (his wife was a member of it), working as a mechanic in
Budapest, the co-op obliged him to work and the company had already
planned to make him redundant. There were several investigations in this
case. They came to the conclusion that the co-op had not infringed the
law because when he applied for the job of a mechanic, the son of the
complainant was only required to ask for a document of the local co-op
proving that his work is not needed there; as the co-op was suffering from
the lack of hands, they did not make out such documents, neither did the
village council. The company might employ his son; it cannot be and will
not be prevented by the co-op. After the complainant was informed about
it, it turned out that his son had already worked a few days for the co-op
and would probably stay there.87
The next topic is what type of cases one can come across in the submissions. At the beginning of 1961, the report of Szabad Fld contained 7
types of complaints: a) the co-op or the village make it difficult to work
outside the co-op, b) the elderly co-op members complain about the lack
of co-op support and the subtraction of the fee of the National Health Insurance, c) there are problems with the final reports and the settlement of
work units, d) complaints about the household plots, e) complaints about
violent co-op organisation, f) the complaints of sick co-op members who
are unable to work, g) complaints with unique characteristics that fall in
no category. The report of the Hungarian Radio and Television at the beginning of February 1961 is about the measures aiming to strengthen the
work morals, the issues concerning household plots and land rent88 and
the problems of supporting members. The report of July summarizes the
problems with organising co-ops, the problems with cultivating land, the
86

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, R-2/1960. Box 48.
88
Land rent was paid to those whose land was used by the co-op, but they did
not waived their ownership rights.
87
lack of workforce, the unpaid land rent, the quarrels between the co-op
members and the unpaid common basic fees.89 I had difficulties categorizing the cases, so probably they are partly based on my subjective assessment. When categorizing them, I tried to retain the uniqueness of each
case, so cases that were made up of several segments have not been classified into those categories which would cover only part of that complaint.90
Table 1. The types of complaints in the case of co-op members
Type of complaint
indicating the intention to quit
applying for a job in a state farm
complaint about the settlement of work units
complaint about the settlement of work units,
and indicating the intention to quit
complaint in connection with the supporting
members
the sum of damages, and complaint about the
settlement of work units
complaint about the obligation to cut off
vineyards and orchards
complaint about the sum of the damages
complaints about household plots
complaints about the obligatory incorporation
of livestock into the co-op
complaint about the prevention of storing crops
complaints about the fee of the National Health
Insurance
complaints about the obligatory incorporation
of land into the co-op and the deprivation of
household plots
89
90
MNL OL, M-KS-288. f. 28/1960. Box 16.

In the tables rounded values are shown.
Their
Number percentage
of cases among all
the cases
4
6.34%
1
1.58%
2
3.17%
1
1.58%
3.17%
1.58%
1.58%
3
8
4.76%
12.69%
3.17%
1.58%
3.17%
1.58%
324 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
complaints about being excluded

asking for replacement plot and indicating the
intention to quit
complaint about being obliged to work for the
co-op
dispute between two co-ops over a land that
was given to the co-op
complaint about being admitted as a regular
member
complaint about not being admitted as a regular
member
requiring a temporary work permission outside
the co-op
complaint about violent co-op organisation and
the expropriation of equipment
complaint about not issuing the document for
getting discount health care and about the sum
of the advance of work units
complaint about malfeasance and problems
deriving from mismanagement
complaints about the problems caused by
unsettled membership
complaint about replacement plots and the
deception committed when the claimant joined
the co-op
requiring a release from physical work
complaint because no household plot was
allotted and indicating the intention to quit
requiring wheat because of hard living
conditions
complaint about an unpaid bonus
complaint about the prohibition of harvesting
the crops, and that the co-op later complained
about it (the ownership of the land is in
question)
7.93%
3.17%
4.76%
1.58%
1.58%
1
1
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
3.17%
3.17%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
4.76%

the crops and indicating the intention to quit
the issue of maintaining private farming
requiring not hard work because of illness and
asking the household plot to be allotted
asking for a lease as the land is used by the coop and the state farm
complaint about the sum of the damages and
the settlement of work units
complaint that they failed to allot the fodder to
the livestock kept in the private household
complaint about the prohibition of reorganising
the co-op
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
I do not intend to deal with every type of case either in connection with
co-op members or with private farmers, but I would like to draw attention
to some major tendencies and background phenomena. The greatest
number of complaints was connected to household plots (8 cases). In
most cases co-op members were not given household plots, but it also occurred that the household plot was not allotted on the land that a person
gave to the co-op but somewhere else and in some cases the right to use
the household plot was denied. The number of cases when a complaint
was made about being excluded from the co-op is also great; 5 such cases
are known. In these cases people were excluded due to illnesses (these
were settled by giving the complainant old age pension), improper work
performance and improper behaviour (excessive drinking, vituperation of
the co-op and large-scale farming, improper use of the equipment of the
co-op). In one case when a supporting membership was repealed, the decision was not explained. As in earlier times, work units were not settled
properly, therefore this problem surfaced two times independently and
two times it was combined with some other complaints. The intention to
quit is also quite frequent; it is mentioned in 4 cases.
There are quite a lot of examples of the family strategies mentioned in the
first half of the study when the cases are examined. To create a financial
position as favourable as possible and/or to get away from agriculture (or
an attitude neglecting the changed circumstances) may have been the
326 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
background purpose of the following complainant. After joining the local

co-op, the complainant was incapable of working in agriculture permanently according to the medical examination. After that the claimant
complained that the co-op subtracted his National Health Care fee and the
old age pension contribution for the whole year in advance from the price
they received for a calf that was sold from the claimants household and
what is more, the co-op did not want to allot a household plot for him.
According to the investigation, the complainant was really ill, but he
could have worked for the co-op; he was just not willing to do so because
he earned better money by driving to transport. It was right to subtract the
National Health Care fee from the price of the calf, since the only offence
was that they had subtracted it for the whole year in advance. To demonstrate the difficult situation, they mention that the co-op was to pay National Health Care fees for about 60 members.91 To complete the abovementioned case, it is a recurring phenomenon in several complaints that
elderly people who were still active at that moment or earlier had worked
in agriculture joined the co-op because they wanted the old age pension
and/or the National Health Care fee.92 As can be seen in these complaints,
the co-ops were struggling with the lack of work force, and the seriousness of the situation is indicated by a statistical paper, according to which
the majority or all of the registered co-op members, their percentage was
between 25-60%, withdrew from the work of co-ops.93 To solve this
problem, co-ops tried to recruit new members, which is reflected by several cases. The above-mentioned case of the railway worker whose son
was hindered to work out of the co-op is a good example.94 Or when the
claimants complained that they are supporting members in the co-op,
however, they were not given household plots. Although the claimants had
certification that they were working elsewhere, the general meeting of the
co-op decided that due to the lack of work force, the supporting members
also had to participate in the common work to receive household plots.95 In
another case the complainant said that her co-op membership is unsettled
91
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, F-10/1960. Box 48.

The following cases fall in this category: MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Be-17/1960.
Box 48; MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ha-13/1960. Box 48; MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o,
Na-10/1960. Box 48; MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, R-25/1/1960. Box 48.
93
Varga, Megtanultk a leckt, 468.
94
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, R-2/1960. Box 48.
95
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ho-13/1960. Box 48.
92
and she was not given a household plot. During the investigation it came
to light that the complainant and her daughter joined the co-op at the
same time as regular members. As they brought land into the co-op, the
co-op was to ensure them National Health Care service and it regularly
pays the National Health Care fee for them. Later the claimants daughter
was warned to take part in the work according to her ability numerous
times. She was asked to participate in the common work as she is still
young and to help strengthen the co-op politically and economically. /
The co-op is in a difficult situation, struggling with lack of workforce.
The warning was useless. According to the investigation, the woman
mentioned that she was susceptible to illnesses, but she failed to appear
before the medical board. According to the records, the method of settling
this problem was discussed with the claimant; the report did not make
mention of the issue of the household plot.96
In the case of private farmers usually other types of complaints can be
distinguished.
Table 2. The types of complaints in the case of private farmers
Type of complaint
complaint about the obligatory incorporation
of land into the co-op because of living in a
common household
of land into the co-op without the consent of
the owner and the unpaid land rent
problems with the replacement plot received
in exchange for the plot that was taken away
by the co-op
complaint that the land lease took effect too
early
asking to be allowed to continue private
farming
complaint about a violent co-op president
96
Number
of cases
Their
percentage
among all
the cases
12.69%
1.58%
16
25.39%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
328 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS

the crops, and that the co-op later complained
about it (the ownership of the land is in
question)
complaint about the sum of the damages or
that they were not paid
of livestock into the co-op
complaint about the obligatory transportation
of the crops to a common corn-floor
complaint about the violent organisation of
the co-op
complaint that the fees of the land used by
the co-op were not paid
complaint that the application form was
signed due to deception
complaint that the co-op took away and used
the land
complaint that the claimant was not admitted
to the co-op
complaint about some injustice caused by the
land arrangement
enquiring about the sum of the damages due
after the crops that fell in the land of the co-op
12.69%
12.69%
3.17%
3.17%
1.58%
7.93%
1.58%
1.58%
1.58%
7.93%
1.58%
A quarter of the complaints (16 cases) sent by private farmers were connected to the replacement plot received in exchange for the plot acquired
by the co-op. They mainly complained about the quality of the plots, their
distance from the homes of the claimants and in some cases the co-op
was reluctant to allot them. To continue with the bigger groups, there are
three with 8 cases each. One of them complained about the obligatory incorporation into the co-op due to living in a common household. Another
group contains complaints about the prohibition of harvesting the crops
and that later the co-op complained about it. In these cases, as the ownership of the land was not settled between the farmer and the co-op, sometimes the co-op was quicker to harvest the debated crops. The third group
contains complaints about the sum of the damages and that they were not
paid. It is worth examining what may have been the motivation of the obligatory incorporation of land or livestock of those who lived in a common household into that of the co-op. The law creators, counting on the
possible complications, passed Law Decree 7 of 1959, providing for agricultural cooperatives and the group of cooperatives. Paragraph 20 of the
Decree provided for the delivery of land, according to Paragraph 1 The
member is obliged to deliver all the lands, including grazing lands or forests owned, leased or used under any legal title by them or their family
members living in the same household, to the common use of the co-op
except for the household plot that can legally be retained.97 So even if a
family with several generations living in the same house but in different
households divided their land and attributed the ownerships of the plots to
different family members, their strategy was to fail if one of them joined
the co-op. According to the decree, in this case all the owners were subject to the obligatory incorporation of their lands, livestock and equipment.98 In a report written during the investigation of such a case, the
presenter drew attention to this strategy. Moreover, I would like to note
that before the co-op was founded, the aforementioned family used the
plot under different titles /: my son, daughter, grandmother, brother-inlaw etc:/. In fact, all the plots registered and leased under different
names were cultivated by B. . and his family. [] According to the village council, the party organisation, the presidents of the village co-ops
and the district council, B. . is not the only one who wants to harvest the
autumnal crops by different machinations, threatening the co-ops need
for bread crops.99 Another big group (5 cases) contains those complaints
when the fees after the land leases were not paid and the number of complaints about the injustices caused by the land arrangement was the same.
The latter ones were caused by the fact that the replacement plot was not
the same size as the one delivered to the co-op. There are case types with
as few as only one case. One of the claimants was an elderly man, and
after working in agriculture all his life, he wanted to receive old age pension, but no co-op had been founded in his village. The nearest one is 11
97

Laws and Regulations, 1959] (Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad,
1960), 97.
98
In such cases sometimes the decision was favourable for the complainant:
99
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ka-10/1960. Box 48.
330 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
km away, but travelling is difficult for him as he is disabled. He asked his

problem to be solved within the co-op. The investigation recommended a
concrete co-op to him, and that was to identify what type of job the
claimant was capable of.100
Comparing the different types of cases of the complaints made by co-op
members and private farmers it is clear that in the cases of co-op members a much wider gamut of complaints can be observed (we have distinguished 37 types), private farmers sent only less than half as many types
of complaints (17) to the Complaints Office. The complaints of the two
groups do not have a lot in common. The prohibition of harvesting the
crops sown by the complainants, the violent co-op organisation, the obligatory incorporation of livestock and the low sum of damages are complaints that belong here. The complaints about the violent co-op
foundations that escalated to battery are mentioned once in each group. A
private farmer was called to the house of the council to clarify his taxation and then they tried to force him to sign the application form to join
the co-op, in the fight the old man, who was eighty years old, fell over.
The investigation could not find out the agitators.101 From the co-op
members one person complained that after he had been forced to join the
co-op, the size of his household plot was decreased, his van was confiscated and his gardening tools were evaluated at a low price. The complainant noted that the injustices committed against him had a bad effect
on the village. According to the investigation carried out by the Group of
Cooperation Policy of the Agricultural Department of the Executive
Committee of the Council of County Somogy, the complaint about violence is not true: it has been found that during the organisation of the
co-op in the village, the above mentioned person signed the application
form without being forced. The agitators tried to convince the aforementioned person by describing the advantages of large scale farming.102
The reproof of the community can be seen in another submission when a
100
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, R-25/1/1960. Box 48.

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ko-53/1960. Box 48.
102
According to the submission, the claimant described in detail how the agitators tried to persuade him to join the co-op, but the methods are not clear because the letter of complaint cannot be found in the file. The complainant first
wrote to Kdr himself, from there the letter was forwarded to the Office of
the HSWP CC, and then it was sent to the Complaints Office. MNL OL, XIXK-1-o, Ko-15/1/1960. Box 48.
101
claimant who lived and worked in Budapest complained that after her
mother had joined the co-op, the money due to her work units was not
paid correctly. Therefore the atmosphere is bad among the members
without land.103 There were other violent activities when the co-ops were
organised. In one case the complainant said that he had signed the application form, but due to the poor health of his wife, he agreed with the
leaders of the co-op that he was going to carry on private farming. He began to cultivate a plot leased by him; the village council registered the
land lease. Despite the above-mentioned events, on 2 November at 11
p.m. about 30 people broke into his house led by the president of the
council armed with sticks and took away his horse together with the
farming tools. When asked, they told him that he would not receive any
compensation. According to the investigation, the co-op only took the
items listed in the application form, but not the way the co-op member
described it, armed with sticks, but in accordance with the decree, and
certainly the member will be compensated for these items.104
In one case the complaint can be connected neither to the cooperative nor
its operation nor its decision. A co-op member said that she could not
store the crops got in exchange for the work units, because her joint tenant did not allow it the complainants husband was a railway worker
therefore they lived in a watchmans house. Anyway, the complaint was
declared to be remedied during the investigation, because MV (Hungarian Railway Company) divided the attic into two sections, so the complainant could store the crops in her section.105
It can also be detected to what extent the complaints cover the country. In
those cases when the home of the complainants was not in the same place
as their agricultural property, it was the property that I took into account.
103
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Ma-32/1960. Box 48.

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, S-40/1960. Box 48.
105
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, E-5/1960. Box 48.
104
332 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
Table 3. The distribution of complaints according to counties
County
BcsKiskun
Baranya
Bks
BorsodAbajZempln
Csongrd
Fejr
GyrMosonSopron
HajdBihar
Heves
JszNagykunSzolnok
Komrom
Esztergom
Ngrd
Pest
Somogy
SzabolcsSzatmrBereg
Tolna
The proportion among all the

complaints
Number of Number
other
Number
cases
of cases
(neither
of cases
(co-op
(private
(others) co-op private private
total
members) farmers)
member farmer farmers
nor co-op
members)
7
5.42%
6.97%
12.39%
2
3
1
4
1.55%
2.32%
0.77%
3.1%
2.32%
5.42%
1
4
3
0.77%
5
6
3.1%
2.32%
0.77%
3.87%
4.65%
6.97%
6.97%
0%
3.1%
4.65%
7.75%
3.1%
6.2%
9.3%
4.65%
2.32%
6.97%
1.55%
2.32%
3.87%
1
3
7
2
5
2
0.77%
2.32%
5.42%
1.55%
3.87%
1.55%
0.77%
2.32%
6.19%
7.74%
2.32%
0.77%
0.77%
3.86%
2.32%
1.55%
0.77%
4.64%
Vas
Veszprm 6
Zala
3
3
4.65%
1 (co-op
members
and
1.55%
private
farmers)
2.32%
2.32%
2.32%
6.97%
0.77%
2.32%
The complainants only sent complaints to the office that were connected to
the agricultural area around the nearby villages and farmhouses, in quite a
number of cases complaints connecting considerable distances can be
found in the files; in these cases the claimants home was far from the agricultural property. I have found 15 cases like that altogether, and in most of
these cases, in 14 cases, the claimant lived and worked in the capital city.
In these cases the migration or commuting lifestyle caused by the organisation of co-ops can be supposed, however, as these cases do not provide a
firm base to answer these questions, I will not intend to discuss them in detail. There are cases (namely 4 cases) where the complaints are not connected to the property but to the living conditions. According to one of
them, the complainant joined the co-op somewhere in County Ngrd, and
he wrote in his letter that he had done it in the name of his wife, but he had
a job in Budapest and considering that he had never done any agricultural
work, he wanted to quit the co-op. However, the leader of the cooperative
required the complainant to be made redundant, promising that the co-op
could provide him with a permanent job.106 In another case the complainant
joined the local co-op where he worked as a blacksmith, but because he
wanted to get married, he intended to move to another place. He announced
his intention to quit the co-op to the general meeting of the co-op twice and
it was approved, but the president of the co-op did not have the decree written and asked his present workplace to lay him off. The co-op approved his
leaving, providing the claimant joined the co-op in his new living place and
sent a message about it to them.107
106
107
MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, J-9/1960. Box 48.

MNL OL, XIX-K-1-o, Z-6/1960. Box 48.
334 _______________________________________________ Csaba KOVCS
Conclusions
As I tried to highlight above, complaints constitute a very colourful and interesting group of sources that help understand the decision-making processes and strategies deployed by the parties concerned in the last wave of
collectivisation. But it would be fruitless to make an attempt to investigate
the number and type of the complaints sent by co-op members and private
farmers and which part of the country these complaints came from and the
proportion of the different types among the complaints. There are several
factors that cannot be ignored. On the one hand, only a small number of injustices committed against landowners were manifested in the form of letters of complaints. Many people may have felt it futile to quarrel with the
government for various reasons nevertheless, it is also a question why
those who submitted a complaint thought that the government would show
a positive attitude towards their complaint. We cannot even be sure whether the Complaints Office retained all the submissions and later all of them
were received by the archives. On the other hand, an annual compilation of
the submissions, in this case that of 1960, does not necessarily give a true
picture of the complaints as the complaints of another year would probably
show completely or partly different parameters. Moreover, it can be stated
that even the personal perspective of those who were aggrieved by collectivisation cannot be examined relying merely on complaints if this segment of that issue can be fully processed at all , as it is not only the
complaints that contain the personal experiences of collectivisation. (The
personal dimensions of co-op organisation, possibly those of both parties,
appear in the law court files, memoirs, diaries, autobiographies and interviews among others.) Nevertheless, it can firmly be stated that the different
analyses based upon the relatively large number of submissions at the turn
of the 1950s and 1960s may cast light to several aspects of the situation of
those working in agriculture, like the processes and methods applied
against them and the complaints about these, and they may provide a closer
view of the Kdr era. They would hardly if at all be revealed to those interested in the history of Hungary and/or the history of Hungarian agriculture by any other source.
A Program for Afforestation: Sovietisation, Knowledge and

Work in Hungary, 1949-19591
Rbert BALOGH
Towards research questions: the meaning of forest in popular
literature of the 1950s
The image of forest management appeared in a number of literary texts
published in the 1950s in Hungary. In 1950 two Soviet novels were translated and published that had the word forest in their title. Leonid Leonovs Sot written in Russian was translated as Forest on the move
(Megindul az erd) in Hungarian. The novel talks of forest in the context
of a paper mill that the main character sets up in a backward region.
Look, buddy and listen!.... and he took out the map that was used to
decorate the governors office This is all forest, it is left there, rotting
and drying. There are countless fungi, bears, hermits and the devil
there is everything besides value and freedom. Twelve hundred desiatina
of it burns down every year and even more dries out.2 Leonov used the
image of the forest to express what the new regime and the memory of
the old one meant in the late 1920s in the Soviet Union. The old forest is
that of ghosts. For Leonov it is the rationality of the map as a tool of governmentality that needs to be reinterpreted in order to trigger productivity,
liberty and enhance the quality of life. Xenia Lvovas short novel translated to Hungarian as Budding forest (Sarjad erd) is a straightforward story of the development of the main character, a young forester
who arrives in the kolkhoz in a numb state of mind. The breakthrough
1
This paper owes much to at least four people. First, to Mrs. Ern Bodor, my
grandmother, for providing me with a calm retreat in Szajla while I collected
material at the Archives of Heves County. Second, to Dr. Jnos Srvri who
granted me unlimited access to the archives of the National Forestry Association at the Kroly Wgner Library in Budapest. Third, to Daria Nazhimova,
who accompanied me on my trip to the Forest Research Institute at Dehradun,
India in April 2013, and finally, to Himani Upadhyaya who brought my attention to environmental history and forest landscapes while I studied at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. I am also thankful to Lidis
Garbovan for translating letters written in Romanian.
Leonid Leonov, Megindul az erd [Forest on the Move] (Budapest: Szikra,
1950), 51.
336 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
occurs as he realizes how much he and the forest have achieved: Their
shrouds reached each other wondered Nastia. He was enchanted and
could not take his eyes off the green branches above him. As if he had
never hoped that this moment would come. Where do these scents, humid,
caressing air and cool come from? The belt of forest has started to live its
own life. Forest vegetation has started. Nastia needed to know the life
of trees...it is easy to say that forest grows anyway, but what about the
struggle? A young poplar tree captured Nastias attention. It lifted its
white silky trunk out of the darkness of twigs of a maple tree.3
In Hungarian fiction Istvn Fekete was exceptionally sensitive to ties between nature and human life. His fairy tale, for Wind and Forest (A Szl
s az Erd) was published in 1957 as part of a larger collection of tales.
In Wind and Forest Fekete talks of the far-reaching destruction that accompany deforestation and also posits that Nature may be healed through
reforestation. As a result of human beings listening to their evil instinct
for accumulating undue wealth they cut the entire forest Thus, the creek
dried up, the silky meadow of the valley had nothing but sedge and people watered their small gardens from wells so that at least they grow
something.4 Thus Fekete was of the opinion that forests were the key
factor in regulating water levels, thus that missing forest means desiccation. In one of the chapters of his book Birds of Forests and grasslands
(Erd-mez madarai), written in a popular style, Albert Vertse an ornithologist emphasized the role of lanes of trees in increasing and maximizing the fertility of arable land. Moreover, in the same chapter he showed
how intertwined bird conservation, afforestation and increasing yields
were. In the shadow of closed lines of trees and protective belts of forest there is more produceIt is a priority to plant trees that grow fast
both for halting wind and to hasten birds nesting.5
The four works cited above showcase a number of aspects of the relationship
between Soviet-type modernization and forests. Since the creation of a
new industrial modernity was central to the regime, there was a momentum
3
4
Xenia Lvova, Sarjad az erd [Budding Forest] (Budapest: j Magyar Kiad,

1950).
Istvn Fekete, Szl s az Erd, [Wind and Forest] in A bvs csengetty s
ms mesk [The Enchanting Bell and Other Stories], eds. Hrs Lszl, Scindler
Frigyesn (Budapest: 1957).
Albert Vertse, Erd-mez madarai [Birds of Forests and Grasslands] (Budapest: Mezgazdasgi Kiad, 1952).
A Program for Afforestation: Sovietisation, Knowledge and Work... _______ 337
towards seeing forestry as a producer of raw material, thus as a series of

mechanized and subsidiary processes serving industry. Thus, with the era
of Stalins plan for Transforming Nature setting in, forestry and agriculture came to closer proximity in political imagery. The idea of conservation and the idea of desiccation were the product of the interaction
between non-Western and Western areas of the globe in the late 19th
century and early 1900s. The four works quoted above saw popular
knowledge in negative terms. Leonov saw negligence and lack of action
in the behaviour and attitude of long-bearded traditional forest guards. In
Lvovas kolkhoz it was up to the trained forester to achieve a healthy
landscape. Istvn Fekete emphasized the propensity of communities to
act against sustainable equilibrium, while Albert Vertse quoted a peasant
who had false knowledge about the role of birds in agriculture. Moreover,
the authors produced gendered geographies. Leonov had complex female
characters involved in power struggle in the small town, while Lvovas
are simply there to bring out the best of Nasztia. One of the key animal
characters in Feketes novel was an expectant fox.
In this paper I argue that the afforestation campaign of the 1950s in Hungary
was at the juncture of a number of developments. Afforestation, it raises
questions about continuity and break between regimes of knowledge before and after the Second World War including the question of cultural
influence of Sovietisation on scientific practices. It asks for an analysis of
the relationship between propaganda and governmentality in the state socialist period of the region. Afforestation is also about the relationship between forest and non-forest realms as well as between foresters, forest
management and those working on the ground. The paper is organized
into four sections. The first section looks at the interaction between propaganda aspects of the afforestation project and methods of political mobilization in the 1950s through focusing on events of the so-called Week
of Trees.. Next, by looking at visits of foresters from Eastern Block
countries to Hungary, in the second section I analyse afforestation as entangled history. Then, I will look at the roles that women played in the
landscape of afforestation. Subsequently, I turn to the local level and look
at how afforestation influenced the life of farmers and cooperatives as
well as that of regional forestry just before the decisive wave of collectivization in the area around Pard, that is, a micro -region in Northern Hungary.
338 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
Knowledge and locality in (semi)peripher

Over the last two decades a number of works showed that environmental
history had to be critical with the notion of knowledge. In their book on
late 20th-century conflicts over forest management in Southeast Asia Tim
Forsyth and Andrew Walker conclude that ...environmental knowledge
(including scientific knowledge) does not exist in a politically neutral and
universally applicable form, but reflects various social and political influences and values.6
Along the same lines, Timothy Mitchell challenged the idea of national
economy and, working within a post-colonial framework, and showed
that the notion that experts and expertise understand and overcome nature
was a fiction of modernity.7 It follows from Mitchells work that if we
one is to ask questions about the afforestation campaign of the 1950s in
Hungary, the quality of research might benefit from looking at studies of
forestry and knowledge about global peripheries and semi-peripheries
outside the Eastern Block.
The role of state, rigid hierarchy of knowledge, exclusion and resistance
are the major issues that studies on environmental history raise in the
context of South Asia. Vinita Damodaran showed in a number of articles
that the troubled relationship between developmental goals, land appropriation and environmental crisis had been a key aspect of modern and
contemporary history.8 The debate on the essence of 19th-century British
forest policies in colonial areas also led historians to appreciate the role
that negotiations played in colonial governmentality.9
Tim Forsyth, Andrew Walker, Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers. The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2008), 229.
7
Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts. Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
8
Vinita Damodaran, Indigenous Forests: Rights, Discourses, and Resistance in
Chotanagpur, 1860-2002, in Ecological Nationalisms. Nature, Livelihood, and
Identities in South Asia, eds. Gunnel Cederlf, Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramkrishnan (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), 115-150.
9
Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramkrishnan, Modern Forests, Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1999).
In the African context, Melissa Leach and Diane K. Davis highlighted

that interpreting forest landscape as the terrain of scarcity, desiccation
and desertification, that is, the word crisis played a key role in claiming
extended rights to colonial control.10 Taking this point further, Akhil
Gupta writes about the concept of the indigenous ecological knowledge:
understandings of ill health...are themselves incommensurable with explanations of ecological destruction because...there may be very different
assessments between, for example, First World conservationists and subaltern, Third World people as to...which losses are significant.11 Paul
Sillitoe reminds us that while talking of indigenous knowledge one shall
not romanticize the concept: It exists nowhere as a totality, there is no
grand repository, and hence no coherent overall theoretical model, although it may achieve some coherence in cosmologies, rituals and symbolic discourse.12
Moreover, works on environmental history have pointed out that forestry
and afforestation in particular are global histories of global circuits. As
the large Botanical Garden in Berlin demonstrates, the body of
knowledge that we call botany was accumulated in the 19th century and
was essentially the outcome of the interaction between European mostly German scientists being introduced to species of the so-called tropics. Kavita Philip and Timothy D. Walker show how much the
production of botany depended on interaction between non-Western experts and travelling Europeans.13 In turn, by mid-19th century Germany
10
Melissa Leach, James Fairhead, Misreading the African Landscape. Society and
Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996); Diana K. Davis, Potential Forests. Degradation Narratives: Science and
Environmental Policy in Protectorate Morocco, 1912-1956, Environmental
History 10/2 (2005) 211-238.
11
Akhil Gupta, Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 289.
12
Paul Sillitoe, Participant observation to participatory development: making
anthropology work, in Participating in development: approaches to indigenous knowledge ed. Paul Sillitoe, Alan Bicker, Johan Pottier, (New York and
London:Taylor and Francis, 2004), 9.
13
Kavita Philip, Civilizing Natures. Race, Resources and Modernity in Colonial
South India (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 171-195; David
Arnold, The Tropics and the Travelling Gaze. India, Landscape and Science
1800-1856 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 185-224; Timothy
D. Walker, Enduring Echoes of Garcia da Orta: The Royal Hospital Gardens
340 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
became the land of scientific forestry. German practices were exported

throughout the colonial world such as India, New Zealand or Java, and
these ideas were adopted by all states wishing to modernize such as Hungary and Russia.14 While the early 20th-century Russian forester, Georgi
F. Morozov introduced his theory of stand types and biocoenosis largely
as a criticism of mainstream German forestry, both Russian and Hungarian foresters readily adopted a notion that developed in colonial context
such as the theory of desiccation and that forest belts were a means of
protection against it.15 E.P. Stebbing, one of the leading British colonial
forest administrators, explained the state of desiccation theory at the 2nd
Forestry Congress held in Budapest in 1936: And sand drift and desiccation [are] recognized at present day as an increasing danger...If a forest
belt is the answer then that belt must be on a scale sufficient to deal with
the force opposed to man.16 Taking one more step in the circuit, Arvid
Nelson called attention to the long dure conflict between German foresters wishing to realize a so-called close-to-nature forest and those that
maintained that scientific forestry was the answer to challenges in the
first half of the 20th century.17 Scientific forestry refers to forest management as that which is governed by a systematic adherence to working
plans for cutting and replanting the forest (in forest plantations), according to prevailing principles of silviculture developed through experi-
14
15
16
17
in Goa and Evolving Hybridization in Portuguese Colonial Medical Culture,

in Medicine, Trade and Empire: Garcia de Orta's Colloquies on the Simples
and Drugs of India in Context, ed. Palmira Fontes da Costa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015), 213-236.
S. Ravi Rajan, Modernizing Nature. Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development
1800-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For the impact of German scientific forestry on Hungarian foresters knowledge see Istvn Hiller,
Haznk els szakknyvtrnak kialakulsa: az Erdszeti s Faipari Egyetem
knyvtrnak trtnete [The Making of the First Library of our Country: the
History of the Library of the University of Forestry and Timber Industry]
(Sopron: 1975).
For Greogri Morozovs views see: Stephen Brain, The Song of the Forest,
Russian Forestry and Stalinist Environmentalism, 1905-1953 (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011).
E.P. Stebbing, The Forests of West Africa and the Sahara in: 2nd World Forestry Congress vol. III. (Budapest, 1936), 675.
Arvid Nelson, Cold War Ecology. Farms, and People in the East German
Landscape, 1945-1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
mental trials over time.18 Nelson shows how different interpretations of

Marxism, Soviet biology, the post-war Sovietisation and ideas within
German forestry came into interaction and conflict in Eastern Germany,
thus, he prompts an analysis of similar linkages in other Eastern Block
countries.
Environmental history of the former Eastern Block has attracted the attention of a handful of historians in the last two decades. Focussing on
the post-WWII East German state Arvid Nelson argued that reparations
that the Soviet Union extracted between 1945 and 1954 resulted in destruction of forests that was far worse than what took place during Nazi
industrialization and the Second World War. Stephen Brain challenged
the view that Stalinist state was plainly antagonistic to nature. He argued
that the 1930s prove that Stalins Ministry of Forest Management preferred conservation to timber industry and that foresters ideas contributed to the idea of Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature of
1948. These ideas, in turn, were a product of a number of cultural influences beyond the overall economic logic of the Soviet regime. Two recently published collections of studies open up new perspectives for
placing ecology of the state socialist period in context. In their introduction to The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe
Arndt Bauerkamper and Constantin Iordachi argue that a comparative approach and the methodology of entangled history (or histoire croise)
both take us further in understanding Sovietisation.19. In another volume,
Gbor Mts close look at a Hungarian micro- region shows how local
knowledge, dramatic and violent shifts of power and modernization programmes produced local-rural landscapes in the second half of the 20th
century.20 Pl Viktors study of water pollution in the state socialist era
18
Nancy Lee Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (Oakland: University of California Press, 1992), 52.
19
Constantin Iordachi, Arndt Bauerkmper (eds.), The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements (Budapest: CEU Press, 2014), 3-34.
20
Gbor Mt A vzhasznlat talakulsa az llamosts s a teszests kvetkeztben a Vlgysgi-patak fels vzvidkn, [Changes of Water Utilization
as a Result of Collectivization and Nationalization of Land in the Vlgysg
Area] in Vz s trsadalom Magyarorszgon a kzpkortl a XX. szzad
vgig [Water and Society in Hungary from the Middle Ages until the 20th
Century], ed. Krisztin Gergely Horvth (Budapest: Balassi, 2015).
342 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
emphasizes that, in terms of environmental impact, besides differences,

similarities between the West and the East also need attention.21
Anarchy of planning and governance: dimensions
of afforestation in the 1950s
The programme for afforestation of the 1950s was the most spectacular
undertaking of forestry in the state socialist era in Hungary. Arguably, the
first milestone, the point of no return was that paragraph no. 33 of Law
no. 25 of 1949 on the five-year plan demanded that timber production should
increase by 300 000 cubic meters and that 50 000 cadastral acres of new
forests should appear in the Great Plains.22 Two years later, governmental
decree no. 1029/1951. (XI. 30.) M.T ordered that all forestry divisions
should engage in a large-scale afforestation campaign that aimed at increasing the proportion of land covered by forest to 20.3% until 1970.23
Although the programme was launched in 1949, its legal and institutional
framework was far from being a coherent package in the 1950s. Goals
and means changed several times between 1949 and 1959, which was the
decade of the largest success of afforestation in terms of area covered. For
example, Erdgazdasgi zemi Kzpont (Centre for Forestry Operations
Units) known as Erdkzpont (Forest Centre), the institution that was responsible for designing the plan for implementation, hardly existed for a
year in 1949-1950. The posts and committees created in 1949-50 such as
afforestation officer and the Afforestation Committee that were to coordinate the work of quasi-civic bodies, were also short-lived.24 There were
various ministries charged with supervising afforestation. First, the Ministry of Agriculture (FM) then Ministry of State Cooperatives and Forestry
21
Viktor Pl Extenzv gazdasgi nvekeds s a krnyezet vdelme Magyarorszgon 1945-1980 kztt, [Economic Growth and Conservation in Hungary,
1945-80] in Vz s trsadalom Magyarorszgon a kzpkortl a XX. szzad
vgig [Water and Society in Hungary from the Middle Ages until the 20th
Century], ed. Krisztin Horvth Gergely (Budapest: Balassi, 2015).
22
Law no. XXV of 1949 http://www.1000ev.hu/index.php?a=3&param=8370
downloaded on 20 August 2015.
23
Text of the decree is an appendix of Imre Babos, Erdtelepts s fsts [Instruction on afforestation] (Budapest: Mezgazdasgi Kiad, 1951).
24
The minister for agriculture regulated the tasks of the afforestation officer: 8.713200.928/1949. F. M. The first person to occupy the post was Pter Veres, president
of the National Peasant Party who was Minister of Defence in 1947-48.
(GEM) and then, from the second half of 1953, the Directorate Generals
of the Ministry of Agriculture overtook tasks of coordinating campaigns
while the newly formed cooperatives and local councils (tancsok) were
responsible for securing loans from the Office of Planning (Tervhivatal) for
financing afforestation actions.25 There was another turning point in 1954.
In a decree, Imre Nagys
government set forestry
apart from agriculture by establishing the National Forest Authority as the main
department of forest management. Thus, it gave considerable autonomy and
allocated more human resources to it than any other
government of Hungary
since the 19th century. Decree no. 1040/1954 M.T. also pointed out that forestry had two major
tasks: securing that timber production grows steadily and making sure
that forests fulfil their role in protecting agriculture, stabilizing climate
conditions and protecting human health. The key to both of these was afforestation: creating new forests and planting trees wherever needed.26 In
1959 a circular published by the National Forestry Authority stated that afforestation had three goals: First, it was to establish belts of forests that protect agriculture land and pastures by preventing damage by wind and flood.
Second, it had to turn land unsuited for agriculture into forests, thus making
it produce goods. Third, it had a role in beautification of roadsides and urban areas as well as in protecting roads and railways from snow.27
The charts below are from a slide show published in 1951 and tell that the
Forest Research Institute of Hungary closely followed the underlying ideas behind afforestation in the Soviet Union.28 Belts of trees were needed
to block sand and to prevent desertification. For this reason these belts
25
Babos, Erdstsi s fstsi utasts (Budapest: 1959).

Bla Keresztesi, Magyar erdszet 1954-1979 [Forestry in Hungary 1954-1979]
(Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1982), 15-16.
27
Babos, Erdstsi s fstsi utasts, 146.
28
http://dia.osaarchivum.org/public/index.php?fs=2501&search=2&page=
downloaded 10 July 2015.
26
344 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
were perpendicular to the main direction of wind. Thus, besides tradition,

Soviet domination over political imagery also suggested that afforestation
should mainly be about the Great Plains. The poster with the image of
Stalin looking at the map of afforestation sends the message that afforestation is of strategic importance for the Soviet Union. The Great Plan of
Transforming Nature
became a major item
on the agenda of the
political machinery in
autumn 1948, hardly a
year after the great
post-war famine that
killed hundreds of
thousands in the Soviet Union. In this light,
the geometrically designed
afforestation
plan reversing desertification and protecting arable land was a way to point at Nature as a the
culprit for the disaster. Nature was named as the Soviet Unions adversary while heavy damns and battalions of trees were the appropriate
means of victory.
In Hungary, publications arguing for the need for large-scale afforestation
claimed that the pre-war political and economic regime was chiefly responsible for the depletion of forests. The argument was that capitalism
saw a source of income in forests instead of seeing them as an integral
part of the growth of productive capacity. However, textbooks and books
explaining the forest economy of the new regime routinely noted that
several personalities had devoted decades of research to the issue in the
interwar period.29 The new set of regulations reflected this paradox as far
as it derived its formal power for establishing public committees and administrative posts for coordinating afforestation from the law on forests
and conservation of 1935 (Law no. 4 of 1935).30 This contradiction also
29
30
A mezgazdasgi szakkpzs tanknyvei Erdgazdasg szakma [Textbooks

of Training in Agriculture Forest Management Profession] (Budapest:
Mezgazdasgi Minisztrium1962)
MNL HML (Heves County Archives of the Hungarian National Archives),
XXIX 601 3.d.
featured in the design for implementation. In his study about implementing afforestation covering the entire territory of the country Jnos Magyar
could rely on decades of previous studies about increasing forested area in
the Great Plains, which were carried out during the early 20th century.31
One of the 1958 issues of the quarterly of the Forest Research Institute was
largely devoted to summarizing goals and achievements of the institution.
Its first article told the story of pre-WWII forest research in Hungary and
it could look back to 1892.32
Yet, at the juncture of the institutional anarchy of planning and high demand for numbers showing growth, Rkosis single-party state derived its
own authority from breaking with the old regime and a major wave of
Sovietisation. As a constituent of this process, by autumn 1949, the afforestation project appeared as a popular programme targeting all citizens
with special emphasis on participation of the young generations. As such, the
programme was a site of contestation among bodies for assuming a politically relevant role of mobilization. One of the most salient of such bodies was
the National Forestry Association that had existed for eighty years by 1950
and had no choice but to operate as a member network of an umbrella organization, the Federation of Technical and Scientific Associations.
Propaganda about desirable goals and contest for political
mobilization in the 1950s: the Week of Trees
16 October [1949], Sunday, on the Day of Forests youth boys and girls
marched in exemplary order to the forest of Iron Gate where they began
the five-year afforestation plan by planting trees in the area called Mtys
Rkosi33
31
Hungarian National Archives (hereafter cited as MNL OL) OT XIX-A-16-a

8710/1949.
32
Roth Gyula, A magyar erdszeti kutatsgy trtnete 1898-tl 1940-ig, [History of Forest Research in Hungary from 1898 to 1940] Erdszeti kutatsok:
Az Erdszeti Tudomnyos Intzet kzlemnyei [Forest Research: Bulletin of
the Forest Research Institute] 3-4 (1958). Although it was given hardly ten
pages, Gyula Roths article opened up issues such as the 2nd World Forestry
Congress of 1936 organized in Hungary and told of a number of research stations that started operating in the 1930s. It concluded by stating that by 1940
the infrastructure behind forestry fell apart due to the war efforts of Hungary.
33
Erdszeti Lapok, November 1949 http://www.erdeszetilapok.hu/?page=
arch_view&id=5843 downloaded 15 July 2015.
346 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
The quote above describes a so-called Day of Forests organized by a secondary school in 1949, on the eve of launching the afforestation project.
The periodical, Erdszeti Lapok, that published the article was the official
journal of the National Association of Forestry. The headmaster of the
high school, Dr. dn Kollwentz, was a noted member of the Association
and he informed members of the upcoming jubilee celebration of the 25th
anniversary of the school in an official letter. In fact, the Association actively promoted afforestation and acted as its major proponent already
prior to the official launching event of September 1949.34 It also asked
journalists to help the association in establishing a network of local authorities willing to take part in the afforestation campaign. It was due to
this effort that the issue also appeared in a radio programme entitled
Dalol erdjrs (Singing forest walk) produced by a notable radio
journalist, Zoltn Kilin.35 Sndor Jablnczy, the secretary of the Association sent letters to nationalized companies involved in publishing, asking them for advertisements and for more copies of the brochure about
afforestation.36 As a result of such efforts of networking, the association
established direct contact with those municipalities that were early birds
in declaring their interest in afforestation. A letter sent to the notary of
Berettyjfalu in Bihar County focused on the importance of establishing
tree nurseries and argued for inclusion of related activities in the curriculum of primary schools. The secretary of the association wished to make
Berettyjfalu a model district where the afforestation plan would be
made according to professional guidelines provided by the association
and included all empty spaces and roadsides. The letter does not explain
specific goals behind planting trees at different types of venues and contexts. It referred the notary to the brochure written by Istvn Osvth, deputy manager of Forest Centre, and previous regional afforestation plans
for more information.37 A few weeks later, in August 1949 the National
Forestry Association expressed its wish to assume a major role in coordinating and planning afforestation to a large audience at its first itinerant
conference held in the largest city of the Southern Great Plains, Szeged.38
34
Kroly Wgner Library, Archives of National Forestry Association (hereafter

KWL ANFA) vol. 1/1949, 236/1949.
35
KWL ANFA, vol. 1/1949, 172/1949.
36
KWL ANFA, vol. 1/1949, 201/1949.
37
KWL ANFA, vol.1/1949, 122/1949.
38
The initial plan was to organize the conference in Szilvsvrad as the local
forestry volunteered to do so, but it was changed to Szeged as a symbolic
In his opening speech the president of the Association pointed out that the
most salient task of the association was to engage in propaganda work
among workers and farmers of the country and make them understand
that increasing the area covered by trees from 12% to 20% is in the interest of all Hungarians. It is the interest of agriculture as it induces climatic
changes and protects arable land, it is a resource for industry, and its fuel
and forests are the sites of leisure and recreation. In the second part of his
speech Dr. Lajos Haracsi dwelled on the species that needed to be planted
in the Great Plains. He stressed that the region is part of the larger geographical zone that reaches to Eastern Ukraine and Russia and that is
dominated by maples, birch and ash. 39 The board of the association prepared various plans about creating a social movement for afforestation
and forming a working group called Trsadalmi Munkakzssg
(Working group for social affairs) that mainly dealt with this theme. In a
long circular, the association asked the municipal administration for contact persons, and they planned to establish a network of distance education based on a model they knew from Finland. The draft also contained
numerous lecture series and a tree planting campaign organized together
with the Artisans Cooperative along the highway from Budapest to Szeged that would be called Kossuth Allee.40 Eventually, the association
published a call in Erdszeti lapok in May 1949: There should be a person appointed to take care of forest even in the smallest village. We have
to plant trees wherever possible in the coming years. For this we need
everyones help according to their ability. This spring Pravda, the largest
Soviet daily discussed the position of Russian biology for weeks and it
opened it up for debate. By bringing our five-year plan to the public we
would like everyone to comment and discuss it, and work on its implementation because the forest belongs to the community, thus it is everyones cause. Please contact the National Forestry Association if you have
any ideas and will to create or protect even a single tree.41 In a different
draft letter the board emphasized the money that was spent on importing
wood was equivalent with the total budget of light industry in Hungary in
move emphasizing the importance of afforestation of the Great Plains and that
the association was aware.
39
KWL ANFA, Minutes of the meeting at Szeged, 15 August 1949, vol. 2/1949.
40
Program of the working group for social impact. KWL ANFA, vol. 2/1949,
unnumbered.
41
Erdszeti Lapok, May 1949 http://www.erdeszetilapok.hu/?page=archivum
downloaded 20 July 2015.
348 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
1948, thus lack of financial resources should not be used as an excuse for
not launching a major plan of afforestation.
Despite the zeal of the National Forestry Association in presenting itself
as the major actor in the afforestation campaign, the fact that very few
high-ranking officials of state institutions came for the meeting showed
that there was opposition to its goals.42 In a letter dated to late September
1949, one of the members of the association noted that As far as afforestation of the country is concerned, it is a pity that mass organizations
have been pushed aside from this area, although it was promising and we
had high hopes.43 In his address in August 1949 the president of the Forestry Association did not mention that there would be a Committee for
Afforestation the Country (Orszgfstsi Bizottsg) and did not picture
the activities of the association within that framework. However, in October 1949 the latter Committee was the one that officially endorsed plans
designed on the basis of the documentation and legal examples received
from the Soviet Union and it set up a network of bodies independent of
the Forestry Association. These bodies were called Committees of the
Mass Organizations for Afforestation (Orszgfstsi Tmegmozgalmi
Bizottsgok), and they had to mobilize organized groups of society at the
local level following the method prescribed in the afforestation project of
the Soviet Union.44 The primary target groups of these committees were
the mass organizations reaching for the young generations.
There is no document suggesting that Istvn Osvth engaged in personal
argument with office bearers of the Association, but articles published in
Erdszeti Lapok show that they had opposing views about the place of
afforestation, mobilization and knowledge within the regime. Osvth was
appointed deputy manager of Forest Centre Erdkzpont 1 April 1949.
Around the same time Osvth became a member of the editorial board of
Erdszeti Lapok that was brought under closer control as a result of the
ministrys demand for a large editorial board. In May 1949, Sndor
Jablnczy, the secretary of the association argued for the need for a separate forestry department within the Ministry of Agriculture that would en42 It is yet to find details about this opposition in the documents of departments
of ministries.
43
KWL ANFA, vol. 2/1949, 268/1949.
44
Attila Benedek, Orszgfsts-makkgyjts, [Afforestation and Collecting
Oak Seeds] Erdszeti Lapok, October 1949 http://www.erdeszetilapok.hu/
?page=arch_view&id=5813.
sure that forestry works in the spirit of principled cooperation with peoples democracies. A forestry officer forced into the framework of plant
production is a narrow scheme and may trigger bureaucratic issues. In
his view such a department should supervise the working of the Forest
Centre that had only been loosely attached to the minister.45 At this time,
besides his position at the association, Jablnczy was the head of the
planning department within the Forest Centre. A few months later he was
posted to the Forestry University of Sopron as head of one of the departments.46 In December 1949 Osvth argued along the line that Rkosi had
adopted regarding experts: in this view reference to professional expertise
was often a sign of the lack of political vision. Osvths article did not
mention the association at all, although he explained the method of rallying masses around the issue of afforestation.47 In this light, we may see the
Associations plan to send copies of a brochure written by Istvn Osvth to
hundreds of local authorities and mass organizations as a conciliatory effort.48 This contradiction of views repeated in a more dramatic way two
years later when the head of the Forest Centre, Istvn Molnr informed
the Association that the Ministry of Agriculture banned the publication of
Erdszeti Lapok. In the last issue editors were forced to publish an apology regarding a sentence of an article written by a forester and university
professor, Vilmos Farkas. The article included a conclusion that argued
against the inclusion on non-experts in the administration of forestry.49
Under such circumstances the governments decision about launching the
45
Sndor Jablnczy, A magyar erdszeti kzigazgats szerepe npi demokrcink gazdasgi letben, [The role of forest administration in economic life
of
our
peoples
democracy]
Erdszeti
Lapok,
May
1949
http://www.erdeszetilapok.hu/?page=arch_view&id=5725.
46 http://www.nyme.hu/index.php/7469/?&L=1 downloaded 22 July 2015.
47 Istvn Osvth, A Szovjetuni erdgazdlkodsa s a magyar erdgazdasgi
fejlds sszefggsei, [Relationship between Soviet Forestry and the Development of Hungarian Forestry] Erdszeti Lapok, December 1949
http://www.erdeszetilapok.hu/?page=arch_view&id=5848.
48
Since the list of addresses is not among the archived documents, it is yet to be
specified how many of these brochures were eventually distributed and what
was the precise target group. There is a letter sent to Egyeslt Parasztifjsg
Orszgos Szvetsge (EPOSZ). This organisation existed briefly and operated
within a larger framework called Magyar Ifjsg Npi Szvetsge.
49
Andrs Madas, Gondolatok az Erdszeti Lapok jubileumn, [Thoughts on
the Jubilee of Erdszeti Lapok] Az Erd 36/12 (1987), 525-534.
350 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
Week of Trees was an opportunity for the association

to prove its usefulness for the
economy and for the regime.
During the board meeting of
8 September 1952 in a discussion on the draft of the
long-term plan of forestry,
Gza Ldy, the vice president of the association argued that since afforestation
was a major concern of the
government, the association needed to appreciate this. He stressed that
the issue of forests to be planted in order to protect agricultural land was
within the competence of forestry and not of agriculture especially since
70% of planned afforestation was about the establishment of such protective lanes.50 He followed up on his own initiative and highlighted a number of problem areas in letters that he, as president of the National
Forestry Association, sent to the Ministry of Agriculture in Autumn
1952.51 In the same period, the association called for a meeting with all
major mass organizations participating in the afforestation campaign to
discuss the tasks that the afforestation plan requires them to fulfil with
special emphasis on the Week of Trees.
The Week of Trees was organized in March or April each year between
1952 and 1957. It was meant to be a series of local events occurring
throughout the country. Regional units of forestry were responsible for
making plans for the week and for coordinating the activities of various
mass organizations and institutions as well as for reaching the local population. By 1953 the National Forestry Association had an extensive network
including around fifty regional forestries throughout the country. These local groups reported their activities to the associations headquarters. Many
of these reports relate to the Week of Trees. In 1955 the events of the week
nearly coincided with the Month of Soviet-Hungarian Friendship for
which scientific associations were expected to undertake extra commitments. In mid-April 1955 the board of the National Forestry Association
instructed local groups to report in detail so that the staff of the association
50
51
KWL ANFA, vol. 2/1952, Minutes of board meeting, 8 September 1952.

KWL ANFA, vol. 2/1952, Letter from Gza Ldy, 20 November 1952.
could make a long list of achievements. The local groups that reported back
emphasized their cooperation with organisations that had a stake in afforestation: Grazing Committees (Legeltetsi Bizottsg), Alliance of Working
Youth (DISZ) and pioneers.52 At the same time, the tone of the reports was
not uniform. They reflected specific features that local groups felt were the
most salient aspects of the afforestation campaign. The local group at
Kecskemt lying on Great Plains area, reported that: I sent posters and
poems propagating afforestation, and brochures explaining the importance
of afforestation to every town and local council in our area so that they can
inform inhabitants about the Week of Trees events that will be organized
in cooperation with youth and mass organizations according to the decree
of the head of the Council of Ministers. At the same time, I informed the
Councils that based on their orders they may receive plants necessary for
planting trees from the nearest forestry. We personally contacted the county level organizations of Pioneers and Alliance of Working youth
(DISZ)...53 Others, such as that of Recsk in the Mtra Hills of Northern
Hungary, focused on the local impact telling how many plants of each species were planted in the various locations and which localities proved active. In their bulletin called Erdmester (Forest Master) the director of the
regional forestry complained that staff generally took afforestation as a
marginal or additional task instead of including it as a core. Nonetheless,
some prizes were distributed to local inhabitants in 1955, too.54 One of the
major Transdanubian forestry, that of Zala County, stressed ceremonial aspects: At Palin, Jen Schneider director, talking in front of pioneers and
teachers, spoke on the love for the forest and its economic salience and also handed over 500 Forints and a medal to the local pioneer unit for their
achievements in the area of afforestation in 1954.55
The images on this page show that youth played a central role in the political imagery afforestation in both Hungary and in the Soviet Union.
The black and white photo montage shows a pioneer climbing a tree in
52
During the 1950s Grazing Committees were bodies that had to coordinate the
use of pastures. These were made up of representatives of local administration,
DFOSZ (Dolgoz Parasztok s Fldmunksok Orszgos Szvetsge [League
of Working Peasants and Agricultural Labourers]) and various types of cooperatives.
53
KWL ANFA, Fk Hete, vol. 3/1955.
54
Erdmester, 1955.
55
KWL ANFA, Fk Hete, vol. 3/1955.
352 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
order to look for seeds that he should then place into the basket. The coloured poster in Russian advises pioneers to collect the seeds described in
the box at the centre of the poster.56
From the evidence above we may conclude that afforestation was a campaign through which organizations, their leaders and members tried to define what type of activism the regime expected of them. By fulfilling such
definitions they made attempts to prove how well they were suited to the
Sovietising system. Moreover, afforestation was an occasion to showcase
the scope of cooperation between professional organizations and youth
organizations in fulfilling goals of the economic plan. Yet, the afforestation campaign of the 1950s was also a terrain for conflict between notions
of accepted modes of governance. While some officials occupying high
ranking posts expected that everyone should approve of the notion according to which omnipresent rule of the Party (Hungarian Workers
Party - MDP) may overwrite all expertise and professional competence,
some foresters understood loyalty and the culture of criticism more daringly and demanded predictability and autonomy even as they accepted
that the political realm had been Sovietised and was there to stay as such.
Linkages and entanglements in the Cold War:
forest research and afforestation
Starting
from
1948,
Mszaki s Termszettudomnyi
Egyesletek
Szvetsge
MTESZ
(League of Hungarian
Scientific and Technical
Associations) was the
umbrella organization for
those associations that operated in various fields of
the economy and were
56
http://dia.osaarchivum.org/public/index.php?fs=2501&search=2&page and The

Gamborg Gallery http://www.digitalsovietart.com/search/9954-pioneers-andschoolchildren-collect-seeds-to-plant-forest-oak-birch-fir-linden-maple-ashtree-apple-tree-pear-tree-cherry-tree-hazelnut-gold-and-black-currant-yellowand-white-acacia?query=forest downloaded 21 July 2015.
allowed to exist in the new regime. (It provided member organizations

with a template for setting up articles of association including a mission
statement and objectives.) It explicitly stated that associations had to disseminate the results of research in the Soviet Union. MTESZ demanded
from the National Forestry Association that it should send all journal articles containing technical documentation that the association had translated. Mostly, this request referred to articles that appeared in Soviet
journals. The League also kept and circulated a list about books written
by Soviet scientists that had been translated.57 The idea behind these steps
was that notions about technology in Hungary had to be changed to make
the economy ready to carry out economic plans, that was, to real development. To put it in another way, the elite had to prove that it was capable of
realizing transformation of such a scale.
As the Cold War took over minds and goals it also meant that Hungarian
scientists had to stay away from international fora. Moreover, they did
not even interact with scientists from other Eastern Block countries apart
from Soviet experts visiting and giving authoritative lectures. Gyula Roth
complained to MTESZ leaders that despite official discussion on what
position Hungary should take in the upcoming FAO forestry meeting, the
delegation eventually did not attend the 3rd Forestry World Congress in
Finland. Roth argued that such decisions were contrary to the interests of
the development of productivity in general and to the implementation of
the afforestation plan in particular.58
In the field of forestry, Gyrgy Koltay, a noted researcher working on
hybrids of poplar was exempt from the quasi ban to keep in touch with
the world. He travelled to the poplar congresses in Belgium and the Netherlands in 1953.59 Koltays relative freedom was not a coincidence. Since
the 1930s poplar, especially Canadian poplar was seen as the most suitable species for establishing protective lanes of forests in the Great Plains
of Hungary. It grew fast and its timber was almost as good as pine for
constructions and furniture. It enjoyed a similar popularity in the Soviet
project. At the juncture of these developments, the centre of the new Forest Research Institute at Srvr launched a long-term and large-scale programme on poplar hybrids in 1954.
57
KWL ANFA, List of Soviet books, vol. 1/1949, vol. 2/1952.

KWL ANFA, Letter from Gyula Roth, 15 July 1949, vol. 1/1949.
59
KWL ANFA, Letter from Gyrgy Koltay, 15 April 1949, vol. 1/1949.
58
354 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
In their recent work Mria Palasik and Zsuzsanna Borvendg do not attribute importance to pre-WWII regulation and initiatives in explaining
afforestation of the 1950sdo not attribute importance to pre-WWII regulation and initiatives in explaining afforestation of the 1950s. They present
the afforestation program as an example of Lysenkoism of the late Stalinist
period that turned out to be an exception: unlike other projects of Lysenkoist agriculture, it was successful in terms of outcome.60 Afforestation in
Hungary stemmed both from the Stalinist plan about overcoming nature
and from late 19th Century agenda of forestry. In 1935 in a booklet about
the way to carry out afforestation in Hungary based on law no. XXIX of
1923, Albert Bky emphasized that forest belts dividing plots protected
the productivity of land and that farmers did not need to worry about
shade.61 Bky put forward an argument about forest soil retaining humidity,
trees blocking winds and increasing humidity of air which was nearly identical with the argument that Palasik and Borvendg quote from Az Erd
(The Forest) published in
the 1950s. Thus, despite
official documents and
textbooks declaring a
break between pre-1945
regime and the new era,
when studying linkages
crossing
conventional
political boundaries we
have to consider the influence of pre-WWII afforestation on what took
place in the 1950s.
Soviet science and afforestation should be placed in contemporary global
context so that one may see what constituted knowledge at that time. Soviet biology had streams other than Lisenkoism, and one of these was the
idea of biocoenology of forest niches. Georgi Fiodorovich Morozovs
60
Mria Palasik, Zsuzsanna Borvendg, Vadhajtsok. A sztlini termszettalaktsi terv tltetse Magyarorszgon, 1948-1956 [Seedlings. Implementation
of the Stalinist Plan to Transform Nature, 1948-1956] (Budapest: Napvilg,
2015), 53-54.
61
Albert Bky, tmutats az Alfld fstsnak munkjhoz [Guide to the Work
of Afforestation in the Great Plains] (Debrecen: 1936).
The Science of the Forest was in high demand in the 1950s and Hungarian foresters kept asking for a translation.62 On the other hand, that collections of translated articles and articles published in Erdgazdasg (Forest
Economy) or appearing in various libraries show that besides biocoenosis,
Hungarian foresters mainly translated papers related to the culture of machines that Soviet forestry had introduced.63 Although, mechanization
may appear as pure pro-Soviet propaganda at first sight, it had to do with
deeper structures of modernity of the mid-20th century. Sovietisation, new
ideas of biological sustainability and ecology, on the one hand, and linking nature, machines and modernity, onthe other hand, were interwoven
phenomena of the 1950s. The latter two were not limited to the Soviet
zone and cannot be dismissed from analysis as absurd phenomena. Thus,
interaction between scientific ideas and programmes in the Soviet Union
and Hungarian forestry cannot be understood without considering the
global context. Globally, the agenda of forestry changed between the
1930s and 1950s. Most sections of the second World Forestry Congress
held in Hungary in 1936 were about issues of silviculture and about the
options to gain comparable data. The third congress was held twelve
years later in Helsinki. There was far more concern about the link between industrial methods and forests. The conference report quoted the
opening speech which stated that The mechanization of logging and
transportation operations would be a desirable step forward, and much
has already been accomplished along these lines, but the mechanization
of actual felling operations is difficult. At any rate, it has so far been
found impossible to reduce factors of time and labour in such work to a
single common denominator permitting any measurement of efficiency.64 Another change was that the congress agenda no longer treated
tropical areas as colonies represented by colonial officials. Participants
also wanted to make policy recommendations more explicit.65 At the
fourth Congress held in 1954 in Dehradun, India rural-urban relations and
population growth entered the agenda. That congress also focussed on
protection, extending the area of managed forests and rapidly growing
62
KWL ANFA, 237/1950, vol. 2/1950

For example Kolligtum no. 162.418-162.422, Library of University of Debrecen.
64
As a Memorial to the Third World Forestry Congress, Unasylva 3/6 (1949)
www.fao.org/xdocrep/x5353e02.htm downloaded 21 August 2015.
65
Unasylva
8/3
(1954)
http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5372e/x5372e04.htm#
TopOfPage downloaded 21 August 2015.
63
356 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
new soft wood species. Moreover, afforestation entered the global agenda, too. The Director-General of FAO said in his address to the congress:
Windbreaks or shelter belts of trees are far from being of negligible importance today; on the contrary, research into their value and sometimes
grandiose projects on the ground have tended to assume more and more
prominence; but the farmer, even the small farmer, is also today becoming increasingly interested in having on his farm a small woodlot, even
single trees or borders, that in a few years can bring in a useful income.66
In her recent volume, Melinda Kalmr stressed the role that Scientific and
Technical Revolution in strategic choices of the Soviet Union and posited
that regimes of the
Eastern Block noted
this pressure and reacted to it.67 She
gued
that
while
lins plans failed to
take account this
lenge,
Khrushchev
was deeply aware of
it. Afforestation provides
contradictory
evidence in this regard. On the one hand, the afforestation campaign, as one of the plans to
transform nature, was halted quickly after Stalins death. This decision
also ended the era of conservation and opened the way for exploiting
mineral resources of regions that had been dominated by forests. On the
other hand, in mid-1954 Pravda, the official public voice of the Central
Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, published an article that
urged scientific organizations to intensify their activities. This news
reached the Forestry Association of Hungary a month later.68 It nearly coincided with the new institutional order introduced by the Nagygovernments decree 1040/1954. Arguably, both the Pravda article and
66
Unasylva 8/3 (1954) http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5372e/x5372e04.htm#

TopOfPage downloaded 21 August 2015.
67
Melinda Kalmr, Trtnelmi galaxisok vonzsban. Magyarorszg s a
szovjetrendszer 1945-1990 [In the Gravity of Historical Galaxies. Hungary
and the Soviet System 1945-1990] (Budapest: Osiris, 2014).
68
KWL ANFA, 544/1954, vol 2/1954.
the new level of autonomy had to do with the fact that the sense of the
necessity of isolation, repeated declarations about the cultural dominance
of the Soviet Union suddenly ended in 1955. From early 1956 the Journal
of the Forest Research Institute contained long articles about study trips
of foresters abroad. Most of them were confined to the countries of the
Eastern Block: Poland, the GDR, Bulgaria and the Union, but some of the
articles talked of events in Western Germany and France. This new trend
culminated in the Poplar Conference that took place in late September
1956 in Budapest.69
Scientific exchange within the Eastern Block gained a new momentum in
1957 when delegations of scientific umbrella organizations of Bulgaria,
Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, the GDR and the Soviet Union met in Berlin. They decided that exchanges and study trips should be
more frequent and that national delegations should coordinate their activities in international organizations.70 The Hungarian National Forestry Association began to plan an exchange with Yugoslavia in the spring of
1955, but it was only realized two years later. First, in May 1957 Hungarian foresters participated at the conference organized by the Yugoslavian
forestry association in Bled. On June 19 Hungarians visited their colleagues in Novi Sad and stayed for ten days to learn about achievements
in the field of afforestation-reforestation of hilly areas and on methods of
managing forests as economic units.71 The Yugoslavian foresters visit in
Hungary in August 1957 focussed on afforestation of sandy areas and also included visits to research centres: Pspkladny near the Romanian
border and Srvr near Austria. In 1957-58 there were similar exchanges
with Bulgaria and Romania as well. The first contact with Romanian foresters was the outcome of an unlikely initiative. Gyula Barthos, a retired
forester who is known for his publications on ornithology and a hunting
memoir, wrote a long study about clear-cuts in Transylvania in the early
20th century and proposed to do a follow up with his son who was also a
69
Lszl Bakkay A Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmia s az Orszgos Erdszeti

Figazgatsg egyttes rendezsben megtartott nyrfakonferencia: 1956.
szeptember 23-29. Orszgos Erdszeti Figazgatsg, [Poplar Congress organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the National Forestry Directorate: 23-29 1956 September]1957.
70
KWL ANFA, Preliminary information on the meeting of technical-scientific
organization in Berlin 17-19 September 1957, vol. 2/1957
71
KWL ANFA, Program of Forestry study tip to Yugoslavia vol. 1/1958.
358 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
forester. The board of the association was sympathetic to the idea, but it
is not clear whether the trip actually took place.72 At any rate, the Hungarian association invited ASIT (the technical and scientific Association
of Romania) to its annual conference in Spring 1958 and subsequently the
two organizations did an exchange later that year. The program of Romanian foresters in Hungary focussed on afforestation of salty soil and related research around Pspkladny and on the Balaton area. In the latter
region they were to learn about experiments with poplar and beech. The
small Bulgarian delegation visited afforestation of sandy areas, forest
lanes protecting arable land and plant seed storehouses.73 It shows the
importance of the latter delegation visiting Hungary in 1958 that it was
the only one that Gyula Balassa, the deputy minister responsible for forestry, received the guests.74 The program of the three groups differed
from one another, the only common denominator being the reception in
Budapest followed by visiting afforestation taking place in a bare area of
the Buda hills and in the urban area. Bulgarian and the Romanian foresters had free time around Lake Balaton. The program offered to foreign
visitors shows that foresters in Hungary were most confident about their
results in afforestation issues of the Great Plains. They could not imagine
an official reception event outside the capital. Moreover, they probably
felt that they had to show the Balaton. These exchanges were not simply
part of the Kdr regimes effort to gain recognition following the revolution in 1956. Horizontal initiatives at ground level played an important
part in these meetings. Moreover, they were part of a series of steps towards coordinating research and displaying scientific knowledge of the
Soviet zone that were initiated in the second half of 1954. Afforestation
projects in Hungary assumed a more international and scientific-technical
face and operated at a larger distance from immediate needs as the Kdr
regime required less mass mobilization than Rkosis around 1951-52.
Looking at it from a different perspective, afforestation assumed a strategic importance i.e. it mattered as part of the vision about how socialist
72
KWL ANFA, Gyula Barthos, Szzadeleji vzlatok [Early 20th century sketches], vol. 2/1958.
73
KWL ANFA, Program of the bulgarian timber industry delegation 20 June
1958, vol. 2/1958.
74
KWL ANFA, Letter from Emil Sali to Gyula Balassa 31 October 1958, vol.
3/1958.
economies should look like and what role science plays in a state of the
Eastern Block.
Gendered geography: women in the landscape of afforestation
One of the Hungarian foresters taking
part in the study
trip to Romania
was a woman.
Margit
Kopasz
worked in the
Budapest regional
forestry and she
was hardly 30
years old. She was
on the short list of
those going to
Bulgaria as well,
but eventually the board of the Forestry Association decided that since
she was the only women it would have been too complicated for both her
and for the hosts.75 Apart from her there were two more women who appeared regularly on forestry related documents: the secretary responsible
for organization, Mrs. Dezs Pcsi and one of the editors of the journal of
the Forest Research Institute. Despite their regular presence, the case of
Margit Kopasz is not the only evidence to show that foresters were not
comfortable with the presence of professional women among their rank.
The photo above, which appeared in the Journal of the Forest Research
Institute and was taken at the conference in Berlin, has an unidentified
woman in the foreground. However, she is not mentioned in the description.
The title was: Discussion in a model plantation of Populus robusta.76
75
76
KWL ANFA, Letter from Emil Sali to Gyula Balassa, 24 January 1958, vol.
1/1958
Ferenc Kopecky, Nemzetkzi kongresszus az erdei fk genetikjnak s
nemestsnek krdseirl, [International Congress on Genetics and Selection
of Forest Tree Species] Erdszeti kutatsok: Az Erdszeti Tudomnyos Intzet
kzlemnyei [Forest Research: Bulletin of the Forest Research Institute] 12/1958, 255. Female presence was more pronounced at the IUFRO Congress
360 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
This marginality is in contrast with how often women appear working at sites
of afforestation. On the
slide taken from a slide
show propagating forest
economy a group of women use the hoe and plant
trees. On the other slide
another women puts shades
over the nursed tree
plants.77 Between 1950 and
1957 we see several similar photographs showing women on the way to afforestation work sites on
front covers of Erdgazdasg, the journal of the official trade union of
agricultural and forestry workers. For example, there was a portrait of a
laborious girl engaged in afforestation, the first two female Stakhanovists of forestry and an outstanding worker of a tree nursery.
77
of Budapest, however it was also ambiguous. A number of women came to the

congress as partners, but only one female forester was present. The organization responded to the situation by organizing a so called Ladies Committee
that consisted of three high ranking women: the wives of Mric Eszterhzy, a
former prime minister and advisor to Horthy, Mrs. baron Klement Waldbott,
the wife of the president of the National Forestry Association and the wife of
the minister for agriculture, Mrs. Darnyi Photographs published as attachment to the transactions of the congress showed these aristocrat women without revealing the names of those ladies who were present in their company.
Moreover, although each section had one woman on their board, they were
additional secretaries without exception, thus they were acting as clerks, in
non-scientific roles. In his article about the Congress and the accompanying
event of the Forestry Research Institutes published in 1958 Gyula Roth paid
attention to gender division. One of the columns of the table representing the
change in the number of participants of world meetings across three meeting
from 1929 (Sweden) to 1936 (Hungary) showed the number of women participants. This table tells that there was a significant increase in the ration of
women. In Hungary it was 17% due to the presence of three women from
Czechoslovakia and four from Finland. 1936 was the first year that there were
women in the Hungarian delegation.
http://dia.osaarchivum.org/public/index.php?fs=2501&search=2&page downloaded 10 July 2015.
As the photo of a woman cutting oak seeds shows below, female presence
was not marginal in the laboratories of forestry, either. Photos from the
botanical garden at Kmon (Szombathely, Vas County) also prove this
point.78 Womens work was central to the afforestation program of the
1950s both as manual workers and lab workers of new forestry research
institutions. Popular literature of the early 1950s also dwelled on the role
of women in forestry and afforestation. For example, Gyrgy Lakoss
documentary-like essay Emberek a Bkkfensskon (People on the Bkk
plateau) was published in 1952. It devoted a whole chapter to tree planting. Under the section he discussed the role of unit leaders in hiring
workforce, the role of pioneers in afforestation and most importantly,
women as the main labour force and driver of the programme. The main
character of the chapter is Ibolya Fnagy who leads and organizes her
group as if she was a military officer. As an outcome of her precision and
skill she has the opportunity to enrol into a forestry training course that
would last only 10 months.79 A few pages later the author underlies the
importance of learning the right work method across regions: while girls
around Debrecen were active in forestry, women in Ngrd County were
reluctant to join.
While the womens voice was absent from the documents of the National
Forestry Association and local forestry management, there is a rich visual
and literary archive of their activities and roles. This archive shows that a
78
Szendi Zsuzsa, Kmoni Arbortum: Szombathely [Botanical Garden at Kmon:

Szombathely] (Srvr: ERTI, 2013).
79
Gyrgy Lakos, Emberek a Bkkfensskon [People on the Bkk Plateau] (Budpapest: Mvelt Np, 1952), 156-158
362 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
gendered geography was projected onto the changing landscape that afforestation was meant to bring about.
Locality, boundaries and work: forestry and afforestation in the
vicinity of Pard
The vicinity of Pard in the Northern Mtra region of Heves County is a
particular region from the point of forestry. In the 19th century it was one
of the estates of the notable aristocrat family, the Krolyis. After Mihly
Krolyi the Red Count and his family had emigrated, the estate became
state property and it was managed by the Fund for Education of the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs for most of the interwar period.
Thus, forest management of the area is particularly well documented and
can be traced back to the 1880s. In 1949 Pard forests were part of a regional nationalized forestry company that had its headquarter in nearby
Recsk. (The latter location is also known for the forced labour/internment
camp that operated in its vicinity during Rkosi's regime.)
Work was one of the principal forms of encounters between forestry and
sorrounding villages. This interaction reflects the changing boundaries of
peasant life and the changing political and economic landscape. Labour
force for felling, moving and loading timber was hired from nearby villages. The issue of low salaries paid to labourers who commuted was a
permanent source of friction between forestry management and village
authorities throughout the 1950s. Cart owners were not willing to move
timber, while others were not willing to be employed as woodcutters.80 In
1950 a team leader of the forestry reported that clear-cutting of acacia
standing near the village of Szajla had to be suspended because even the
best saw, that of Jnos Maruzs, did not earn enough. He was to become a
bus driver.81 Forestry tried to compensate low salaries with regulating and
improving menus and living conditions for those workers that had to stay
away from their homes for longer periods. Occasionally, we read of bacon and wheat being distributed especially in 1950-1951, years when rationing had to be reintroduced.82 Womens work at tree nurseries was a
usual form of temporary employment. Their contracts were usually for
80
NML HML, XXIX, 1521, box 3, 15/1951.

NML HML, XXIX, 1531, box 2, 116/1950.
82
NML HML, XXIX, 1521, box 2, 304/ 1950, 455/1950, 356/1950, 31/1950.
81
one year.83 A list prepared in March 1951 showed that 13 out of 14 people employed for tree nursery were women. In fact, they were very young
women between 16 and 22 years old.84 In 1952 the person that reached
the best result in afforestation was Anna Oravec from Szajla. She reportedly planted 210 pine trees that were 172% of the norm. The Bulletin of
the regional forestry announced that girls at the nursery needed sports
gears, mainly for playing volleyball. When fewer plants survived, the
manager to be shamed on the same pages for such failure was also a
woman.85 The management of the Recsk forestry talked of the afforestation campaign launched in 1949 as a representative investment, that is, an
additional task and expense, not much integrated with regular activities.86
Forestry was used to planting new trees in areas that were cut and also in
those sites that foresters considered failing or unsustainable (rontott) forest. However, extending the area of forest cover in grasslands or planting
trees along roads was not something they had done earlier. From 1949
onwards the latter activities became part of the yearly plan. Among the
regular forestry tasks performed around Pard, work at the nursery was
easiest to combine with the new afforestation effort. In fact, the work
process at tree nurseries was regulated in much detail in 1950 and it consisted of dozens of steps. This list appeared in the same year when the
brigade-system was introduced. 87 Afforestation also brought about a new
circuit for seeds, especially for pine species. Forestry had to use code
names such as Szombathely 2 to report which types they were using.88
From the late 1940s the work process and the idea behind creating work
units (brigd) with long descriptions of their organization and tasks were
driven by political considerations: it all had to match the way the regime
wished to portray its own place in the world. Managers in charge were
expected to link the struggle for world peace and responsibility for fulfilling plan numbers. Reports that were not politically conscious received
83
MNL HML, XXIX, 1531, box 2, unnumbered contract dated 20 January 1951
and 468/1952.
84
MNL HML, XXIX, 1521, box 2, 8/1950, 10/1950, and 603 568/1952.
85
Erdmester, April 1955.
86
MNL HML, XXIX, 1521, box 3, 504/1949.
87
MNL HML, XXIX, 1531, box 2, 157/1951.
88
MNL HML, XXIX, 1521, box 2, 234/1950.
364 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
open criticism at official workers meetings.89 Moreover, party organs,

police and forestry management cooperated in the selection of cadres.
Those who wished to make a career needed to create their own handwritten CVs proving their families had been poor, and that they did not
own land in the old system. The questionnaires evaluated applicants on
the basis of what they said about their activities in the trade unions or in
party and other mass organizations, their membership in cooperatives,
their travels abroad as well as military service.90
Forestry activities interfered with agricultural activities of the villagers.
There were century old sources of tension and ones that emerged with the
new authoritarian regime. The right to let animals feed on areas designated as forest had been an issue since at least the second half of 19th century. According to a cartoon in the May 1955 issue of the Bulletin of the
Recsk Forestry, the most salient issue related to agriculture was that of
illegal grazing in the forest. In the narrative of the cartoon, despite the
damage they do to the forest, some foresters overlooked the presence of
cattle as they had interest in them91. In fact, a number of foresters received some land from the forestry around Pard. The unit had around 80
acres of arable land scattered around the villages92. Forestry also limited
villagers access to acorn that they would feed to their pigs. This was increasingly so after the afforestation campaign had been launched as oak
was in scarcity and the area of nurseries had to be expanded in the territory of all regional forestry. 93 Another long-term issue was the question of
wild animals becoming pest animals by damaging agricultural produce.
In 1949 there was disagreement between foresters at Pard and the county
level about the extent of damage done by boars and the necessity of hunting them. The former reported that there were very few boars in the area
and that they could not have caused much damage. Surprisingly, despite
general conditions of scarcity, theft of wood and poaching did not appear
as major issues on the basis of the documents from the 1950s. New tensions arose around the theme of private property. Until nationalization of
89
Minutes from meetings on 20 September 1950, 12 March 1952, 9 August

1950, 1 September 1950 (without numbering) MNL HML XXIX, 1521.
90
MNL HML, XXIX, 1521, box 3, 399/1949; XXIX, 1531, box 2, 4032/1950.
91
Erdmester, May 1955, also Erdszeti Lapok, December 1949.
92
MNL HML, XXIX, 1521, box 2, 633/1950, box 3 295/1949; NML XXIX,
1531, box 2, 69/1950, 165/1950, 87/1951, 106/1951.
93
MNL HML, XXIX, 1521, box 2, 3/1950; box 3, 568/1949.
forest was finished, foresters had the authority to give or withhold permission to individual farmers to cut some wood in their forest plot. In
1949-50 the decision was often in the negative on the basis that too much
wood had been taken in previous years. Moreover, state forestry sealed
wood that belonged to the village community if was still in the forest.
The most important development that made local farmers worried was the
chart of ownership that was prepared in May 1949 enlisting all interested
parties and the location of their forest property. This foreshadowed further change of the ownership pattern, namely, loss of private property.
In summary, working for the forestry as a labourer was not a bright option in terms of salary; however, it was a potential channel to receive political support for ones career. It provided jobs at tree nurseries and these
were mostly expected to be taken by young women. The afforestation
program also meant a platform for taking part in national level circuits.
Working for forestry was one of the sites where the culture of work competition and brigades could be learnt, thus it potentially socialized rural
population for industrial work. Moreover, at the local level, forestry became remained involved in drawing local hierarchies by regulating access
to resources.
Conclusions
The history of afforestation shows that the relationship between landscape change, Sovietisation and modernity was not a simple one in the
Eastern Block. Patterns and elements of knowledge show continuity and
connectedness temporally and on a global scale. The afforestation campaign that Hungarian forestry engaged in from 1949 onwards brought together the reception of German and Soviet forestry, conservation ideas of
the interwar period and pressures coming from Rkosis regime. The latter wished to overcome its insecurity and weak material basis by incessant mobilization. The remnants of civil society, such as the National
Forestry Association wished to gain legitimacy by trying to improve the
quality of implementing the programme and by cooperating with mass
organizations in reaching the target groups envisioned by Stalinist decision makers. The afforestation campaign and the institutional changes
around it show that the regimes governmentality featured both anarchy
of planning and efforts of governance.
366 _______________________________________________ Rbert BALOGH
At the local level, afforestation impacted boundaries between agriculture

and forest management in various ways. It demanded labour and offered
low pay, but some access to resources of the forest. Forestry authorities
carried out assessment of forest property foreshadowing more changes in
ownership patterns. It also channelled selected local inhabitants towards
positions and tasks offered by the single party-state. Afforestation produced landscape change and it also projected a gendered geography on
both forestry as a profession and on rural labour force working for local
forestry.
Political instruments
of the communist regimes
for transforming
the village: between
coercion and resistance
How could we? Explaining Faulty Steps, Mishits and other

Regrettable Deeds in the Slovak Countryside
Marna ZAVACK
The chapter focuses on agricultural collectivisation as a central topic of
comments voiced by delegates of annual party conferences in regions of
north-east Slovakia.1 After a slow start the socialisation of agriculture
here evolved into extremely violent forms, until it temporarily collapsed
in 1953. Against the still prevalent dichotomous version of peasants and
communists as two separate contesting sides, it concentrates on conflicts
within the lower echelons of the Communist party itself. This was reflected in redefinitions of valuated role-model behaviour of a proper
communist, paralleled with development of discourse of success and failure. Due to that-time social composition and specific historical traditions
of north-eastern Slovakia, research in this territory gives also the opportunity to get deeper insight into the relations and tensions between the
Czechoslovak centre and periphery, into transferability and applicability
of selected central policies into particular local environments.
Similarly to other post-socialist historiographies, Slovak publications
originating after 1989 focused on abuse of state structures for enforcing
regime policies and on violent acts against the population. Accounts of
enforced collectivisation of agriculture in the 1950s also adopted much
from the structure of the already existing Communist narrative.2 Main actors
* The study is a result of a research project VEGA 2/0154/14 The Cold War and
the Central Europe: selected aspects of its developement.
1
According to structure of local administration, Slovakia in 1946-1960 was divided into 6 counties (kraj), these further consisting of regions (okres). Preov
county consisted of 15 regions. The local administration was organised into
National committees (a Village/Local National Committee Miestny nrodn
vbor). The structure of Communist Party organs copied the state structure.
(The term district was used for a quarter in a town.) Thereafter the term region is used in a sense of such territorial unit.
2
See , , [Aleksandr Vezenkov, On unnormalisation of communism] in eds.
, , :
[Michail Gruev, Diana Mishkova (eds.) Bulgarian Communism: Discussions
and Interpretations] (Sofia: CAI, 2013), 245-273.
370 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
of the story remained the Central Committee/the Government on one

hand (now as main culprits) and the victims, kulaks, village rich men
and peasants on the other.3 The Soviet influence tended to be seen as
a sole source of condemned behavioural models, like as the Soviet experience had used to serve as a model to be followed. In studies focused on
chronicling injustice committed against different target groups (farm
owners, shopkeepers, urban bourgeoisie, clergy, etc.), these groups tend
to be strictly separate despite their blurred boundaries.4 In this context it
is not surprising that the notion of the communist is also treated as selfexplanatory, describing politically conscious, disciplined and ruthless individuals with clearly set political targets, identical with the actual political agenda of the Central committee.5
The text is based on a series of bound volumes of minutes from the annual conferences of the regional (okres) party organisations. These standardly consisted of the annual report on activity of the regional
organisation presented by the executive secretary of the organisation, followed by the report of the auditing committee, a guest speech of an invited member of a higher party body, discussion, closing remarks
3
Viera Hlavov, Kulak, triedny nepriate. Dedinsk boh v kontexte kolektivizcie na Slovensku (1949-1960) [Kulak, the Class Enemy. The Village Rich
Man in the Context of Collectivisation in Slovakia 1949-1960] (Bratislava:
Veda, 2010); Karel Jech, Kolektivizace a vyhnn sedlk z pdy [Collectivisation and Driving the Peasants from soil] (Praha: Vyehrad, 2008); Samuel
Cambel, Pdesiate roky na slovenskej dedine. Najaie roky kolektivizcie
[The 1950s in a Slovak Village. The Hardest Years of Collectivisation]
(Preov: Universum, 2005); Jan Peek, Odvrten tvr totality. Politick
perzekcie na Slovensku 1945-1943 [The Reverse Face of Totality. Political
Persecution in Slovakia 1945-1943] (Bratislava: H SAV and NMS, 1998).
More attention to analysis of peasant society was paid in recent dissertation of
Lucia ulejov, Odpor ronkov proti kolektivizcii v Preovskom kraji 19491953 [Resistance to Collectivisation in Preov County 1949-1953] (Bratislava:
Comenius University dissertation, 2014).
Michal Barnovsk (ed.), Od diktatry k diktatre [From one Dictatorship to
Another] (Bratislava: Veda, 1995); ubomr Ba et al. Zloiny komunizmu na
Slovensku 1948-1989 [Crimes of Communism in Slovakia 1948-1989] (Preov:
Michal Vako, 2001).
Vclav Kaka, Neukznn a neangaovan. Disciplinace len Komunistick
strany eskoslovenska v letech 1948-1952 [Undisciplined and Unengaged.
Disciplinisation of the CPC Members in 1948-1952] (Praha: STR, 2014), 16.
How could we? Explaining Faulty Steps, Mishits and other... __________ 371
formulated by the main referee or by the guest, and a resolution containing learned lessons and tasks set for the next year. They were also often
supplemented with a parallel concise review of the event, written by an
inspecting guest directly for the Central committee.6
Usually the opening Annual report on activity of the regional organisation and the closing Resolution were formulated in advance by the professional party apparatus and checked by the superior party board. But
intra-party discussions at this level were still relatively free. Whether in
the atmosphere of victory or of a deep frustration, delegates who were
speaking in a literally neighbourly environment often diverted from the
pattern of success narratives or of selectively directed critique and did not
restrain themselves from descriptions of their specific experiences with
collectivisation. These were formed in contact with smallholders and
lacklands who refused to join the agricultural cooperatives, or peasants
who joined willingly but then refused transformation of their cooperatives
to more progressive stages. The idea of general collectivisation was far
from being popular among the village party members themselves. Many
actually used their authority for shielding the village from high procurement rates or from collectivisation itself. This conflict cut both through
village communist families and through their local party organisations.
Local conditions
The most frequent notion connected with the north-east Slovakia was its
poverty. Namely the regions lying on the border belonged to the most
damaged areas during the Second World War, since the front stood there
for weeks in the autumn of 1944. Especially in the surroundings of
Medzilaborce, also the destructive impact of the First World War was felt
for a long time its territory was included in general Brusilovs offensive
of the Russian army in 1915 and claims for refunding of war damages by
the state were never fully met despite repeated promises. Its border location originated another frequent topos the north-east as the first territory to be liberated by the Soviet army and consequently it had been a half
year ahead in formation of new civil administration (local self6
The archival entry includes the name of the archive Slovensk nrodn archv
(Slovak National Archives, SNA), fund V 2 Okresn konferencie KSS (Regional conferences of the Communist party of Slovakia), number of the box,
number of the file, locality and page of bound annual minutes.
372 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
government). In some villages, already the arrival of the Soviet army was
interpreted as a signal for communist takeover, and the necessity to conform to National front (i.e. to share power with the Democrats) was perceived as a dictate from the centre. The long-lasting poverty generated
mass emigration of the working force. Pre-war and interwar stories of trails
to the mines in France or Belgium and of seafaring to the USA, including
experiences with trade unionism and constitutional freedoms, became
commonplace. But so was clinging to ones own strips of land or forest,
bought for the hard earned American money after return. Also those
peasants, who spent a few years in post-revolutionary Russia as WWI captives and turned Bolshevik in POW camps before returning home, remembered best the Leninist slogans of distribution of land to peasants.7
Thus while the post-war communist promises of new jobs in industry could
ring the bell, their collectivisation rhetoric definitely did not. The positions
of their main post-war political competitor in the 1946 elections, the Democratic Party, were remarkably stronger. While the Slovak average of votes
for the Communist party was 31% (compared to 62% of the Democratic
party), in Preov county the Democrats victory was even stronger (68,5%),
including a record 90,9% majority in Sobrance region.8
After the war, a notable fraction of local inhabitants inclined to trust
communists moved out from Eastern Slovakia at the call of the Communist party in two opposite directions: about 15 000 inhabitants, mainly
ethnic Ruthenians, willing to adopt proposed Ukrainian ethnic identity,
attributed to them by communist propaganda, responded in 1945-47 to
the call to opt for living directly in the USSR.9 Other thousands of their
neighbours moved to the west under the patronage of the minister of agriculture Jlius uri and his Slovak communist colleague in the central
7
8
9
Juraj Benko, Socialistick ideolgia v konfrontcii s religiznym slovenskm

prostredm v prvej tvrtine 20. storoia (Politizcia kresanskej tradcie a sakralizcia socialistickej vzie), [Socialist Ideology in Confrontation with Religious
Slovak Environment in the First Quarter of the 20th Century. (Politicisation of
Christian Tradition and Sacralisation of Socialist Vision)] in Xnia uchov
(ed.), Komunisti a udci: Spojenci? Speri? Protivnci? [Communists and
udks: Allies? Rivals? Adversaries?] (Preov: Universum, 2006), 9-23.
tatistick prruka Slovenska [Statistical Handbook of Slovakia] (Bratislava:
1947), 308.
Michal mige, tefan Kruko, Opcia a presdlenie Rusnov do ZSSR (19451947) [Option and Transfer of Ruthenians into the USSR in 1945-1947] (Bratislava: Goralinga, 2011).
government minister of work and social care Jozef oltsz, to re-inhabit

western Czech borderlands (Sudetenland) after the forced transfer of ethnic Germans.10 Local industrial enterprises also contributed to the drain
of young active cadres from the villages. The first post-1948 intra-party
screening aimed on exclusion of free-riders and promotion of unity,
lowered the membership in certain regions for more than 30%.11
Another specific feature was linked to the hilly character of the borderlands. Highland communities tend to evolve their own codes of behaviour
toward the state and its representatives, with little regard to actual government. Coincidentally, a 1935 event taking place in local villages of
Habura and ertin became a part of the interwar communist cannon of
revolutionary fight in the Slovak countryside (against the bourgeois regime).12 That time, the chasing down and beating of a tax collector who
came to expropriate a cow to an indebted villager provoked a punitive police expedition, which was met by fire from a few illegally kept handguns. While in 1936 or 1946 commemoration of this deed as a fight of
poor peasants for justice was quite non-problematic for the party, since
1950 the revived memory of tradition of common villagers defence
against uninvited officials expropriating their cattle acquired unwanted
second meaning.13
Last but not least, the population had fresh experiences with another undemocratic regime the war-time Slovak state. It was very similar not
10
At the beginning of the 1950s, families of kulaks and also of Greek-catholic

priests who refused to convert to Orthodoxy were also customarily deported to
Czech borderlands.
11
In Vranov nad Topou, only 62% of members retained membership a year after February 1948. SNA, V 2, file 1165, Vranov nad Topou, 1949, 3. The
rest was expelled or removed into candidate category and removed from functions. Both the head of the Regional party bureau and of the Regional national
committee were changed.
12
Laco Novomesk, ertin sa stva pojmom, [ertin Becomes a Household Word] in estn povinnos. Vber z politickch stat a lnkov 19331944 [Duty of Honour. Selected political articles 1933-1944, II.], II (Bratislava: Epocha, 1969), 151. First published in Tvorba X/12 (1935), 177-178.
13
Another specific revolutionary tradition connected with the north-east was
the short-lived existence of the Slovak Soviet republic, which was proclaimed
in Preov in 1919, under the patronage of the Hungarian Bolshevik army of
Bela Kun. But after the WWII it was difficult to gain popular support for its
commemoration and for its veterans, because of its Hungarian dimension.
374 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
only due to its drastic blow against a large section of private small trade
(which was locally often run by persons of Jewish origin). The people got
used to an imposed unification of the political scene to one state-party,
whose leading role was secured in the Constitution already then. Open
preference of the Peoples' party members in public employment was introduced, and membership in regime organisations was expected from
public employees, such as teachers. Elections to bodies of local selfgovernment were abolished and villages were governed by appointed
commissars and party-approved boards. The population in general got
used to the sight of neighbours being expropriated and deported. An important core of white collars office clerks, teachers, or village board
members broke mental barriers keeping them from signing any requested
membership card to keep their otherwise non-political profession or post.
After the communist access to power in 1948, these groups of middle
class professionals, classified as bourgeoisie, private office clerks, entrepreneurs, tradesmen and shopkeepers were targeted by the regime already before the start of collectivisation of agriculture. 14
Combined with the fact that borderlands of eastern Slovakia played the
role of a small Siberia, a place of exile for uncomfortable employees
whether they were sent there from larger towns, or they tried to escape
from known environment to a place lacking manpower and thus being
more tolerable to black spots in the curriculum the elements with a
doubtful past flooded the newly created jobs requiring office skills such
as file keeping, basic accounting and business correspondence. Repeated
purges in economic, educational and cultural departments of National
committees, in regional branches of the Ministry of product procurement,
in communalised enterprises centralising the formerly independent small
workshops, etc., revealed that consequent individual membership in ruling parties, i.e. Hlinkas Slovak Peoples Party, Democratic Party and the
14
The Law 199/1948 of July 1948 on Communal enterprises provided for takeover of private services, trades and shops by municipal administration (National
committees). Before peasants, private owners of small businesses were deprived of independence. They were pushed into newly formed communal
services, run by local governments. From there, fit men were soon ordered to
leave jobs deemed less physically demanding (barbers, waiters, tailors, cooks,
clerks...) to be substituted by women, and were dispatched to heavy industry
and mines. It seems that usually bus/lorry transport and burial services were
the first to be taken over.
Communist Party was a regular occurrence among employees in local offices. The incidence of non-party employees with a spotty cadre profile
was also high.
Party decisions
The dissonant approach of village party members towards collectivisation
was rooted in the political rhetoric of the early post-war period, when any
inclination to the idea of collectivisation of agriculture was openly denied
and refused by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Post-war leftist
and etatist moods in the society were sufficiently met by wide nationalisation in the banking sector, big industry, education and culture. The
word kolkhoz was deliberately crossed out from communist vocabulary.15 Contrary to collectivisation, the Communists in 1945-48 supported
large land reforms aimed at distributing the land to smallholders and lacklands. Allowed land ownership was limited to 50 hectares. Slovak communist representative in the central government, minister of agriculture
Jlius uri, was promoted as their initiator and guarantor. His name was
also connected with the drafting of six agricultural laws of 1946, promising new shares from confiscated land and state subventions for acquisition of tractors and other modern machinery. Ownership of the land up to
50 hectares, if cultivated by the owners and their family, was also expressly guaranteed in the new Constitution of May 9th, 1948, adopted after the communist coup. The eagerness of comrades, who identified
themselves with the interwar Communist extolment of the USSR as an
economical model to be followed as soon as possible, was sacrificed for
better results in the elections of 1946 and for peace in the countryside until the stabilisation of Communist power after February 1948. Even a few
months after the Bucharest session of Informbyro in June 1948, where
Yugoslav communists were criticised for disregard of Soviet experiences
with building socialism, Klement Gottwald bound his Central Committee
not to talk about kolkhozes, and preferred just making them.16 The
15
The ministry of agriculture insists upon inclusion into our new Constitution,
which is just being drafted, of a constitutional guarantee of land ownership up
to 50 hectares. This will stop spreading nervousness about us wanting to introduce kolkhozes, argued minister Jlius uri April 4, 1947. Jech, Kolektivizace, 43.
16
Jech. Kolektivizace , 57.
376 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
Bolshevik-sounding term kulak was also initially substituted in media

with homely sounding village rich man.
The Czechoslovak Law on United Peasants Cooperative17 was adopted a
year after the Communist access to power. Still, it formally accepted the
membership of all persons who were working on the land or could contribute to achieve cooperative targets. In places where some other kind of
farmer cooperatives had already existed, their membership was automatically transferred. The model statutes did not exclude kulaks even from
new cooperative boards, provided that small and middle peasants would
have a 4/5 majority of seats. Gradually, depending on regime situational
needs and on local policies, kulaks and generally well-to-do farmers both
inside and outside cooperatives became targets of official criminalising
and hatemongering campaigns. Since 1949 the secret police was charged
with helping the cooperatives to neutralise all dangers on the road to socialism and with developing of such particular activities that will make
the village rich aware of the fact, that they are being suppressed and cornered.18 For example, there is the celebrated cooperative of Vyn
Miroov, Svidnk region, where peasants together with their priest19 reserved part of the money earned from the harvest to build their own house
of culture, thus starting a whole-state self-supportive campaign to raise
the cultural level of villages A grain of Miroov; it took a round year to
become attacked as a haven of village rich and speculators.20
A delegate from Kapuany confirmed in 1950 that in their village rich
men are forced to contribute the major part of the procurement assigned
to the village, while the smallholders do not have any duties. He called
the newly elected regional committee to keep kulaks on check and remove them from time to time.21 An inspecting guest of 1951 conference
in Vranov quoted with satisfaction in his report for the Central committee
a local enthusiast, who called for more active public agitation through
pointing out the successes of the party, so the village rich man will
17
Law 69/1949, issued on 23 February 1949.

The Slovak National Archives, SNA, f. PV, Sekretariat, box 197, material
United peasants cooperatives and the role of the State secret police in their
creation. Quoted in Peek, Odvrten tvr totality, 207.
19
o pripravuje Miroov, Roncky hlas, 30 October 1949, 3.
20
SNA, V2, box 166, file 1144, Regional conference in Svidnk, 1950, 1 and
file 1145, Regional conference in Svidnk, 1951, 8.
21
SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1009, Preov, 1950, 9.
18
have to hide in a mouse hole from this truth, and encouraged raising the
class struggle to make him think about hanging himself. The guest noted, that this comrade speaks nicely, fluently, comprehensively, frequently quoting Gottwald, it is evident he reads papers from the Central
committee. It is a waste to leave him in the village.22
Types of first cooperatives varied substantially, this diversity being reflected by their assigned category from I. to IV. According to the Soviet kolkhoz classification they were mostly closer to initial associations for
joint land cultivation (toz) and cartels (arte). Only in category III.
was mass production of vegetable and animals introduced. Animals
were herded from private households into common stables and only small
allotments of ground were left for private farming after liquidation of
bounds under the so-called economic technical adjustment of land.
The relatively smooth introduction of many first cooperatives in 1949 had
less to do with the Soviet model and more with the tradition of forming
voluntary benefit societies. Due to the long history of the agricultural cooperative movement in both Czech lands and Slovakia, such bodies were
quite commonplace in the local countryside. During the interwar period
they were systematically propagated in schools and from pulpits. Also the
Agrarian party, from which the post-war Democratic party evolved in
Slovakia, belonged to their greatest political supporters. Furthermore,
there still existed historically older forest and grazing guilds, urbariates
and compossessorates, dating back to Theresian laws. The peasants frequently cooperated to share agricultural machinery, for common renting
of a granary, establishing a dairy shop, village store, etc. These cooperatives were usually run by more educated and well-off farmers. After February 1948, in line with the temporarily tolerated official inclusive
approach, local collectivisation propagandists praised their qualification
and experience, which should encourage other farmers to join cooperatives created under the new law. On the other hand, for the owners of machinery falling under the order of mandatory expropriation for the needs
of the community, joining the cooperative could seem as a way of retaining
at least a partial control over their ownership. Official rhetoric of progressive changes in agriculture was linked not only to jubilee celebrations of
abolition of fiefdom in the Hungarian kingdom (1849) but also to the 200th
birth anniversary of Juraj Fndly, a Catholic priest and active propagator of
22
SNA, UV 2, box 169, file 1167, Vranov nad Topou, 1951, 105, an unsigned
guests report quoted Michal Horniak from the cooperative in Mal Domaa.
378 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
agricultural modernisation (1750-1811), whose portrait hung above the

delegates of Peasant conferences to inspire them to carry on his legacy.
For propagandist reasons the first cooperatives received generous state
support, both in direct allowances and in loans. For example the model
cooperative established in Han in Michalovce region got from the
Commissariat of agriculture 980 000 Ks subvention, i.e. almost a million
crowns, together with a loan of 890 000 Ks, i.e. practically another million, from the Regional savings bank in Michalovce, for building of a
hoggery, hennery and washery. Their effort was supported also by unpaid skilled work provided by their industrial patron, the Czechoslovak
construction works in Michalovce, whose employees started working as
a brigade at building of first cooperative buildings.23 A model cooperative in elmanovce, presenting itself as a village of lacklands, started
with the takeover of the local forest and grazing guild, doing this fully
voluntarily, only being inspired and helped by the regional and county
party representatives. After a year, they claimed full participation of the
villagers, acquiring a machine park valued at one million, just for finishing the common hennery and electrification of the village.24
Due to rising tensions in Cold War international politics at the beginning
of the 1950s and to consequent changes of direction of the state economy
towards heavy industry and military production, such an easy-going approach towards funding of agriculture was quickly abandoned. On the
contrary, cooperatives and private farmers were targeted as an easy
source of lacking means for the favoured industry. The notable break in
the gradual state policy of collectivisation was linked to the threatening
economic failure of the First five-year-plan of economic development.25
In this phase of collectivisation the image of peasants as partners to
workers turned to their being portrayed as a social class that was deeply
indebted to industrial workers.26 They were reprimanded for ungratefulness and made responsible for the lack of commodities of daily use.
23
SNA, V 2, box 156, file 1055, Michalovce, 1950. Extensively commented

also in Jan Kozk, Na ceste [On the Way. How the Michalovce Region was
Collectivised] (Bratislava: Pravda, 1963), 52.
24
SNA, V 2, box 155, file 1031, Giraltovce, 1950, 32.
25
Adopted as a Law 241/ 948 on October 27, 1948.
26
Our peasants do not realise that if they request more, they have to reward our
workers class somehow. Our women want damask sheeting, but they pour
1/4 litre of water into milk. SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1011, Preov 1952, 89.
Widely propagated slogans proclaimed the general socialisation of the

village, i.e. collectivisation of agriculture, as the only possible way to
build socialism in the whole state. And nobody had the right to stand in
the way of socialism being built for the common good. The public was
being prepared for a great turn of collectivisation.
For a number of smallholders and middle peasants, the pure idea of
common work in a cooperative was repulsive, and they preferred to
struggle their way through grossed up procurement quotas assigned to
private farming households. This applied also to formerly eager communist voters and communist members, who were lured to the party by
the post-war land distribution. Despite officially proclaimed tolerance of
such private farming, until 1952 the conditions became unbearably
strained and remaining farmers were consciously pushed to the edge of
criminalisation. When not able to meet the requirements, their household
farms were proclaimed bankrupt. As such these were expropriated by the
cooperative or enforced to another smallholder family, thus launching the
domino effect of bankruptcy caused by lack of manpower in private farming.
Yet another part of small and middle peasants found initial simple forms
of cooperative work fully acceptable also under communist heading and
started feeling endangered and driven to resistance only by imposed
progress into category III., where bounds were forcibly ploughed up
and their own livestock centralised into common stables. The cooperative in Kladzany, region Vranov, worked steadily at the beginning, but
then the working initiative burnt out ... also the interest for common cultivation of soil does not meet the expected level. Actually it can be said
there is none.27 In the moment of enforced collectivisation, these former
communist supporters were not only losing their own spots of land, but
they were and that could be even more important also losing face in
their tightly knit communities.
On the eve of the 1952 harvest, the Central committee Resolution on
strengthening and further development of united peasants cooperatives28 was adopted. Despite initial promotion of gradual evolution of
cooperatives through all stages, now peasants in many villages were
27
SNA, V 2, box 168, file 1166, Vranov nad Topou, 1950, 8, the leading secretary Tomkoviovs comment.
28
Governmental resolution on consolidation and further development of United
peasants cooperatives, 3 June 1952.
380 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
forced to form directly category III. cooperatives, giving up their ancestral fields and cattle. Communists from all branches, but especially from
industry, were called to help speed-up the process. Simultaneously, public
administration bodies on regional and county levels were entrusted with
wide-scale extra court punitive powers, realised through punitive committees.29 In households of stubborn farmers, searches were carried out by the
police, their cases were handed over to prosecutors, and their families
were charged with unrealizable procurement duties. This was the high season of agitation convoys, staffed with dozens of outsiders invading the
villages to persuade the peasants on advantages of collective farming, as
known from standard historical accounts on Stalinist collectivisation.
Until the harvest of 1953 Stalin and Gottwald had died, loss of life-long
savings in an unjust currency reform of June 1953 alienated still wider
strata of the population (workers included) from the regime, and agriculture headed to another disastrous deficiency of goods. In the international
context, the Soviet power seemed shaken; a workers rebellion in the
GDR erupted, and news about collective farms going bankrupt was coming from Hungary. From Moscow, a clear signal came for correction of
the course of the Czechoslovak industrial production to calm down the
population, to publicly acknowledge its needs and meet them at least in
part.30 During a summer visit of workers at the Klava dam on August 1,
1953, president Zpotock came forward to confess that there was a lot to
improve, including many mistakes made in the course of collectivisation.31 He made a similar announcement already at the workers meeting
in Bratislava on June 15 and elsewhere. But now, in a generic critical
and self-critical speech he not only acknowledged that cooperatives created under constraint did not provide a good example to follow, but he
noted that the party will not hold back those members who would like to
quit. Despite the presidents consequent claim that the course towards
29
Law 88/1950 Administrative criminal law (Trestn zkon sprvny). Jech.

Kolektivizace, 65.
30
Michal Barnovsk, Prestvka medzi prvou a druhou etapou kolektivizcie,
[The Break between the First and the Second Phase of Collectivisation] in
Blanka Raticov (ed.): Osudy drustevnictv ve 20. stolet [Fates of Cooperative Movement in the 20th Century] (Uhersk Hradit: Slovck muzeum,
2002), 237.
31
President republiky mezi budovateli Klavsk pehrady, [President of the
Republic among the Builders of Klava dam] Rud prvo, 2 August 1953, 1.
http://archiv.ucl.cas.cz/index.php?path=RudePravo/1953/8/2/1.png.
collectivisation of agriculture is unavoidable in the socialist system, so it

will be necessary to re-create the cooperative anyway in a few years,
maybe with even more effort, the message about unblocked possibility to
leave was echoed eagerly and resulted in a wave of weakening and even
occasional complete dissolution of cooperatives.
While political messages and legal decisions related to collectivisation of
agriculture were issued on the national level and the resulting crisis of
cooperative farming touched the whole state, important differences could
be observed in the resulting application in individual counties and regions. In the researched territory of north-east Slovakia, due to the peculiar combination of a specific social composition, historical traditions and
natural conditions with determined but amateurish exercise of local authority, in a few months this campaign developed into fast spreading collectivisation fever, just to end up in economic, political as well as social
disaster. Secret police reports chronicling the campaign give picture akin
to a society driven to the verge of the civil war.32 The situation got out of
hands of regional and county representatives. Reinstatement of control
fully relied on the help from the centre. Besides personal changes and enforcements of the political apparatus, local government offices and police
stations, the county also became the first theatre of engagement for the
Czechoslovak Interior Guards (Vntorn str), units of a special interior
army commanded by the Ministry of national security, being recently
created according to the Soviet model.33
At this scale, it was no longer possible to hide the crisis from the public.
While, for example, in the counties in Czech lands the number of handedin deregistration forms were counted in the hundreds34 and they only
32
Martina Fiamov, Vydejte nm krvy, my drustvo nechceme! Bezpenostn

situcia v Preovskom kraji v roku 1953, [Give us Back Our Cows, We do not
Want the Cooperative! Security Situation in Preov County in 1953] Securitas
imperii 2/2 (2012), 150-181. http://www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/publikace/securitasimperii/no21/150-181.pdf; Martina Fiamov, Kritick obdobie v kolektivizcii
vidieka dramatick udalosti roka 1953 v Preovskom kraji na prklade obce
Kela, [Critical Phase in Collectivisation in the Country Dramatic Events of
1953 in Preov County: the Case of Kela Village] Pam nroda 3/3 (2010),
57-64.
33
Peek. Odvrten tvr totality, 215.
34
According to evidence from August 22, 1953, there were 316 deregistration
forms handed out in the county of esk Budjovice, 626 in the county of
Plze, 500 in Jihlava, 500 in Ostrava, 450 in Gottwaldov. Jan Peek. Perod
382 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
exceptionally resulted in dissolution of a whole cooperative, in regions

belonging to the north-eastern county of Preov omnibus deregistration
led to their mass disbandment. In some limited form, only less than a
quarter of cooperatives existing in 1953 survived till 1954.
The propaganda line in the central media switched from the informationsuppressing mode to generating a picture of a model failure of a powerabusing local satrap. Removal of such unworthy local party representative, sanctioned by an understanding central power, signalised a breaking
step towards renewal of mutual trust between the people and the leaders
in the Central committee. The result was that it could be transmitted as an
impressive and reassuring story also for the readers in the rest of the state.
During the autumn of 1953 a series of measures adopted by the party
and the government to ease the life in the villages were announced.35
Pressure for collectivisation was lifted until the start of its next phase in
1955-1958, in a better-positioned economic situation.
To help in the forgetting of past grievances and healing bonds between
the centre and the local population, inhabitants of the Preov county were
granted a revival plan, including massive state investments not only into
local industry and agriculture, but also into civil infrastructure and housing.
How to explain a failure
The question remains, what was the role of the local communists and
their village organisations in the collectivisation crisis of 1952/53 and in
preceding developments? How did they explain their lagging behind the
general trend of collectivisation before 1952?36 How did they interpret
jihoesk vesnice. K historii zdrustevovn zemdlstv eskobudjovickho
kraje v letech 1949-1959 [Rebirth of a South Bohemian Village. To the History of Collectivisation in the County of esk Budjovice in 1949-1959]
(esk Budjovice: Jihoesk nakladatelstv, 1985), 109 and 137.
35
Ji Urban, Tv k venkovu. Vystoupen Antonna Zpotockho ve Sterch,
[Facing the Village. The Speech of Antonn Zpotock in Stery] Pam a
djiny 3 (2013), 36-37; http://www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/pamet-dejiny/pad1303/
032-046.pdf
36
While in the state scope the number of cooperatives doubled (since the last
year), we managed to establish only two new preparatory committees. Today
we have twenty cooperatives in the region, but only two of a higher class, one
of category II. in Hruov and one of III. in So. ... For a comparison, there are
their participation in unlawful moments of their campaigns? What strategies were used to switch from the initial narrative of successful collectivisation in 1952 to the victorious removal of the satrap? Also, for their
further functional existence, regional organisations needed an inclusive
consensual version of past events, enabling all honest, even if erring
comrades to write off their errors and carry on the right path. To sum up,
how was the idea of collectivisation related to communist membership
and what being a communist meant for them at all?
According to the valid Central committee resolutions, all communists
were bound to support the foundation of the cooperatives in principle. On
place, village communists actively tried to avoid having them in their
own backyard and used to explain at large, why exactly their village is
not suitable for the foundation of such an enterprise. Their reasoning
could vary from pointing at having a majority of poor peasants in the village, who on the contrary to industrial workers were said to be backward by nature and it was difficult to enlighten them, to having too many
industrial workers in the village, so there was not enough people to work in
the possible cooperative. However, the argument stating the low level of
mass political consciousness of peasants clashed with the official claim
about general popular support for the communist takeover of 1948 and could
entice unwanted attention to their pessimist source.37 For the solution of
lacking manpower, there was a magic formula of the communist organisation
of work. After all, the Soviet communists had worse conditions and they
managed, as could be seen in the book The Harvest. There were only
three communists in the village and they organised a kolkhoz.38
14 000 heads of cattle in the region, about 9000 of that are milking cows, of
which cooperative members own about 10%, but we have only eight cows in
one common cowshed, that is less than one per thousand. SNA, V 2, box
169, file 1167, Vranov nad Topou, 1951, 18.
37
Comrade Knapk says, that we do not have credit. I have heard this already.
During the screening of the Regional bureau. The peasants do not trust the Regional bureau. Why? Lets explore it! SNA, V 2, box 168, file 1165,
Vranov, 1949, 7. Reaction of an invited guest, the MP in the Slovak National
Council Pavol Fleischer.
38
Galina Nikolaeva, Zhatva (Moscow: 1948). [Eng. Version The Harvest (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953)]. Also filmed adaptation by
Pudovkin as Return of Vasilii Bortnikov (1953). SNA, V 2, box 151, file
1013, Preov 1952, 70 and 132.
384 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
The official narrative of the regimes successful meeting of the needs of

peasants could be also turned into an explanation of the negative approach against collectivisation: the former lacklands did not remember
how risky the agricultural enterprise was under the old regime. Once
getting their apportion of field, as private peasants in the peoples democracy they took no risks, being supported by the state through cheap loans
and subsidies for machinery, so they could not value the advantages of
cooperative economy.39
Some regional and village communist representatives, either being sure
of the superiority of collective farming over private production or just
wanting to get over the initially planned numbers of cooperatives, promised the peasants that they could join them for trial and to see over a
year, whether it worked or not.40 But such offer, meant as a pull moment, also indicated that there might exist a standard mechanism of deregistration. This political mistake was evaluated as causing great
damage by laying foundations of cooperatives on false basis.41 Besides
bringing political complications to propagators of such an idea, it became
a prototype of a face-losing moment, when the functionary, the close
neighbour, was not able to stand up to his (political) promises.
The majority of peasant members of the party expressed views that they
want to remain in the party, but they wish to be left in peace with those
cooperatives.42 For example, in 1950 out of 320 party members in Vek
ari, mostly smallholders, only 27 were cooperative members.43 Others
signed the application, but refused to take any other steps, including signing the model statutes.44 It happened that village communists working in
the industry volunteered to establish a cooperative and accepted the functions in its board, but not the work in the field.45
39
SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1009, Preov, 1950, Annual report on the activity of
the regional party committee, separate brochure, 49.
40
SNA, V 2, box 157, file 1069, Michalovce, 1952, 89.
41
42
SNA, V 2, box 165, file 1145, Svidnk, 1951, report of M. Falan, 91.
43
SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1010, Preov, 1951, 40, Bucur of Vek ari.
44
45
In our cooperative I am an ordinary shepherd. The rest are functionaries and
there is nobody to help me. SNA, V 2, box 157, file 1059, Medzilaborce
1954, 82. On industrial workers, who joined the cooperative and let their field
For peasants unwilling to join a cooperative, all communists out of the cooperative became an argument for postponing their membership until they
joined. The same motive was used by local communists against the higher
posted functionaries, who were not able to persuade their own parents, so
how could they expect other people to be successful in persuasion.
The down-to-earth position, or Realpolitik, of keeping the cooperatives
open for landed peasants, brought black points to the previous county
party leadership, which was cleansed in 1950/51. At that time the purged
local Members to the Parliament A. Penika and P. Fleischer tolerated
in our regional organisations 64 members owning more than 20 acres of
soil each, and two functionaries with 30 acres, while the former head of
the Regional party committee in Vranov, P. Mur addressed the village
rich men at the meeting with an invitation to join the cooperative, reasoning that otherwise the beggars will take their fields.46 It is worth mentioning, that already this generation of post-war functionaries was
blamed for dictatorial practices,47 which became the main reason for removal of their successors in 1952/53. For greater impression they were
linked to the recently unveiled enemies in the centre (Clementis, ling et
al.) and even blamed for the Bukharinite policy of reliance on rich peasants
to build cooperatives. They earned their own regionally valid -isms,
muarizmus and penikovtina, combining the label of bourgeois
nationalism with agrarianism hidden under the red flag.48
The pride and self-confidence of village organisations members was
subverted not only by pressure to point out ones neighbours as kulaks
and participate in their cornering, but also by regular imposed intraparty purges, or screenings of membership. Weakened small village
party organisations in general withdrew from public life and turned into
small closed circles of veterans drowning in the past glory. In case the local National committee chairman was a communist himself, daily routine
forced him to consensuses and concessions, to take decisions and responsibilities, which were not consulted with the whole village communist organisation. Due to lack of experienced and skilled managers, active
there to be cultivated for rent, see also SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1010, Preov
1951, 15.
46
SNA, V 2, box 169, file 1167, Vranov nad Topou, 1951, 24.
47
SNA, V 2, box 165, file 1145, Svidnk 1951, 3.
48
386 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
leading posts in National committees and in cooperatives were regularly

occupied by non-partisans with little sympathy towards the contemporary
politics. Refusal of local communists to engage in their agitation to the
party was labelled as sectarian and led to further intra-party cleansings.49 Failure of a local party organisation to get the local administration,
i.e. their village National committee, under control (to put the leading
role of the party into practice) was then likely to be qualified as an incidence of Titoism.50
The propagandist return to motives of political agrarianism soon led to
new verification of personal curricula. In a county where the openly anti-communist party won the 1946 election with almost 70% of votes,
a past in the Agrarian Party, Democratic Party, or the Hlinkas Party was
highly probable among any prospective and able leading figures. However, purges in the leadership of village National committees and cooperatives aimed at instalment of new, reliable but often inexperienced
communists, led to creation of different official side-ways for supplying
some additional able aides to effectively deal with administrative and
managerial tasks, despite their tainted past. First, patron industrial enterprises were directed to send accountants for brigades in book-keeping,
while procurement of goods had to be carried on by special local plentipotentiaries of the Ministry of procurement. Then also stable posts
of professional administrating secretaries at National committees were
created to keep the office going, conspicuously resembling the removed
bourgeois village notaries. Due to lack of other able cadres, these jobs
were gradually staffed with former people again. The effort to build a
functional procurement administration forced the local and regional party
leaders to cooperate with class-alien blue and white collars, who tried to
remain afloat in a third regime change in a decade.
49
The cooperative was founded among the last ones in the region. It has 52
members and 2 families remain out. The Party is weak in a political and numerical sense; there are 8 members and 4 candidates. Communists are not in
leading functions; the head of the National committee and of the Cooperative
are non-partisans. For more than two months there was neither a party meeting
nor a bureau meeting. This is the reason why all comrades do not fight for the
party political line and why the small and middle peasants are under influence
of village speculators and backward elements. SNA, V 2, box 169, file 1166,
Vranov nad Topou, 1950, 42, Situational report on the Trepec village.
50
SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1010, Preov, 1951, 21.
With rising frustration in the regional offices, whose staff was not able to
fulfil the production tasks assigned from the centre, the tensions affected
also their relation towards the rural population in general, including village party representatives. A frustrated but empowered chair of the regional National committee became a nightmare for party members and
non-members alike. The spirit of violent agitation convoys was present in
regional offices some months in advance before their departure to the
fields. With hindsight it is clear how due to undeveloped commonly acceptable vocabulary for such inappropriate behaviour of officials attempts
of its acceptable descriptions were stuffed with formal phrases. Comrades
from a village organisation, who came for advice how to better meet the
procurement, were met by a regional National committee chair, who instead of advising them hit the table, so the comrades, seeing his methods, better shifted off by running from his office, applying the motto,
talking is silver, silence is gold.51
While both the rank-and-file communists and the Central committee repeated slogans on granted voluntary membership in cooperatives and
the unacceptability of pressure and force, the executive layer of regional
and county functionaries, who were made responsible for slow progress
of collectivisation, were expected to succeed through the constant persuading of peasants. Not able to reach their goal by peaceful means, agitators, sent from the Regional committee with clear tasks to get the
collectivisation process moving turned to aggressive behaviour, including
threatening with handguns, paralleled with heavy drinking.52
New campaign for shock foundation of new cooperatives and for forced
elevation of existing ones into higher categories, which was launched in
1952/53, shifted the already passive village communists to the side of
their non-party neighbours. Some were directly engaged in helping the
villagers to preserve their fields through the administrative dekulakisation, i.e. cooking the books and hiding parts of their fields in the
official paper documentation.53 As delegate Timko remarked in spring
51

A delegate of the conference judge Jn Novk mentioned that in Jastrabie,
comrade Holomka was shooting into the ceiling in the pub. ... In emern,
comrade Beh thinks that it is possible to deal with people under gunpoint.
SNA, V 2, box 169, file 1169, Vranov nad Topou, 1953, 65-66
53
It is proven that in 1952 there were 135 households from 10 to 20 hectares,
and in 1954 only 72 of such households. In 1952 there were 349 households
52
388 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
1952, it is proven by fact that the functionaries do not pay any attention
to party questions and some of them stated that they would better take a
job in a quarry.54 Old village party members refused to join the cooperatives off hand. They toiled enough in America for now having nothing to
eat, according to a complaint of a young head of the cooperative, who
could not persuade even one old communist to join him.55 One of the veterans struck back by reminding Timko about his shooting like a Texas
cowboy in the presence of the peasants, which had not helped either. A
village party chairman in Lekrovce was overheard agreeing with the
cooperative when talking to a communist, while being against when talking to a kulak.56 In a number of villages, chairmen of party committees
together with heads of the National committee and of Cooperatives were
directly blamed for active hindering of collectivisation. From Stropkov,
such party members were reported, who meditate in the morning,
whether to go to work or not, and who succumbed to psychosis and were
the first to sign withdrawals from the cooperative.57 A delegate in Preov
1953 reprimanded his comrades for avoiding agitation convoys instead
joining the cooperative immediately. When it comes to signing an application for the cooperative, it is my primary duty to stay at home and not run
to the woods, as repeatedly happened with our functionaries.58
After having their ancestral fields ploughed together and cattle taken, the
population in number of villages resorted to passive resistance and stopped
working at all. They simply sat in front of their houses until the students,
the industrial workers and the army had to be called to take the crops from
the fields. The majority of our party members only observed the situation
and did not adopt almost any measures.59 Preserving their social bonds
within the village, the party members not only refrained from fighting back
the reactionaries, but they went publicly, in a drunk state, and sung diffrom 10 to 15 hectares, but in 1954 only 267. The number of households having from 3 to 5 hectares rises evidently. SNA, V 2, box 166, file 1138,
Stropkov, 1955, 151.
54
55
SNA, V 2, box 169, file 1169, Vranov nad Topou, 1953, Michal Timko,
JRD Klov Dlh.
56
SNA, V 2, box 168, file 1158, Vek Kapuany, 1953, 7.
57
SNA, V 2, box 165, file 1136, Stropkov, 1954, 8.
58
SNA, V 2, box 1012, file 1012, Preov 1953, 94.
59
ferent guardist, fascist songs and pronounced provocative speeches, including awful defamation of our constitutional representatives.60
Despite stopping the aggressive collectivisation campaign in autumn
1953, accompanied with a confession of errors on the highest level and
radical changes in the county and regional party offices, it could be said
that if after the 1949 the authority of the local village communists decreased, after 1952/1953 it was completely lost. Administrative methods, a euphemism for signing the application at gunpoint, or blackmail
with written arrest warrants, were shortly criticised and then referred to
mostly vaguely as everybody knows, how it was then and how it was
everywhere.61 However, old conflicts erupted from time to time. When
in Stropkov conference in early spring of 1955 delegate Jacuko again
spoke about his successful recruitment of new members into their cooperative, he was publicly attacked in the evening by another delegate. He
was reminded of belonging to main initiators of forced collectivisation,
and urged to remember, in shouting, that he will be the first to be hanged
in front of the Regional national committee building.62
In the media, criminal acts were spun to bending of the clearly drawn party line, as it was outlined by comrade Gottwald, that was ascribed to a
vague group of functionaries.63 And as was repeatedly (and ritually) stated, the party as such had absolutely nothing to do with such acts committed
in its name. The Resolution on further development and consolidation of
cooperatives was only wrongly understood, namely its part on economical-political strengthening already existing cooperatives.64
It was also necessary to find a balance between competing narratives of
generally positive public attitude towards the cooperatives, criticising just
some violent excesses, and of the great missionary effort needed for initial creation of cooperatives, which was now completely wasted by the
use of violence and so would take years to recreate.
The best answer to the basic question of how it could happen at all,
through which the guilt could be equally distributed to all involved, was
found in the deficient ideological education resulting in a low level of
60

SNA, V 2, box 169, file 1171 Vranov nad Topou, 1955, 3.
62
SNA, V 2, box 165, file 1137, Stropkov, 1955, 154.
63
SNA, V 2, box 167, file 1148, Svidnk, 1954, main report, 9.
64
61
390 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
Marxist-Leninist consciousness. The Year of party schooling, requiring

all members and inviting non-partisans to participate in cyclical lectures
read by assigned instructors, selected and sent by the Regional party, relieved the local comrades of many pains. While its popularity as well as
its attendance was low, it allowed for an elegant passing of the bucket.
Everybody baulks at the cooperative. Who is to blame for this mistake?
It is mainly our guilt and that of the Regional committee, which had not
sent instructors, who would persuade small and middle peasants and inform them on cooperatives.65 The responsibility for the lack of ideological instruction was laid at the whole spectre of purged chairmen of the
county party and civil administration offices, who already since 1945
underestimated and neglected the ideological growth of party members.66
The low level of ideological conscience could especially be blamed for
the apocalyptic dimensions of the local deviation from the party line. It
was clear, that in Bratislava county or in Nitra county there were also
some persons committing mistakes and trying to apply such methods.
But their cooperatives survived, and the peasants retained their trust to
the party, because there was stronger mass of the working class, the peasants were more developed, and the cultural level of the working people in
general was higher.67
Some versions of the failure tried to relate it to natural disposition of the
natives: we Slovaks are communists by nature. We did not study the
History of the CPSU and we succumbed to the comrades from the County
committee who asked us to establish cooperatives at the cost of deforming the party line. 68 Other delegates limited the lack of political and
ideological maturity to individual functionaries, who caused the dissolution of 16 cooperatives out of 19 by not relying on textbooks of Marxism-Leninism and on soviet experiences, and by developing instead
their own method, which was alien to our party.69
The model honest self-critique of a participant in excess violence included confessing of his share of guilt in not standing up against the former
65
SNA, V 2, box 158, file 1071, Michalovce 1954, 19. Particularly named
were Kabo, Penika, Fleischer and ika, for the county, and ollk,
Kstenbaum, Hals for the Michalovce region.
67
68
SNA, V 2, box 167, file 1148, Svidnk, 1954, 45.
69
SNA, V 2, box 167, file 1148, Svidnk, 1954, 48.
66
chairman, an act which none of us has done. But his moral failure was
again interpreted as caused by lack of knowledge of Marxism-Leninism
and of Soviet experiences.70
Besides its pure existence, the quality of the ideological education was important. The instructors could be found to be either too urban to understand
agricultural problems, or too posh to be comprehensible for the good but
semiliterate village comrades, or too young to find common language with
the elders, and they rotated too often to build trust and mutual bonds with
the villagers. If they were not coming at all, the village party organisation
cancelled its own meetings totally. The criteria for an ideal instructor were
high. He should not carry on his work formally, as was frequent until
now. Moreover, he was expected to have all qualities of V. I. Lenin. To
find the right way to approach the people. To be patient. To have a good
heart and iron will, so he can do something. His task was seen as really
difficult, because party organisations died out somehow.71
Propagandist usage of the motive of the ideological education could thus
solve all problems with the public interpreting the 1952/1953 period in
commonly acceptable way: The uneducated villagers did not understand, the regional functionaries lacking proper schooling gave wrong
commands, their politically unaware executive apparatus carried them
out and the party rank-and-files without proper grounding in MarxismLeninism did not stop them committing mistakes. It is a paradox, that in
the beginning of the 1950s the local communists were freer to commit
mistakes than later. Since the crisis of 1952/1953, even the radicals felt it
more expedient to leave politics to professionals, i.e. to the burgeoning
party apparatus and to professional functionaries, a caste just emerging
from the recently established one- or two-years long party schools for regional and county cadres.
In contrast to the purges of 1951/52, this time the removed party representatives were portrayed more as failing losers then as traitors. The lack of interest in unveiling new enemies can be linked to the approaching election
campaign of 1954, which was presented as the first general election into the
local National committees. Candidates for these elections should officially
come not only from the party, but also from mass organisations. In many
places hit by the violent collectivisation campaign, oppositional slogans
70
71

SNA, V 2, box 167, file 1148, Svidnk 1954, 81.
392 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
about a chance to rally for a National committee without communists

started to resonate among peasants and it seemed that the leading role of
the party in the region could become at stake again.72
***
For an illustration of the ambivalent position and experience of a local
communist activist during the collectivisation drive of 1952/1953, being
caught between the omnipotence of the party and impotence of its local
member, the discussion entry of one comrade Sabol from Kendice in
Preov region from spring 1954 is quoted in extenso.
Our agricultural cooperative was established in August 1952 and was
immediately elevated into category III. It was established under heavy
pressure from the regional party committee and National committee. The
first agitation brigade, which came to establish the cooperative, consisted
of 30 members, former shopkeepers and clerks. I do not want to harm the
individual honest people of these strata who care about building socialism
in villages. When I as a chairman of the National committee told them,
that I will not go for building a cooperative with them, they went to the
Regional party committee and reported this to comrade Mikul, who
came immediately and wanted me to be imprisoned, because I as a party
member take a negative approach to socialisation of the village. But how
could I go to build a cooperative with such people, who just after coming
to the village went for a chat and were shaking hands with kulaks?
Then, in few days a group of teachers from the Snina region came to establish a cooperative, but those did nothing, only eat and bathed in the
river for the whole week spent in our village. Later the functionaries from
the Municipal committee and the regional National committee came.
Some of them are present here now. We walked through the village and
persuaded the peasants about advantages of the common economy. But it
was difficult and we looked for reasons why we could not establish the
cooperative. At the end, there came an order from the Regional National
committee that we have to find a village rich man. So we proclaimed
Koiko a village rich man, whom we considered being a kulak, because
he was a member of parliament for the Agrarian party. He used to have
servants, so we proclaimed him a village rich man number one. Also our
village organisation issued an agreement with this.
72
SNA, V 2, box 165, file 1126, Star ubova, 1954, 2.
We let him be arrested and after his arrest we got 40 applications to the
cooperative.
The next kulak, number two, was Baran, who had 7 acres of field. He had
a bull and then slaughtered him without authorisation. After his arrest we
got next 70 applications. So we established a cooperative, we proclaimed
the village being a socialist village, but nobody cared for our cooperative
since then.
Later, the members of the cooperative gathered to elect the board. Meanwhile, those two returned from arrest and during the elections into the cooperative board the first village rich man Koiko got there. I do not
know how it is possible that a kulak can get into the cooperative, not even
to the board.
The vice-chair of the Municipal national committee Pavk was present at
the meeting, so we let him know about the situation. He responded that
we cannot do anything, since the majority wishes to have Koiko in the
board. Already then went rumours through the village, that if there is a
cooperative established, it should be headed by a peasant, not by a worker. And so comrade Pavk came one day and ordered the elections of the
chairman of the National committee to be held. That time, I was the
chairman. It was said that I am bad and I have dictatorial approach. I ask
you, comrades, which communist is not a dictator for kulaks? But if comrade Pavk came to me and told me that I have some mistakes, so the
chairman has to be replaced that would be more correct. But he used the
situation, when I was with another comrade out to take part in a party active, and organised the elections in that time.
A man, who was a former commander of Hlinka guard, a shopkeeper,
who did not want to give up his trade, and also he left his wife and children to volunteer on the Eastern front, got to the leading post in the village. The whole coordination with the Regional National committee, the
Municipal committee and the Regional party committee was limited to
their agreement with his appointment to chair our National committee.
After the more detailed characteristic of our new chairman, you can imagine the whole situation, which developed in the cooperative. The village party organisation called a meeting and reported to the executive
secretary Mikul and comrades Pavk and Chlapeek that they are satisfied with me as a chairman of the National committee. But these explained that it is not possible to reinstall me, because by this I would lose
394 _____________________________________________ Marna ZAVACK
authority. Can you imagine to what laughter our organisation was exposed. Now you put it together for us.
At the time of collecting hay from the field, squandering of cooperative
property started. Members of the cooperative, even functionaries drove
hay to their homes at night. The forest warden compiled a list of members, who took part in squandering, but comrade Seman, when he got the
report, did not take any action to solve the situation, even though he was
asked by the cooperative board.
The second case took place during the harvest, when the communists
promised to help mowing on Sunday. Our chairman issued some proposals for fulfilment of the task, but the highly drunk chairman of the cooperative told him not to interfere, and that was in the presence of
comrade Pavk, who just shrugged his shoulders.
When somebody came from the region to us, he did not need the party
any more. Members of the party were not even greeted. All negotiations
were carried out with the cooperative board. We had to withdraw.
One day the cooperative broke and its property got squandered. I alerted
comrade Mikul to the whole situation and I reproached him that they
paid little attention to our cooperative. Then he told me that I have no
right to tell him what to do, that he is a secretary, not me. Believe me,
comrades, I had to apologize to him for what he viewed as an offence.
Now to what concerns the elections to the National committee and the
situation in our village. I was gone for a course in Lipovec. The National
committee made the list of candidates for the elections. I do not think it is
right if the cooperative drafts the list. Out of 9 members they put only 3
communists, and those were divided into groups, so in fact it is organised
in a way that the National committee would be left without communists.
When I consulted the chairwoman of the Womens Union, she told me
that she knows of completely different instructions for drafting the list of
candidates. Also the chairman of the village party organisation has other
instructions. If we compare them, they contradict each other.
If we progress this way, we cannot reach any result, and the elections to
the National committees cannot fulfil their goal.73
73
SNA, V 2, box 151, file 1013, Preov 1954, 72.
Distrust as a Perception, Resistance as a Response:

the Introduction of Communist Politics
in the East Bohemian Rural Area
Ji URBAN
After the communist coup in February 1948, the Czech society went
through an extremely difficult period. Extensive social changes, total reconstruction of the economy and installation of a tough one-party dictatorship elicited a wave of disagreement, instigated centres of opposition
and created space for active resistance against the policy of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistick strana eskoslovenska,
KS). While the existence of the first, anti-Habsburg, and the second, anti-Nazi resistance is now generally acknowledged, the third, antiCommunist resistance had fared much worse until recently. The resistance and opposition against the communist power in Czechoslovakia
in the late 1940s and early 1950s is now relatively often reflected upon in
literature and on the pages of specialized journals;1 it is also ever more
often discussed in public expert forums. In April 2009, an international
conference was held in the Lichtenstein Palace in Prague, called Resistance and opposition against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia
and Central Europe. Consequently, in May 2010 a conference called
The 3rd resistance was held at the Metropolitan University Prague, dedicated to the memory of Dr. Milada Horkov. In November 2011, the
Slovak Nations Memory Institute together with partner institutions from
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic organized a scientific conference called Anti-communist resistance in Central and Eastern Europe.
The different papers, which have been published in collections,2 show
1
A bibliography of works reflecting the issue of anti-communist resistance and

opposition was compiled by Marie Bokov, Komentovan bibliografie k
djinm III. odboje (1945) 1948-1960 (1967) [Commented Bibliography on the
History of the 3rd Resistance (1945) 1948-1960 (1967)], URL:
<http://www.ustrcr.cz/cs/komentovana-bibliografie-k-dejinam-3odboje> [quot.
2015-05-25]. Further see Vclav Veber, Two Decades: Historiography of the
Anti-Communist Resistance at the Czech Universities Two Decades after the Fall
of Communism, in Between Brussels and Moscow: Selected Texts, ed. Vclav
Veber (Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice, Fakulta filozofick, 2014), 55-59.
See Peter Jaek, ed., Protikomunistick odboj v strednej a vchodnej Eurpe
[Anti-Communist Resistance in Central and Eastern Europe] (Bratislava: stav
396 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
quite clearly that anti-communist activities were of various forms, of

which only some have been studied in an adequate extent so far.3 It is the
activities of couriers, called agents-walkers in the period language,
which prove to be one of the most prominent demonstrations of the existence of the 3rd resistance as in them the continuity of the anti-communist
resistance with the previous two is best traceable.4 The synthesis written by
historian Vclav Veber in 2014 became (although it contains a number of
inaccuracies) a significant contribution to the study of the anti-communist
resistance and represents the first attempt to grasp the integral theme.5
In recent years, the anti-communist activities of Czechoslovak citizens
have been discussed not only by historians but with alternating intensity
also in the Czech media. It was revived in July 2010 in connection with the
death of Milan Paumer; the third one in the Man brothers group, and
pamti nroda, 2012). Jan Bure, Vclav Veber et al., Tet odboj: kapitoly z
djin protikomunistick rezistence v eskoslovensku v padestch letech 20.
stolet [The 3rd Resistance: Chapters from the History of Anti-Communist Resistance in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s] (Plze: Vydavatelstv Ale enk,
2010); Vclav Veber, ed., Odboj a odpor proti komunistickmu reimu v
eskoslovensku a ve stedn Evrop [Resistance and Opposition Against the
Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia and in Central Europe] (Praha: stav
pro studium totalitnch reim, 2010).
The quarterly revue Pam a djiny in the section Tet odboj (The 3rd resistance) led by historian Vclav Veber strived to draw attention to the variety
of anti-communist activities; the section presented outcomes of the group for
study of the anti-communist resistance and opposition at the Institute for the
Study of Totalitarian Regimes. However, after he left from the head of the
group, the outcomes have become rather scarce and the section occasional.
See e.g. Ivo Pejoch, Prokop Tomek, Agenti-chodci na popraviti: kuri zpadnch zpravodajskch slueb, popraven v letech 1949-1958 [AgentsWalkers at the Gallows: Couriers of Western Intelligence Services Executed
Between 1949-1958] (Cheb: Svt kdel, 2010); Ota Rambousek, Pamti lichobnka: pamti agenta chodce [Memoirs of a Trapezoid: Memoirs of an
Agent-Walker] (Praha: Primus, 1999); Jaroslav Rokosk, Brati Frantiek a
Josef Bogatajovi. Protikomunistick odboj na jin Morav, [Brothers Frantiek and Josef Bogataj. Anti-Communist Resistance in Southern Moravia] Securitas Imperii 16 (2010), 88-133.
Vclav Veber, Tet odboj: SR v letech 1948-1953 [The 3rd Resistance:
Czechoslovakia 1948-1953] (Pardubice: Filozofick fakulta Univerzity Pardubice, 2014).
Distrust as a Perception, Resistance as a Response:... __________________ 397
historian Martin Tich drew up a successful summary of it.6 A Senate law

draft on anti-communist resistance, which was submitted by a group of
18 senators led by Ji Lika, attracted a lot of attention. The incoherent
draft caused a wave of disagreement among experts, primarily due to the
way anti-communist resistance participants were defined, the hardly acceptable classification of their activities and the unsatisfactory form of
the proposed satisfaction.7 In the end, the amended Act on the participants in anti-communist opposition and resistance was adopted as Act
No. 262/2011 Coll. and became effective symbolically on the Day of the
fight for freedom and democracy on 17 November 2011.8 By the beginning of July 2015, a total of 917 participants in the anti-communist resistance were awarded pursuant to this act;9 however, the way people are
selected for the award is still being disputed and, often rightfully, criticized.10
Significantly smaller space is dedicated to a more specific and narrow subject within the anti-communist activities the opposition against forced
collectivisation of the Czechoslovak countryside. The historiographic
production until now has mostly focused on the pace of the collectivisation process and on describing the persecution of farmers labelled as kulaks; however, both active and passive opposition against
collectivisation remain outside the main focus of attention. At the same
time, the number of flyers, broken windows, haystacks and barns set on
fire, and other various forms of intimidation of the active supporters of
6
Martin Tich, esk spolenost ve svtle manovsk diskuse. Co zaznlo po

smrti Milana Paumera o skupin brat Man, [The Czech Society in the
Light of the Man Discussion. What Was Said about the Man Brothers
Group after Milan Paumers Death] Pam a djiny 3 (2010), 120-124.
7
See Stanovisko historik nejnovjch djin k sentnmu nvrhu zkona o
astncch protikomunistickho odboje a astncch odporu proti komunismu,
[Statement of Historians of Contemporary History on the Senate Draft Act on
Participants in Anti-Communist Resistance and Participants in Opposition
against Communism] URL: <http://blisty.cz/art/55767.html>, [quot. 2015-06-06].
8
See a comment on the draft, Pavel ek, Aplikace zkona o III. Odboji, [Application of the Act on the 3rd Resistance] Pam a djiny 3 (2011), 115-118.
9
Register of participants in resistance and opposition as of 9.7.2015, who were
granted a certificate pursuant to Act No. 262/2011 Coll., URL:
<http://www.veterani.army.cz/vydana-osvedceni> [quot. 2015-07-16].
10
Most recently see Petr Zdek, Vroba tetho odboje, [Creation of the 3rd Resistance] Lidov noviny: Orientace, 28-29 March 2015, I-II, IV.
398 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
collectivisation in line with the Soviet model is evidence of the serious

level of resistance of the country people against the agricultural policies
of the KS, against the promised better future where villagers were to
be led by force, literally under the knout. Numerous forms of passive resistance such as rejecting the supply regulations or even cases of killing
livestock or suicides of desperate farmers show us the depth of the human
tragedies with which the forced collectivisation of the countryside was
inseparably connected.11
To my mind, the level of knowledge concerning the forms and manifestations of resistance against collectivisation in the Czech conditions is still
only in its initial state. Some regional expert studies are at hand, although
their number is still low.12 Historian Jaroslav Rokosk was the first one to
11
12
See such examples in the life stories of Frantika Kurkov from Svatojansk
jezd and Vilm Dresler from Valdov in the Nov Paka region: Ji Urban,
Venkov pod kolektivizan knutou: okolnosti exemplrnho kulackho procesu [The Countryside under the Collectivisation Knout: Circumstances of the
Exemplary Kulak Trial] (Praha: Vyehrad, 2010), 120-121 and 212-213.
Compare with the East German conditions: Stefan Finger, Widerstand gegen
die Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft in der DDR 1952-1961 (Hamburg:
Diplomarbeiten Agentur, 2000), 63-65. Udo Grasshof, Suizidales Klima
whrend der Zwangskollektivierung im Frhjahr 1960, in Klassenkampf
gegen die Bauern: die Zwangskollektivierung der ostdeutschen Landwirtschaft
und ihre Folgen bis heute, eds. Michael Beleites, Friedrich Wilhelm Graefe,
Robert Grnbaum (Berlin: Metropol, 2010), 33-45.
See Ji Urban, On Various Expressions of Resistance to Collectivisation of
the Countryside of Czechoslovakia, Acta Humanitarica Universitatis Saulensis 16 (2013), 97-121; Ji Urban, Rolnick manifestace: motivace, manipulace,
existenn
dsledky,[(Peasants
Manifestation:
Motivation,
Manipulation, Existential Consequences] Securitas Imperii 15 (2009), 98-136;
Ji Urban, Barvou a ttcem proti reimu a jm prosazovan kolektivizaci,
[With Paint and Brush against the Regime and Forced Collectivisation] in Jan
Bure, Vclav Veber et al., Tet odboj: kapitoly z djin protikomunistick rezistence v eskoslovensku v padestch letech 20. stolet, [The 3rd Resistance:
Chapters from the History of Anti-Communist Resistance in Czechoslovakia
in the 1950s] (Plze: Vydavatelstv Ale enk, 2010), 192-221. Ji Urban,
Projevy odporu proti nastupujc kolektivizaci na Novobydovsku, [Resistance Manifestations against the Upcoming Collectivisation in the Nov
Bydov District] Theatrum historiae 8 (2011), 279-310.
try to grasp the topic in general and his effort is promising.13 On the other
hand, the attempt by Jan Kalous to focus on the relationship between religious belief and the resistance against collectivisation can be best characterized as a good idea with weak realization.14 Here we should also
mention the duo of writers Ludk Navara and Miroslav Kasek, who
have long been addressing the collectivisation context of the anticommunist activities in their popularization works.15 In this respect, the
above-mentioned Vebers work represents a clear shift which I see firstly
in the perspective of the conceptual classification and embedding of values of the anti-collectivisation activities of the then elites of the banned
agrarian party and secondly concerning the peasants relation towards the
agricultural policy of the KS. He gives several examples of country resistance groups; however, he does not grasp the resistance against collectivisation as a separate phenomenon. Nevertheless, in other places he
discusses resistance activities (an attack on a regional secretary) and
groups (boy scouts SODAN) with a clear anti-collectivisation meaning.
Finally, Vebers idea articulated in the thesis that anti-communist resistance clearly relied on the support of the countryside and, without it, it
would be but a half is of fundamental importance. This is also evident in
many other places in Vebers book.16 However, we still lack a synthetic
research study into the resistance against the unscrupulously forced transformation of the Czech countryside that would be inspired by representative foreign works.17
13
Jaroslav Rokosk, Mezi hrdost a zoufalstvm. Odpor proti nsiln kolektivizaci, [Between Pride and Despair. Resistance to forced Collectivisation] in
Kolektivizace v eskoslovensku [Collectivisation in Czechoslovakia], eds.
Jaroslav Rokosk, Libor Svoboda (Praha: stav pro studium totalitnch
reim, 2013), 181-203.
14
Jan Kalous, Vra a odboj proti kolektivizaci, [Religion and Resistance
against Collectivisation] in Kolektivizace v eskoslovensku, 205-215.
15
Most recently Ludk Navara, Miroslav Kasek, Pbhy tetho odboje [Stories of the 3rd Resistance] (Brno: Host, 2010), 57-109; Ludk Navara, Miroslav
Kasek, Mlyni od Babic: nov fakta o osudovm dramatu padestch let
[The Millers of Babice: New Facts about the Fatal Drama of the 1950s] (Brno:
Host, 2008).
16
Veber, Tet odboj, 114, 144, 187-191, 242-249, quot. p. 247.
17
What I have in mind here are primarily the works Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels
under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants:
400 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
Thus, the presented text aims to contribute to mapping the various forms
of resistance against establishment of unified agricultural cooperatives
(jednotn zemdlsk drutvo, hereinafter as JZD18) in the Czech countryside and thus enrich the debate dealing with fundamental issues of collectivisation of the agriculture, its forced nature and consequences.
Hopefully, this partial aim can be achieved through a regional microhistoric view at events more than 60 years old which took place in the
then Nov Bydov district in the Hradec Krlov region, Eastern Bohemia.
Actors
Many people used to meet in Ladislav Bros wheelwright shop in
lunice19. The number of carts of rubber wheels increased after the war,
but the wheelwrights craft still belonged among the most indispensable
ones in the country. Bros workshop had a relatively large catchment area of customers. After the collectivisation began in February 1949, likeminded farmers used to meet there, often grumbling about the agricultural
policy, the JZDs, confiscation of agricultural machinery and the local
KS functionaries. Consequently, some inhabitants of lunice and the
18
19
Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1994); James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak:
Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1985); James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Ralph A. Thaxton, Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine and the
Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Huaiyin Li, Confrontation and Conciliation under the Socialist State: Peasant Resistance to Agricultural Collectivization in China in the
1950s, Twentieth-Century China 33/2 (April 2008), 73-99.
The organisations that arose under the title JZD in the 1950s had nothing
whatsoever to do with the most basic principles of the cooperative system,
such as voluntary organisation, member participation in responsibility, and
self-administration. Socialist enterprises in the form of JZDs were run by the
state and depended on it for their existence. They were subjected to a bureaucratic system of organisation and central command planning.
lunice a village with cadastre area of almost 800 ha at 263 m altitude; according to the 1950 census 403 people in 125 houses lived there. Vladimr
Balcar, Jiina Rkov, Josef krabal et al., Historick lexikon obc esk republiky 1869-2005, [Historical Lexicon of Towns and Villages of the Czech
Republic] I. part (Praha: esk statistick ad, 2006), 478-479.
surrounding villages had a feeling that something should be done,

simply that they should not only passively watch the communists bullying and forced reconstruction of the society. They agreed that they would
construct a gallows to give a warning to the most active KS functionaries and members. Ladislav Bro made the life-size gallows structure in
his shop. On a May night in 1949, Frantiek Volejnk and Jaroslav
Odvrko erected it at the agreed place.20
Ladislav Bro (1913) was the owner of ca. 5ha of fields and of a wheelwright workshop in lunice. His father had already established in the
wheelwrights trade and it was there that Ladislav learned the craft after
he completed five years of primary school and 2 years of town school. He
mastered his craft with brilliance; the chronicler dubbed him a master
wheelwright. In 1943 he got married and his father passed the farm and
the trade on to him. He had one daughter, Marie (1944) and one son, Ladislav (1946) with his wife Marie, ne Baldov. In the time of the first
Czechoslovak republic he was a member of the republican youth; during
the protectorate he was a regular member of the National Union. He did not
enter any political party after the war. He did not agree with the communist
policies and after February 1948 when he was asked as a sole-trader to enter a communal enterprise, he became completely bitter towards the new
regime. Apart from the villages music group he did not go anywhere; he
lived in privacy and dedicated all his time to the work in his workshop.21
Frantiek Volejnk (1922) worked on a farm of 6.5ha that belonged to his
father who also ran an inn and a grocery store in lunice. The family
moved in in 1925 when the father bought the inn. Little Frantiek attended primary school in lunice and a town school in Vysok Vesel; later
he became an assistant in his fathers shop. In 1946 he left for Liberec to
work for two years as an assistant in a railway store. Before and after that
20
21
Security Services Archive Prague [Archiv bezpenostnch sloek, hereinafter

as ABS Praha], fund (fond, hereinafter as f.) Investigation files Hradec Krlov, archival number (archivn slo, hereinafter as arch. .) V-448 HK, Investigation report, Regional StB Directorate (Krajsk sprva Sttn
bezpenosti, hereinafter as KS StB) Hradec Krlov 29.12.1952 and
15.1.1953. Criminal complaints, KS StB Hradec Krlov 21.1.1953.
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Curriculum vitae, 16.1.1953. ABS Praha, f. Historical fund of the Ministry of the
Interior (Ministerstvo vnitra, hereinafter as MV), arch. . H-242 MV, Report
ref. no. A-153/52, StB Division Nov Bydov 11.4.1952.
402 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
he worked for his father; his family did not have any other employees.
People around him saw him as an extremely hard-working and dexterous
man; he was able to manage any kind of work, be it in the shop, the inn or
on the farm. In post-war leftist enthusiasm he entered the KS; however,
he did not participate in the party work in any way and shortly before the
February 1948 coup he handed in his notice of departure.22
Jaroslav Odvrko (1928) came from the family of a small peasant. His
father Josef owned 4ha of land in lunice. Jaroslav completed 8 grades in
the school in lunice and after that for two winters he attended a course
specialized in agriculture. Until 1946 he worked for his father, after that
he started work as a tractor driver at a machinery station. In the high season he worked in a branch located directly in the village; in winter he
worked in Nov Bydov. In those years young Jaroslav was also a member of the KS. After the harvest of 1949, he ceased to work as a tractor
driver following his fathers wish and worked on the family farm until the
following autumn when he was conscripted into the army. His brother
Josef and sister Marie had their own families by that time and lived rather
far from lunice, so their aging parents needed the youngest son to help
them work the land and fulfil provisions.23
Installation of the gallows
On the night of 27 May 1949, a yet unknown perpetrator erected a
round log ca. 3 m tall with a crossbar ca. 1m long nailed at the top on a
field in the Kozojedy cadastre in the Nov Bydov district. A rope with a
handle was affixed at the end of the crossbar. The pole was made from
dried spruce wood, 5-8 cm in diameter. In the centre a square piece of
cardboard was nailed measuring 15x15 cm with an inscription on it in
22
State regional archive (Sttn okresn archiv, hereinafter as SOkA) Hradec

Krlov, f. District National Committee (Okresn nrodn vbor, hereinafter as
ONV) Nov Bydov, box (karton, hereinafter as kt.) 385, inventory number
(inventrn slo, hereinafter as inv. .) 1179, signature (hereinafter as sign.)
IV/VI/93, Frantiek Volejnks application for deletion from the village rich
men list, lunice 3.12.1953. ABS Praha, f. Investigation files Hradec
Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Curriculum vitae, 14.1.1953. ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Report ref. no. A-153/52, StB Division
Nov Bydov 11.4.1952.
23
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Curriculum vitae, 29.12.1952.
capital letters that read To the Linek brothers and company.24 It was a
life-size gallows. It stood on the land of the peasant Oldich Lemberk
from Kozojedy, on an elevated bank at a crossing of two field paths, not
far from the wooden church of St. Wenceslas. It was about 100m away
from the house on the south side of the public built-up area.25 Oldich
Lemberk, who arrived at the field together with his father-in-law Alois
Zbrana on that May day, removed the gallows from his land. By then,
however, several other people had noticed the unusual gallows installation and logically gossip was bound to spread in the village. That morning after 7 oclock, Frantika apkov, wife of a peasant from No. 6,
went with her mother to the field to hoe beet. Already from afar she noticed a stick on the bank at the crossing but at first she did not pay any
attention to it. The previous night, in the small hours in the morning, it
rained allegedly. So in the field the two women learned that the soil was
too wet to work on and decided to go back. And only then, on the way
back they realized that the erected pole was supposed to represent a gallows On the path that led from the village to the fields and merged into
the road from Kozojedy to lunice, footprints of one man were still visible, they said, clearly leading to the gallows and back.26
The event was reported to the Security only the following day, i.e., on 28
May 1949, so it was no longer possible to document the footprints.
Oldich Lemberk considered the whole thing to be some kind of an imprudent youthful provocation; however, the Security thought otherwise
the event was supposed to be reported without delay to the respective
authority.27 In fact, the security forces were on alert on 25 through to 29
May 1949 when the 9th Congress of the KS was held. However, during
24
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Report addressed to the
Regional State Security Command (Krajsk velitelstv Sttn bezpenosti,
hereinafter as KV StB) Hradec Krlov, National Security Corps (Sbor nrodn bezpenosti, hereinafter as SNB) Command in Vysok Vesel 30.5.1949.
25
Unfortunately, the Kozojedy chronicle does not depict this unusual story as in
the years 1937-56 no continuous entries were made. After 20 years, chronicler
Alois Hemek took over the book, who covered the years 1937-49 only very
briefly and after that he continued with the current year, 1956. Kozojedy Municipal Office, Memorial book of Kozojedy (1929-36, 1956-2008), 90-98.
26
KV StB Hradec Krlov, SNB Station Command in Vysok Vesel 30.5.1949.
27
404 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
inspections in different corners of the country, a huge number of flaws

were detected in the organization of the state of emergency; in many
places officers allegedly executed the service without true conviction
about its need and without the necessary class hatred.28 Concerns
peaked on the night of 28 May, the birthday of President Bene, who died
in September.29 Whatever the approach of the officers of the SNB station in
Vysok Vesel to the state of emergency was, Senior Constable Petr had to
state with a sigh that despite the intense search, which was put in place
immediately, we did not succeed in catching the perpetrator yet. 30 Also
the investigation carried out by KV StB Hradec Krlov was in vain.31
This whetted our appetite for further work, Ladislav Bro admitted later.32
Later the actors commented on the choice of the name of the Linek brothers saying it was known about them in the Nov Bydov district that they
were principled communists, and apart from that they both held public
offices.33 Both brothers were born in lunice. Jaroslav Linek (1906)
earned his living as a salesman selling rubber seals. He lived in Vysok
Vesel and he supplemented the family budget by what the communist
press called black-marketeering. But unlike others he was protected by
the party red book.34 Vclav Linek (1899) lived in neighbouring Kozojedy
28
ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous security records after 1945, sign. 304-55-11, Experience from the extraordinary measures in the course of the 9th Congress of
the KS on 16-30 May 1949, MV odd. BP/5, Praha 11.7.1949.
29
The security forces were ordered not to stop people from laying flowers at
memorials; however, gatherings were to be prevented so that elements hostile to the peoples democratic regime could not make use of huge gatherings
of people. SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. ONV Nov Bydov, kt. 310, inv. . 329,
sign. IV/II/4, Memorandum of a security officer at the Regional National
Committee (Krajsk nrodn vbor, hereinafter as KNV) on securing peace
and order on the congress days, ref. no. V-522-1949, Hradec Krlov undated.
30
31
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Collection of information on illeg. group Bro et al., Hradec Krlov 2.10.1952.
32
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Record
of the testimony of Ladislav Bro, KS StB Hradec Krlov 14.1.1953.
33
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Record
of the testimony of Ladislav Bro, KS StB Hradec Krlov 14.1.1953.
34
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. ONV Nov Bydov, kt. 308, inv.. 929, sign.
IV/II/4, Denunciation for transgression against the trade order, SNB Station
as a small peasant and after February 1948 primarily as the chairman of

the local KS organization. Now I have understood that my place is
among workers and that the KS party is the only party which will be
able to lead our nation to prosperity, he announced before the screening
commission.35 In the village he held the office of the chairman of the
peasant commission and the agricultural referent; he also often attended
agricultural meetings in the neighbouring villages as an agitator. In the
spring of 1949 when he attended an agricultural meeting in lunice, he
was right to notice the local peoples aversion to the KS policy. During
the meeting, farmers Hnt from Sekeice and Bro from lunice made
declarations by which they meant to silence the speaker and disrupt the
meeting. A few days after the meeting I learnt that the farmers were getting ready for me and comrade Stekl and intended to beat us up after the
lights went out. However, they were not successful because the innkeeper
Volejnk, who was supposed to switch off the lights, did not do so, Linek
stated later.36 It was thanks to Linek and Stekls37 activity that already at
that time, only two months after the collectivisation had started, a JZD
preparatory committee was established in Kozojedy.38 They were the
ones who promoted ploughing the balks and pushed establishing a JZD.
Command in Vysok Vesel 14.4.1949. The author was unable to find any relevant information about his party or public offices.
35
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. Regional Committee of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia (Okresn vbor KS, hereinafter as OV KS) Nov Bydov,
kt. 6, inv. . 73, Screenings 1949-50, Linek Vclav.
36
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Group
file, Record of a testimony, KS StB Hradec Krlov 8.1.1953.
37
Jan Stekl was a local agronomer in Kozojedy, a member of local organization
of the KS (mstn organizace, hereinafter MO KS) and of the JZD. He entered the KS in 1948 and as a convinced party member and an agile functionary he dutifully attended many meetings. From 1952 he also served as an
assistant guard of the Public Security (Veejn bezpenost, hereinafter as VB).
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, kt. 8, inv. . 73, Screenings
1949-50, Assessment. SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, book
(kniha, hereinafter as kn.) 35, inv. . 35, Minutes of a meeting of the leadership on 21.10.1952.
38
National Archive Prague (Nrodn archiv, hereinafter as NA Praha), f. Ministry of Agriculture - JZD, kt. 37, inv. . 184, JZD Kozojedy Alterations for a
cooperative already registered, Regional Court in Hradec Krlov 16.3.1951.
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. ONV Nov Bydov, kt. 467, inv. . 1218, sign.
IV/IV/132, file JZD Kozojedy.
406 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
Perception of the region

When at the beginning of June 1949 comrades from the OV KS Nov
Bydov discussed the conditions for establishment of a JZD, a clerk from
the Ministry of Agriculture present at the meeting highlighted that a JZD
is a matter of tactics and constant persuasion and pointed out to those
present that on partys orders they must not speak about kolkhozes.39
Consequently, the clerk Kalina conveyed the order to establish three exemplary JZDs in the district that must serve as an example of good
management.40 However, the original idea that people in the countryside
would support the project to establish JZDs with enthusiasm proved unfounded. Security reports from the region confirm that worries concerning collectivisation spread even before it was officially initiated. Now
after the work in fields has ended, peasants discussed the transition of the
agriculture from private small-scale enterprises to collective large-scale
production. The majority of them do not have a positive attitude towards
introduction of collective farming through cooperatives and only a few
individuals support this type of farming, a regular report by commander
Marek from December 1948 stated.41 At the beginning of 1950, a total of
124 cooperatives were established on the territory of the region, but only
a small percentage carried out any activities. Nine JZDs were referred to
as exemplary. We also have such JZDs which were established a year
ago and by that their activities ended, comrades admitted.42
It is no coincidence that on the occasion of the 9th Congress of the KS,
that is, at the same time when the above-mentioned gallows was erected in
Kozojedy, the officers of the StB command in the Hradec Krlov region
pledged to compile a card index of all farmers with anti-communist opinions who started to be called village rich men or kulaks.43 Anyway,
39
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, kn. 32, inv. . 32, Minutes
of a meeting of the leadership on 1.6.1949.
40
of a meeting of the leadership on 15.6.1949.
41
ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous security records after 1945, sign. 304-181-7, Intelligence report of the SNB District Command Nov Bydov of 3.12.1948.
42
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-6, JZD issues in the Hradec Krlov
region a report from a meeting of StB divisions and KV StB chiefs of departments in JZD Hradec Krlov 15.2.1950.
43
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-5, General guideline KV StB Hradec
Krlov, special-service part, undated.
the protection of the creative effort of the working people asked for a
completely novel practical approach to the execution of the security service, according to a secret guideline of a regional commander of the National Security in Hradec Krlov, Staff Captain Luek. Together with
the order to create a register of enemies of the communist regime and
surveillance of strangers in the precincts of individual SNB stations, a lot
of attention was paid to observing the moods in the countryside.44 The
task of the StB in the countryside is to uncover organizers of reactionary
plots and prosecute them, ordered Josef Urban, chief of the 2nd department of KV StB Hradec Krlov, in his instruction.45 In the context of the
above-mentioned guidelines and obligations, the StB headquarters was
ensured at the end of 1949 that in the Hradec Krlov region after what
happened in the Dobruka district,46 the comrades are working on the villages.47 Also reports from the village KS organizations confirmed their
focus on the unbending countryside, where the party sent their instructors. Their reports claimed that the reaction was working very hard, that
prerequisites for establishment of JZDs were poor and that in almost all
organizations the meaning of JZDs is unclear.48
44
ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous security records after 1945, sign. 304-90-5,

Guideline for execution of the service ref. no. 231/50-2-1949-III, Regional
National Security Command Hradec Krlov 13.4.1949.
45
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-6, Minutes of a meeting of StB divisions and KV StB chiefs of departments in Hradec Krlov, 4.11.1949.
46
On 9 December 1949, about 300 peasants gathered in Dobruka in front of the
ONV building to voice their disapproval with enforcement of agricultural provisions. For more see Ji Urban, The Post-February 1948 Introduction of a
Centrally Planned Economy to Czechoslovak Agriculture: System of Compulsory Deliveries and Peasants' Responses, in The Economic Iron Curtain I:
Land Reforms and Agrarian Policies, ed. ukasz Dwilewicz (Warszawa: Instytut Pamici Narodowej, in print). Compare resistance against delivery quotas
in Romania Michael Stewart, Razvan Stan, Collectivization and Resistance in
the Shepherding Village of Poiana Sibiului (Sibiu Region), in Transforming
Peasants, Property and Power: the Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania,
1949-1962, eds. Constantin Iordachi, Dorin Dobrincu (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009), 251-274.
47
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-6, Report from a chiefs meeting in
Hradec Krlov, Praha 30.12.1949.
48
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, kt. 1, inv. . 44, Minutes of
a secretariat meeting on 22.9.1949.
408 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
Other actions
In the autumn of 1949, the local KS organization in lunice held a
members meeting in the municipal house where district secretary Svoboda was supposed to be invited as an official speaker.49 On this occasion
Frantiek Volejnk and Jaroslav Odvrko punctured the tyres of the car in
which he came to the meeting with long forged nails. When Svoboda was
to leave the meeting, all the tyres were flat.50 However, the entry in the
communal chronicle rather differs from the StB version. The lunice
chronicler recorded the event as an incident linked to the visit of comrade
Bene, the administrator of the sanatorium in Chotlice. When going
home he noticed that one tyre51 was damaged by a thrust nail, so he reported the case to the SNB station in Vysok Vesel adding that it was a
premeditated assault. Early in the morning on the following day, Security
officers initiated investigation not only in shops where they sold similar
nails. Several young men, who were visiting a friend that evening, were
harshly interrogated and two of them, namely Jaroslav Odvrko and
Frantiek Volejnk being the prime suspects were arrested and transported as they were on the fields, without bidding farewell to their families, to
the court in Nov Bydov and there they were separately detained, recorded the chronicler.52 However, neither of them confessed and after
three weeks they were released from detention due to lack of evidence.53
49
Jan Svoboda (1908) from Chlumec nad Cidlinou was a head political secretary
at OV KS in Nov Bydov. SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov
Bydov, kt. 2, inv. . 67, Proposal to appoint 5 members of the Peoples Militias district staff addressed to the leadership of the KS Regional Committee
(Krajsk vbor KS, hereinafter as KV KS), Nov Bydov 5.7.1952.
50
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Criminal complaints, KS StB Hradec Krlov 21.1.1953.
51
The testimony of one of the direct actors in the incident states that at least two
nails were planted under each tyre. ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec
Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Record of the testimony of Jaroslav Odvrko, KS
StB Hradec Krlov 29.12.1952.
52
lunice Municipal Office, Memorial book of the lunice village (1938-66), 3031. The description of the chronicler in lunice, Josef Hork seems more likely. For sure, the chronicler had no reason to skew the incident while on the
other hand the StB investigators obviously felt it was more appropriate to describe the situation as threatening to the chief district functionary. The fabrication used in the investigation files is also supported by the fact that the event
Whether it was the secretary or the boss of the sanatorium who was assaulted that night in lunice, it is certain that party comrades in country
districts in the Hradec Krlov region could not and did not feel fully sure
and safe. In mid-October 1949 the Nov Bydov OV KS discussed the
issue of functionaries safety and decided that from that moment on the
speakers would be accompanied by Peoples Militias officers on their
way from the meetings.54 At the same time, local and district communists
started to ask more often for permission to buy guns, as is well evidenced
in the agenda of the 3rd (security) department of the ONV. For instance, a
KS political secretary in Chlumec nad Cidlinou asked for a certificate
to buy a machine pistol 6.35mm; and a secretary of the district action
committee of the National Front (akn vbor Nrodn fronty, hereinafter
as AV NF) Antonn Novotn or MNV deputy Vclav Stekl from
Choovice also justified their need to be armed by frequent returns from
meetings home at night.55 Also in discussions of KV KS members,
comments prevailed concerning the fact that district functionaries lacked
self-confidence, did not have prospects and failed in problem solving.56
The objection that they do not dare to go to villages to see to tasks was
pronounced as late as in November 1952 at a meeting of KNV agricultural referents at the Ministry of Agriculture.57
was not reflected upon in the minutes of KS meetings as could be expected

in the case of a threat to the chief secretary. In this respect it is quite unlucky
that the minutes of meetings of the regional troika in Nov Bydov were not
preserved as they would undoubtedly be able to prove or rebut the alleged
threat to the regional secretary.
53
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Records of a testimony, KS StB Hradec Krlov 15.1.1953.
54
of meetings of the leadership on 13 and 20.10.1949.
55
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. ONV Nov Bydov, kt. 308 and 309, inv. . 929,
sign. IV/II/4, Applications for issuance of a purchase permit of 28.2., 26.3. and
18.5.1949.
56
NA Praha, f. KS Central Committee Jindich Uher, sv. 2, archival unit (archivn jednotka, hereinafter as arch. j.) 27, Report on KV KS meeting in
Hradec Krlov, Praha 12.11.1951.
57
NA Praha, f. KS Central Committee Jindich Uher, sv. 2, arch. j. 25, Report from a meeting of chairmen and agricultural clerks at KNV in Praha on
13.11.1952.
410 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
In January 1950, when the cold weather alternated with a thaw,58 communists at lunice organized an evening of dancing. On this occasion
Ladislav Bro together with Frantiek Volejnk and Jaroslav Odvrko
planned to cut the electricity wires in order to thwart the communists
dancing. That night, so as not to arouse suspicion, they all met at the
dancing evening, which the KS held in Volejnks inn. Volejnk charged
for every drink separately at the bar so that he would not lose money once
the lights went out. Later, at the right moment, Jaroslav Odvrko crept
out, changed in Bros workshop, put on different shoes and took long
rubber gloves. He tore the lock off the electrical mains that secured access but he soon realized he had damaged the securing of the main lever.
Consequently, he did not succeed in cutting off the electricity supply.59
Futile investigation
The activities of the lunice trio Bro, Volejnk and Odvrko still remained the work of an unknown perpetrator in the eyes of the Security.
Their activity was subdued in the autumn of 1950 due to Odvrkos conscription to the army and Volejnks accident;60 however, it needs to be
said that the lunice provocations were not the only troubles the local Security officers had to deal with. At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s they
58
lunice Municipality Office, Memorial book of the lunice village (1938-66), 32.
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Record
of the testimony of J. Odvrko, KS StB Hradec Krlov 29.12.1952.
60
Frantiek Volejnk was sentenced to one year in prison by the District Court in
Nov Bydov in 1951 for having run over peasant Maty from Kozojdky
while drunk. According to the lunice chronicler the accident was not caused by
drinking and driving (though it must be said that Frantiek Volejnk was on his
way back from a wedding where he for sure did not abstain from drinking), but
by Matys carelessness as he leaped onto the road fearing his horses might bolt
and was hit by the passing car. Municipal Office, Memorial book of the village
of lunice (1938-66), 45. He served his sentence in one of the labour camps in
Jchymov and was released on 3 May 1952. An application is held in the contemporary documents of the ONV security department in which he asked to be
released in order to participate in seasonal farm work. Referring to Volejnks
flawless behaviour, diligence and character qualities, the application was backed
by representatives of MNV, MAV NF and MO KS in lunice. SOkA Hradec
Krlov, f. ONV Nov Bydov, kt. 160, inv. . 544, sign. II/I/17, Application for
a release to participate in farm work, lunice 8.4.1951.
59
made up for only a fraction in the whole mosaic of anti-communist activities in the region. Soon after the start of the collectivisation, flyers appeared in Luec nad Cidlinou that said: Do not enter agricultural
cooperatives.61 More flyers against the JZDs emerged in July 1949 in
the village of Mnk.62 In the months of August, September and October
stencil cyclostyle flyers were repeatedly distributed calling for distancing
from the KSs policy and for activities against the dictatorship which
had already existed for a year and a half at that time.63 The appearance of
anti-communist flyers was again monitored at the beginning of 1951.64
Other forms of intimidation of active communists were also common. In
Skochovice near Nov Bydov, anti-communist inscriptions appeared on
the night of 21 April 1949. In the plaster of the fire station it was written:
The communist will soon be hanged; on the facade of the house No. 85
a message was left for the communist who lived there: The time is at
hand when he will hang. The author used soaked clay dirt from the
nearby pond. The text was written in capital letters about 40 cm high.65 In
July 1949, someone in Zachraany removed the notice board of the local
KS organization, weighted it with brick and threw it into a pond.66 All
61
IV/II/4, Denunciation of an unknown perpetrator, ref. no. 626-1949, SNB Station Command Nepolisy 20.4.1949.
62
Pavel Hork, Zemdlsk politika v okrese Nov Bydov v letech 1949-1959
[Agricultural Policy in the Nov Bydov District], Diploma thesis (Hradec
Krlov: Filozofick Fakulta Univerzity Hradec Krlov, 2010), 18.
63
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, sign. H-242 MV, Report Anti-state flyers
distribution in the local district, SNB Station Command in Nov Bydov
20.8.1949. Illegal flyers report, SNB Station Command in Smidary
19.9.1949. Report Flyers of an inciting content distribution, District National Security Command Nov Bydov 19.9.1949. Report Anti-communist
flyers, scattered in the village of Metliany, SNB Station Command in Nov
Bydov 3.10.1949.
64
ABS Praha, f. Agency files MV, arch. . 937543 MV, Personal file of collaborator Jindich, Report on the illegal organization RAK in N. Bydov
sending out flyers, StB Department Nov Bydov 12.1.1951.
65
IV/II/4, Denunciation of an unknown perpetrator, ref. no. 636-1949, SNB Station Command Nepolisy 22.4.1949.
66
IV/II/4, Denunciation of an unknown perpetrator, ref. no. 1239/1949, SNB
Station Command Nepolisy 12.7.1949.
412 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
these anti-communist provocations remained unresolved by the Security.

It is no coincidence then that the regular overviews of the happenings in
the country which were sent to Josef Pavel, the then-deputy minister of
the interior for security, warned in June 1949 that the reaction is escalating its effort to intimidate the country KS functionaries.67
So the communists were right to consider the Nov Bydov area together
with the whole Hradec Krlov region a reactionary territory.68 In the
days of the first anniversary of the communist coup, the Hradec Krlov
region reported an increasing number of anonymous letters sent to KS
functionaries, and Security officers arrested 75 individuals as a preventive measure (in no other region were the numbers of arrested people so
high).69 At one of the meetings of StB chiefs in the region, the head of the
2nd department of KV StB Urban highlighted in his paper the conservatism of the country and remarked that the Hradec Krlov region was a
stronghold of political agrarians; later his colleague Kubt put emphasis on agency penetration as a primary task.70 Also the commander of
KV StB Rado gave an order for an agency work-out of the Hradec
Krlov countryside.71 Despite that, less than two years later the Hradec
Krlov StB command was scolded for the low number of personnel at
the countryside department operating at the 2nd department of the KV
StB. The Prague StB command called on Hradec Krlov commander
Karel Vlek to strengthen the countryside department without delay. The
fact that until then the department only had two operative officers was
67
ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous security files after 1945, sign. 304-155-22, Struggle
with reaction over the village news overview for May-June, Praha 28.6.1949.
68
For the use of the StB, the Nov Bydov district was characterized with
phrases like political and agrarian reaction, agricultural region, sugar refineries, leather manufacturing, textile industry, sugar factories. ABS Praha, f.
StB Command, sign. 310-14-5, A list of districts in the Hradec Krlov region
characterization, StB Division Hradec Krlov 9.12.1948.
69
The overall mood of the people in the region according to a report was good
in general, self-confident among workers and with a negligible number of
people indifferent to bleakness. ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous security files
after 1945, sign. 304-103-16, Security situation on the territory of CSR in the
last 48 hours, Praha 25.2.1949.
70
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-6, Minutes of a meeting of StB divisions and KV StB chiefs of departments in Hradec Krlov, 4.11.1949.
71
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-6, Report from a meeting of StB
divisions and KV StB chiefs of departments in Hradec Krlov, 15.2.1950.
considered unacceptable as the region was rightfully seen as a former

stronghold of the agrarian party.72
The commander of the StB division in Nov Bydov was Constable Ladislav
Rkr (1923), born in Hoice, originally a machine fitter. In the summer of
1945 he entered the KS and in the spring of 1949 he joined the Security
where he stayed until the summer of 1978 when he retired as a captain
decorated with several medals. He served as the commander of the Nov
Bydov StB from October 1950 till October 1953 and lived in Dobr Voda u Hoic.73 In the summer of 1950 the Regional Prosecutors Office
moved from the building of the ONV to the building of the court as the
office which had been used by the prosecutor until then had to be freed
for the needs of the StB.74 According to a report of March 1951, Ladislav
Rkr had five organs at his disposal for the work in the district.75
It was because of the perception of the given region as a reactionary
one that during 1951 reinforcement came to Hradec Krlov, which was
supposed to significantly enhance the agency work in the regions countryside. Utilization of provocation together with the omnipresence of StB
collaborators was crucial in uncovering anti-communist actors in lunice
and the surrounding area.
Provocations staged by the StB
Bedich Hrdlika (1922) came from Trubn, a small village southwest of
Beroun, Central Bohemia. He completed five grades of primary school
72
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-6, Memorandum of the StB command secretariate ref. no. A-6659/01-51, Praha 13.11.1951.
73
ABS Brno - Kanice, f. Personnel files of MV officers, arch. . 4795/23, Cadre
assessment for military directorate, Hradec Krlov 21.6.1978. Questionnaire,
Hradec Krlov 6.4.1949.
74
On this occasion, regional prosecutor Ladislav Urban assured his regional superiors that the moving will not affect the cooperation between the prosecutors office and the security bodies as they had agreed with the security clerk
that regular meetings would be organized at which the administrator at the
prosecutors office will learn the position of the public and political representatives necessary for processing any crim. case. SOA Zmrsk, f. Regional
Prosecutors Office Hradec Krlov, kt. 1, inv. . 271, sign. T 12/50, Situational report, Regional Prosecutors Office in Nov Bydov 2.8.1950.
75
ABS Praha, f. StB Command, sign. 310-14-4, Staffing of the KV StB and subordinated bodies, Hradec Krlov 16.3.1951.
414 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
and one year of town school in Poaply.76 During the Protectorate he was
a forced labourer in Germany; he was sentenced to nine months of imprisonment for a verbal offence in December 1943.77 He returned to
Trubn in March 1945. In October 1947 he registered residence in
Frdlant,78 probably as part of a plan to leave the country. After February
1948 Hrdlika left Czechoslovakia and according to one report became a
CIC agent abroad. However, in the spring of 1951 he was arrested several
times trying to cross the border (26.2., 13.4., 31.5. and 8.6.1951, each
time near Neualbenreuth, in the border zone between Cheb and
Marinsk Lzn). It is likely that the following note: His crossing the
border must never be reported upon his arrest.79 means that the officer
arresting him was not allowed to submit a regular report about his arrest
and it was to be kept a secret. Also within the security apparatus there
was a rule that every officer only knew as much as was necessary for performance of his duty. Does this mean that Hrdlika was recruited as an
StB collaborator in West Germany immediately after his first arrest? Or
had he collaborated with the StB even before he left Czechoslovakia?
Answers to these questions remain hypothetical ones, as we simply do
not have sources at hand to answer them; Hrdlikas personal file has not
been preserved. In the district archives in Beroun a report is held about
seizure of property from the time Hrdlika was arrested at the border for
the second time. His mother Rena, ne Kroftov stated then that her
son had not been at home since 1945, that he had left for the borderland
where he allegedly stayed in different places and that he had not kept in
touch with his parents. They know nothing of him, a clerk noted down
in the report.80
76
SOkA Beroun, f. Primary school Poaply, class catalogues of school years

1928/9 through to 1934/5. SOkA Beroun, f. Town school Poaply, pupils attendance and school results registers, school year 1935/6.
77
ABS Praha, f. German courts in the Protectorate, sign. 134-442-32, Anklageschrift 3 Js 680/43, Prag 13.8.1943. Verdikt 3 K MS 16/43-III-1995,
Sondergerichts bei dem Deutschen Landgericht in Prag 6.12.1943.
78
SOkA Beroun, f. Police applications II, card of Bedich Hrdlika.
79
ABS Praha, f. Main Military Counterintelligence Directorate, sign. 302-219-6,
Information about agents a report from 6.11.1951. The report is signed by
Captain Hotk and according to the entry it was acquired from a card index
and qualified as likely unverified.
80
SOkA Beroun, f. ONV Beroun, kt. 2584, sign. Rp-93, Record of seizure,
Trubn 16.4.1951.
The only existing document linked to Hrdlikas engagement in emigration cited above has been confirmed by testimonies given by former officers of the Hradec Krlov StB made in the 1990s. Stanislav edek,
who served as commander of the 2nd operative department at KS StB in
Hradec Krlov from May 1951 till November 1953, said that some time
in the middle of the year 1951 an agent from the Bogatajs group81 was
arrested somewhere and transferred to the headquarters in Prague. In
detention he was re-recruited and started to work for the StB under codename Sedlk.82 Stanislav edek (1920) was originally a weaver. In May
1945 he entered the KS and co-founded a party organization in Rtyn v
Podkrkono. In September of the same year he joined the Ministry of the
Interior. First, he was assigned to the SNB station in Vrchlab, after that
he graduated from the Ministry of the Interior school in Marinsk Lzn
and served in the border units in Luby u Chebu and acl. After the
communist coup he was drafted to Hradec Krlov where he entered the
local StB command as of 1 April 1948.83 It was edek who elaborated the
plan of activities codenamed Kruh for the new agent. The idea was to
let Hrdlika act in the region as part of the legend about a U.S. intelligence agent, seek lodging by anti-communist minded citizens, and gain
81
82
83
Frantiek Bogataj (1913-1999) was a Czechoslovak army officer from 1934.

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia he was member of the military
resistance organization Obrana nroda. He fled abroad to avoid arrest, fought
in France and later underwent paratroopers training in England. In April 1944
he was parachuted in the Protectorate as part of operation Carbon; his group
successfully fulfilled intelligence and sabotage tasks until the end of the war.
In the period of the 3rd republic he graduated from War College, but after February 1948 was discharged from the army and left for the U.S. zone in Germany where he belonged among the founding members of the newly established
anti-communist resistance. He was head of his own intelligence group, which
was active in training and dispatching couriers to Czechoslovakia. Rokosk,
Brati Frantiek a Josef Bogatajovi, 88-133; Pejoch, Tomek, Agenti-chodci
na popraviti, 21-22.
The Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of
Communism (ad dokumentace a vyetovn zloin komunismu, hereinafter as DV) Praha, file: DV-10/VtB-97, Official record ref. no. DV146/VvK-95, Praha 19.4.1996.
DV Praha, file: DV-16/VtB-96, Cader assessment, Praha 16.4.1955 (official copy).
416 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
their support and their confidence.84 Josef Martnek became Hrdlikas,

that is agent Sedlks superordinate organ.85 Martnek confirmed in
the 1990s that Sedlk was in the department until then unknown, possibly from a different region. [...] They called him Ba. [...] Ba was
not an StB officer, he was not from this region, he had knowledge of the
life in the country.86
Action Kruh, the aim of which was to get to know as many people as
possible willing to work against the regime,87 started without delay. In
the course of his activity, Bedich Hrdlika, registered StB agent No. 226
under the codename Sedlk88 established several trustworthy contacts
in a number of districts in the Hradec Krlov region.89 It worked along
the following lines: Martnek passed information from Sedlk on to
edek, who in fact supervised the agent he worked out a plan of provocation and gave instructions on how to proceed. During March through to
May 1952, Hrdlika was involved in the provocation of Vladimr Cerman
and Stanislav Jeek from ist u Horek in the Nov Paka district.90
84
DV Praha, file: DV-16/VtB-96, Record of the testimony of S. edek, Praha

11.5.1998.
85
DV Praha, file: DV-16/VtB-96, Decision on release from secrecy, Praha
8.3.1996.
86
DV Praha, file: DV-16/VtB-96, Official record ref. no. DV-146/VvK-95,
Praha 11.4.1996.
87
DV Praha, file: DV-16/VtB-96, Official record ref. no. DV-146/VvK-95,
Praha 19.4.1996.
88
ABS Praha, Protocol of registration of collaborators files, 1st special department of Regional Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior (Krajsk sprva
Ministerstva vnitra, hereinafter as KS MV) Hradec Krlov. Protocol of registered operative files registry department of the Ministry of National Security,
serial No. 40, entry of 13.3.1952, StB Command, 1st sector, 4. dept., ref. 28A.
89
DV Praha, file: DV-10/VtB-97, Record of the testimony of S. edek, Praha
11.5.1998.
90
For more see Ji Mlek, Justin vrada Vladimra Cermana, [Judicial murder of Vladimr Cerman] in Za svobodu a demokracii III.: tet (protikomunistick) odboj [For Freedom and Democracy III.: the Third (Anti-Communist)
Resistance], eds. Luk Babka, Vclav Veber (Hradec Krlov: M&V, 2002),
221-235. Hana Pexov, Kolektivizace v okrese Jin, [Collectivisation in the
Jin district] in Akce "K". Vyhnn sedlk a jejich rodin z usedlost v
padestch letech: studie, seznamy a dokumenty [Action "K". The Expulsion
of Farmers and their Families from the Homesteads in the Fifties: Studies,
Hrdlika acted there using the name of Josef Snka,91 while in lunice at
their first meeting in late April 1952 he presented himself to Ladislav
Bro as Holub.92 Hrdikas establishing a contact with Bro as a foreign agent was documented by an unnamed peasant from one of the
neighbouring villages, whom Bro must have trusted and could not have
imagined that he was collaborating with the StB as informer No. 9.93
Ladislav Bro discovered his true identity only 16 years later: In May
1952, ipera from Kozojedy sent a man to me, who didnt have a thumb
on his left hand. He wanted me to tell him everything I knew about the
group.94 So it was Josef ipera from Kozojedy95 who offered cover for
agent Sedlk and who reported the anti-communist minded farmers to
the StB; his superordinate organ was Ladislav Rkr. At a meeting with
Lists and Documents], eds. Petr Blaek, Karel Jech, Michal Kublek (Praha:
Pulchra, 2010), 244-255.
91
NA Praha, f. Confederation of Political Prisoners of the Czech Republic (Konfederace politickch vz esk republiky, hereinafter as KPV R) (unprocessed), kt. 121, file Documentation Cerman et al. ist u Horek, Report by
documentation commission K 231 Nov Paka of 3.6.1968. Allegedly,
Hrdlika also acted under the name of Jaroslav Sedlek from Krnsko in the
Mlad Boleslav district. ABS Praha, f. Main Military Counterintelligence Directorate, sign. 302-219-6, Information about agents a report from
6.11.1951.
92
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Record of the testimony of L. Bro, KS StB Hradec Krlov 31.10.1952.
93
It may be of interest that according to reports the overall number of agents and
informers cooperating with the Hradec Krlov StB Command grew from
mere 28 as of 1.6.1950 to 75 as of 1.1.1952. ABS Praha, f. StB Command,
sign. 310-14-4, Situational report ref. no. A-18/014-52, KV StB Hradec Krlov 11.1.1952. However, the cited number does not include StB collaborators
supervised by separate StB district divisions in the region.
94
NA Praha, f. KPV R (unprocessed), kt. 121, file Minutes and testimonies,
From Ladislav Bros rehabilitation application, undated (1968).
95
Josef ipera was registered as No. 528 at the District Department MV Nov
Bydov as a collaborator codenamed 315. His file was closed in September
1956 and destroyed in April 1964. ABS Praha, Protocol of registration of collaborators files, 1st special department KS MV Hradec Krlov. Also, one of
iperas agency reports contains a clue for his identification: And then he
asks me, am I not mistaken, am I here with ipera, and I say, you are. ABS
Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Agency report ehk Karel from Kozojdky suspicious behaviour of 14.7.1952.
418 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
him Ladislav Bro mentioned that he would like to send a letter abroad
so that on the other side they would learn how people are treated
here.96 This was a good opportunity for the StB to set a second agent on
Bro acting as an agent from abroad.97 In this way Hrdlika gained
Bros trust relatively easy.98
From that moment on, almost all plans and activities of Bro and his
friends were inspired by the operative plan and interests of the StB Command Hradec Krlov. Possibilities to establish anti-communist cells in the
surroundings, a possible delivery of arms and ammunition from the West
as well as obtaining SNB uniforms were discussed. They were clearly motivated by anticipation of a political reversal and at the given moment they
considered it their duty to be ready to participate in the deposition of the
communist dictatorship. For this purpose they assembled a fellowship of
reliable people of anti-communist orientation and democratic thinking. In
the first place he required I gathered reliable people from around lunice
who we could rely on in case of a political convulsion, Bro later commented on his meetings with Hrdlika alias Holub.99 Apart from that they
also gathered armaments. Understandably, Bedich Hrdlika was immensely interested in weapons kept by opponents of the regime in the Nov
Bydov countryside. Overtly trusting Bro confided to him where he hid his
arms a Lancaster rifle, a shotgun and several handguns100), and promised
96
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Agency reports No. 12
and 16 of 11.4. and 21.4.1952.
97
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Collection of information on illeg. group Bro et al., Hradec Krlov 2.10.1952.
98
Even on the first night he visited him, Bro left him overnight; Hrdlika then
left the house early in the morning. ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. .
H-242 MV, Agency report of 30.4.1952 and Record of the testimony of L.
Bro, KS StB Hradec Krlov 31.10.1952. The presence of a complete
stranger in the cadastre of the village, however, was not a new thing. Already
in mid-May 1950 the lunice chronicler noted that the local inhabitants are
occupied by incessant debates about some stranger who has been seen in different places several times. The people call him a bogeyman, different suggestions arise, but all in all it is humbug. lunice Municipal Office, Memorial
book of the lunice village (1938-66), 37.
99
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Subfile
L. Bro, Record of a testimony, KS StB Hradec Krlov 31.10.1952.
100
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Agency report of
26.6.1952. It ought to be remembered that the incidence of armaments in the
Czechoslovak countryside after the war was a common thing. The situation
to find out about other farmers in the neighbourhood. He introduced

Oldich Hnik to Holub, pointing him out as a reliable person and on another occasion Hrdlika later met him in person.101
So in this way, other people from the neighbourhood who condemned the
post-February regime were gradually brought to the security polices attention. Thanks to the StB collaborators initiative, the lunice trio got in
touch with farmers from Vinary and Sekeice, Josef ern (1904), Jaroslav Hork (1914) and Josef Hnt (1912), who were said to be involved
in distribution of anti-communist flyers. This of course suited the plans of
the Security and fit ideally into the construction of an anti-state group,
which bore clear collectivisation subtext.102
Further plans interrupted by arrests
Although we could divide the activities of the three anti-communist
minded friends from lunice into two periods, that is the initiative period
and the provoked one, allow me to mention two more examples that
somehow relativize this division. In the spring months of the year 1952,
sons of dissatisfied lunice farmers had an idea to set fire to the grain
storage located in the yard of the state farm in lunice. No doubt they
around lunice was no different. As is evidenced in recurring reports of the
Nov Bydov SNB Command, unexploded landmines and artillery grenades
could also be found in the neighbouring woods. ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous
security files after 1945, sign. 304-181-7, Intelligence reports of the District
SNB Command Nov Bydov of 14.7., 26.8., 29.10.1946 and 13.1.1947. The
lunice group planned to hide the arms promised by the foreign agent in
the riverbank, in the wood or in a bunker built by partisans. ABS Praha, f.
Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Record of the testimony of L. Bro,
KV StB Hradec Krlov 31.10.1952.
101
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Agency reports of 2.5.
and 7.5.1952.
102
Anti-state cells were mostly established by the village rich men and people
who oppose the collectivisation of the country, Second Lieutenant Josef
Martnek pointed out. ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV,
Collection of information on illeg. group Bro et al., Hradec Krlov
2.10.1952. SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. ONV Nov Bydov, kt. 251, inv. . 794,
sign. III/VI/4, List of village rich men in the Nov Bydov district, undated.
IV/VI/93, List of village rich men, undated.
420 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
were inspired by the example of nearby Slavhostivce where a barn went

up in flames as soon as a JZD was established there.103 Later, in the
summer of 1952 Bro and Volejnk introduced a plan to organize one
more action to intimidate initiative communists in the region. They chose
security referent at the ONV Frantiek Sytn, who worked as a KS instructor in lunice.104 Sytn went to work on a motorcycle and so a plan
was conceived to stretch a steel wire across the road on the hill by the
Slavhostice wood.105 Both these intentions were conceived in the heads of
lunice inhabitants, who were deeply dissatisfied with the communist dictatorship, and not in the heads of agents or on the tables of StB officers.
The possibility of the suggested intentions being put into practice aroused
significant worries among the agents and StB officers and the Security
through its collaborators strived hard to make sure the actors were talked out
of executing them or at least postponed them. In the end it was these initiatives of the people of lunice that played a considerable role in the decision
to stop the provocations, which were hiding behind the then security term
agency combinations, and arrest the burdensome, anti-communist minded inhabitants, or in other words realize an anti-state group.
At the beginning of October 1952 Second Lieutenant Josef Martnek at
KV StB submitted a proposal for a realization, that is, arrests and
house searches.106 Arrests started on 9 October, under the command of
Senior Constable Jaroslav venk. That afternoon, the foursome Ladislav
103
The chronicle was not kept in the village between 1940-1966, the construction of socialism in our country probably did not allow the village teacher
enough free time even for keeping a chronicle. A later chronicler only wrote
in hindsight: Socialization of the village (1952) brought a lot of trouble,
problems, inconveniences and hostility among people. SOkA Jin, f. Primary school Slavhostice (unprocessed), Chronicle of the primary school in
Slavhostice, 103-104.
104
Later, in the summer of 1953 his colleague Konek pointed out with concern
that Sytn, who used to be active, has for some time now been a little annoyed. SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, kt. 1, inv. . 99,
Working methods of the agricultural department minutes of a debate at a
member meeting of the company KS organization of the OV KS secretariat, undated.
105
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, arch. . V-448 HK, Record of the testimony of F. Volejnk, KS StB Hradec Krlov 15.1.1953.
106
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, sign. H-242 MV, Collection of information on illeg. group Bro et al., Hradec Krlov 2.10.1952.
Bro, Frantiek Volejnk, Josef Hnt and Jaroslav Hork were transported
to the StB remand prison in Hradec Krlov.107 The lunice chronicler
could only write concealment of some armaments and some political
matters, as naturally, he had no further information.108 At the beginning
of December, Josef ern was also arrested.109 On St. Stephens Day
(Boxing Day), the Security also came for Jaroslav Odvrko, who worked
part time for the Vtkovick stavby national enterprise after his return
from the compulsory military service. However, unlike his four colleagues he returned home after four days and probably thanks to his more
favourable class profile was investigated at large.110
Thanks to documents of the former association of former political prisoners K 231, which were unearthed after 40 years near Bl u Pecky in the
autumn of 2008, we are informed about the manner of the investigation.
In 1968, Ladislav Bro wrote: Immediately after my arrest, an StB officer Suchnek in Hradec Krlov took care of me. I learnt his name later. He smashed my mouth the very first time and broke my tooth and they
did not give me any food because I refused to confess. He threatened he
would not give me any food until I confessed. During the interrogation I
was tied to a stool by metal handcuffs on my right hand and could not
move. I was often beaten.111 The role of the agent provocateur Bedich
107
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, sign. V-448 HK, Arrest
proposals, 2.10.1952. Arrest orders, 9.10.1952.
108
lunice Municipal Office, Memorial book of the lunice village (1938-66),
80-81.
109
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, sign. V-448 HK, Arrest
proposal, 28.11.1952. Arrest order, 1.12.1952.
110
lunice Municipal Office, Memorial book of the lunice village (1938-66), 83.
111
Another political prisoner Josef Hrub from Sloupno also expanded on
Suchneks methods. He remembered that at the first interrogation Frantiek
Suchnek introduced himself and told him: It has never happened to me that
someone did not confess in the end. Josef Hrub was commanded to do
squats and when he fell exhausted, Suchnek started to kick him. But lets
pay attention to the authentic description of his interrogation methods: He
pulled me up to the chair by the collar, started to shake me, tied me up to a
stool by the wall and now you will speak what I will ask you. He asked me
about arms but, because I knew nothing, he twisted the shirt on my neck and
pressed his thumb against my Adams apple until my eyes were popping out
of my head and said that this was his method, that he did not bruise a man but
helped him in that way. During other interrogations when he wanted me to
422 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
Hrdlika was a sensitive question for the StB officers in Hradec Krlov.
The interrogation of Bro concerning an agent at the 2nd department,
whom Bro knows only as an agent from abroad, is to be recorded in a
separate protocol, Second Lieutenant Martnek ordered. During the interrogation the officers were to inform Bro that the agent who used to
visit him had not been caught yet and so it was not desirable to mention
his name in other protocols and primarily not at the trial. Warn him, instructed Martnek that if that happened, we would also add high treason
among his criminal offences because he had a contact with an agent of a
foreign power. Bro must be made aware of it and be worked upon
enough so that it does not happen that an agent features in the trial, was
Martneks ultimate order.112
After the forced confession, he had to memorize question protocols.
They gave me written questions and answers, I had to learn them by
heart, I was then summoned to interrogations where Suchnek tested me
[] Before the hearing he threatened that they would place me in a madhouse, or that I would end up badly; that was why I had to confess again
and again.113 However, part of the population lost their illusions about the
interrogation methods of the communist Security shortly after February
1948; that is two decades before the Prague Spring 1968. Rumours spread
among the population concerning the National Security Corps that the
current police treat interrogated people even worse than the Gestapo
112
113
confess to things I had no knowledge of, he smashed my head against the wall
and he pulled me up so that I got blood poisoning in my wounds and had to
be treated twice a day by the prison doctor who gave me tetanus shots and
cleaned my wounds. Despite this wound I was summoned day and night for
interrogations. Four or five times I was in a darkroom the whole night and
sometimes also the following morning and I had to walk all the time, without
food or drink. After the confession was pried out of him in that way, he had
to memorize question protocols. He warned me that if I said other things at
the court other than what he ordered me to say, I and my bastard of a son
would end up there again and would never leave. NA Praha, f. KPV R
(unprocessed), kt. 121, file Minutes and testimonies, From Ladislav Bros
rehabilitation application, undated (1968). Letter to the Club K-231, Sloupno
15.8.1968.
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, sign. H-242 MV, Collection of information on illeg. group Bro et al., Hradec Krlov 2.10.1952.
NA Praha, f. KPV R (unprocessed), kt. 121, file Minutes and testimonies,
From Ladislav Bros rehabilitation application, undated (1968).
during the occupation. If they knock someones tooth out, he has to sign
that he did it himself, said a regular report on what the talk was among
people.114
In January 1953, a criminal complaint was filed against Ladislav Bro,
Frantiek Volejnk, Jaroslav Odvrko, Jaroslav Hork and Josef Hnt,
signed by regional StB commander, Staff Captain Frantiek Zita. All defendants [] represent a conspiracy of criminal elements and have decided out of hatred of our political system to fight and disrupt the happy
future of the working people, one of the accusing phrases said.115
Circumstances of the lawsuit
While the interned farmers in their cells counted the days to the trial,
communists were celebrating the 1st of May. The participants in the May
manifestation in the district town of Nov Bydov were welcomed and
accompanied by six bands. The square was more than ever decorated
with slogans and portraits of communist leaders. After belligerent
speeches of the ONV chairman Exner and regional AV NF representative
Khol as well as the necessary singing of Internationale, a parade followed
including floats. It passed through the streets of the town to the decorated
playground by the Sokol house. A May celebration was supposed to take
place there; however, people showed more interest in Pramen beer
stands, and the SM youth did not organize the performance of choruses
as planned, comrades from the OV KS complained later.116 The new
Czechoslovak banknotes secretly printed in the USSR were ready; one
month remained before the pecuniary reform.117 The lunice chronicler
114
ABS Praha, f. Miscellaneous security files after 1945, sign. 304-155-22, Outline of rumoured propaganda recorded in KV NB reports, Praha 29.9.1949.
115
ABS Praha, f. Investigation files - Hradec Krlov, sign. V-448 HK, Criminal
complaints, KS StB Hradec Krlov 21.1.1953.
116
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, kt. 2, inv. . 60, Assessment of the 1st May celebration in the Nov Bydov district, 12.5.1953.
117
For more details see for example Drahomr Jank, Cesta k mnov reform
roku 1953: od maarskho modelu zaveden volnho trhu k mnov reform
sovtskho typu (The Path to the 1953 Pecuniary Reform: From the Hungarian Model of the Free Market Introduction to the Soviet Type Pecuniary Reform), Krlovhradecko: historick sbornk pro pouenou veejnost 4 (2007),
249-268. Zdenk Jirsek, Jaroslav la, Velk penn loupe v eskoslovensku 1953, aneb, 50: 1 (Grand money theft in Czechoslovakia 1953, or 50:1)
424 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
noticed that already several days before the reform a ban on sale of spirits
was issued (effective until 4 June). The ignorant public considered it
strange, unjustified. Only on Saturday some secret information emerged
about some pecuniary reform. On Sunday we were already certain of
what was awaiting us; that is why that Sunday was named Black Sunday.118 On Monday, 1 June 1953, committee and member meetings were
held in enterprises to arm communists for agitation in favour of the
new currency. However, they were not able to prevent strikes that took
place in enterprises in the Nchod, Trutnov and Dobruka regions.119
The trial with the farmers from the Nov Bydov district took place only
a few days before the draconic monetary reform. It was scheduled for
Friday, 22 May 1953 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. before the Regional Court in
Hradec Krlov as a first instance court.120 The senate included Marie
Ceralov and Adolf Vencko as popular judges and JUDr. Jan Hlavika,
who chaired the court. Jaroslav Kremla acted as a prosecutor.121 The foursome Bro, Volejnk, Hork and ern were found guilty of high treason
and sentenced to the following: Ladislav Bro to 18 years of imprisonment and a fine of CSK 20,000, Frantiek Volejnk to 16 years and CSK
50,000, Josef ern to 12 years and CSK 10,000, Jaroslav Hork to 11
years and CSK 10,000. Josef Hnt was sentenced for not having reported
a criminal offence to 4 years of imprisonment and a fine of CSK 10,000.
Jaroslav Odvrko was sentenced for assembling against the Republic to 1
year of imprisonment. All of them except Odvrko also received a bypunishment of forfeiture of all property and a loss of all honorary civil
(Praha: Svtn, 1992). Ji Petr, Penn reforma 1953 (The 1953 Pecuniary
Reform), Sbornk Archivu ministerstva vnitra 3 (2005), 141-171.
118
119
SOkA Hradec Krlov, f. OV KS Nov Bydov, kt. 2, inv. . 67, Assessment of realization of party and government order on pecuniary reform and
the abolition of the stamp system in the Hradec Krlov region, 12.6.1953.
The greatest unrest accompanying pecuniary reform took place in Plze, see
Zdenk tpnek, Utajen povstn 1953 (Secret uprising of 1953) (Praha:
Michael, 1993).
120
As of 1 January 1953 the activities of the extraordinary tribunals in the form
of state courts and respective state prosecutors offices and the agenda of anti-state acts were taken over by regional courts.
121
Regional Court in Hradec Krlov, Rehabilitation file, file number (spisov
znaka, hereinafter spis. zn.) Rt 124/90, original criminal file T 9/53, Protocol
of the trial, Hradec Krlov 22.5.1953.
rights for 10 years (in the case of Hnt for 5 years). The convicts were
obliged to cover the legal costs of the prosecution as well as costs of the
execution of the sentence.122 All young husbands and fathers, excellent
farmers started work in the uranium mines in Jchymov. After about
three months they were allowed to write to their loved ones, but only under prison supervision, the chronicler wrote.123 The process was not
mentioned in the daily press, either the regional version of Rud prvo, or
the regional Pochode; the plan for its propagandistic use in the regional
village newspapers was not executed either.
Only Ladislav Bros prison file has been preserved to bear witness to the
prison anabasis of the convicted farmers. Thanks to already mentioned
documents which were unearthed after 40 years in the autumn of 2008 we
have been able to fully reconstruct Ladislav Bros journey through prisons and camps based on his own records which he made in 1968, that is a
mere 6 years after he was released. His distressing prison journey started
in the Barbora uranium labour camp. At the end of September 1953 he
was moved to the newly-constructed Bytz camp near Pbram where he
worked as a stone-breaker. He stayed there until mid-October 1954. Then
he was hospitalized in the Pankrc prison and in March 1955 he went to
Valdice where he stayed until he was released in May 1962.124 The need
to treat his diabetes was most likely the reason why he was moved from
labour camps to a brick-and-mortar prison.125 He held several working
positions in Valdice (Kohinoor, joiners workshop); from 1957 he was
permanently placed in a glass cutters workshop.
According to assessment reports, the attempts to re-educate Ladislav Bro
in prison were not successful, he considered the sentence too severe and
repeatedly sought to reopen the case; his attitude towards the communist
regime remained negative and together with like-minded prisoners he
welcomed setbacks of the regime. Only once did he receive a disciplinary
122
Regional Court in Hradec Krlov, Rehabilitation file spis. zn. Rt 124/90,

Sentence, spis. zn. T 9/53, Hradec Krlov 22.5.1953.
123
124
KPV R Archives Nov Paka, Ladislav Bros application No. 16 for K 231
of the Jin region.
125
NA Praha, f. Correctional Education Corps Directorate (unprocessed), Ladislav
Bros personal file, Assessment, 10.5.1957. Application for transport to prison hospital department for treatment, Pbram 13.9.1954. Notification on relocation of the convict, Praha 11.11.1954.
426 ___________________________________________________ Ji URBAN
punishment in October 1953 he got seven days of solitary confinement

for breaching the code of the corrective labour camp.126 In fragments of
retained correspondence we can also take a look at the imprisoned
farmers mood and the life of his hard-tried family. I only ask this one
thing of you I do not know when I will come back, whether I will see my
parents ever again as they are so old attend to them in their old age to
compensate a little for what I would have done for them, wrote Ladislav
Bro to his wife from behind the Valdice bars.127 However, following repeated rejections of her pleas and applications for a conditional discharge
of her spouse, Marie suffered a nervous breakdown and was twice hospitalized in the asylum in Kosmonosy. Worried about her health, Ladislav
Bro wrote a letter to doctor MUDr. Mrzek in the spring of 1961: She
must have heard various things from her collaborators and since then I
had often read in her letters laments and aversion to work until it came to
the state she is in now. I know that my absence did her a lot of harm, fate
was hard on our family. [] I am no murderer and thief, and I wish for
our family to meet again at home, healthy and happy, he concluded.128
His parents Frantiek and Marie Bro petitioned several times for his
conditional discharge, all in vain.129 He was finally released in amnesty
on 9 May 1962, his work morale had always been high and he fulfilled
the appointed tasks, there were no complaints concerning his behaviour,
the release report stated.130
126

Bros personal file, Assessment of petition of clemency, Valdice 22.5.1957.
Assessment, Valdice 13.21956. Dispatch note.
127
Bros personal file, Letter of 16.3.1958.
128
Bros personal file, Letter addressed to Dr. Mrzek, undated (1961).
129
All of you who participate in the re-education of all the unruly must be
thanked sincerely, they humbly wrote to Valdice. NA Praha, f. Correctional
Education Corps Directorate (unprocessed), Ladislav Bros personal file,
Plea request for conditional discharge of our son, lunice 10.4.1961. Request
for application of amnesty, Valdice 5.9.1961.
130
Bros personal file, Order of the Regional Court in Hradec Krlov on participation in amnesty, 16.5.1962. Report of 9.5.1962.
Conclusions
The installation of the gallows, punctured tyres, disrupted electricity pole
protection, together with flyers, facades covered in inscriptions, plans to
set a grain storage on fire and mug an agile communist functionary show
us on the example of the district of Nov Bydov how numerous and varied forms could an unrestrained resistance to forced collectivisation take.
At the same time they also confirm that the period assessments of the
communist Security of the region as a reactionary one were justified. It
is no coincidence that the file monitoring the anti-communist activities in
the Nov Bydov area in the late 1940s and early 1950s were after 1955
stored in the archives of the communist Ministry of the Interior and thematically filed under headwords like terror intimidations, illegal organizations after 1948 and unauthorized arming. The headword
provocation actions by StB, which we had a chance to follow, is missing, logically. At the end of the 1970s the commission of the statisticregistration department appointed by the commander of the StB directorate in Hradec Krlov decided on permanent storage of the group file
in the archives, namely in the H fund. It justified the decision saying
that these documents characterize the period of acute class struggle during the construction of socialism in the countryside in the 1950s.131 It
was not before September 1990 that the Regional Court in Hradec Krlov revoked the guilty verdict of the lunice farmers, stopped the criminal
prosecution and rehabilitated them.132
131
132
ABS Praha, f. Historical fund MV, arch. . H-242 MV, Final report, KS MV
Hradec Krlov 21.9.1955. Decision, StB Directorate Hradec Krlov
21.4.1979.
Regional Court in Hradec Krlov, Rehabilitation file spis. zn. Rt 124/90,
Order of 19.9.1990.
Questioning the Persecutor-Victim Paradigm: Polish Peasants

versus the Authorities, 1945-1989
Dariusz JAROSZ
As from the transformations of 1989, Polish historiography has tended to
present peasants as a social group that consistently, whether actively or
passively, resisted the peoples authorities. The analysis below would
suggest that this approach might be an oversimplification.
In the years since 1989, numerous reliable analyses based on the thorough research of various aspects of the Polish Peoples Republic (typically abbreviated in Polish as the PRL) have been produced. But it is
difficult to resist the impression that without wishing to question the
critical stance vis--vis the PRL the pendulum of historiography has
swung as far as denying the existence of any type of cooperation with the
communist authorities before 1989. The political demand for a reinterpretation of our contemporary history, coming in tandem with the natural desire to remove the lies and fill in the blanks the white patches as they
are called has also borne fruit in an excessively one-sided view of the
PRL as a structure that was solely repressive, implementing aims imposed by the Communist Party (the Polish United Workers Party PZPR)
and behind it, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which
remained in unrelenting and unmitigated conflict with society.
This tendency, not always consciously adopted, has found expression primarily in the selection of research topics, especially at the beginning of the
1990s, concentrating on the repressions and crimes of the Stalinist system on
the one hand, and social resistance and political opposition on the other.
Numerous historical texts though I wish to emphasise, not all make
up a sort of black vision of the Polish nation being oppressed by an alien,
communist power.1 From where does such a picture originate? In my
opinion, it is the consequence of a natural academic tendency to fill the
subject areas that were out of bounds until 1989. Collectivization, the fate
of the anti-communist underground resistance, the struggles of the political opposition, the strikes, repressions and struggle against the Catholic
1
For the most radical approach to this problem: see Tomasz Strzembosz, Gos
w dyskusji: Jak pisa o komunizmie? Jak pisa o PRL, [Voice in the Debate:
How to Wrote about the Polish Peoples Republic] Arcana 2 (2000), 7.
Questioning the Persecutor-Victim Paradigm: Polish Peasants versus... ____ 429
Church are just some of the topics most frequently taken up; they unquestionably abound in chapters of social mutiny and various forms of
resistance on the one hand, while met with the brutal, naked force of the
authorities on the other.
The effect of this historiographical tendency can be seen particularly
clearly in assessments of peasant postures and behaviour in the PRL period. The dichotomous picture of invincible communist power in conflict
with society, above all with the peasants, seems painted in accordance with
the paradigm of executioner and victim. What was it like in reality? Lets
try to answer that question by analysing the relations between the authorities and the peasants in two periods. The first encompasses the period of
expansion of communism (1944-1956) with such characteristic features as:
the mass nature and universality of terror, extreme ideological commitment, and centralisation of the economy in the hands of the state. The second period (1956-1989) is the gradual erosion of the system entwined with
moments of intensification of repressions against anti-system activities.
Period I: Communism on the Offensive
What had the greatest influence on the attitude of peasants to the communist authorities in Poland in the immediate post-war period was, on the
one hand, the brutal suppression of the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) which
enjoyed widespread peasant support, and, on the other hand, the socioeconomic reforms, notably the agrarian reform, and the settlement of the
Regained Lands.
The PSL, led by Stanisaw Mikoajczyk in March 1946, had about
450,000 members, most of whom were peasants. The political play-off,
which culminated in the falsification of the first post-war parliamentary
election results in January 1947, brought about the marginalisation of that
party. Its leader was forced to flee the country in October 1948 and the
rump of the leadership decided to merge PSL with the communist-run
United Peasant Party (ZSL) in 1949.2 The consequence of that process, of
mass scale implications, was above all the considerable reduction of political activity of Polish peasants.
2
Romuald Turkowski, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe w obronie demokracji 19451949 [Polish Peasant Party in the Defence of Democracy] (Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1992).
430 _______________________________________________ Dariusz JAROSZ
As regards the Polish countryside, the most important event that changed
the existing social order was the post-war agrarian reform, above all the
redistribution of farmsteads and the agrarian settlement of formerly German lands (popularly called the Regained Lands). In effect of these
changes, land was received by about one million peasants, of which about
380,000 peasants received land from redistribution (referred to as parcelization); about 6 million hectares were divided up, of which 1.99 million
hectares were in the old lands (belonging to pre-war Poland) and over 4
million in the Regained Lands, whereby by 1949, every third farmstead in
Poland came in part or in whole from agrarian reform.3 To be sure peasants initially somewhat feared taking the gentrys land, such as occurred in the provinces of Poznania and Pomerania, stemmed primarily
from their unsatisfactory size, lack of credit and farming tools, army requisitions, etc. Even though the beneficiaries of these reforms were relieved from the immediate settlement of their financial liabilities and the
increase of the average size of the redistributed parcels of land reversed
this trend, the number of beneficiaries of this redistribution of land in
1949 did not reach the figure of July 1945.
Agrarian reform had the greatest impact on the distribution of political
sympathies in the countryside. It is no accident that the communist Polish
Workers Party (PPR, and partly in the PPS the Polish Socialist Party,
that was increasingly subordinated to it) was joined by those peasants
who profited by it mainly farmhands in the Regained Lands and beneficiaries of land redistribution in south-eastern Poland. Social antagonism
overlaid political differences. The most important of these distinctions
was the divide between the dworusy (a contemptuous term for former
farmhands) who tended to join the PPR, and those inheriting land from
farmer forebears who swelled the ranks of the PSL en masse. The
groundswell of the latter was greeted in the countryside with relief as a
token of hope that the ideas which PPR members were suspected of harbouring would be pushed away (the promotion of atheism, collectivization, non-Polish government). The destruction of the PSL was followed
by a drop in the political activity of peasants in general.
Agrarian reform created one more significant social division in the countryside. It turned out that in rural opinion, land acquired as a result of
3
Henryk Sabek, Reforma rolna, [Land Reform] in Gospodarka Polski Ludowej 1944-1955 [The Economy of Peoples Poland], ed. Janusz Kaliski and
Zbigniew Landau (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza, 1986), 60-61.
post-war reform was regarded as worse than that which passed from father to son. Post-war transformations in the countryside also caused the
emergence and gradual strengthening of the significance of new determinants of social status. The size of the farmstead in this context gradually
lost its significance; non-agricultural work increasingly gained in importance. In 1950 the group of peasant-workers combining work and residence in the countryside with work in towns counted nearly 0.5 million,
and about 15% of farmsteads drew income also or chiefly from nonagricultural sources. It was they who introduced new urban models of behaviour in the countryside. Peasants seized the opportunity to migrate to
towns with increasing frequency; as a result of migratory traffic in the
years 1946-1950, the number of town residents rose by over a million.
The process that most antagonised relations of the authorities with the
peasants in the period of Stalinism was that of collectivization that commenced in 1948. The response to it not only took the form of vigorous
protests, but also various forms of passive resistance.
Peasants were a social group which was most frequently subject to repressions: the surviving source materials allow us to establish that in the
years 1952-1955, due to the failure to satisfy the imposed obligatory supplies, at least 574,374 persons were penalised (mainly fines), in other
words more or less one in six farmers. In the years 1953-1955, the courts
sentenced over 10,000 people for produce delivery defaults. The apogee
of these repressions came in 1953 when over 251,000 people were either
fined or imprisoned.4
Postures expressing resistance were accompanied by various forms of adaptation to the regime. Peasants in their majority did not accept the methods by which local authority structures were produced in rural areas. This
was typically by way of purges and falsified elections, but the bare necessities of everyday life forced them in many instances to collaborate. This
included tacit acknowledgement of the regime by entering into relations
with officials and giving bribes in order to obtain tax reliefs, reduced
mandatory quotas of produce they had to supply, and deficit goods in the
local shop. Peasants complained about the local authorities; they pointed
at their corrupt favouritism and injustices, but forced by circumstances
4
Dariusz Jarosz, Polityka wadz komunistycznych w Polsce w latach 1948-1956

a chopi [The Communist Power in Poland and Peasants 1948-1956] (Warsaw:
Wydawnictwo DiG, 1998), 228-37.
432 _______________________________________________ Dariusz JAROSZ
they often accommodated themselves to the informal rules that the local
authorities imposed.
As regards collectivization, adaptation to the institutional order also assumed variegated forms. Many production cooperatives were formed on
paper which, nota bene was convenient not only for the peasants forced
to sign the appropriate declarations, but also the local apparatchiks who
forced them to do so. Those Polish peasants who did join cooperatives
usually did not exude excessive diligence. The cultivation of the land and
care for the development of livestock primarily on ones own holding rather than on the joint collective holding of the farmstead group was one
form of adaptation to the system.
As a result of resorting to various procedures in struggling with collectivisation, the production cooperative movement did not become a dominant
feature in rural Poland. In its highpoint period, collective farms encompassed over 2,100,000 hectares, that is 11% of the overall peasant-held
land and several percent of their farmsteads. At the end of 1955 they
united about 190,000 families, over 12% of whom were landless peasants. It is characteristic that most of them arose in the post-German Regained Lands. This was the effect not only of their difficult economic
situation (post-German farmsteads were ruined, deprived of essential
equipment, hence difficult to reconstruct and run) but also of origin.
These were in their majority settler farmsteads whose new owners were
not weighed down with the cultural baggage associated with their heritage. Moreover, and that too was of significance the authorities did not
hurry with regulating the issue of their ownership since in any case they
were to be collectivised.5
In response to the pressure to succumb to collectivization, peasants, and
more precisely their children, increasingly frequently availed themselves
of the path to social advancement on a mass scale, as was ensured by the
policy of enforced industrialisation as pursued from 1949-1950. This aspect of state policy together with the new educational chances it offered
enjoyed the relatively big support of the rural population. They did not
accept the scale of repressions and the sharp anti-Church course.
5
For more, see: Dariusz Jarosz, The Collectivization of Agriculture in Poland:

Causes of Defeat, in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements, ed. Constantin Iordachi and Arnd
Bauerkmper (Budapest - New York: Central European University Press,
2014), 113-146.
1956-1989: Communism in Decomposition

The year 1956 opened a period in which communism a la polonaise
gradually, though not always consistently, weakened. Further stages of
that process of decomposition consisted of the often described political
changes caused by the massacre of the shipyard workers in December
1970 and the accession to power of technocrats led by Edward Gierek,
the strikes of August 1980 inaugurating the Solidarity carnival of freedom, and finally the introduction of martial law by the state-party apparatus concentrated round Wojciech Jaruzelski (13 December 1981). The
years 1982-1989 inscribed themselves in the history of the Polish Peoples Republic as the death throes of a communist system that had exhausted its developmental capacities.
What did the period after 1956 signify for Polish peasants? For a start they
were ridding themselves of the greatest threat to their traditional existence
as was represented by collectivization. Resistance against it in the peasant
mentality left a permanent mark in the shape of a feeling of threat to individual farming. The first effect of this aversion was the mass and elemental
dissolution of production cooperatives at the end of 1956 and the beginning
of 1957. Out of the overall number of 10,203 farmstead groups that were
registered on 30 September 1956, only 1954 survived until 31 December of
that year.6 The aversion top Polish kolkhozes also assumed other forms.
In two research projects of 1963, which were independent of each other,
49.2 to 58.7 percent of farmers recognised individual farmsteads as the best
in agriculture; only 2.2 -2.1% of respondents were in favour of production
cooperatives. In 1969, 42% of farmers forecasted that the future agricultural system would be based on individual farmsteads. In 1979, 55.5% of rural
respondents saw the chance of solving the problem of deficit agricultural
production above all by supporting individual farmsteads (in the case of
peasants, the indicator amounted to 68.5%). In 1982, only 54% of peasant respondents were completely sure of the future of their farmsteads (23
years earlier that indicator stood at 43%).7
6
Dariusz Jarosz, Grzegorz Miernik, A lengyel mezgazdasg dekolektivizlsnak

tjai s kvetkezmnyei, [Decollectivization Processes in Polish Agriculture and
its Consequences] Mltunk. Politikatrtneti Folyirat 3 (2013), 60-67.
7
Wadysaw Adamski, Wadysaw Turski, Interesy klasy chopskiej jako rdo
sytuacji kryzysowych, [The Interests of the Peasant Class as a Source of Crisis Situations] in Interesy i konflikt: studia nad dynamika struktury spoecznej
434 _______________________________________________ Dariusz JAROSZ
As can be seen, the trauma of collectivization was so strong that it impacted on the peasant perception of the world throughout the whole PRL
period.
Historical and sociological research suggests that in the general assessments of the rural population more so than in that of the inhabitants of
small towns, the post-war period was regarded as more beneficial than
earlier periods. Sociological research of both 1965 and 1970 showed that
at least half the rural respondents chose the current times as a period in
which they would want to live (in towns this indicator was considerably
lower).8 This generally positive assessment of post-war Poland survived
in the seventies and eighties. The countryside generally assessed that the
PRL period brought it more good than bad, and in its end phase, the peasant tendency to criticise the departing regime was lesser than that of town
residents.9 Equally, it is no accident that albeit in July 1988 the tendency
to completely denigrate PRL in comparison with the West dominated in
Polish society; in the countryside this tendency was lower (68.8% responses) than in big towns (72.1%).10
The peasant assessment of the various stages of Polish post-war history
was variegated. Research of the 1980s shows that they saw the period
1970-1975 as the best they ever had for themselves and agriculture as
such. The import levels of cereals and fodder rose quite sharply at the
[Interests and Conflicts: Studies on of Dynamics of Social Structure], ed.
Wadysaw Adamski (Wrocaw - Warszawa: Ossolineum, 1990), 135-142.
8
Barbara Szacka, Przeszo w wiadomoci ludnoci wiejskiej [Past in the Consciousness of the Rural Population] (Warszawa: Polskie Radio i Telewizja,
1967) 22; Jerzy Szacki, Tradycja a wspczesno [Tradition and Modern
Times] (Warszawa: Orodek Badania Opinii Publicznej i Studiw Programowych, 1973), 31.
9
Aspiracje demokratyczne i opinie spoeczestwa o praktyce politycznej Polski
84 (wstpny zapis wynikw z bada) [Democratic Aspirations and Opinions of
the Public about Political Practice in Poland in 1984 (Preliminary Records of
the Findings] (Warszawa: Centrum Badania Opinii Spoecznej, October 1984)
n.p.; Nastroje polityczne mieszkacw wsi. Komunikat z bada CBOS [The Political Moods of the Villagers] (Warszawa: Centrum Badania Opinii Spoecznej, 1987) n.p.
10
Samopoczucie narodowe Polakw. Polska na tle innych pastw. Komunikat z
bada CBOS [Polish National Well-being. Poland Compared to Other Countries. Communication from the Research of the Public Opinion Research Center] (Warszawa: Centrum Badania Opinii Spoecznej, February 1989) n.p.
time and these commodities were quite evenly distributed between farmsteads, which caused an increase in cattle and pig livestock, and an improvement in the material situation of peasants.11
It is difficult to wonder at that because although the level of income of
the agrarian population from 1944 to the 1980s in certain periods was
characterized by stagnation, overall, on balance, income from agricultural
production and extra-agricultural work continually increased. The level of
consumption also grew, and its structure was increasingly more wideranging. Per capita consumption in peasant families gradually approached
urban levels.12
Much research shows that general support for the PRL did not have to
mean (and did not mean) uniform support for all activities undertaken in
its name. What then did peasants value post-war Poland for? Both from
sociologists findings and from analyses of diaries, it stems that all
changes in such spheres of social life as education, leisure and recreation
conditions, housing and work (in this the furnishing of households),
changes in the law and in administrative offices, family life, morality, interpersonal relations, were all assessed in a more positive way in rural
than in urban areas.13 Research from the 1960s14 and that of December
198015 shows that peasants, more than other social groups, were pleased
with the social egalitarianism. Farmers most frequently spoke for the assurance of equal income in society. That was in accord with the social
policy of the PRL authorities that was pursued since the 1940s. It seems
that the possibility of educating children and their advancement in the urban environment was most valued by peasants in the post-war state. They
11
Jzef Balcerek, Sytuacja gospodarcza Polski w okresie 1956-1993, [The

Economic Situation in Poland 1956-1993] in Elity wadzy w Polsce a struktura
spoeczna w latach 1956-1981 [The Power Elite in Poland and the Social
Structure 1956-1981], ed. Przemysaw Wjcik (Warszawa: Instytut Stosowanych Nauk Spoecznych Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1994), 344-345.
12
Boena Gulbicka, Dochody, spoycie i akumulacja w indywidualnych gospodarstwach chopskich w Polsce Ludowej [Income, Consumption and Accumulation of Private Farms in Peoples Poland] (Warszawa: Instytut Ekonomiki
rolnictwa i Gospodarki ywnociowej, 1986), 302.
13
Szacki, Tradycja a wspczesno, 34-38.
14
Szacka, Przeszo w wiadomoci, 34.
15
Polacy 80. Wyniki bada ankietowych [Poles 80. Survey Results] (Warszawa: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii PAN, 1981), 123-124.
436 _______________________________________________ Dariusz JAROSZ
were prepared to sustain very great sacrifices, and not just material ones
at that, for its achievement.
I believe that the positive ratings the PRL scored in the peasant eyes
should be interpreted in association with their broadly understood system
of values and historical experience. They always thought primarily in categories of their own farmsteads as mini-enterprises staffed by their families and local communities. Their development required above all work, a
stable economic environment, peace and order. The peasant way of thinking was dominated by pragmatic, concrete concerns, hence their lesser
tendency to operate or specifically understand such concepts as independence, communism, and democracy. For this reason, among others,
they were not particularly moved by distant political events which had
little local resonance or which ran their course beyond their own environment, like for example the student riots of March 1968. Indeed, less
so: a few archival transmissions on this subject suggest that they were
much more ready to accept the point of view of the authorities in assessing them than other social groups.16 It is characteristic that in research
as in opinion polls carried out in conditions of renewal (in June 1971),
they were considerably less apt to put forward critical postulates concerning so-called democratisation; they concentrated on work and living conditions and criticised the civilizational levels of town and country.17
Research in 1979 showed that democracy for farmers meant less than participation in wielding power for other social groups; there were similar
divergences between the approach of town and country to issues like social equality and justice. Farmers and workers, less so than the intelligentsia and white-collar workers, accentuated the features of democracy
16
Marcin Zaremba, Biedni Polacy 68. Spoeczestwo polskie wobec wydarze

marcowych w wietle raportw KW i MSW dla kierownictwa PZPR, [Poor
Poles 68. Polish Society Towards the March Events in the Light of Reports of
Provincial Party Committees and the Ministry of Public of Internal Affairs for
the Leadership of the Polish United Workers Party] in Marzec 1968.
Trzydzieci lat pniej, [March 1968. Thirty Years Later] vol. 1 (Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1998), 151.
17
Andrzej Duma, Rola Polskiego Radia i Telewizji jako instytucji skarg i wnioskw. Wyniki ankiety pt. Porady i interwencje [The Role of the Polish Radio and Television as an Institution of Complaints and Requests. Results of the
Pool: Counselling and Intervention] (Warszawa: Orodek Badania Opinii
Publicznej i Studiw Programowych, 1974), 57.
as law and civic freedom.18 History, which, after all, also fulfilled the
function of an element of ideological-political struggle in the PRL, did
not occupy a particularly important place in their everyday lives.19 They
also showed less interest in politics than the urban population.20 It is no
accident that as would emerge from analyses of diaries of 1982 and
1983 they formed a group offering the weakest support for strikes as the
form of protest since, to their way of thinking, they were a contradiction
of the fundamental features of the peasant ethos.21
The highlighted peasant assessments of the PRL as such, and the PRL
system as a certain whole, were more the balance of pluses and minuses,
a general synthesis in the context of individual peasant achievements and
setbacks. And the fact that both peasant attitudes to concrete policies of
the authorities and to the authorities themselves, especially at the local
level, were much more critical in no way stands at variance with them.
The relatively strong peasant acceptance of the PRL co-existed with suspicion towards concrete moves of the state authorities. Above all, the
Polish countryside did not accept two elements that were pursued by the
state authorities for ideological reasons: the striving for socializing individual farmsteads and the struggle with the Catholic Church. They were
ready to take very firm and uncompromising action in defence of these
institutions, which, in practice, were also endowed with an anti-Russian
and anti-Soviet character. The apogee of manifesting religious conviction
in the countryside occurred in the 1960s. The countryside became most
animated in the religious sense under the influence of the Millenium, the
celebrations of a thousand years of Christianity, as proclaimed by the
primate of Poland Cardinal Stefan Wyszyski.22 The reports compiled by
18
Andrzej Duma, wiadomo demokracji w spoeczestwie polskim [The

Awareness of Democracy in the Polish Society] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
Radia i Telewizji, 1983), 44.
19
Przeszo jako przedmiot zainteresowania i dyskusji we wspczesnym spoeczestwie polskim. Komunikat z bada [Past as the Subject of Interest in Polish
Society] (Warszawa: Orodek Badania Opinii Publicznej, July 1988) n.p.
20
Nastroje polityczne mieszkacw, n.p.
21
Krystyna apiska-Tyszka, Konflikt spoeczny w wiadomoci pokole
chopskich, [Social Conflict in the Consciousness of Generations of Peasants]
in Interesy i konflikt: studia nad dynamika struktury spoecznej, 193.
22
Wadysaw Piwowarski, Przemiany religijnoci wsi polskiej, [The Religious
Transformation of the Polish Countryside], Kultura Wsi 2 (1996), 71; Andrzej
438 _______________________________________________ Dariusz JAROSZ
the Ministry of Interior and PZPR (Polish United Workers Party) units in
1966 show that that year, great church ceremonies in diocesan headquarters took place with the particularly large participation of the rural population.23 The countryside picked up the slogan of the Polish Episcopate
A Thousand Crosses for the Thousandth Anniversary of Baptism.24 But
this does not mean that the countryside rejected the slogan of building
1000 schools to mark the thousandth anniversary of the state. Given that
the characteristic process in Polish nation-building was the tight welding
of national and religious values, the thesis that this traditional (strongly
tied with Catholicism) model of Polishness represented especially by the
peasants, seems justified. Paradoxically it could be said that the effect of
socio-political processes occurring in the PRL period was the galvanisation of this model. In face of the threat to freedom of worship the traditional anti-clericalism disappeared as an important determinant of peasant
postures and behaviour.25
What determined the material well-being of peasants in this period, and
in this sense also what co-shaped their attitude to the state, was the expansion of dual professions. The farmsteads of all working peasant families, hence also those for whom additional work constituted a subsidiary
source of income, already constituted about 25% of their entire number in
1960. In 1960, the peasant-worker population counted (without family
members) 801,000, in 1970 - 1,149,000, in 1978 - 1,140,000, in 1982 1,089,000 people. Both this great social process as its corollary - the
growth of towns with the big input of the rural element, ensured that in
1962, most of the workers employed in industry (55%) and building
(63%) were children of rural families. Still in 1972, almost every other
manual labourer of the non-agrarian sectors of the economy came from a
Micewski, Kardyna Wyszyski Prymas i m stanu [Cardinal Wyszynski Primate and Statesman] (Paris: Editions du Dialogue, 1982), 152-154.
23
Uroczystoci milenijne 1966 roku. Sprawozdania urzdw spraw
wewntrznych [1966 Millenium Celebrations. Reports of Internal Affairs Offices], foreword by Antoni Dudek and Irena Marczak (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Centralnego Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Wewntrznych, 1966), 2021, 44, 47, 51, 67, 99, 102, 113, 166.
24
Uroczystoci milenijne 1966, 86.
25
Krzysztof Gorlach, Socjologia polska wobec kwestii chopskiej [Sociology
Towards the Peasant Question] (Krakw: Towarzystwo Autorw i Wydawcw
Prac Naukowych, 1990), 119.
farming environment. In 1978, of all the workers as such men employed in non-agrarian sectors of the economy had fathers who were individual farmers 36.9%.26
These reflections allow one to posit the thesis that the attitude of peasants
to post-war Poland and its authorities eludes description in terms of victim and oppressor. The peasant system of values set great store by pragmatism and that ordered them to look at the government of communists
from the vantage point of their individual aims that were to be achieved.
It did happen that Polish peasants resisted the system. But probably the
more dominant model of behaviour was one that took various forms of
adaptation, accommodation, and even cooperation with the governing authorities. And that is not an accusation but rather the assertion of a fact
that must be understood.
26
Henryk Sabek, Obraz robotnikw polskich w wietle ich wiadectw wasnych i

statystyki 1945-1989 [The Image of the Polish Workers in the Light of their
own Testimonies and Statistics] (Warszawa - Kutno: Instyutut Historii PAN,
Wysza Szkoa Gospodarki Krajowej, 2004), 40-42.
The Last Stage of Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania.

Repressive and Restrictive Methods against the Rural
Population*
Cosmin BUDEANC
The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania.
General Considerations
The historiography of the last 25 years has focused largely on several
common themes, which had been taboo subjects before 1989, or which
had to be accepted ad litteram from the documents of the era or the
presentations of official historians. One such subject, forbidden for decades and which has recently come to the attention of historians is the process of collectivization of agriculture. Developed over more than a
decade, the socialist transformation of agriculture represented a very important moment in the evolution of Romanian society after the installation of the communist regime, which brought about irreversible changes
in both the traditional Romanian village and Romanian society as a
whole. The effects of collectivization were especially strong in the shortand medium-term, but also in the long-term, some of them remaining visible in Romanian society even today. In this case, we appreciate that the
subject deserves historians full attention. In addition, a series of collections of studies1, case studies and regional analyses2 both collections of
*
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for
Scientific Research, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-20123-0334.
1
Dorin Dobrincu, Constantin Iordachi (eds.), rnimea i puterea. Procesul de
colectivizare a agriculturii n Romnia (1949-1962) [The Peasantry and the
Power. The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania (1949-1962)] (Iai:
Polirom Publishing House, 2005); Gail Kligman, Katherine Verdery, Peasants
under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011); Constantin Iordachi,
Arnd Bauerkmper (eds.), The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist
Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2014).
2
Sanda Bora, Colectivizarea agriculturii n fosta Regiune administrativ Cluj
(1949-1962) [The Collectivization of Agriculture in the Former Administrative
Region Cluj (1949-1962)] (Cluj-Napoca: Mega Publishing House, 2013).
The Last Stage of Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania. ... __________ 441
documents and oral testimonies3 have appeared in recent years, all contributing to a better understanding of what the collectivization of Romanian agriculture really meant.
The installation of the communist regime brought with it several major
changes in the Romanian political, economic and social system. The collectivization of agriculture was one of the measures imposed for Romania
to join the political and ideological direction drawn from Moscow. After
the annihilation of opposition parties, after the proclamation of the republic and the nationalization of the principal means of production, the Romanian Communists focused their attention on the peasants, who
represented the greatest part of the population of the country and, due to
the property they owned, pulled a lot of weight in the Romanian economy. Private property and peasant households were considered by the
Communists the principal obstacles that had to be overcome to build the
new society. Even V.I. Lenin considered that small private households
3
Gheorghe Iancu, Virgiliu ru, Ottmar Trac (eds.), Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia. Aspecte legislative. 1945-1962 [The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania. Legal Aspects. 1945-1962] (Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University
Press, 2000); Dan Ctnu, Octavian Roske (eds.), Colectivizarea agriculturii
n Romnia. Dimensiunea politic [The Collectivization of Agriculture in
Romania. The Political Dimension], vol. I, 1949-1953 (Bucharest: National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism, 2000); Octavian Roske, Florin Abraham,
Dan Ctnu, Colectivizarea Agriculturii n Romnia. Cadru Legislativ 19491962 [The Collectivization of agriculture in Romania. Legislative Framework
1949-1962] (Bucharest: National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism,
2007); Andrea Dobe, Gheorghe Mihai Brlea, Robert Frts, Colectivizarea
n Maramure: contribuii documentare: (1949-1962) [The Collectivization in
Maramures Area: Documentation Contribution: (1949-1962)] (Bucharest: Civic Academy Foundation, 2004); Robert Frts, Gheorghe Mihai Brlea (eds.),
Colectivizarea n Maramure. Mrturii de istorie oral [The Collectivization
in Maramures Area. Oral History Testimonies] (Bucharest: Civic Academy
Foundation, 2009); Ancu Damian, Florentin Breazu, Ion Blan (eds.), Colectivizarea n Vlaca, 1949-1950. Documente [Collectivization in Vlaca County,
1949-1950. Documents] (Bucharest: Vinea Publishing House, 2002); Aurel
Lup, 40 de ani de agricultur socialist n Dobrogea: (1949-1989) [40 Years
of Socialist Agriculture in Dobrogea (1949-1989)] (Constana: Ex Ponto Publishing House, 2012); Livia Sicoie-Coroi, Colectivizarea agriculturii n Raionul Brad ntre istorie i memorie (1949-1962) [The Collectivization of
Agriculture in the Brad District between History and Memory (1949-1962)]
(Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut Publishing House, 2009).
442 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
lead to capitalism and bourgeoisie, permanently, every day, at every

hour, spontaneously and en masse.4 Later, in the period 1949-1962 in
Romania, the process of collectivization of agriculture was carried out on
the Soviet model and consisted of the confiscation of almost all private
agricultural property and its use in state-administered agricultural firms.
Effectively, having as its stated goal the modernization of Romanian
agriculture and the introduction of socialist structures to the villages,
collectivization was the longest, most difficult and most criminal social
engineering campaign implemented in Communist Romania.5 Its
importance to the Communist authorities can be seen, on the one hand, of
course, through the great significance of the peasant in Romanian society
(over 70% of the population), and on the other hand through the long
period spent on its development (1949-1962) as well as the extraordinary
efforts put forth to finalize it. In addition, the over 80,000 peasants
arrested and tried is the best proof of the resistance to collectivization.6
The present work proposes, in the first place, to present the principal
characteristics of the last stage of the process of collectivization of Romanian agriculture, occuring from 1957-1962, distinguished by the acceleration of the process of change in agriculture and especially the largescale use of violent methods. In this last stage, tens of thousands of residents of rural areas were subjected to intense pressure (threats, blackmail,
fines, beatings, arrests and convictions) to give up their land to associative forms of agriculture. Protests were numerous, and the intervention of
the authorities remarkably harsh. Many peasants were arrested and convicted, mainly in order to spread fear throughout the population and convince them to accept collectivization. To exemplify the ways in which the
repression was made concrete, we will present the case of the Ciorti
community in eastern Romania in the former Rmnicu Srat county, currently Vrancea county.
4
5
V.I. Lenin, Stngismul, boala copilriei comunismului [The Leftism, Communism Childhood Disease] (Bucharest: PMR Publishing House, 1948), 10.
Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in
Romania (C.P.A.D.C.R.), Raport final [The Final Report] (2006), 425,
http://www.presidency.ro/static/ordine/RAPORT_FINAL_CPADCR.pdf, accessed March 26, 2013.
Scnteia [The Spark] (The official newspaper of Romanian Workers' Party),
December 7, 1961.
Although we intend to address only the final stage of the process of the
collectivization of agriculture, to understand better how this process was
implemented in Romania several details about the origins of the idea and
the previously mentioned first two stages are called for.
The Soviet Model of Transformation of Agriculture
The idea of abolishing private property rights over the land and the establishment of the collectivist model in agriculture was part of a broader series of ideas assumed (or imposed) according to the Soviet model. Even if
initially these ideas were older and they could be identified in many of
the utopian projects of the previous two millennia7, the manner in which
they were applied in Romania has a close connection with the Soviet
model of socialist transformation of agriculture. In fact, when the USSR
occupied Eastern Europe, it had already prepared a strategy of sovietisation, which was to be applied in all the states in the area that came under
its influence. And the collectivization of agriculture had an important
place within this strategy.8
The Soviet model of collectivist agriculture was based on both a theoretical basis, drawn up by Lenin and Stalin, and the experience acquired by
the Communists during the period in which they experienced collectivization in the states under the USSR and in some occupied territories in the
years 1939-1940. As regards the theoretisation of the model, a few regulations of the two leaders referred to above were observed. One of the
most important such regulations was embodied within the concept of
class struggle, which meant attracting the peasantry to the Communists side, with a view to isolation and destruction of the big land
owners, considered political enemies.9
7
Octavian Roske (coord.), Dosarul colectivizrii n Romnia. 1949-1962. Studiu

ntocmit de Comisia pentru cercetarea abuzurilor din Camera Deputailor
[The File of Collectivization in Romania. 1949-1962. Study Prepared by
Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Chamber of Deputies] (Bucharest:
Chamber of Deputies of the Romanian Parliament, 1992), 3.
8
Dan Ctnu, Octavian Roske, Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia. Dimensiunea politic [The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania. The Political Dimension], vol. I, 1949-1953 (Bucharest: National Institute for the Study
of Totalitarianism, 2000), 12.
9
Ctnu, Roske, Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia, 13.
444 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
The role of the Soviet Union in transforming the agriculture of our country
can be noticed as far back as 7 March 1945, when the Romanian Communist
Party did not yet hold political and economic power. At that time, a group
of emissaries from Moscow arrived in Bucharest with a plan according to
which the communisation of Romania would be carried out over a period
of three years.10 The presence of the Soviet advisers in our country was also observed, however, in the years to come. By their exceptional professional background and with extensive experience in the field of building
the socialist agriculture, they effectively contributed to the collectivization
of agriculture, or, in the language of that age, they were helping with the
organisation and strengthening of the socialist sector of agriculture.
But the defining elements of the collectivization of agriculture in Romania which connect with the Soviet model are much more numerous: from
use of the legislative mechanisms and the institutions of the state, to the
use of terror and extreme violence for attaining the desired end, up to the
terminology and language used. As regards terminology only, we notice
that it was identical to that used in the 1920s - 1930s in the USSR: The
politics of putting the kulaks (chiaburi in Romanian) in a bind, dekulakisation and destroying the kulaks as a social class (i.e. the policy of putting the kulaks in a bind and destroying them in the Soviet variant).11
The institutions and collectivist structures followed the Soviet model, being
translated from Russian and implemented in full, from the organisation
chart up to the operating rules. Thus, the collective agricultural households
(GACs in Romanian) accounted for the Romanian version of kolkhozes
(collective farms); the state agricultural households were the sovhozes (state
farms), ntovririle (associations for joint cultivation of land the tozes
TOZ), and the machinery and tractor stations, (the SMT in Romanian).12
The first two Stages of the Process of Collectivization of Agriculture
As previously mentioned, three major stages can be identified in the process of the socialist transformation of Romanian agriculture and the subordination of the rural world. These were influenced by several internal
10
Florin Constantiniu, Doi ori doi fac aisprezece. A nceput Rzboiul Rece n
Romnia [Two Times Two is Sixteen. A Cold War began in Romania]
(Bucharest: Eurosong & Book Publishing House, 1997), 141.
11
12
and external political factors and took place in 1949-1953; 1953-1956;

and 1957-1962.
Although this idea of collectivization was not new, it was officially
enunciated by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Secretary General of the Central
Committee of the Romanian Workers Party (CC al PMR) at the Plenary
sesson of the Central Committee of 3-5 March 1949. On this occasion, he
presented the report The duties of PMR in the fight for the union of the
working class with working peasants and the socialist transformation of
agriculture.13 The Communist leader was aware of the fact that the
process of collectivization of agriculture would be a difficult realization,
a fact seen in his report, in which he acknowledged that The peasant
problem under consideration at todays Plenary is one of the hardest and
most complex problems of the socialist revolution and the construction of
socialism.14
As initially established by the Party and following Leninist principle, a
Collective Agriculture Household (GAC) should be created through the
free consent of people signing their land over to common ownership and
management. The leaders saw the principle of free consent as crucial to
establishing the legitimacy of the Party and the legality of its actions,
even if only a faade; free consent was to demonstrate support for the
regime performatively.15 In reality, however, things were completely
different. Over the next four years (1949-1953), the imposition of
collectivist structures was attempted, especially through violent means
and persuasion. This period was characterized by concerted campaigns to
convince landowners to join collectivist groups. Among those who were
arrested and convicted were also many others who endured trickery and
abuse of authority. The Militia and the Securitate (the Communist
political police) were also called in, and they strongly supported the party
representatives. According to archived documents, just in the summer of
1950, approximately 30,000 peasant families were forced to join
collective households, and together with the consolidation of these, many
13
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Articole i cuvntri [Articles and Speeches] (Bucharest: State Press for Political Literature, 1955), 174-178.
14
Gheorghiu-Dej, Articole i cuvntri, 174.
15
Kligman, Verdery, Peasants under Siege, 125.
446 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
others were required to give up their properties, which were absorbed into
the new structures.16
But the resistance of the population proved far beyond expectations, and
as a result, the pressures and violence alternated with periods of prudence
on the part of the authorities. In parallel, incapable of acknowledging that
the process of collectivization was not wanted by the people, the Communists identified, among their ranks, an explanation for the failure: the
Ana Pauker17 - Vasile Luca18 - Teohari Georgescu19 faction. Considered rightist deviants, these three were accused of impeding the collectivization campaign and excluded from party leadership at the end of May
1952. A new wave of terror over peasant landowners ensued, but, in spite
of the pressures and advantages offered, the results were not spectacular
during 1949-1953.20
The second stage of the process of collectivization, occurring between
1953 and 1956, was characterized by a certain relaxation of action, with
the attempt to consolidate existing structures. In parallel, the number of
ntovriri was raised, collectives cubs as they were called by the
peasants.21 During this period, arrests and confiscations were replaced by
many administrative interdictions and commercial restrictions.22
16
Central National Historical Archives (hereafter cited as CNHA), Fond Comitetul

Central la Partidului Comunist Romn-Cancelarie (Central Committee of the
Romanian Communist Party Chancellery Fund, file no. 59/1950: 54, 74.
17
Ana Pauker (Hanna Rabinsohn), (1893-1960), member of the Communist Party
of Romania since the interwar period, when it was illegal. After the Communists
took power, she became Vice Premier and Minister of External Affairs.
18
Vasile Luca (Lszl Luka), (1898-1963), member of the Communist Party of
Romania since the interwar period, when it was illegal. After the Communists
took power, he became Minister of Finance.
19
Teohari Georgescu (1908-1976) member of the Communist Party of Romania
since the interwar period, when it was illegal. After the Communists took
power, he became Minister of Internal Affairs.
20
Octavian Roske, Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia, 1949-1962, [The
Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania, 1949-1962] Arhivele Totalitarismului I/3 (1993), 160.
21
ntovrire was an intermediate stage between private property to socialist
property. This form was based on its members collective work, without their
possessions (land, animals, production means) being collectivized. Frts,
Brlea Colectivizarea n Maramure, 11.
22
Frts, Brlea Colectivizarea n Maramure, 11.
It can practically be said that this second period began together with the
meeting of the Politcal Bureau of the Central Committee of the Romanian
Workers Party of 19 November 1952, which saw the unanimous
approval of the proposal those arrested for non-political acts for late
seeding, late tax payment, late registry of collection quotas, incorrect
submission of produce to the collectives, the commission of minor forest
or grazing infractions, as well as the craftsmen to be released.23
The delay in the transformation of agriculture was much more obvious
after the death of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (5 March 1953), and especially after the Plenary of the CC of the PMR of 19-20 March 1953. Despite all of this, a long series of administrative measures (restrictions and
interdictions in the commercialization of produce) serve to prove that the
authorities had not given up on their final goal but had merely changed
their methods. One example of this is perhaps the Decision no. 4172 of
December 1953, referring to quotas of meat, milk and wool, which favored members of the cooperative or of collective agriculture houses,
while peasants not included in these who owned more than 2 hectares of
land were required to render part of their quotas in pork, regardless of
whether or not they raised pigs.24
Similar decisions were made in this period and they maintained constant
economic pressure on peasant landowners. Even if the violence became
less intense, the spirit of the rural population was permanently monitored
by the Militia and Securitate.25
The events in Hungary in October 1956 again slowed the campaign,
however, as Romanias leaders sought to regroup in hopes of forestalling
similar movements.26 However, this situation would not last for long.
23
Eugen Denize, Partidul i politica de represiune. edina Biroului Politic al

CC. al PMR din 19 noiembrie 1952, [The Party and the Political Repression.
The Meeting of Politburo of CC of PMR from November 19, 1952] Memoria
46 (2004), 41.
24
Iancu, ru, Trac, Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia, XLIV.
25
Marius Oprea, Transformarea socialist a agriculturii: asaltul final, 19531962, [The Socialist Transformation of Agriculture: The Final Assault, 19531962] in Dobrincu, Iordachi, rnimea i puterea, 87-88.
26
448 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
Methods of Repression and Restriction of the Population

While the entire process of collectivization was carried out under repression, there were several significant moments when this was accentuated.
The responsibility for the implementation of the many repressive
measures against the peasants rested with the Militia and Securitate,
which closely supported party activists in their mission of guidance
and, finally, of forcing the rural population to accept collectivist agriculture. Further, the two repressive institutions periodically write reports on
the spirit of the class enemy from rural areas and the ways the partys
policies were applied. These documents were used by policy-makers to
establish strategies against the peasants.
To illustrate, generally, the repressive measures aimed at the peasants, we
recall the deportations and relocations of the population, which had a major impact at the beginning of collectivization. Thus, through the Decision of the Council of Ministers (HCM) No. 1154/26 October 1950, later
modified by HCM No. 344/15 March 1951, the Minister of Internal Affairs was given the authority to establish forced domicile for certain categories of people, including families of former exploiters. Deportation
and relocation were used quite frequently, especially as repressive
measures after revolts and protests of the peasants. For example, just in
the summer of 1949, following a peasant revolt, 236 families were evacuated from the Arad, Bihor, Baia Mare and Sibiu regions, while the next
summer another 94 families from the southern part of the country.27
But the largest wave of deportations took place in June 1951, when over
12,000 families, representing over 43,000 people, from over 250 localities around the western border of Romania were deported and assigned
forced domicile in Brgan28. The decision was made based on the tense
relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, and implicitly with
27
Romanian Information Services Archive (hereafter cited as RISA), Documentary

Fund, file no. 7778, vol. 36: 36-37, apud Cristina Roman, Transformarea forat a
proprietii agricole individuale n proprietate colectiv represiunea (19491953), [Forced Conversion of Individual Collective Ownership of Agricultural
Property Repression (1949-1953)] in Stat i via privat n regimurile comuniste [The State and the Private Life in Communist Regimes], eds. Cosmin
Budeanc, Florentin Olteanu (Iai: Polirom Publising House, 2009), 108.
28
Plains area very sparsely populated in southeastern Romania, with a very harsh
climate.
Romania. But the communist authorities took advantage of this pretext to

also strike a blow at the local rural population, which was a large portion
of those deported.29
Although exact numbers are not known, the number of people deported to
Brgan, Dobrogea or other parts of the country during 1949-1962 is estimated at approximately 200,000 people.
Some of the many other normative acts pushed on rural residents were
Decree No. 6/14 January 1950 and HCM No. 1554/12 August 1952,
which allowed for the creation of work units, i.e. work colonies and battalions, to which thousands of wealthy people and peasants were transferred.30 As in other cases, the provisions of these normative acts left
room for abusive interpretation. Thus, Decree No. 6 proclaims that those
who through their actions, direct or indirect, threatened or tried to
threaten the popular democratic regime, burdened or tried to burden the
realization of socialism in the Romanian Peoples Republic could be
punished. Later, a command of the general director of the Peoples Security (O. 100/3 April 1950) extended the provisions of this decree to an
almost unlimited number of people.31 Just about any behavior considered
insubordinate or out of line with the governments measures could be
punished by time in prison camps from 6 months to 2 years, with the
option of extended punishment up to 5 years. The fact that the measure
also applied to rural residents can be seen by the fact that the order
contained special provisions. So impediment or resistance to
collectivization, collection, plans for seeding or joining of land could
automatically bring internment in work camps on themselves.
For a better illustration of the level of political repression aimed at the
peasants just in the first years, we mention that, just between 1 September
1948 and 7 November 1949, the Securitate detained 23,597 people,
10,152 peasants (4,518 middle class, 2,979 poor, 2,655 wealthy), while,
29
30
31
RISA, Documentary Fund, file no. 7778, vol. 36, f. 37, apud Roman, Transformarea forat a proprietii..., 108.
RISA, Documentary Fund, file no. 10957, ff. 1-2, 8, apud Roman, Transformarea forat a proprietii..., 109.
RISA, Documentary Fund, file no. 7778, vol. 36, ff. 64-65, apud Roman,
Transformarea forat a proprietii..., 109.
450 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
between 1951 and 1952, 34,738 peasants were arrested. Of these, 22,088
were wealthy, 7,226 middle class and 5,504 poor.32
Unfortunately, the exact numbers of peasants who were arrested and sent
to prison for opposing collectivization is not known, but, for example, the
figures mentioned in the Party newspaper, Scnteia, and by historian
Dennis Deletant are 80,000, of which 30,000 were judged publicly.33
Likewise, there were many cases of demonstrative executions, with many
peasants being killed by the Securitate without being convicted simply
for demonstrating against the regime and collectivization. In the majority
of cases, victims were publicly exposed, the executions obviously serving
to intimidate the population.
During this period there were also many peasant revolts and uprisings,
cases in which the Securitate and Militia intervened, usually violently,
resulting in dead, wounded and many arrested and deported. The most
famous such uprisings on the part of the peasants were those in Bihor,
Arad, Suceava (1949), and Giurgiu (1950) counties. These types of popular
revolts also occurred during the last stage of collectivization, such as in
Vrancea and Arge counties (1960), Olt (1961) and Dmbovia (1962).
The Final Stage of the Process of Collectivization of Agriculture
As previously mentioned, the final stage of the process of collectivization
of agriculture took place between 1957-1962. This was the final assault
on the village, in the context of the communist regime.34 This final stage
was especially characterized by the use of violent methods to reach the
final goal, the complete regimentation of the peasantry in associative
agricultural structures.35
32
Dorin Dobrincu, Colectivizarea agriculturii i represiunea mpotriva rnimii

din Romnia (1949-1962), [The Collectivization of Agriculture and the
Peasantry Crackdown in Romania (1949-1962)] in Comunism i represiune n
Romnia, [Communism and Repression in Romania], ed. Ruxandra Cesreanu
(Iai: Polirom Publishing House, 2006), 115.
33
Scnteia, December 7, 1961; Dennis Deletant, Romania under Communist
Rule (Bucharest: Civic Academy Foundation, 2006), 87.
34
Bora, Colectivizarea agriculturii n fosta Regiune administrativ Cluj, 95.
35
Dan Salaga, Aspecte privind procesul de colectivizare. Comuna Cudalbi, ianuarie
1958, [Issues on Collectivization. Cudalbi Village, January 1958] in Totalitarism
i rezisten, teroare i represiune n Romnia comunist [Totalitarianism and
The intensification of the pressures on the peasantry during the first part
of 1958 again drew a reaction of rejection on their part, revolts and
uprisings being recorded in many localities throughout the country. The
response of the authorities didnt take long to appear and brought about
new repressive legislative measures. For example, Decree No. 89 of 17
February 1958 allowed that certain workplaces could name people who
through their actions impede or attempt to impede state order, when this
is not already an infraction.36 The relativity of guilt allowed for the interpretation of the law such that it could be used simply to punish those
considered undesirable, and to intimidate the population. Later, through
HCM Nr. 282 of 5 March, referring to the application of Decree No. 89,
it was established that the duration of internment in work colonies should
be between 2 and 6 years, this decision belonging to the Minister of Internal Affairs.37
In autumn 1958, the Party announced its plan to push collectivization to
conclusion by 1962, three years ahead of the initial plan. The balance of
forces was now very different from that of earlier years. Owing to price
of trends unfavorable to agriculture, villages that had once been fairly
independent of the center became more dependent on it by supplementing
agricultural incomes with industrial and seasonal work.38 This attitude
was established when the elite launched its second generalized assault on
the peasantry so as to complete collectivization in the next few years. The
peasantry was weakened. The CC Plenary of 26-28 November 1958 gave
the signal for this new campaign to bring the peasants under control,
ending with their defeat in 1962.39
Resistance, Terror and Repression in Communist Romania] ed. Gheorghe Onioru
(Bucharest: National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives, 2001), 154.
36
Hotrre cu privire la aplicarea Decretului no. 89 din 17 februarie 1958 pentru
instituirea unor msuri privind asigurarea ordinii de stat (Decision on the application of Decree no. 89 of February 17, 1958 establishing measures to ensure order state), in Roske, Abraham, Ctnu, Colectivizarea Agriculturii n
Romnia, 480.
37
Hotrre cu privire la aplicarea Decretului no. 89, in Roske, Abraham,
Ctnu, Colectivizarea Agriculturii n Romnia, 480.
38
39
Stelian Tnase, Elite i societate. Guvernarea Gheorghiu-Dej, 1948-1965
[Elite and Society. Governance of Gheorghiu-Dej, 1948-1965] (Bucharest:
Humanitas Publishing House, 1998), 143.
452 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
Among the additional weapons of the final assault were increasingly

heavy penalties for threats to public order and other offenses, of which
a network of informers for the Securitate kept Party cadres well apprised.
There were also multiple means of intimidation. Among them were forms
grounded in familial relations: factory workers originally from villages
would be sent home to persuade their family to join, lest the worker lose
his job; families would be threatened with expulsion of their children
from school; teachers would humiliate the children of those who hadnt
joined by making them stand and mocking them, so they would then
plead with their parents to sign up; and so on. This time, however, there
were more incentives of other kinds. Activists would promise money or
gifts to peasants for joining or special deals, such as that they did not
have to bring all their animals or land, or could take the harvest from their
land in the first year, or could remove a hectare from the Collective
Agriculture Household (GAC) for their daughters marriage.40
As mentioned, repression against peasants was the main characteristic of
this period. The frequency of arrests and forms of brutality waxed and
waned as the collectivization drive was intensified and relaxed. With the
final assault, beginning in late 1958, the number of arrests and labour
colony and prison internments increased astoundingly, as the regime
equated any action hostile to collectivization with attempts to undermine
the political system. Harsh penalties were meted out for offences like
instigating peasants against joining the collectives or to withdraw from
them, threatening the functionaries charged with implementing
collectivization, writing petitions for anyone who wanted to withdraw
from GAC, criticizing GACs, or participating in actions against them.41
In general, peasants who opposed the regime with force ended up in
prison, or dead, but they could be imprisoned for much less, such as for
merely refusing to join their voluntarily constituted GACs. They could
be jailed for insulting the GAC president, or for failing to follow orders to
plow under the stubble of their newly harvested fields in some unmeetable time frame, or for urging others to withdraw from the collectives, or for spreading rumors that the regime would soon collapse
because the Americans were coming.42
40

Octavian Roske, Final report, Collectivization project, authors files, 2003,
104-129, apud Gail Kligman, Katherine Verdery, 148.
42
41
It must also be kept in mind that Soviet troops were withdrawn from
Romania in 1958. To prove to Moscow that they had total control of the
country, the communists undertook a series of measures to assure the internal security of the regime. Some of them brought about modifications
to the Penal Code, which became tougher than the previous version from
1949. The new provisions of the Penal Code (especially article 209, establishing major punishments for crimes against the social order an
article used frequently to convict peasants43) and the intensification of the
process of collectivization of agriculture led to a wave of arrests and very
harsh sentences. For example, in 1958, 6,211 people were serving terms
for crimes against state security (not including those imprisoned without
conviction), and in December the number of political prisoners had
reached 10,125, and by January 17,613 people.44
As far as legislation supporting collectivization, in Decree No. 3 of 9
January 1959, the establishment of Collective Agriculture Households
(GACs), Agricultural Production Cooperatives (CAPs) and other associative forms was delegated only to the executive committees of the Regional Popular Councils (Sfaturi Populare Regionale), or of subordinate
towns (art. 1), with the abrogation of Decree 319/1949 (art.2), which provided for the establishment of GACs on the proposal of the Minister of
Agriculture through decisions emitted by the Council of Ministries (art.
II).45 The normative act proved once again the intention of deciding political factors to grow the socialist agricultural sector through any possible
means.
The fact that the theme of collectivization was an unusually important
one is shown in the fact that in a very short time, on 30 March 1959, a
new decree was published in the Official Bulletin, No. 115/1959, with the
aim of the liquidation of the remains of any form of human exploitation
in agriculture, with the aim of continuing to raise the material and cultural
standard of living of the peasant working class and of the development of
the socialist structure. More concretely, this new normative act prohibited the partial giving or leasing of lands, while lands that could no long43
Octavian Roske, Accente n strategia colectivizrii. Articolul 209 Cod Penal,

[Highlights in the Strategy of Collectivization. Article 209 of Penal Code]
Arhivele Totalitarismului II/1-2 (1994), 277-312.
44
Cartea alb a Securitii [The White Book of Securitate], vol. III, 1958-1968
(Bucharest: Romanian Information Service, 1994), 1207, note no. 75.
45
Bora, Colectivizarea agriculturii n fosta Regiune administrativ Cluj, 95.
454 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
er be cultivated would be transferred to the GACs or other socialist agricultural organizations.46 Effectively, the decree was aimed at the liquidation at any price of the wealthy and the spreading of socialist agricultural
structures, the acceleration of the forced transformation of agriculture,
aiming to be a new impulse of the cooperatist movement, the mass transfer of the peasantry from the agricultural collectives (ntovririle) to
the cooperatives (CAP).47
Therefore, the new normative act instituted a supplementary pressure
over those who had not yet signed up for GACs, their lives outside of the
system becoming harder and harder. The result of this measure was, by
the end of 1959, 71 percent of Romanias arable land and 73 percent of
its peasant households were in socialist organizations.48
The campaign was briefly relaxed for part of 1960, then resumed in
December of that year at the cost of still more peasant revolts. Teams of
twenty to thirty activists put constant pressure on peasants who had not
yet signed up, ignoring the principle of free consent in their
determination to complete the drive in 1962.49
The End of Collectivization
After 12 years since the debut of the process of collectivization, it was
nowhere near the level that would have satisfied the communist
authorities. Politically, the power of the communist state was already
consolidated, but in the rural area, the peasants still refused to give up
their private property.
In this context, at the Plenary of the CC of the PMR of 30 June 1 July
1961, the subject of the closing of the historical process of collectivization of agriculture was introduced. Among other things, during the event,
a request was made for the intensification of the measures of economic
46
Buletinul Oficial al RPR, no. 10, March 30, 1959, 1-3.

Aliana clasei muncitoare cu rnimea muncitoare n Romnia [The Alliance
between Working Class and Peasantry in Romania] (Bucharest: Editura
Politic, Political Publishing House, 1969), 512-513, apud Bora, Colectivizarea agriculturii n fosta Regiune administrativ Cluj, 96.
48
Dumitru andru, Reforma agrar din 1945 n Romnia [The Land Reform in
Romania in 1945] (Bucharest: National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism, 2005), 58.
49
47
consolidation of collectivist structures. In these conditions, in the following period, by early 1962, regional and district Party organizations were
sending out teams of activists with instructions not to return home until
they had signed people to GACs.50
The decisions made at the Plenary of 1961 and the actions which
followed led, after a battle of 13 years with owners and after the rural
world was subjected to repeated acts of violence and various overtly
coercive legislative measures, to the objective of the collectivization of
agriculture being finally reached in 1962. Thus, during the Plenary of the
CC of the PMR in Bucharest of 23-25 April 1962, the balance sheet of
activities undertaken by the party in the domain of the socialist transformation of agriculture was created. The Plenary was organized to announce the end of collectivization to party leadership, but it also had the
role of preparing the Extraordinary Session of the Great National Assembly. This was to take place in Bucharest, and a grandiose spectacle dedicated to the grand event was desired, to be enjoyed also by the masses.51
After only several days, during 27-28 April 1962, was the Extraordinary
Session of the Grand National Assembly, and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
officially announced the end of the process of collectivization of agriculture. The communist leaders closed their discourse affirming that the
current session will remain written forever in the annals of our history.
The victory of socialism in the villages will have a profound impact
throughout all domains of the countrys socioeconomic life, give a huge
advantage to the productive work of our people for the completion of the
construction of socialism...52 Unfortunately, Gheorghiu-Dej was very right
in regard to the effects that collectivization would have on Romanian society, but, viewed retrospectively, these were more harmful than positive.
As far as the results, in numbers, of collectivization as presented at the
time, the socialist structures of property held 96% of the arable land sur50

Cosmin Budeanc, ncheierea procesului de colectivizare a agriculturii i reflectarea n pres, [The Completion of the Collectivization of Agriculture and
Media Coverage] Analele Sighet 9. 1961-1972. rile Europei de Est ntre
sperana reformei i realitatea stagnrii [Sighet Annals 9. 1961-1972. Eastern
European Countries between the Hopes of Reform and the Reality of Stagnation], ed. Romulus Rusan (Bucharest, Civic Academia Foundation, 2001), 217.
52
Scnteia, XXI, no. 5512, 28 April 1962; Romnia Liber, XX, no. 5454, 28
April 1962.
51
456 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
face of the country and 93.4% of the agricultural land, and consisted of
3,201,000 families, while peasant private property had dropped considerably, from 88% to 3.5%.53 What was not shown, however, in the report
presented by Gheorghiu-Dej was that the vast majority of land that had
been included in collectivist structures had been subsumed gradually,
through violent or administrative means.54
Referring to the Extraordinary Session of the Grand National Assembly
of 27-28 April 1962 in Bucharest, it is interesting to mention a symbolic
fact, that, alongside the deputies of the Grand National Assembly, 11,000
peasants also participated, presidents of all of the GACs, specialists
working in agricultural production, workers from state collectives and auto
and tractor stations, scientists, engineers and lead workers from farming
machinery factories and the chemical industry, and party and state employees.55 The number 11,000 was not chosen arbitrarily, but referred to the
number of so-called victims of the peasant revolt of 1907. The number was
clearly a propagandistic exaggeration, but the presence of such a large
number of agricultural workers could be seen as evidence of the cynicism
of the communist authorities. Thus, after destroying the peasantry as a
social class, as a final humiliation, the communists gathered their
representatives for the festivities on closing the process of collectivization
of agriculture, to applaud and celebrate.
The Repression in the Last Phase of Collectivization. Micro Case Study
In many places, peasants were arrested and convicted. We will further
present the case of the Ciorti village, in modern-day Vrancea county,
then part of the Rmnicu Srat county. At the beginning of collectivization,
53
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Raport cu privire la ncheierea colectivizrii i reorganizarea conducerii agriculturii, prezentat la sesiunea extraordinar a
Marii Adunri Naionale, 27 aprilie 1962 [The Report on the Collectivization
of Agriculture and Management Reorganization, Presented at the Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly, April 27, 1962] (Bucharest: Editura
Politic, 1962), 287. For a more detailed perspective of how the conclusion of
the process of collectivization of agriculture was illustrated in the press of the
time, see also Budeanc, ncheierea procesului de colectivizare a agriculturii..., 212-230, Tnase, Elite i societate,186.
54
Iancu, ru, Trac, Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia, LXIV.
55
Scnteia, XXI, no. 5512, 28 April 1962; Romnia Liber, XX, no. 5454, 28
April 1962.
many massive revolts took place in Vrancea and, as a response, the

authorities interfered brutally. In Ciorti, in 1952, the Iosif Ranghe
Collective Agricultural Household (GAC) was founded.56 In nearby Satu
Nou were two collectives of type TOZ. Acording to documents of the
time, in autumn of 1957, the majority from the two collectives expressed
their desire to subscribe to the Iosif Ranghe GAC.57
Two former leaders of the collectives, who had became regular members,
penned a letter to the Central Council of the Romanian Workers Party
(CC al PMR) in January 1958 where they claimed that they had been
forced to dissolve those collectives and subscribe to the GAC. According
to the official documents, this was not true, because the subscriptions
were made by free will, no peasant forced by anyone. But if we consider
that the discontent of the peasants with the associative forms were
obvious, and that the the official documents regularly mystified reality,
we believe that the two were telling the truth. What is certain is that they
convinced 45 people to sign a petition that they want to leave the GAC,
but the authorities did not tolerate this type of opposition. Also, they
could not accept such a large number leaving a GAC, as it could provide
an example for others.
Therefore, the authorities reacted swiftly, and, on 25 January 1958, 10
peasants from Ciorti were arested, investigated and tried. It was
established that 8 of them had met and together created the memo to the
Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party (CC al PMR). When
they learned that, in another village, Sptreasa, similar subversive actions had taken place, they destroyed the letter. Nevertheless, to set an
example for other peasants who might want to oppose the regime, they
were convicted to 6 months to 2 years of incarceration for public
instigation. In some cases the penalties were increased. In March,
another two people were arrested and convicted.
Considering that Ciorti was not big, the arrests had the result expected
by the authorities: the intimidation of the population. Similar situations
occured in the vast majority of rural localities in Romania and represented a characteristic of collectivization the use of violence, abuse and
threats on the population.
56
57
Iosif Renghe (1904-1952), communist from the time the party was illegal.
National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives, Penal Fund, file no.
15187, vol. 2, f. 64v.
458 ___________________________________________ Cosmin BUDEANC
Conclusions
The process of collectivization of agriculture was not a linear one but
contained frequent reversals and modifications. The shape of the
campaign was constrained by both disagreements among the leadership
and unrelenting resistance from peasantry, as well as by practical problems
such as the food requirements of the growing urban population.58
Additionally, the impact that collectivization had was a major one, both on
an individual or family level and the level of the village considered as an
entity. For the most stubborn landowners, the decision of the authorities to
finish the process of collectivization meant deportations, physical and
psychological pressure, arrests and convictions. Although Romanias
collectivization came nowhere near the level of violence and destruction
caused by the same process in the Soviet Union, recourse to violence
remains nonetheless a fundamental feature of it.59
With all of the opposition manifested by a part of the community, the result desired by the authorities was finally realized: the socialist transformation of agriculture. Although the ideas at the root of collectivization
were considered valid by the representants of the authorities of the time,
both the decisions regarding collectivization and its effects finally proved
detrimental to the majority of village residents. The comparison between
the evolution of the collectivized localities and the non-collectivized ones
is the best argument for this affirmation.
The short-term effects, besides the poverty of the peasants, included the
alienation of them from their traditional values. For 13 years, residents of
the villages lived under almost constant terror, one of the communists
main goals being to convince them to give up their property. The loss of
their land put many of them in the situation of being unable to sustain
themselves and their families. In many cases, this was one of the motives
that drove many (especially the young) to leave their home towns and
move towards the cities looking for work. The effect was the
depopulation of the villages and the uprooting of many familes. Also,
accustomed to a specific lifestyle, many of those who moved to the city
had a hard time adapting and integrating into a new lifestyle, and the
consequences of these poor adaptations can be seen even decades later.
58
59

The values system of the rural areas changed, as well, irreversibly. Those
who, through work, had made up the elites of these communities, were subjugated, both economically and, sometimes, physically. Their places were
taken by a pseudo-elite consisting of representatives of the new regime,
who, at least at the beginning, were chosen from the margins of society.
In the long term, the most important consequence was the elimination of
a social category, peasantry, from the national economic circuit, which
had had a major role in the countrys evolution. The effects of this social
engineering can still be seen today, when, because of the changes
brought on more than half a century ago, Romanias agricultural potential
is not fully realized, strongly influencing the economic development of
the country.
The Rural Population under the Surveillance of Securitate

during the Totalitarian Regime in Romania (1948-1989)
Valentin VASILE
The instauration of a totalitarian regime must be quickly strengthened
through a series of social and economic control measures in order to prevent possible seizures that would endanger its existence. On this reason,
the informative-operative structures are charged with carrying out missions to strengthen the new political power.
In late 1940s, Romania officially entered the ranks of states to the Soviet
Unions orbit, and the new developments generated an unconditional adherence to the Stalinist ideology and Soviet model application in everything that meant economic, social, cultural relations, etc. In addition to
deeply repressive legislation, producing the phenomena known as nationalization of enterprises, agricultural collectivization, nationalization buildings etc., there were added the extensive punishment
operations of former members of historic political parties or Legionary
Movement, landlords, bourgeoisie and kulaks, categorized hostile elements, generating waves of unrest.
The new guidelines demanded participation of the population in the process of implementing the new ideology, but a part of the voluntarism of
people had to be supported and amplified. Etatism and dirigisme charged
by the new rulers were not used by the broad categories of people and, as
such, the actions of the party activists had to be pandered. The interventions were supported by the intelligence structures recognized as Securitatea Statului, one of the repressive institutions in the first two decades
of the totalitarian regime.
Why were the informative organs necessary and how did they manifest?
Since ancient times, the eyes and the ears of people were represented by
temporal secret trusted entities of the political leaders. The servitude of
such an institution was ensuring both the understanding of peoples state
of mind (political, social and economic issues) and manifestations of
neighbouring countries or those that are enemies.
The communists power had been strengthened through the appeal of two
instruments: the party, by its members, and Securitatea, a new institution
with many inexperienced employees in informative work. Since Romania
The Rural Population under the Surveillance of Securitate during... _______ 461
in the 1940s was deeply rural and agricultural, it was necessary to carry out
informative and operative surveillance activities into the peasant problem.
The state of affairs within the village had been known by the state leadership by the summaries drawn up by the Securitates structures. Policy
makers utilized the information in interpretable forms and with variable
results. The approach aimed to bring to the readers attention the methods, the actions and the results of the informative-operative work carried
out by the intelligence structures during the post-war totalitarian regime.
Also, the study is divided into three chronological clippings, 1948-1967,
1968-1980, and 1981-1989, and is trying to define the types of prevailing,
repressive or preventive actions and the effects of organization and reorganization informative-operative work in the rural areas.
1948-1967
The village world was shaken at the beginning of March 1949 by The
Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party plenary meeting for
triggering the collectivization of agriculture. For this reason the situation
of wealthy peasants, called kulaks, and landlords, groups perceived as
hostile elements, had to be carefully studied, watched and possibly led.
The asserted objective was the neutralization of the two categories, but it
needed information about those targeted; Securitatea and Militia could
exert pressure and repression in order to achieve targets. Note that the
numerical share of the declared enemies was insignificant in the great
mass of peasantry. Therefore, it was indicated to extend the informativeoperative activities in the whole rural world.
The agricultural activities were closely monitored by the informative organs through the cohorts of population who were working in this area, but
also due to the economic importance held by the land sector in the national economy. For these reasons a series of enforcement orders issued
by the General Directorate for State Security (DGSS) between years
1949-1951 were elaborated and disseminated. The main goals imposed to
the operative workers were the aggressive mass events (attacks, arsons,
etc.), the silent oppositions at the wheat shifting to the area or at the quotas delivery, the pointing out of some negative aspects of the local bodies
work (imposing larger quotas, lack of tact and favouritism) and the laying
down of statistics regarding the complaints number made by peasants in
the quotas problem.
462 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
After the principle the party dispose, Securitatea executes, the expanding
range of shares had been suggested, and, in this way they were keeping
track of the entire circuit agrarian works. Among many provisions, most of
them insisted on cultural maintenance, preparation and timely execution of
the collecting of the harvest. The informative organs needed to collect a
range of data highlighting the negative aspects (the lack of fuel and labour,
abuse, hostile actions, the malfunction of agricultural stock belonging to
individual household) establishing the causes and accountabilities.
Peasants, regardless of their social status, were the highest category exposed in relation to the informative structures. The resistance to collectivization, both violent and passive, was one of the greatest challenges of the
political regime, and of the repression structures (Securitatea Statului, being one of the engines of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). The narrated
battle for the collectivization of agriculture was restored extensively in
many historiographical works published in the 25 years of postcommunism; however, there are data that fill the information panel.
In this way, in the documents held by Securitate it has been emphasized,
recurrently, one of the most reluctant practices of the time, the instigation.
If instigation actions were observed, the evidence was immediately collected, sending by courier the files within four days. Smarandache Marin and
Ciorb Ion, form Ileana village, Ilfov County, manifested in a hostile way
to the regime, especially on the collect laws, saying among other things that
it is time to put on your hand on cudgel. They said this among local peasants who were preparing the area for threshing. Ptracu Georghe, middle
peasant, from Slculeti village, Ilfov County, asked the villagers to get
their hands on the forks and to beat the man with the collecting.1
In the Ciuperceni village, Vlasca, Ionescu Marin, a teacher who incited
people against the collecting and subsequently was retained, by the Securitate organs, was identified. Because of this, the peasants reacted and, in
return, they seized two political activists. The immediate result was the
mobilization of Securitate and Militia workers from that area to settle the
dispute. At the arrival of the Ministry of Internal Affairs bodies, the villagers did not scare and they even disarmed and detained the members of
the intervention corp. Things escalated and two platoons of Militia and
1
Arhiva Consiliului Naional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitii [The Arhive

of National Council for Study the Securitate Archives, hereafter: ACNSAS)],
Documentary Fund, file no. 7, vol. 1, 506.
one of Securitate were sent. They acted in force on the night of 6/7 July
1951, and killed two peasants.2
In some villages actions for abolition of the cooperative sheepfolds were
organized, with shepherds chasing sheep and recovering them, while the
People's Council President approved the removal of sheepfolds. Note that
the peasants success was ephemeral and soon after guilty people were
arrested and investigated by the Securitate bodies.
The improvement methods and types of action used by Securitate, but also the legal and institutional regulations, enabled it gradually to carry out
some of the attributes, the monitoring and information ones. The organization of informative work tasks in the villages had been regulated by the
DGSS directive issued in1951. The rural knowledge objective pursued
(communes) involved the distribution of an officer who was responsible
for a sector that included several rural settlements (average of six to seven villages).
The operative worker was following all the DGSS issues, starting with
the hostile manifestations and kulaks instigations, the private and collective agriculture issues, the cooperative movement, trade, finance, elements of the former political parties, legionaries, the representatives of
different religions and sects, the members of the state apparatus, suspicious espionage elements, etc.3 The officer was carrying out his mission
with the help of the informative network, being in a position to recruit,
primarily unskilled informers for knowing the village problems and the
elements which provoked or instigated them. The effective recruitment
and granting the status of qualified informer involved several steps, from
data provided by the Militia to the schedule biographical, studying the
potential agent, approved by the district Securitate chief, ending with an
agreement and drafting an autobiography.4
The interest of structures was regarding the establishment of informative
lines in all village stratums (poor peasants, middle class, kulaks, legionnaires, etc.) and the officers role was essential. Under the phrase "binds
friendship with the working peasant", the officer was binding his personal
2
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 7, vol. 1, 507-508.

Partiturile Securitii. Directive, ordine, instruciuni (1947-1987) [Securitate
Scores. Directions, Orders, Instructions (1947-1987)], eds. Cristina Anisescu,
Silviu B. Moldovan, Mirela Matiu (Bucureti: Editura Nemira, 2007), 217.
4
Anisescu, Moldovan, Matiu, Securitate scores, 219.
3
464 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
relationships (accommodation, food, transport), which helped him in the

recruiting work, and meeting with residents and informers.5 The Securitates worker mission was difficult on the one hand because of the reluctance of most people across its activity and on the other hand because of
the high danger of revealing ties (the number of inhabitants was lower
than in urban settlements, the peasants attitude were not secret for the
other villagers and also the scarcity of places of conspiracy).
In order to confuse the suspicious people, they changed the accommodation and they dealt with as many citizens as possible. Discharging informative activities in villages was done by creating residencies; the
categories concerned to carry out these missions were members of people's councils, except the president, agricultural agents, health care workers, veterinarians, teachers, directors of cultural centres, postmen or
peasants with school education (residences should include five to ten unskilled informers).6 At the same time, the improvement of specific activities was needed, being co-opted to collaborate with Militia bodies (had
reliable data about inhabitants) and local government (facilitating whereabouts of operative information). Besides the village files, in cases of
larger economic objectives or isolated ones, it opened new objective files
(state or collective households, machinery and tractor stations) according
to the instructions received from the region.7
From the multitude of village files opened in the 1950s, the document
type comes to the fore: the decision to open and close the file, village historian, plans to search for information and informative measures, tables
with suspects, annual informative synthesis, mentions of informative
network, as well as a series of actions initiated according to the problem
pursued. Also, the files had to contain data about two enemy categories:
kulaks (wealthy peasants) and hostile elements which were included in
collection units (centres and bases responsible, collectors), being owners
of material goods and money, and their political convictions were contrary to the totalitarian regime.8
Through the work plans were provided concrete measures for identification of the hostile elements and their registration, informative framing of
5

7
8
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 16.373, vol. 4, 115.
6
them, increasing the quality of the informative network and updating

stock records.9 Some examples of objective village files reflected the realities of the epoch in which most Securitate officers were developing a
poor sense of duty and the rural world became increasingly stiffened, the
effect of economic and social organization measures applied by the totalitarian regime.
The village files had incomplete data, or worse, were out of use; also, if
there were opportunities for informative recruitment and penetration, no
action was taken (for example, in the Bogdneti village, Vrancea County, there were registered 63 legionaries, 46 kulaks, 16 former members of
the National Peasant Party (P.N.T.) and 10 of the National Liberal Party
(P.N.L.) who were considered as suspects, but none of them was not recruited as an informer).
New forms of economic organization in rural areas [collective farms
(GAC), State farms (GAS) machines resorts Tractors (SMT)] had received attention of the informative bodies; watching new entities was
similar to that of village files, and it was based on the opening of a new
objective file. The new file respected the receipt of the documents proposed by the central leadership and taken to the regional council. The
search information plan, one of the pillars of the informative work, contained the following priorities: covering with informers (skilled, unskilled; previously, calculate the number of employees from the
objective, number of suspicious elements and placing them on objectives,
level of vulnerability of different sections, workshops, etc.), active surveillance of hostile elements put into the lens (supervision for a period of
between two and six months, and the resulting material was deposited in
a file folder attached to the objective file, proposing different solutions
from removal under surveillance until the opening of verification actions), informative action itself (the method "informative encirclement"
performed on multiple lines of informers), cleaning of the production
units of hostile elements, informing upper bodies about the objective situation (writing of summaries concerning the state of mind and enemy activities in production, based on reports and informative notes).10
Among the targets under surveillance since the beginning of the fifth decade, we present the case of the Agricultural Cooperative Institutions "Tudor
9
ACNSAS, Microfilm-Fond Informativ [Informative File Microfilm Fund]

Dmbovia, file no. 26.845, vol. 3, roll 420, 28.
10
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 15.574, 15.
466 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
Vladimirescu" Pianul de Sus, Alba County (opened on 31st of December

1952 by the district Securitate office Sebe). The informative summaries
referred to the arms of work, agricultural work, the state machinery and
agricultural tools, sowing and harvesting campaigns, animal welfare, possibilities and stocks of the animal feed, cereal storage capacities, the alert
states of mind, actions of class enemies; materials were prepared based
on personal observations of Securitates workers and data collection from
informers. The informative activity within the framework of the GAC
was organized on the basis of work plans, aimed at: records and operative
supervision of suspects, former members of the traditional parties or Legionary Movement, as well as the transmission of data relating to the collectivists mood.11
Despite demands from Bucharest, the monitoring of major economic
structures in the rural world was not fully satisfactory. In Baia Mare region (29th of October 1953), 17 of the 57 collective farms hadnt had objective files; also many of the files were incomplete and did not appear in
concrete manifestations of the class enemy. Although the Securitate offices had triggered a series of sweeps, however, the results were modest
[more sources came from among those who had to be followed and the
numbers of agents were not enough (e.g. GAS Carei with over 1,500
workers was served by five informers)]; it is high time to point out that
the overwhelming majority of the agricultural association (an intermediate form of collectivist organization made up of a smaller number of
members) remained without informative registration.12
The Securitates workers activity was evaluated periodically and many
times they had highlighted the negative sides of their work. Criticism envisioned historic villages (many statistics without the influence of political abolished groups concerning population), tables suspects sheets, the
informative network was reduced and unfairly placed against the identified suspects categories (kulaks, former legionnaires, liberals or peasants).13 A lot of informative negligence in the surveillance of the socialist
objectives was noticed. Many of these were covered by a single informer
and, moreover unqualified. Although verification actions were open on
some elements were suspected of committing sabotage, in most cases
11
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 16.566, vol. 1, 5-6, 31-34, 42-45, 48,
68-69.
12
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 200, 210, 211, 213.
13
they were confined to obtain statements. An administrative and operational

analysis highlights a number of flaws in the content of the objectives files,
such as the lack of data characterizing the target and the scarcity or absence
of the informative summaries suggested an anarchic work.
The informative network in rural areas (1948-1967)
A weak point for many Securitates employees was the informers; many
were recruited on the basis of the incriminating materials and often as a
result of physical abuse and/or mental pressures. From the administrative
point of view the dossier met the requirements, but the ways of co-opting
the network and how the agent was studied were tributary to the professional work. Typically, research on the informative potential was stonewalled and capacities and possibilities of few collaborators were quasiinexistent. Against this background, in the villages, were not known the
real course of the threshing and collection campaign and contact with the
network was interrupted for months. Many verification files and informative actions were randomly opened, without any prospects for checking
existing material. The informative framing was achieved, to a significant
extent, on one line and with too few qualified informers. The action plans
were unrealistic, without remarkable positive results.
Large expenses, low results and failure in the informative sector generated a measure called networks cleaning. By the orders of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs no. 811 / 11th of October 1952 a revision of the whole information network was decided upon, aimed to clean the double agents,
misinformed and those incapable. The task was fulfilled, however, without respecting the rules of ethics; many informers with real informative
capabilities were abandoned since contact with the officer was discontinued for several months. The shock of such a decision was felt immediately, and the leadership ordered the network to be rechecked (a significant
part were reactivated).
After abandoning the improper informers they decided to conscript new
agents, only if that the operation was executed superficially and for this
reason, in many objectives the quality of network (intrusion in the privacy of elements considered hostile) was missing or, worse, there was no
informer. In the Lungeti village, Drgani district, Piteti region, there
were 3,000 people, including 44 kulaks and a nunnery, and there were only three informers (relations had been interrupted for months). Similar
468 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
cases were registered in the tefneti, Zlteni, Drgoeti, Dobroteasa villages and others.14 At the level of the district were recruited 156 informers (of which 13 qualified), but less than half were regularly contacted.
The situation registered in the Drgani district was representative all
over the country, and the Securitates files contained data confirming
failures in the informative work. Insufficient knowledge of the village realities under its multiple aspects (economic, cultural, spiritual or social)
was induced by improper activities in agriculture, especially during
threshing and of mandatory quotas collection.
The difficulties encountered in gathering information and, especially, the
understanding of the mechanisms of functioning of rural socio-economic
relations from the first post-war decade forced the Ministry of Internal
Affairs (MAI) to seek alternatives; the easiest and the most appropriate
way was further empowerment of Militia bodies to carry out preventive
and detective actions against hostile elements. According to the order of
The Ministry of State Security (MSS) no. 769 / 24th of April 1953, Militia
bodies had to step up the pace of informative work for identifying illegal
traders, brokers and producers that sold animals, meat, and milk, as well
as the instigators against the mandatory quotas; also of concern was a
category consisting of a variable number of collectors and purchasers
who had illegal occupations (they had cheated the producers at the collection or acquisition, sacrificing and introducing in the selling circuit the
meat and other goods obtained fraudulently).15
Detailing of the new duties were enshrined by the order MSS no. 1337 /
18th of June 1953, thus, the economic Militia was supervising the agricultural campaigns through an informative network of monitored targets,
discovering the instigators (information was passed to the Securitates organs, aiming to work out a set of measures against those guilty), it was
detecting persons who had committed sabotage actions (arson, destruction of agricultural machinery) or aggression against state officials and /
or were involved in clandestine trade (were making arrests, prosecution
and preparing criminal cases).16
14

ACNSAS, Fondul Direciei Juridice [Juridical Directorate Fund], inventory no.
3.611, vol. 1/1953, 156-157.
16
ACNSAS, Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.611, vol. 1/1953, 202203, 205.
15
The transfer of tasks toward the Militia equate, in theory with an increasing quality of the informative work, from knowing the concerns of former
legionnaires or members of democratic parties, kulaks, former landlords
to actions undertaken by foreign intelligence services, including in the
countryside. However, steps in data collection had been toilsome and often lacking in consistency; the causes for differences arising in the informative field certainly can be explained by mistakes committed or
reprinting. Among the most obvious errors, we mention recruitments
based on a superficial study of the candidates, using brutal methods or
intimidating potential informers, poor training of network and disinterest
in fulfilling orders from the central directions. The solution chosen for
new data has been widening the working base; recruitment of fresh elements was in line with a series of orders issued by the MAI, but the manner in which it was conducted did not respect the primacy of the initial
action. The aim, as a first phase, was the construction and sedimentation
of the new economic entities in rural areas (GAC, GAS, SMT), annihilating any attempt of the enemy class using the MAIs bodies.
Agenda changes provided the reformation of the entire network, including gradual renunciation to unqualified informers coming from the ranks
of the Romanian Workers' Party (PMR), meticulous study of all materials
received from the network, the direct involvement of leadership in informative work, expanding the recruitment policy of former legionaries
or members of the traditional parties, the sectarians (the infiltration of
checked informers in the places where sectarians recruited their new
members), Catholics and other groups; also, it had stepped up efforts in
the recruitment operations based on patriotic feelings and also the setting
up of meeting houses.
The Securitate workers weak points have been reported keenly in the
first decade of the totalitarian regime in relations with their subjects. At
the meetings of regional directorates of analysis are offered countless
negative examples. Thus, apart from hiring individuals in the network after a cursory check, mention is of tributary practices in obtaining information or frequent disclosure of "suppliers" in the public space. In the
many regional parts, using physical constraints for getting data still persist. For example, Slt. Stanculescu (Regional Directorate of Securitate
Oradea) had resorted to hooligan methods, introducing into the fire the
hand of the prisoner SP in order to recognize his participation in a coun-
470 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
ter-revolutionary organization.17 At Babadag district, Constanta region,

on some hostile elements targeted to be recruited electrocution by using a
telephone inductive was used as a method of persuasion.18
Besides investigators brutalities, intimidation of the existing agents is
added, in the case of using them as witnesses by the temporary arrest.
Although they were included in the stock records, informers were questioned as witnesses and, in many occasions, they produced their disclosure. The lack of professionalism or maliciousness was confirmed in
falsifying information materials and statements in the reconstruction of
criminal acts. The innocents arrest occurred constantly, and the case of
citizen VI, Stalin region, is concrete proof; thus lt. Polac, without an informational action, based on two statements taken from witnesses, dictated and signed by coercion, arrested VI, but after extensive research had to
free VI. The use of abusive methods generated a series of false confessions, which later had to be retracted, thus discrediting the Securitates
organs.19
The practices listed were prohibited and new courses of action were imposed, such as arbitrary arrests cessation (detention had to be made after a
preliminary documentation obtained by interviewing witnesses, experts
reports, official documents, etc.); withdraw the interrogation informers as
witnesses; the arrests were carried out only with the permission of the
prosecutor, based on the brief submitted by an employee of operative services and approved by the commander of the region and the detained person to be taken by investigative bodies; suppression of physical violence
against detainees or witnesses.20
The disclosure of collaboration with the intelligence services was a common phenomenon in the 1950s; the actors were both informers themselves and liaison officers. The informer "Viscol", being heavy with
wine, boasted in front of the citizens that Securitatea sent him into an action. The informer "Burdinau" was exposed because lt. Barbu was visiting him at home, and at a professional recycling course was caught
writing notes. The agent Muraru said in front of the workers that he
does not need the money of the institution, because Securitatea sends
17
ACNSAS, Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.611, vol. 2/1953, 43.
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 200, 163.
19
ACNSAS, Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.611, vol. 2/1953, 42-43.
20
18
monthly an envelope with money.21 Slt. Ciachi, Baia Mare, consuming

alcoholic beverages in a cooperative village with two informers, expressed to one of them, so look, he is also an informer, you are our trusted people.22 Many Securitates workers consumed alcohol during
missions, getting into direct touch with the informers in an advanced state
of intoxication and also had inappropriate connections with women. The
disclosure of the secret cooperation with the Securitatea occurred because
of the lack of training as well as because of the unprofessional behaviour
of informative bodies.
The inadequacies between fieldwork and official reports had been corrected through a series of orders of the minister. By order no. 15 / 14th of
March 1956 it was taken into account the substantial restructuring of the
network, changing working methods and the organization of the activity
related to reality. Starting from these premises, territorial structures had
to solve problems within four months from the issuance date of such provisions. The analyses in the territory had revealed, in unison, a failing of
its target. For example, in the region of Bacau, checking and cleaning the
ballast agency, double agents, and misinformed had been affected in 57%
(up to 15th of July 1956). The evaluation report inserts a series of shortcomings (superficial work, contact with the network without rhythm), but
highlights some positive results, such as the recruitment of former legionaries elements (they provided data on members grouped into distinct
camps and exposed activities of other former party colleagues). If in
March 1956 the network from Bacau was counting 1,637 qualified informers, their number dropped to 564, that of the residents from 129 to 5,
and the number of the meeting houses decreased from 259 to 183; in parallel, research actions were taking place in order to recruit new agents.23
Exclusions from the network were equivalent to the restricting activity of
Securitates bodies and the lack of staff in some villages; in special circumstances it was decided to redress contacts with certain agents previously abandoned for finding the attitude of certain objectives. In some
enterprises and in almost all villages and towns, the legionnaires were not
sufficiently supervised. Thus, in the Buhui district, Tazlu village, there
were 22 suspected legionnaire assemblies and there was no agent. From
21

23
22
472 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
Bacau, Zeletin, Ceahlu and other districts information had not been collected about the legion activities; also the tracing items from the former
traditional parties were almost inexistent. Criticisms were made in respect
to the issue of cults, sects (monks in Orthodox monasteries, reactionary
clergy, the situation of Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and others), the
fragile agency from economic objectives and the labour inefficiency in
identifying the persons who served hostile manifestos and documents (the
authors identification 14 of the 78 cases recorded in the Bacau region).24
The weak activity in the regional directorate was due to both the lack of
interest of the management bodies (the agency was disorganized, the
heads of territorial structures did not participate effectively in intelligence
work, the analyses were incomplete) and by enrolling, maintaining and
promoting officers who did not develop specific skills. Improving the operational situation occurred in the early 1960s, both in terms of target
files, and those personal files (individual tracking, network). The number
of agents was increasing and the average was 10 agents per officer in rural areas and 15 in urban areas. However, they were still calling on a set
of obsolete measures [choosing of marginal candidates (recruiting people
who had no ties with the obviousness elements, recruiting prospective
agents by militia) or using rigid methods in the recruitment (e.g. handcuffing) that produced negative results (weak agents with limited results,
collaboration avoidance)] with modest results; the need for attitudinal
changes and, in particular, for changes in practices was necessary.
Agent Sandu David, Roiesti-Horezu, on 24th of May 1961 recruited by
Capt. Castravete Ilie, provided notes that related to some minor irregularities in the GAC, which was known to all collectivists, but about former members of the PNT and PNL, for which he had been recruited, he
did not give anything. Agent Oros Carol on 27th of May 1960 was recruited by Lt. Maj. Ionescu Nicolae, the Drgani district, was a former
legionnaire who worked in education and was refusing to come to the
meetings, much less, to respond to the tasks that were communicated, citing various pretexts.25
The reactions of the Securitates workers had adapted to the challenges of
the era, and to study the candidates, their possibilities and capitalization
the data was to be carried out properly. Gradually, it started to recruit in24
25
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 16.527, vol. 22, 610-612.

formers through incentives and expanded the one based on the patriotic
feelings and, where this was required, compromising materials were used
to attract individuals to the collaboration. The beginning of the sixth decade was marked by the issue of collectivization (agitation during harvesting, illegalities committed by the GAC leadership, materialized by
stealing, the allocation of larger helpful lots, favouring some collectivists
by granting unfounded working days) as well as hostile actions resulting
in the leaflets, inscriptions and letters.
The new priorities in the field of labour were regulated by the Minister of
Internal Affairs in October 1962 and made reference to the network, work
actions, the activities to discover the authors of leaflets, letters and anonymous inscriptions with a counterrevolutionary nature and the organization of stock records. Control actions find that both workers and heads of
the Militia stations show more ambition and wishes respected concerning
the organization of meetings with agents (10-14 days), and in the recruitment actions compromising materials were not used excessively.26
However, some issues had not been fully resolved, and they were related
to obtain informational materials or recruiting informers. The operative
workers and heads of the Militia stations, in order to have materials to
check the candidates, suggested or even dictated the texts of informative
notes to the agents. The most recruitments were made at the local Militia
stations (many departments had established in the premises of the people
village hall), so that attracted the attention of the other people.
Another weak point was the convenience of some workers who did not
open new intelligence activities although they possessed many suspicious
elements; also, the insufficient work in discovering the authors of manifestos, inscriptions, and hostile letters was criticized. During 1960, 40
documents were spread and only 23 authors were discovered, the following year, 67 documents and 44 authors, and in 1962, 45 documents appeared and 25 authors were found. Unsatisfactory results were caused by
the superficial clues analysis the suspects did not include many people
from those who could commit such actions, the writing samples were collected with difficulty and the workers and their superiors delayed the execution.27
26
27

474 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
Protests (1948-1967)
The recently founded institution, Securitatea, participated in a series of
repressive actions against the peasantry. In order to eliminate the counterrevolutionary actions the troops of the Ministry were used, including
the help received from Securitate, for some spontaneous peasant movements, which started because of the measures taken by the politicaladministrative unit (mandatory collections, setting up collective farms,
agricultural tax, threshing at the area). The populations discontent was
expressed concisely, including through the slogans: We do not give any
grain to the collecting, We dont want cooperatives, Down with the
People's Village Hall, We want bread, We will not thresh at the areas, We pay in kind to the threshing, Our work is ours, We do not
want to give thieves wheat.28
The peasants did not use slogans only and they started the attack. They
interrupted the telephone connections, the activists party teams were either apostrophized or brutalized, and even sequestered; also, the villagers
put pressure on the Local Provisional Committees and policemen in the
village for ending the collecting actions or the collectivization actions.
During the demonstrations, women and children were put at the forefront
and the fighting arsenal consisted of forks, axes, scythes and hoes.
In order to counteract such actions, the abettors were arrested and/or dislocated, people committing acts of terror were executed, the telephone
wires were cut, and robbery and fires were used against those who did not
comply with legal summons. In 1949-1950, the most brutal peasant riots
were held in the counties (then regions) of western Romania, Oradea, Arad
and Timis. The most important action took place in Bihor county, where
17,441 peasants, from among 6.238 clashed with security forces; in terms
of social composition, the overwhelming majority was poor peasants,
17,441 (70.91%), followed by middle peasants, 4,069 (23.33%), and kulaks, 1,004 (5.75%).29
28
Arhivele Naionale Istorice, Fond Comitetul Central al Partidului Comunist

Romn Secia Administrativ-Politic [The Central National Historical Archives, Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party Fund Administrative-Political Section], file no. 17/1949, 117, 191.
29
The Central National Historical Archives, Central Committee of the Romanian
Communist Party Fund Administrative-Political Section, file no. 17/1949, 186.
In villages where aggressive actions took place, the riots were organized
systematically (chasing the local administrative leadership, burning documents related to collecting and to village hall archives, disarming Militia
workers). In response, the police forces mobilized the Militia, border
guards and Securitate troops and used their weapons. The intervention
troops included 315 Militia workers and 65 Securitate workers, and the
operations resulted in 28 people killed and 170 arrested (later 10 were
killed under the pretext of escape from the escort).30
The permanent presence of the Securitate officers or NCOs in rural areas
represented another pressure factor and when people (party activists, village hall employees) in charge with collectivization faced problems, the
Securitate organs uttered threats of arrest and investigations. Luca Teodor,
captain of Securitate, assigned to the Pietroani village, managed to increase in two days the area owned by the local joint agricultural association by 75 ha arable land as compared to 80 ha that had been registered in
25 days. Therefore, the officer stated: I believe that this achievement
was not only the result of the explanatory work carried out by me among
the peasants, but it was also due to the fact that I was the chief of the Securitate district. Some comrades of the team were taking advantage of
this by saying that the peasants must register themselves because the Securitate chief has come.31
Protests against the collectivization of agriculture took place during the
entire process, but the violent riots in the early 1950s did not happen
again. People choose another way to express their criticism towards the
joint agricultural associations (which had a hostile and hateful content
regarding the state and party leadership bodies which contributed to the
collectivization of agriculture) by using manifestos and slips of paper.
The president of the People's City Hall (Sfatul Popular) of the Potcoava
village, Slatina district found on the hedge fence of his courtyard the following poster: Comrade President you destroyed the world, but it's your
turn [...] to ask people to set fire to your house, only the walls shall remain32. On 8th of August 1964, a case file regarding an anonymous
30

Communist Party Fund Administrative-Political Section, file no. 17/1949, 45,
61, 118.
31
Communist Party Fund Administrative-Political Section, file no. 3/1959, 10.
32
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 824, vol. 1, 55.
476 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
letter sent to the president of the Agricultural Production Cooperative in

the Visina village (in which he was insulted) was opened; the file was
closed with unknown author.33
Another form of expression of the peasants' dissatisfaction with the collectivization was their attempts to submit requests in order to withdraw
themselves from the collectivist agricultural structures. On 25th of January 1961, about 200 citizens in Cireasov village, Slatina district, went to
the headquarters of the Collective Agricultural Institution and they asked
to receive back their enrolment requests (93 from 448 submitted in
1960).34 The efforts of peasants to substitute collectivization failed; their
attempts to oppose both physically and verbally to it did not produce positive results. Except certain hilly areas, which were not profitable, the entire agricultural real estate became State property, while a significant part
of the peasantry joined as cooperatives farmers.
1968-1980
The political changes of the leadership (1965) and the inauguration of a
path in the evolution of the Securitate (1967-1968), based on prevention
activities, influenced in a decisive way the next 25 years of totalitarian
regime. The tackling of the period 1968-1989 is connected to the organizational changes of the Securitate [the establishment of the Council for
State Security (CSS)] and to the assignment of additional tasks to Militia
bodies. On 31st of May 1968, a statistical study concerns the intelligenceoperative situation in the rural area (based on the informative network).
Thus, 353,590 people in 11,515 villages were found in the general records, but only 41,584 were included in the work base. The informative
network contained 11,918 people directly connected with the Securitate
officers and 19,261 were related with the heads of police stations; it is worth
mentioning that 819 Securitate officers were working at the countryside,
1,096 actions were being opened and 1,831 work files were prepared.35
The Militias role was consolidated by the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and of the President of CSS no. 175 / 1st of August 1969, art.
1, which stated: as of 1st of September 1969, the general informative
33

35
34
surveillance in rural areas shall be performed by the county Militia inspectorates through officers and non-commissioned officers from Militia
stations.36 The informative surveillance carried out by Militias workers
had two basic components, both to prevent and fight against the crimes
affecting the country's security, and those against the public property,
personal or private, against individuals, etc. the activity aimed to watch
over somebody ceased when obtaining the first referral information concerning one of the above-mentioned crimes.
The prevention consisted of the work done to prevent offences or to discover them shortly after they took place, before great damages occurred.
The informative side was vital; in case of a group of offenders, an informer was introduced among them; being well trained and guided, he
was supposed to make mischief and to convince the group members to
mistrust each other, by causing its dismantling. The MAIs employees
were forced to consider all alerts on committing crimes and determine
where, when, how, what and by whom they were committed. The next
step was to identify the author / authors and to discover the proofs. If the
crimes affected the state security, the Securitate officers were the ones
who should find evidence and execute the following activities (the intelligence structures and the Militia ones were collaborating when necessary). If the research was made up by Militia and the Securitate workers,
the management of work was for the latter (cf. art. 45 and 212 of the
Criminal Procedure Code).37
What were the socio-professional categories targeted by Militia and Securitate bodies?
The informative priorities were almost unchanged as compared to the
first two post-war decades, with an emphasis on the descendants of former legionaries, the convicted for crimes against state security, historical
party members, former activists of the fascist and nationalist-chauvinist
organizations (German, Hungarian, Ukrainian and others), and active
members of religious sects.38 One of the new elements was the activity of
foreign intelligence services and some organizations catalogued as reactionary that were trying to find tools among the population in order to
obtain interesting information. The actions would have been facilitated by
36
38
37
478 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
the vulnerability of some of the possible exporters of information (addictions, negative personality traits) that were to be found in the defence
production sector or within other important economic units, active military personnel, employees who had or knew state secrets or civil status
papers or handled weapons, ammunition, explosives.39
The surveillance work carried out by the Militia workers included targets
or places of interest in the rural areas that were not watched by the Securitate officers (state farms, Agricultural Production Cooperatives, Machinery and Tractor Stations, handicraft cooperatives, units of local
industries, historical monuments, tourist chalets, some smaller balneoclimateric resorts, forests, viaducts, tunnels, railway cantons, etc.). The
specific activities consisted of knowing the target, establishing the contact with the decision makers, studying the criminality state, organizing
the intelligence work and discovering offences related to the target, accompanied by other illegal facts that took place outside the supervised
area (arbitrage, smuggling, possession and traffic of gold and foreign currency, legal offences).
Therefore, the crime prevention and detection was supposed to be realized on the work lines (the NCOs of the Militia stations organized their
activity to prevent and discover special kinds of illegal acts), especially
the economic and legal ones.40 Regarding the economic issues, the NCOs
had to know which were the conditions to own, process and circulate certain assets and values (especially food and industrial products and mercurial); also, people without a precise occupation and the way they earned
money were being monitored (they supported their families and were
spending money the only way to explain this situation was by committing crimes). On legal grounds, the most important were the crimes
against life, bodily integrity, the public property, personal or private.41
The successful actions carried out separately or together by the MAI and
the CSS bodies mostly depended on the activities reunited under the
name of informative work. The administrative regulation was achieved
through several orders issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (no. 1 /
20th of January 1973, no. 875 / 15th of May 1976, no. 250 / 1st of June
1976, no. 1600 / 1st of November 1979) and the main forms of expression
39

41
40
of the informative work were the general informative surveillance (SIG)

and the special informative surveillance, executed by the Securitate and
Militia separately or together. Thanks to the SIG, it was possible to obtain
the first referral information regarding the preparation or perpetration of a
crime, while the special informative surveillance was focused on the investigation of the information that could be evidence to establish that one
person is guilty or innocent.42
The first referral information was investigated (identification, search in
the records, along with other data and information), and, within 15 days,
a solution was chosen (by setting up controls, sting operations, warnings,
etc.). The collected data came from the informative network made up of
informers43, collaborators44, residents45 and hosts of meeting houses.46
The recruitment operations were approved by the heads of units, heads of
the Securitate counties departments and by Militia chiefs, their deputies
and heads of the military counterintelligence services; the procedure ended by signing an agreement of collaboration with the Securitate, also, personal files (network files) were opened. It is worth mentioning that the
party members and the NCOs did not have personal files under their
42
ACNSAS, Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.631, vol. 1/1973, 3, 6.

The person who secretly collaborates with the Securitate or Militia bodies and
who could provide information or solve other tasks, bringing an important
contribution to preventing and finding crimes (ACNSAS, fond Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.631, vol. 1/1973, 8).
44
The person who secretly supports the Securitate and Militia bodies they are
mainly recruited in vulnerable places; border areas; places frequented by foreigners; among conscripts, students, pupils and minors without surveillance; in
places where the crimes are frequently committed, consumed or merchandised
stolen goods or prohibited, as well as performing tasks on the line of operative
technique units and sub-units, stakeout and investigations (ACNSAS, Juridical
Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.631, vol. 1/1973, 8).
45
The person who was working with the Securitate and Militia organs and entrusted to the reins of the activity of a number of informers and collaborators.
Each resident had contact with a minimum of three collaborators or informers
(ACNSAS, Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.631, vol. 1/1973, 8).
46
The person makes available the house or some rooms of the workplace for
some meetings between Securitate or Militia workers with the informers. In
the meeting home were to be introduced up to 4-5 persons of network in contact with the same officer or NCO (ACNSAS, Juridical Directorate Fund, inventory no. 3.631, vol. 1/1973, 9-10).
43
480 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
names, even though they were in charge of informative tasks. The original
materials were kept in the annex-file (also made up for the party members,
officers or NCOs of the Ministry Internal Affairs) along with the documents resulting from the investigation of the provided information.47
Mr. Florian Bunta (Ialomita County Inspectorate) estimated that on the
issue date of new regulations on monitoring the rural areas, some positive
effects had been noticed. Thus, the general informative surveillance activity in the rural areas has become more organized, more comprehensive
and has reached a high quality level.48 However, the steps were still small
and further problems were far from being solved. During the 1971 balance session of the Securitate, major general Dumitru Boran underlined
several relevant aspects related to the activities deployed by the Securitate and Militia. Regarding their achievements, the number of persons included in the general informative surveillance increased by 7.9% as
compared to 1970, while the number of those included in the special informative surveillance increased by 27%, and many activities were deployed by the heads of local Militia and instructors (who were members of
the Securitate).49 At the same time, the involvement of the NCOs from
some Militia stations in some activities (which were specific to the Securitate workers) confirms the increasing level of cooperation between the two
entities (participation to warnings, breakdown, restrictions applied to some
sectarian groups, followed foreign citizens who visited the rural area).
Nevertheless, the general informative surveillance activity was still poor
and with modest results. It was focused on a small number of people,
whose names were mentioned in the notebooks of the heads of police stations. As a result, a number of former legionnaires and other elements
with political or criminal history were not being monitored. The work
base in many villages was made up by only two elements, while many
people (whose names were found in the general records) from those villages were not being watched. In order to boost its activities, the leadership of Securitate issued new orders aiming at conveying to the Militia
47
Supravegherea informativ-operativ n mediul rural (mas rotund), [Informative-Operative Surveillance in the Countryside (Panel of Experts)] Securitatea 1 (1970), 14.
49
Dumitru Boran,Probleme privind munca de securitate n mediul rural,
[Problems Concerning Securitates Work in the Countryside] Securitatea 1
(1972), 20.
48
stations the informative material (the general records and the operative
work base) and also aiming at co-opting an increasing number of Militia
workers for the general informative surveillance and the achievement of
some measures foreseen by the informative investigation files.50
The work with informative network
One effect of the reorganization of the surveillance process at the countryside was the unification of the informative networks of Securitate and Militia. At the beginning, it was difficult, having in view the change of profile
of the networkers on common issues; many collaborators of Securitate
had adapted quickly to the new tasks, as compared to those under the Militias supervision. However, the Securitate officers kept the task to know the
position of the work base elements. They had been concentrating all the informative materials and periodically analysed the data and decided which
had been the recommendable measures. Of course, the network connected
to the head of the police station brought its contribution to it.
The Decision of the Board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of 22nd of
June 1976 on the improvement of the operative-informative work at the
countryside stated in a concise way the concept of "unique network",
which had the possibility to gather information on both Securitate and
Militia directions. The number of informers that was necessary to each
Militia station was established every year by the Securitate and Militia
officers, and was approved by the management structures.51 After the issue of the Decision regarding the county inspectorates, the heads of police stations attended training courses, consisting of practical applications
and seminars. The main actions were focused on the following: the creation of a unique network, informative classification of the suspected elements and their surveillance, the adoption of several measures within the
surveillance activity, the issues of prevention and respect for the rule of
50
Vasile Mihil, Sprijin eficient ofierilor i subofierilor de la posturile de miliie,

pentru mbuntirea muncii de securitate n mediul rural, [Efficient Support
to Officers and NCOs from Militia Stations, for Improving Securitates Work
in the Countryside] Securitatea 3 (1972), 90; Constantin Huluba, Cheia succesului: ndrumare, control i sprijin efilor de posture, [The Key of Success:
Instruction, Control and Support for the Chiefs of Militia Stations] Securitatea
3 (1972), 9.
51
482 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
law, etc.52 The Securitate officers deployed in the rural areas had to guide
the merging activity of the existing networks. The unique network offered
advantages and the most important thing was that the informative activity
developed (Securitate and Militia). However, the selection criteria were
kept according to the priorities and tasks of the two bodies, having in
view the skills and opportunities of the potential "networker". Thus, the
Securitate officers participated effectively in recruiting informers with political and criminal past, and analysed along with local NCOs their work.
The prevention and detection activities of the hostile elements were
mostly made through the information network. In terms of social composition, until the early 1970s, the network was formed in an overwhelming
majority of peasants involved in the CAP, with a low cultural level. For
operational reasons, in the first decade of the totalitarian regime, there
were recruited agents in large scale, regardless of training or occupation;
thus, a segment of the rural population, former members of historical parties or the Legionary Movement or kulaks were convinced in various
forms to collaborate with the Securitate. But things had changed during
1970-1980 because of three main reasons: first, the new guidelines in the
operative work focusing on the preventive side, second, the disappearance or physical inability of informers to provide data and, third, the need
to restructure the network. One of the cleaning causes was the constant
refusal of the informer to edit written materials. However, their attitude
should not surprise us, knowing that 70% of them performed physical labour and stopped using the pen long ago. Nonetheless, they were very
good storytellers; they used to pay attention to every detail and were very
receptive to everything that happened across the village.53
Although they no longer corresponded to the requirements of Securitate
work, however, the radical solution to eliminate from the network those
who did not prepare written notes would not have produced beneficial effects. In such circumstances, it was decided to shift to other kinds of support, namely the creation of the hosts-meeting houses. This form of
cooperation emphasized another vulnerability of the operative work, the
52
53
Ion Vlaicu, Vasile Mihil, S ridicm munca de securitate din mediul rural
la cotele exigenelor actuale, [Enhancing Securitates Work from the Countryside to the Present-Day Exigencies] Securitatea 3 (1977), 30.
Ion Rpeanu, Particulariti n obinerea materialului scris de la reeaua din
mediul rural, [Particularities in the Obtaining of Written Notes from the Rural
Network] Buletin intern 1 (1969), 63.
danger of the informers discovery. It was absolutely necessary to establish the place and the time with the informers in order to maintain their
secret identity in small communities. It was almost impossible to set up a
meeting between the officer/NCO in small villages, which were also isolated and sparsely populated. In this case, other isolated places or other
villages were used as meeting points. It was also necessary for the officer
to know the village before the meeting, what were the habits, and even
the circulation restrictions during the night.
The arrival of a foreign person when the night started drew the attention
of the people in charge with the village security or the citizens who he
met in the streets. Such a case was reported in the Securitatea magazine
and we quote: While going to the meeting place, the informer was seen
by a woman who knew him. Since she had never seen him heading to that
direction at such an hour, she became suspicious. Using the covered field,
the woman followed him; she saw him while meeting with another man
and waited until they finished. Then she followed the officer to a place
where she could see him and recognized him. So here is how a detail
which is apparently insignificant led to the revelation of the informer.54
The meeting houses represented another flaw in the activity of intelligence
bodies; the few possibilities and lack of inspiration in their choice produced
countless failures. Recruiting hosts meeting houses was done generally
from the collectivist peasants, and some of them had already interacted
with the intelligence structures. It often happened to be at home during the
meetings between officers and informers; it was also possible that the dogs
in the courtyard announced the presence of unknown people. As a twist of
fate, amid human curiosity, intruders (officer, informer) became the objects
of surveillance. No other places were too safe, and we refer to those around
communal cafeterias, the consumers cooperative society and other rural
shops guarded at night. Under these conditions arose a series of difficulties,
from discussions with the guards who would not leave the post until the
throwing-down of meetings.55
54
tefan David, Stabilirea locului i timpului ntlnirilor cu informatorii din mediul rural, [Establishing the Time and the Meeting Place with the Informers
from the Countryside] Securitatea 3 (1969), 22-23.
55
Alexandru Dumitracu, Particulariti ale ntlnirilor cu informatorii n mediul rural, [Particularities of the Meetings with the Informers in the Countryside] Buletin intern 1 (1968), 54.
484 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
Positive results were obtained despite the difficult conditions and we

would like to present three cases that were to be found in the Securitatea magazine. The first makes reference to Mariana, a member of the
religious sect Jehovah's Witnesses, monitored by the informer Mitru.
She suspected that the man was watching her and she accused him of collaboration with the Securitate. The informer had been warned about the
Jehovah's direct investigations; he strongly replied and, after two weeks
of surveillance from the members of the sect, they apologized.
The second brought to the fore the confrontation between an officer and a
former legionary commander, having been codenamed as Fanaticul,
and released from prison in 1964. The ex-legionnaire started to watch the
Securitate worker whenever he had entered the village; therefore the officer gave up any meeting with informers and walked with the former legionnaire all over the village. Furthermore, on his next visit to the village,
the worker contacted many citizens, among which, two intimates of Fanaticul, in a discreet way; the legionary swallowed the bait, turning
his attention to the former comrades. The third case highlights the guidance of the officer to find another job and to continue the collaboration.
The informer Dan Bucur, resident in a village near the border strip, reported difficulties to the meeting place. Soon after, he was hired as head
of reception base near the meeting point; the informer gave satisfaction
both in informative work and professional life.56
A challenge for the MAIs bodies was the sect Jehovah's Witnesses, a
religious association unrecognized by the regime. Interactions between
representatives of the authorities and the sect followers overtook the wellknown scenario, which meant unbalanced forces, severe control and the
direction to certain activities in the states interest. The confrontation took
place on informative grounds; thus, the Valea Larga village, Mures County, represented a case study in the early 1970s. The village, which is situated at a long distance of communication routes, with no electricity and
low interest for education, has created advantages for Jehovah's Witnesses proselytism; otherwise, from the 2,666 adults more than 900 were
members of this sect. Therefore, the informative penetration was very difficult, but achievable. After careful analysis, the informer Sabau was
called; he had a leading position and inspired confidence to all villagers,
56
David, Stabilirea locului i timpului ntlnirilor cu informatorii din mediul

rural, 24.
being infiltrated within the members of the sect. Along the way, much
valuable operative information was obtained. The sectarians became suspicious and started to organize their meetings during the night in the isolated houses in order to avoid the surveillance of the MAIs bodies. In
return, besides the informative network, there were also special measures
that were being applied (stakeout, secret photographs, house searches,
equipping informers with mobile listening devices powered by batteries)
and agents infiltration.57
Also as a novelty element, it was found that people who were being
watched used similar actions practiced by intelligence structures. Specifically, sectarians were watching the PTTR office, pharmacy and the bar in
front of the Militia station. In these places there were Jehovah's Witnesses
elements, unknown by the officer, who had the task to identify people entering inside the Militia station and also to keep on eye to the offices visits in the village. Furthermore, a preacher asked the Deputy Secretary of
the local Committee of the Romanian Communist Party to become the
officers friend, to invite him to lunch and a drink, to find out as much as
he could about the actions against Jehovah's Witnesses. The end is easy
to imagine; some of Jehovah's Witnesses had to abide the consequences
of their activity.
The involvement of Militia bodies in carrying out specific actions or in
general informative surveillance increased permanently, being one of the
purposes of the prevention work outlined in the various orders of the
MAI during the 1970s. The informative work in rural areas had targeted
different people with the most varied professions and pursuits (former legionaries, intellectuals, peasants, commuters, pensioners, etc.) whose full
and effective informative surveillance would not have been achieved
without the help of the Militias NCOs; their useful involvement was obvious within the informative surveillance action made differently and on
extended areas, the investigations and inspections required by the endorsement of departures abroad, the establishment of some peoples connections with foreign citizens, and the application of preventive measures
or informative classification.58
57
Gheorghe Florea, Nicolae Dali, Aspecte noi ale activitii iehoviste n judeul
Mure, [New Aspects of the Activity of Jehovah's Witnesses in Mures County] Securitatea 3 (1970), 28-32.
58
Dnil Savin, Ion Nicolae, Unele particulariti n activitatea de ndrumare a
subofierilor de la posturile comunale de miliie, pentru soluionarea unor sarcini
486 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
1981-1989
The last decade of the totalitarian regime at the countryside, in terms of
informative-operative work, brought new challenges and a new reorganization of specific activities as of 1st of August 1981. Changes were made
operational only after the Board of State Security Department (DSS)s
evaluation of the Securitate work in the rural world. Thus, on the occasion of the meeting held on 8th of Ju1y 1981, the inspection results of the
511 Militia stations from 23 counties were analysed, highlighting both the
positive actions and the negative ones. One of the achievements was the
information on the existing work base in rural areas. The effects of data
collection were found in more than 2,500 warnings, the public debate of
more than 200 people and, in several cases, the initiation of the intelligence surveillance.59
Regarding unsuccessful activities, we may highlight the limitation of
knowledge work and searching for information on people with political
or criminal history enclosed in records; places and environments where
actions that might have affected the state security were neglected. Also,
the information regarding villages with an increasing number of tourists
were insufficient and were not used within preventive actions (counteractions to the incitement to emigration). In special situations there were settlements with a majority from among cohabitant nationalities or in areas
with high concentration of members of the cult or sect. These localities
were frequently visited by emissaries of reactionary organizations
abroad centres and about which the network of the Militia did not provide information.
The inactivity of the Militia workers was also related to the deficient informative surveillance of certain categories of people and social groups
from the health sector, education, trade and others. One of the most serious problems of the intelligence work was the surveillance of the zootechnical or industrial objectives in the villages. The analysis report informed about the following: Almost without exception, we did not find
information regarding the agro-zoo-technical and industrial objectives
specifice de securitate, [Some Particularities in the Instruction Activity of
NCOs from Militia Stations, for Solving the Securitates Specific Tasks] Securitatea 2 (1978), 61-65.
59
[...]. The prevention of material damages is being neglected, the Militia

workers are concentrating only on direct findings and the settlement of
some cases, most of them unimportant.60 The poor results of the Securitate work in the rural area were caused by all those involved in the work
(Militia, Securitate, the management of DSS, the informative connections). The sources given to the Militia stations, at the establishment of
the unique network or subsequently recruited with the support of the officers of the intelligence structure, had a low informative contribution or
they had been discovered.
The officers of the Securitate did not involve themselves anymore in the
recruitment of rural people; in addition, the visits to the Militia stations
were sporadic and were not aimed at fulfilling the assigned orders and
tasks. The poor results of the Securitate work in the rural area were
caused by all those involved in the work (Militia, Securitate, the management of DSS, the informative connections). Therefore, the MAIs order no. D/00140/1st of August 1981 regarding the organization and the
development of the informative-operative work of Securitate in rural areas
was issued. The provisions of the act brought some novelties concerning
the monitoring operations in villages. However, the general informative
surveillance was still done by the workers of the Militia stations, with the
exception of those under the direct responsibility of the Securitate officers; also, the control and specific training of Militia workers were provided by the Department of State Security (DSS).
The changes concerned the informative surveillance actions and the creation of special networks under the direct guidance of the workers of Securitate; they also concerned the regulation of documents that should have
been included in the files. The attributes of the exercise of the informative
surveillance went exclusively to the Securitate employees, while the Militia workers carried out clear tasks, having, this way, completely different
tasks as compared to the previous years. Until 31st of July 1981 the
unique network operated under the Militia control, but it lost its leading
role. In order to increase the information quality and the network workers, a special informative network was created for Securitate issues,
made up of informers, collaborators and residents. The new informative
directions were either connected to the DSSs officers or to the NCOs or
Militia officers (under the control and management of the Securitate).
60
488 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
The sources were directly contacted by the residents, and indirectly by

using mailboxes of people who used to go quite often to countys main
city or villages (doctors, teachers, civil servants, etc).
The responsibility for guiding, organizing and conducting the Securitate
belonged to Directorate I, through territorial structures; also, the counterintelligence services had directed the informative-operative work in villages with industrial, touristic activities. The officers of the Securitate
responsible for villages were forced to visit them at least once a month.
According to the tasks field, the officers were supposed to contact the
network, to support and guide the Militia workers, and to solve the duties
related to the informative surveillance actions.
The records and documents containing secret information from the village Militia stations were not entirely changed, but they were better systematized and computerized (documents sent by the Information and
Documentation Centre). The file enclosed tables called "A" (table of people with political or criminal history whose names were in the General
Documents Record of Securitate and were permanent residents of the village), B (enclosed unknown people with political or criminal history,
suspected of committing crimes or other acts against the state security
and whose surveillance was imperative to survey), C (which enclosed
objectives, places and social groups whose actions might have affected
the state security facts) and were accompanied by the informers and collaborators paper cases that were to be found in annex (they enclosed only
the conspiracy names and the list of documents of the provided notes), as
well as special registers concerning foreign citizens that were temporarily
residing in villages.
The orders effects were felt both in the short term and medium. In the
short term, the order was entirely implemented in a reasonable time. The
organization of the satisfactory work has transposed by the nomination of
informers involved in the Securitates work in villages and their professional training, by the opening of new objective files, or informative surveillance files, carrying out activities related to the creation of a new
network.
On medium terms, as positive results, the Securitate recruited sources
with a high education level from education, health, cults, sects, and agriculture who were able to carry out the tasks. However, the volume of information about the elements under surveillance was increasing, about
negative states of mind, through the network selected or recruited on the

security profile and the sources used for the needs of the Militia work.
The informative rsums based on operational data were sent to the decision makers (party bodies and factors of responsibility from different sectors of the economy) in order to limit and prevent damage or blur certain
negative phenomena. Among the Securitates skills, there were also orders aimed at preventing illegal border crossing actions, the conveyance
of mail "with hostile contents" about the regime and sent to the "Free Europe" radio station; preventive measures were adopted (warning, breakdown, public debate, etc.) on a growing number of people who were the
object of the Securitates work.61
The analysis of activity of MAIs structures in the early eighties pointed
to the "challenges" in the informative-operative work. First of all, the
numerical component was mentioned since about 70% of all people with
political or criminal history were in the rural area (the need of information involved many laborious activities, from the surveillance of social
groups to the identification of the entourages). Second, the increase of nationalist-irredentist manifestations, especially among intellectuals and of
a part of the peasantry, was emphasized and it was influenced by reactionary circles living abroad. Third, emphasizing the escapist phenomenon (illegal border crossing), most fugitives were residing in rural areas.
Fourth, it had in view the increase of the actions of several sects (Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists reformists) and the multiplication and dissemination of forbidden religious materials. The fifth reveals the
concerns of foreigners (visitors to relatives, specialists, tourists or traders)
who were interacting with different people, ensuring connections with
relatives who had left abroad or practicing various commissions; they
were also suspected of hostile propaganda to the socialist regime.
Sixth, the alleged espionage activities of foreign services in attracting
specialists engaged in economic units in rural area (agro-livestock, mines,
oil and gas, transport) to commit hostile actions; the most exposed to the
61
Aron Bordea, Ion Rizea, Concluzii privind modul cum s-a asigurat aplicarea
Ordinului nr. 00140/1981 al ministrului de Interne. Msuri ce se impun pentru
mbuntirea calitii muncii de securitate n mediul rural, [Conclusions
Concerning the Way to Apply the Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs no.
00140/1981. Measures Taken for Improving the Quality of the Securitates
Work in the Countryside] Securitatea 1 (1982), 28.
490 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
recruitment were the elements sent abroad within trade and technical cooperation.62
The large information in Securitate files shows growing concerns of the
intelligence structures for the surveillance of the rural world. In 1983
113,158 people with political or criminal history were under the surveillance of the Securitate (former legionaries represented about 50% of
those with political past) and were included in table A.63 Table B
contained up to 18% more people than the previous year, highlighting the
increase of the nationalist-irredentist manifestations, spreading news of
the foreign radio stations, escapist intentions, hostile activities under the
mask of religious concerns, the maintenance of unofficial connections
with foreign citizens, and the increase of suspects related to economic
counterintelligence. The useful activity of the intelligence structures was
also reflected in the number of the informative surveillance files (especially in the agro-livestock, mechanization and land improvement sectors)
and the network (in addition to 19% compared to 1982 as indicated by on
hiring people with intellectual training relevant and informative possibilities); also the preventive actions and neutralization of hostile actions that
had been raising values (over 60 public debates about 2,000 warnings and
300 breakdown).64
The results were not modest, but there were many problems when the Securitate had to collaborate with the Militia bodies or when it had to convey information. By the end of 1983, no informative sources were
recruited from Mures, Caras Severin, Alba or Ialomita counties, although
62

64
The most preventive security measures used in the 1980s were the positive influence (is accomplished with the help of the informative network or family,
to protect against the perform antisocial acts), the warning (the target had to
correct ones conduit according to social law and norms and was carried out in
the presence of other people, workplace superiors or family members), the
public debate (the resulting publicity is likely to cause the person to abstain
engaging in hostile activities) and the breakdown (a number of preventive
measures in order to stop inappropriate activities which take place within
groups and entourages and could degenerate into crime or other antisocial acts
[Virgiliu ru (ed.), Learning History Through Past Experiences: Ordinary
Citizens under the Surveillance of Securitate during the 1970s-1980s
(Bucureti: Editura CNSAS, 2009), 64].
63
there were many objectives, places and environments that were uncovered from an informative point of view; table C did not include all
places and environments (commuters, seasonal bedrooms, consumers
cooperatives societies, and others). Other problems were related to the
poor training of the Militias NCOs in search and exploitation activities
of information, inappropriate contact of informers (most of the meetings
took place at the premises of the Militia without mentioning the sources;
residences were not created, mailboxes and others to assure the impersonal connection and the operative conveyance of information) and fluctuations in the numbers of the Militias workers.
The informative-operative work during the last years of the socialist
regime
The informative work was organized and carried out according to the
forms and methods used by the so-called hostile elements (sabotage, diversion, release of alarming rumours, spreading news, drafting and dissemination of small sheets of paper with hostile content) and the
informative network played a key role in discovering the plans of hostile
elements. It was said that the subjects monitoring was more accessible
for three reasons: first, fellow villagers knew each other very well, second, foreigners arriving in the village would raise the attention of many
inhabitants, third, the workers of the Militia stations could directly observe the suspect items in both economic goals and in places and environments frequented by them.
The composition and the quality of the informative network used to determine the obtaining of some operative data; it was necessary to convince those who could finish the task. A classification drawn up by the
Securitate bodies indicates the following professions of the recruits: engineers, doctors, teachers, priests, workers, health personnel, and cooperative or individual peasants. Most of them were aged between 31-60 years,
being active and having access to information of interest to intelligence
structures (economic counterintelligence, internal information, security
and guard).
The delimitation of competences and obligations in informative work are
to be found constantly in the documents issued after the 1st of August
1981. Thus, a limited number of workers of the Militia had security responsibilities and some of them had the task to solve intelligence duties
492 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
following the approval of the Securitate head.65 Each Securitate County

Inspectorate was submitted to regular investigations and some information was requested regarding the local agents (the number of informers, but also the subjects under surveillance). It is worth mentioning most
of the informers were connected to Militia and the ones recruited after 1st
of August 1981 were under their direct coordination.
About the stage of informative-operative work we are able to provide
some county data. On 27th of October 1989 in Iasi, there were 1,507 (informers 1,050, 434 support people, 23 sources with approval), of which
142 were in contact with the Securitate officers, 134 Militia sources were
used with approval and 315 operative relations.66 The situation of the
sources of the Securitate village network according to the political or
criminal history and the membership to certain cults was as follows: legionaries and their descendants, former members of Peasant Party and its
descendants, Liberals and the descendants of the Liberals, ex-convicts
and ex-convicts descendants, Baptists, Pentecostals, the Brethren Assemblies, Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses. The activity of informative surveillance, investigation and clarification of information was represented
by a variable number of elements that were to be found in the work base,
some of them were under informative investigation files (DUI), other
were in investigation blotter. The importance of these people was given
by elements suspected of nationalist-irredentist activities, clandestine activity sectarian, especially Jehovah's Witnesses etc.
In D.U.I. Danila, 66 years old, retired, former member of the PNT, residing in Bontida village, Cluj County, was taken under surveillance on
9th of June 1989, documentation measures regarding his hostile activity
were taken, having in view that he used to listen to forbidden radio stations (Free Europe). He used to write and send anonymous letters to
several institutions in Bucharest, in which he expressed his disagreement
with the political regime. On 21st of October 1989 he was warned by the
authorities and said he would give up such practices.67
The eighties were characterized by rapid and significant changes regarding the work base (people watched by the Securitate or Militia bodies).
Among the changes, we can mention: the decline of elements having
65

67
66
reactionary political history because of their physical disappearance;

methods and means used by the suspects were subtle (writing a special
demand or other works which were hostile to Romania, submitted for
publication and dissemination abroad); a part of former political prisoners
were suspected of preparing hostile activities under the mask of religious
activities; the increase of the number of specialists, athletes, Romanian
tourists who were refusing to return to the country.68
Amid a higher propaganda activity from outside, particularly through radio stations, tourists and relatives' visitors, the emigration psychosis
reached a high level among the German ethnic group in Sibiu area and
neo-protestants; the number of villagers receiving financial aid or food
packages from cultic organizations, charities or individuals, particularly
from Germany and Austria, had also increased and had stimulated the nationalist sentiments and launched critics addressed to the political regime.69 The informative network provided a lot of data regarding the
assets management, their security, theft prevention, abuse of office and
negligence, embezzlement and degradation of assets and materials, etc.,
aiming to cover damages and to prevent the public property damages.70
However, the alerts of the network showed numerous problems that were
not connected to the concerns of different hostile elements under surveillance. Among the facts that can be found among Securitates documents
are the negative states of mind that were dominant. Cooperative members
and pensioners were dissatisfied with the poor remuneration of the performed work, and therefore they refused to contribute to the accomplishment of the acquisition plan and to ensure the centralized state fund. The
implementation of measures concerning food rationing has generated
waves of criticism of the rural population. Supplies of bread, sugar, oil
and other food were constantly decreasing and amplified villagers dissatisfaction (e.g. in the village of Avrig, Sibiu county, from 8 tonnes of
bread daily traded reached 3-4 tonnes). Mrza Ioan from Alba Iulia said:
... We had a lot of rain, the harvest is beautiful and we paid foreign
debts. However, food vouchers are still in force, the ration becomes lower
and in the food stores there is an extreme poverty...71
68
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 13.382, vol. vol. 21, 100.
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file no. 13.382, vol. vol. 18, III.
70
71
Florian Banu (ed.), Amorsarea Revoluiei. Romnia anilor 80 vzut prin
ochii Securitii [The Buffer of the Revolution. The Romania of the 1980s
69
494 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
The S special unit (the secret control and censorship of the correspondence) used to receive on a daily basis materials having information about
the different things and negative phenomena. Glaghe M. from Cordun
village, Neamt County, wrote to a friend in France: ... Life has become
expensive and we are running out of food. There is no more bread in villages, and oil and sugar are being given instead of eggs, but even so they
are nowhere to be found. The ones who have worked in the fields have
not even received beetroot.72
In the whirl of reducing of any consumption, the regime decided to save
electricity, therefore there were daily cuts for normal people and also for
agro-industrial consumers. No one used to announce to people the time
when the electricity would be stopped, and this created food supply issues
to animal farms, and also to the means of obtaining and collecting milk
through mechanized installations.73 The food restrictions, fuel shortage,
heat rationing and the frequent syncope of the 1980s economy rushed the
end of a regime that was almost autarchic, semi-isolated and not at all
prone to changes.
Conclusions
The regime of totalitarian origin established in Romania at the mid-20th
century led to major changes of the political, economic, sociooccupational, cultural and educational system. The need to know the
population's reactions is the equivalent of the activation of the intelligence structures capable to collect information and to communicate to
political leaders the states of mind of the peasantry and the effects of various political decisions. The institution named the Securitatea Statului
fulfilled its role as the belt drive between the people and the political
authority and even consecrated the use of the terms surveillance,
stakeout, files, preventive measures, etc., for most actions of intelligence structures throughout the above-mentioned period.
Seen through the Securitates Eyes] (Trgovite: Editura Cetatea de Scaun,
2012), 314.
72
Liviu ranu (ed.), Pe luna decembrie nu mi-am fcut planul Romnii n
Epoca de Aur. Coresponden din anii 80 [For the Month of December I
Have not Fulfilled the Plan... The Romanians during the Golden Epoch.
Correspondence of the 1980s] (Trgovite: Editura Cetatea de Scaun, 2012),
67-68.
73
The rural area was a defining target for the new political regime, because
the largest part of the Romanian population was living in villages, where
the implementation of new forms of social or economic organization
could have encountered hardships. This eased the start of the operativeinformative surveillance actions of the entire rural world. Collecting data
actions regarding realities of the peasantry world (with an emphasis on
the negative aspects), were accompanied by methods and actions, some
of them damnable, other natural. The informative work in the 1950s was
focused on the activities taking place in villages, by opening files of villages' objectives or of economic units, on the surveillance of elements
that presented interest (kulaks, landlords, former party members, etc.),
and on the organization of functional informative network. The forms of
action were varied from one case to another or from officer to officer.
During the first decade of the communist regime repressive actions took
place by adopting a discriminatory legislation accompanied by physical
violence, psychological abuse and intimidation. Many of the Securitates
workers contributed to the tense state in the post-war rural world by using
reprehensible methods and techniques, covering this way professional incapacity or limited informative possibilities.
The informative bodies did not acted alone, with Militia being co-opted
on several occasions. The transfer of tasks towards the other entity of the
MAI contributed to the expansion of the general informative surveillance
in the rural area, and the Securitates workers have focused on people
suspected of "endangering" the state security. The identification of some
elements belonging to hostile categories had generated a series of
measures specific to secret services, with variable results. What really
persisted in the period 1948-1989 was the surveillance of former members of political parties and those of the Legionary Movement, which was
later expanded to their descendants too.
The choice of the period 1948-1967 followed the evolution of Securitates work, starting from countless abuses and indolence in observing job
duties to action changes that the Securitate was forced to adopt after its
reorganization in May 1963 (prevention of the population's possible opposition). The situation changed substantially at the political level (Nicolae Ceausescu took over the power), as well as at institutional level
(foundation of the Council for State Security in 1967) within the period
1965-1968-1989. During the 1960s-1980s, the informative-operative
work suffered changes, having in view the growing importance of pre-
496 _______________________________________________Valentin VASILE
ventive actions carried out by the Securitate. At the same time, Militia
started to have more responsibilities (who carried out the informative
surveillance during 1969-1981 and coordinated the unique network, acting according to specific intelligence structures). The beginning of the
last communist decade depended on new directions outlined by the order
of the MAI issued on 1st of August 1981.
We have to remember the main actions of Securitate in the rural area,
such as: the village was being analysed through the operative workers,
and also with the help of other bodies of State (Militia, the administrative-political structures); the informative work was based on informers
recruitment (in a repressive way, or through blackmail or patriotic feelings); the social composition of networks was, of course, dominated by
the great mass of peasantry, with a low cultural and educational level; the
situation changed during the 1970s and 1980s, having in view that the
Securitate was trying to find new informers, who would come from the
rural elite. The main objectives of informative-operative work were the
annihilation of the hostile elements who were against collectivization, the
surveillance of former members of traditional political parties and of the
Legionary Movement, the informative control within the cults-sects issue, the initiation of counterintelligence actions, and highlighting the
peasantry's attitudes concerning political, social and economic measures
(the implicit surveillance, the capitalization of informative notes, the control of the correspondence).
The political machine wanted to know closely any opinion, attitude and
form of expression of all social categories, and the rural world generated
information that needed to be exploited; also, it prevented any possible
actions that were supposed to destabilize the totalitarian regime. Recomposition of the rural world during 1948-1989, even in the light of the Securitate actions, is trying to highlight the information gathered in the
archives of the former institution and to encourage the extension of the
historical or sociological scientific research.
Commuting Villagers and Social Protest:

Peasant-Workers and Working-Class Unrest
in Romania, 1965-1989
Drago PETRESCU
Ninety-nine percent of the male workforce
[in the village] commute to work, that is, are employed
in industry; in the morning, at 4:30 a.m., the Mobra motorbikes start to roar as if one fires a machine gun.
Ion Bieu, Balana [The Balance], uncensored ed., 19901
When examining the way rural life was transformed under communist
rule in Romania, social hybridization features as one of the most interesting processes that emerged in response to the regimes new agrarian
revolution. This process resulted in the appearance of a particular category of villagers: the peasant-workers or the commuting villagers. This
category consisted of villagers who found employment in enterprises or
industrial facilities the communist regime erected in the nearby towns and
who commuted daily to their workplaces. Peasant-workers should not be
confused with the individuals who were employed by the state-owned
farms and worked in agriculture. The present study addresses the abovementioned process of social hybridization and argues that the emergence
of this category of peasant-workers represented an appropriate strategy of
survival, adopted by a large number of villagers in response to the policies of the communist regime in Romania.
Furthermore, this author contends that the presence of significant groups
of peasant-workers in compact working-class milieus hampered to a certain extent the development of anti-regime stances in such milieus. This
study shows that in terms of political cultures of resistance, peasantworkers were more submissive and therefore less likely to protest against
the regime. Consequently, they contributed to a lowering of the potential
for public protest by the Romanian working-class during the period of
deep economic crisis of the 1980s. In contrast to peasant-workers, genuine workers, that is, those industrial workers who severed their ties with
the countryside displayed a higher potential for open protest.
1
Ion Bieu, Balana [The Balance] 2nd uncensored ed. (Bucharest: Editura Minerva,
1990); the first edition was published in 1985 by the Cartea Romneasc Publishing House.
498 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Industry vs. Agriculture: Heavy Industry at All Costs

After the communist takeover, the Romanian economy sustained a high
growth rate with a strong emphasis on steel, petrochemical, and machinebuilding industries. As Stephen Fischer-Galati has argued, the policy of industrialization of the communist regime was rather a political than an economic necessity: Even in the later forties, after Romanias liberation, the
communists were infinitely more concerned with consolidation of Soviet
power and with their own political survival than with industrialization and
modernization. If anything, industrialization was viewed as a political rather
than as an economic necessity.... Industrialization, even as it gathered momentum following the adoption of economic planning in the late forties, remained a function of Soviet and Romanian communist politics at least until
the late fifties when it became a function of Romanian politics alone.2
The regimes policy of sustained industrialization resulted in a rapid
growth of the urban population. Thus, between 1948 and 1977, the rural
population decreased constantly, from 76.6 percent of the total population
in 1948, to 68.7 percent in 1956, to 60.9 percent in 1966, and reached
52.5 percent in 1977. Conversely, the urban population grew over the
same period from 23.4 percent of the total population in 1948, to 31.3
percent in 1956, to 39.1 percent in 1966, and reached a share of 47.5 percent of the total population in 1977.3 Rapid industrialization led to an accelerated growth of the working class, especially due to a significant
increase in the number of individuals working in industry. Thus, between
1956 and 1977 the Romanian working class (blue collar workers, including foremen) grew from 23.7 percent of total population in 1956 to
39.9 percent in 1966 and to 54.3 percent in 1977. According to the official figures, the Romanian working class grew, in absolute numbers, from
2,212,500 individuals in 1960 to 3,018,700 in 1965. Between 1970 and
1972, the Romanian working class grew from 3,867,800 to 4,089,100 individuals.4 Employment in the secondary sector became dominant, while
2
Stephen Fischer-Galati, Romanias Development as a Communist State, in

Daniel N. Nelson, ed., Romania in the 1980s (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1981), 5-6.
3
See Figure 1 below.
4
Andreas C. Tsantis and Roy Pepper, eds., Romania: The Industrialization of an
Agrarian Economy under Socialist Planning (Washington D. C.: The World
Bank, 1979), 542-43.
Commuting Villagers and Social Protest: Peasant-Workers and... _________ 499
employment in primary and tertiary sectors declined. As Per Ronns has

argued: The tertiary sector, which had dominated urban employment in
1930, suffered a strong decline and by 1956 had lost its first position to
manufacturing.5 At the same time, many of the newly declared towns
were mining and heavy manufacturing centers, where employment in the
secondary sector was dominant. For instance, in 1956 in the city of
Hunedoara and in the mining centers of the Jiu Valley such as Lupeni,
Petrila and Vulcan, the employment in the secondary sector exceeded 80
percent of the total active population. Thus, 84.4 percent of the total population active in industries was employed in the secondary sector in the
city of Hunedoara, 81.4 percent in Lupeni, 80.5 percent in Petrila and
82.0 percent in Vulcan. For comparison, in 1930 in the city of Hunedoara
38.8 percent of the population was employed in manufacturing, mining
and construction. The same year 1956, in the city of Braov out of the total population active in industries, 60.7 percent was employed in the secondary sector, while 36.2 percent was employed in the tertiary sector.
Back in 1930, 39.1 percent of Braovs population was employed in the
secondary sector, while 38.6 percent was employed in the tertiary sector.
The communist regime put a strong emphasis on both industrialization
and urbanization processes. However, the urbanization process could not
keep the pace with the industrialization process. As a consequence, numerous workers employed in industry continued to commute daily from
their villages to factories and enterprises located in the nearby towns.
Although no systematic research has been carried out so far on the issue
of commuting workforce during the communist epoch, the available data,
as incomplete as it is for the time being, is nevertheless useful to assess
the proportions of the phenomenon.6 Thus, in his study of the village of
ieti, in Maramure, Remus Anghel states that 80 percent of the population in the village worked in mining or industry and commuted to work
a distance of maximum 20 km.7 According to an evaluation of 1973, in
5
Per Ronns, Urbanization in Romania: A Geography of Social and Economic

Change since Independence (Stockholm: The Economic Research Institute,
Stockholm School of Economics, 1984), 156.
6
The census of 1977 has put a special emphasis on the phenomenon of interregional migration. See Figure 2 below.
7
Remus Anghel, Economia informal n comunism i postcomunism: Mere i
uic ntr-un sat din Maramure [Informal Economy in Communism and PostCommunism: Apples and Brandy in a Village from Maramure], in Liviu
500 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
some factories of the Braov county around 50 percent of the workforce

was composed of commuting villagers.8 As discussed below, in the case
of the Uzina de Autoturisme Piteti (Piteti Automobile Enterprise), 57.5
percent of the total workforce was composed of commuting villagers.
Furthermore, at the same Piteti enterprise 8.7 percent of the total workforce was composed of long-distance intra-county commuters.9
Transportation of commuting workforce was poorly organized, and
commuting workers constantly complained about transport conditions. In
order to reach their workplaces, many workers were obliged to travel between 20 and 60 kilometers by train or by trucks provided by their factories or enterprises. In many cases, commuters had to walk several
kilometers from the nearest railway station to their villages. The following example describes a normal working-day for a commuter, considering
the train as the main means of transportation and a commuting distance of
60 kilometers. At the time, the average speed of local trains in Romania
was of 45 kilometers per hour on main lines and of 30 kilometers per
hour on branch lines, due to the large number of stations.10 In order to
cover the average distance of 60 kilometers, a commuter needed between
one hour and a half and two hours per trip, making a total commuting
time of 3 to 4 hours per working day. Considering the working program
at the Steagul Rou (Red Flag) Truck Factory in Braov, that is, from
6:30 a.m. to 14:30 p.m., a commuter had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. in order
to arrive at their factory at 6:30 a.m., in the case that the railway station
was close enough to his or her village. At the end of the working day, in
the best case, commuters could arrive at home at 5:00 p.m., but in many
cases they arrived home around 6:00 p.m. A study of the total workforce
(as of 31 July 1971) of the Piteti Automobile Enterprise indicates that
from the total workforce, 42.5 percent spent up to 30 minutes to arrive to
Chelcea and Oana Mateescu, eds., Economia informal n Romnia: Piee,
practici sociale i transformri ale statului dup 1989 [Informal Economy in
Romania: Markets, Social Practices and State Transformations after 1989]
(Bucharest: Editura Paideia, 2005), 269.
8
Michael Shafir, Romania. Politics, Economics and Society: Political Stagnation
and Simulated Change (London: Frances Pinter Publishers, 1985), 141.
9
C. tefnescu, C. Moroan and I. Soare, Monografia Uzinei de autoturisme
Piteti [The Monograph of the Piteti Automobile Enterprise] (n.p., October
1972), 88.
10
Tsantis and Pepper, 323.
the factory, 48.8 percent spent up to 60 minutes, and 8.7 per cent needed
around 100 minutes.11 Prior to 1957, the commuting workforce had to
walk 4 km from the nearest railway station to the factory. In hard winters,
many workers were forced to stay over night in the factory, because of
the bad roads and poor transport conditions.12
The second shift represented a major aspect of everyday lives of many
peasant-workers. After arriving home from work, that is, after 5:00 or
6:00 p.m., the vast majority of the commuting villagers entered the second shift. As John W. Cole puts it, the second shift was related to the
activity the commuting workers did in agriculture after a day of work in
the factory. According to Cole, this second shift denominates the process of production and distribution that is carried out through noncorporate social relations: Romanian workers call the work that they do
in agriculture after they come home to their village after a day of work in
the factory their second shift.13 At the same time, David A. Kideckel
has stressed that the extended family pattern (three generations living together in the same household) was reinforced in late communism. Furthermore, in the particular setting of the ara Oltului (roughly the region
between Braov and Sibiu, in southern Transylvania) Kideckel has remarked upon the corporatist character of such peasant households, in
which work was performed both in the village and in the nearby town by
family members belonging to different generations.14 Turning back to the
problem of the second shift, one should mention that witness accounts
from the period point towards the indirect costs the socialist sector had
to pay because of this. Such accounts speak of the poor quality of the
work performed by the commuting villagers during the first shift. Because of the difficulties of commuting, these workers were often too tired
11
tefnescu, Moroan and Soare, Monografia Uzinei de autoturisme Piteti, 88.

tefnescu, Moroan and Soare, Monografia Uzinei de autoturisme Piteti, 2021 and 26.
13
John W. Cole, Family, Farm, and Factory: Rural Workers in Contemporary
Romania, in Daniel N. Nelson, ed., Romania in the 1980s (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1981), 93. On the way this second shift led to the development of the informal economy in a non-collectivized area, see Anghel, Mere i
uic ntr-un sat din Maramure, 272-77.
14
David A. Kideckel, The Solitude of Collectivism: Romanian Villagers to the
Revolution and Beyond (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 93-96;
pages are to the Romanian version (Iai: Editura Polirom, 2006).
12
502 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
to do good work, and their sleepiness during working hours caused numerous work accidents.15
Unrest in Working-Class Milieus: Peasant-Workers vs. Genuine
Workers
As shown above, peasant-workers represented a quick growing category
of workers. (Again, one should not confuse the peasant-workers, who
commuted daily to workplaces located in nearby towns, with villagers
working on state-owned farms.) A difficult problem, however, is to assess
the influence this growing category had on the potential for protest of
workers employed in industry from the mid-1970s onwards. Many accounts suggest that the workers were dissatisfied with their wages and the
working conditions throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. At the same
time, no major working-class protests occurred in communist Romania
during the period 1958-77. As discussed elsewhere, an analysis of the period between 1958 and 1977 suggests two important trends related to the
Romanian working class.16
The first trend regards the traditional working-class milieus, established
in the interwar period in the most industrially developed regions of
Greater Romania. As a result of the policy of sustained industrialization
imposed by the communist regime, the traditional industrial workforce
was diluted through a massive input of rural-born workers. This further
affected the sense of cohesion and solidarity of the Romanian working
class, which already had weak traditions of trade unionism. According to
an account of December 1955, which referred to the workers employed at
15
Open Society Archives, Budapest (OSA/RFE Archives), Romanian Fond, Unit

No. 300/60/1/390, Item 4623/58: 3.
16
For an analysis of the working-class protests in communist Romania see Drago
Petrescu, Workers and Peasant-Workers in a Working-Class Paradise: Patterns of Working-Class Protest in Communist Romania, in Peter Hbner,
Christoph Klemann and Klaus Tenfelde, eds., Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus:
Ideologischer Anspruch und Soziale Wirklichkeit (Cologne: Bhlau Verlag,
2005), 119-40 and Idem, State against the Citizens and Citizens against the
State: Repression and Insurgent Violence in Communist Romania, Arhivele Totalitarismului, Year XXII, No. 3-4 (2014), 125-41. Regarding the phenomenon
of anti-communist opposition and dissent during the communist epoch, see Cristina Petrescu, From Robin Hood to Don Quixote: Resistance and Dissent in
Communist Romania (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedic, 2013).
the Grivia heavy machinery enterprise, only the workers belonging to the
older generations still displayed a certain sense of solidarity.17 The second trend concerns the process of long distance internal migration, which
resulted in the creation of a category of genuine workers. The term
genuine has to be understood in the sense of a category that was forced
to rely almost entirely on the salary obtained from the so-called socialist
sector. This category of genuine workers did not have any working
class traditions: these workers were long distance migrating peasants
seeking for employment in industry. Consequently, their sense of solidarity developed only slowly and particularly to those employed in dangerous industrial sectors such as mining or shipbuilding. It may be argued
that a sense of cohesion among the genuine workers occurred from the
mid-1970s onwards.
As already mentioned, research on the political subculture of the peasantworkers employed in industry is scarce. Nevertheless, one can draw some
conclusions regarding the political mindset of this category by examining
the areas where the most significant working-class protests occurred during the period 1977-89. By analyzing these open protests by the working
class, one can assess whether the driving force behind the protests were
genuine workers or peasant-workers. At the same time, such an analysis would permit to assess to what extent the presence of a significant
number of peasant-workers within the workforce increased or decreased
the potential for protest in the respective area.
During the period 1977-89, the most relevant working-class protests occurred in the following places: the Jiu Valley (August 1977), Motru (October 1981), and Braov (November 1987). Of these, the most relevant
were the Jiu Valley and Braov protests. Moreover, the causes of the two
major protests that occurred in 1977 and 1987 have to do with the emergence of the category of genuine workers. This argument is also supported by the research carried out by Roman Laba, who examined the
working-class milieus on the Polish Baltic Coast. According to Laba,
those workers who severed their ties to the countryside were instrumental in the emergence of the non-violent, round-the-clock, occupation
strike that ultimately led to the birth of Solidarity. As the same author has
aptly observed, the August 1980 strike was sparked by shipyard workers
17
Open Society Archives, Budapest (OSA/RFE Archives), Romanian Fond, Unit

No. 300/60/1/837, Item 4019/56: 5.
504 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
who were unable to supplement their salaries with extra work on the
farm and whose very existence was therefore threatened by what they
perceived as an excessive rise of food prices.18
Let us examine briefly the main features of the 1977, 1981 and 1987
working-class protests. The Jiu Valley strike took place on 2-3 August
1977 and was a round-the-clock, non-violent, occupation strike and represented the first mature working-class protest in communist Romania.
The total number of miners employed by the ten mines in the Jiu Valley
back in 1977 Lonea, Petrila, Dlja, Livezeni, Aninoasa, Vulcan,
Paroeni, Lupeni, Brbteni and Uricani amounted to 23,527.19 The critical mass of miners that determined the outbreak of the strike was composed of the third shift that just finished the working day and the first
shift that was preparing for entering the mine, which amounts to about
two-thirds of the total number of miners employed at the time by all the
ten mines in the Jiu Valley. The strike was sparked by new legislation
concerning pensions (Law no. 3 of 30 June 1977 concerning state social
pensions and social assistance). The law was adopted by the Romanian
Grand National Assembly on 30 June and was subsequently published in
the Official Bulletin of the Socialist Republic Romania on 8 July. Miners
were worried by a series of limitations introduced by the new law as
compared with the old legislation (Law no. 27/1966) such as: the raise of
the retirement age from fifty to fifty-two, and the cancellation or restriction of various categories of sickness benefits and entitlements to
disability pension (especially with regard to the so-called third-degree
disability pension).20 A central element of discontent was the extension
of the workday from six to eight hours. The main aspects of the strike can
be summarized as follows: (1) the miners displayed a high level of selforganization; a strike command post was established at Gate No. 2 of the
most important mine in the area, the Lupeni mine, which became the focal point of the strike; (2) the strike was non-violent, sit-down, and
round-the-clock; and (3) the miners prepared a list of demands and asked
18
Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Polands WorkingClass Democratization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 119.
19
Marian Boboc and Mihai Barbu, Strict secret: Lupeni 1977 Filajul continu!
[Top Secret: Lupeni 1977 Stakeout Continues!] (Craiova: Editura MJM,
2007), 30, 49, 80, 90, 98, 144, 178, 354, 470 and 528.
20
On the limitations introduced by Law no. 3/1977 as compared with Law no.
27/1966, see Boboc and Barbu, Strict secret: Lupeni 1977, 12-15.
to negotiate directly with Ceauescu, face to face.21 On 2 August 1977, a

delegation of high party officials failed to reach an agreement with the
strikers, who firmly demanded to negotiate with the supreme leader of the
RCP in person. On 3 August, Ceauescu arrived at Lupeni and eventually
agreed to consider the workers demands. Ceauescus acceptance of the
list of demands put forward by the miners led to the termination of the
strike. The communist authorities did not use force to suppress the strike:
the repression followed gradually, during the winter of 1977-78. Despite
persistent rumors, the ringleaders were not killed by the Securitate: they
were moved forcefully to other regions, where they remained under constant surveillance by the Securitate.
The 1981 revolt by the Motru miners showed that the workers dissatisfaction with the communist regime was growing. Thus, the Motru protesters shouted anti-regime slogans, which indicated that the workingclass unrest was turning political. The miners in the Motru basin carried
out a violent protest, which was sparked by new legislation adopted by
the regime with regard to food rationing (Decrees 306/9 October 1981
and 313/17 October 1981).22 Miners were especially angered by the strict
rationing of bread envisaged by the above-mentioned decrees. The revolt
was sparked by miners from the Roiua and Leurda mines, who went on
strike on 19 October 1981, and were subsequently joined by fellow workers from other mines in the Motru area. The protesters left their workplaces and marched into the town of Motru. Apart from the slogan We want
bread! the strikers shouted Down with Ceauescu! and Down with
21
The list of demands included: (1) the reinstatement of a six-hour working day;
(2) retirement at age of fifty in the conditions of twenty years of effective activity; (3) the reinstatement of sickness benefits and entitlements to disability pensions restricted by the new law of pensions; (4) the improvement of working
conditions, as well as adequate food supplies and medical care in the Jiu Valley;
(5) the establishment of light industry enterprises in the Jiu Valley to provide
work to miners wives and daughters; (6) the establishment of workers commissions at the enterprise level, and their empowerment to control managers activity; (7) an agreement to be signed providing that protesting miners would
suffer no reprisals; and (8) the national media to report accurately on the causes
and progress of miners strike. Mihai Barbu and Marian Boboc, Lupeni 77:
Sfnta Varvara versus Tanti Varvara [Lupeni 77: Saint Varvara versus Aunt
Varvara] (Cluj: Editura Fundaiei pentru Studii Europene, 2005), 215-216.
22
Gheorghe Gorun, Rezistena la comunism: Motru 81 [Resistance to Communism: Motru 81] (Cluj: Editura Clusium, 2005), 40-50.
506 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
the dictator! which indicates that the protest eventually turned political.23
Once the protesters arrived in the center of the town, the protest also
turned violent. The protesting miners were joined by town dwellers, and
the same day of 19 October, at around 3 p.m., the angry crowd attacked
the building of the party committee. Army and Militia troops, as well as
Securitate agents were sent immediately to put down the protest. The repression lasted from 10 p.m. on 19 October until 3 a.m. the next day, 20
October 1981. After the official inquiry was completed, nine miners were
put to trial and subsequently received sentences ranging from 6 to 8 years
in prison.24
The Braov workers uprising of 15 November 1987 is of historic importance, very much like the Jiu Valley strike of 2-3 August 1977. The
protest occurred in one of the largest Romanian cities and turned into the
most violent anti-Ceauescu revolt prior to the December 1989 revolution. Very much like in the case of the 1981 Motru revolt, a large number
of Braov dwellers joined the workers in their protest. The Braov uprising occurred in the midst of a severe economic crisis. The spontaneous
protest was initiated by workers from the Steagul Rou (Red Flag) truck
plant, as a response to the wage cuts imposed by the management for
non-fulfillment of production targets. The announcement that the wages
were to be cut provoked an immediate and resolute reaction from a part
of the workers, all the more that this occurred in the context of chronic
food shortages and heating restrictions.25 The protest started during the
night shift (the so-called third shift) at the Steagul Rou truck plant.
Workers went on strike at 6:00 a.m. on 15 November 1987, and around
8:00 a.m. marched off from the plant in the direction of the city center.
The initial group of 300-350 protesters grew as the strikers marched towards downtown, and workers from the tractor factory Tractorul and citizens of Braov joined them. Witness accounts speak of some 3,000-4,000
23
Gorun, Rezistena la comunism: Motru 81, 58-59.

Gorun, Rezistena la comunism: Motru 81, 89-93.
25
Romulus Rusan, ed., O zi de toamn, cndva: 15 noiembrie 1987, Braov
[One Day in Autumn, Sometime: 15 November 1987, Braov] (Bucharest:
Editura Fundaiei Academia Civic, 2004); Marius Oprea and Stejrel Olaru,
eds., Ziua care nu se uit: 15 noiembrie 1987, Braov [The Day One Does Not
Forget: 15 November 1987, Braov] (Iai: Editura Polirom, 2002); and Vasile
Gogea, Fragmente salvate, 1975-1989 [Saved Fragments, 1975-1989] (Iai:
Editura Polirom, 1996), 168-177.
24
demonstrators, who gathered in the front of the party headquarters around

10:30 a.m.26 Protesters entered the building and threw out furniture and
equipment, and set them on fire outside the building. A similar scenario
was repeated at the Peoples Council building. Around 12:00 a.m., the
riot police entered the central square of Braov, accompanied by fire engines and firefighters. By 1:00 p.m., the crowd was dispersed and the protest ceased. Arrests were operated during the night of 15 to 16 of
November 1987. Some 500 protesters, mainly workers, were arrested and
interrogated. Eventually, 61 individuals directly involved in the violent
protest were deported.27 The unorganized and violent character of the revolt hampered the appearance of a much larger protest action, although
large categories of the Braov population were likely to join the protest.
The strikers decision to leave the plant and protest in the front of the
Braov party headquarters affected their capacity to defend themselves
against the intervention troops.
As already mentioned, this study argues that the peasant-workers had a
significantly lower potential for protest as compared to the genuine
workers, who found jobs in industrial facilities located well beyond the
distance one could cover daily in order to commute to work. In order to
illustrate this aspect regarding the political mindset of the commuting
villagers, this author contends that one has to examine the long distance
inter-county migration trends in communist Romania. In this respect, one
has to analyze the structure of the population in the counties where major
working-class protests occurred and assess whether these areas also attracted a large number of long distance inter-county migrants. Other
counties of communist Romania underwent a process of rapid industrialization as well, but did not witness major working-class protests. Thus,
one can argue that the investments in the fixed assets of socialist enterprises created a differentiation between the counties. Massive investment
in a countys economic infrastructure was likely to attract workforce from
26
27
Gogea, Fragmente salvate, 1975-1989, 173.

Dennis Deletant, Ceauescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 (London: Hurst & Company, 1995), 253. The Association
15 November 1987 of the participants to the revolt confirms the number of
61 workers deported to other regions of the country. See Comisia Prezidenial
pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din Romnia, Raport final [Final Report],
eds. Vladimir Tismneanu, Dorin Dobrincu, and Cristian Vasile (Bucharest:
Editura Humanitas, 2007), 709.
508 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
remote counties, beyond the commuting distance. Conversely, modest investment in a countys economic infrastructure was likely to attract primarily
workforce within a commuting distance. Having said this, let us examine
the long-distance internal migration trends in Ceauescus Romania.
Commuting to Work: Within or Beyond a Commuting Distance
In order to assess the long distance inter-county migration trends in
communist Romania under the Ceauescu regime, one has to analyze first
the industrial structure of the Romanian towns. Table 1 provides relevant
data regarding the industrial structure of Romanian towns for the period
1956-1977. For instance, in the case of the Hunedoara county (which
comprises the Jiu Valley region) one can observe that in the major mining
centres the employment in the secondary sector was significantly high. In
1977, in the mining centers of the Jiu Valley, the population active in the
second sector represented 77.7 percent of the total active population in
the town of Lupeni, 74.3 percent in Petrila, 66.5 percent in Uricani, and
78.6 percent in Vulcan. In the case of the town of Hunedoara, 71.4 percent of the total active population was employed in the secondary sector.28 At the same time, as shown in Table 2, in 1977 in Hunedoara county
workers represented 63.2 percent of the total active population. Similarly,
in 1977 the Braov county was one of the most industrialized counties of
Romania. As shown in Table 1, the population active in the secondary
sector represented 67.2 percent in Braov, 71.3 percent in Codlea, 71.8
percent in Fgra, 77.7 percent in Rnov, 77.9 percent in Scele, 73.7
percent in Victoria and 85.6 percent in Zrneti.29 As Ronns puts it:
Braov was the most urbanized county and had limited potentials for
further reductions of the agricultural population.30 At the same time, as
shown in Table 2, in the Braov county workers represented 70.5 of the
total active population.
As already mentioned, an analysis of the potential of protest by the working class to take into consideration not only the total number of workers
employed in the secondary sector, but also the percentage of commuting
villagers and the percentage of long distance inter-county migrants. This
is why this author contends that it is important to address the emergence
28
See Table 1 below.

See Table 2 below.
30
Ronns, Urbanization in Romania, 147.
29
of the category of genuine workers who were obliged to rely almost entirely on the salary they obtained from the state-socialist sector. Thus, one
has to address the issue of long distance inter-county migration. Data is
scarce in this respect, considering that one can use only the data provided
by the 1977 census. Unfortunately, between 1977 and 1992 no other census was taken in Romania and therefore the information concerning the
period between 1977 and 1989 is incomplete. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to consider that the general trend resulting from the basic 1977 census
data was maintained. For example, in the case of the city of Braov the
pattern of long distance inter-county migration was illustrated in the
1980s by the numerous jokes with Moldavians who were migrating to
Transylvania. Thus, a joke stated that Braov was about to become Iaov
considering the large number of migrants from the Moldavian city of Iai.
In her study on the mining town of Rovinari, located in the Gorj county,
Corina Cimpoieru touches upon the issue of long distance inter-county
migration by addressing the issue of Moldavian Orientalism and examining post-1989 recollections of the open conflict that emerged during the
Ceauescu epoch between the local Oltenians and the non-local Moldavians. Up to 80 percent of the workforce who came to the town to work in
the mining industry was made of Moldavians, whom the local population
perceived as uncivilized colonizers.31
A further problem regards the very term of long distance inter-county migration. Thus, one has to define the term by taking into consideration the
particular conditions at the time with regard to the means of transportation commuters had at their disposal. This study has considered a maximum commuting time of two hours per trip, which means a total of four
hours per day. This calculation is based on the average speed and daily
timetables of the main means of transportation (railway and bus) available at the time in communist Romania. One should add that commuting
by car was less common at the time, while commuting by motorbike was
not feasible from late autumn to early spring because of the weather conditions. In addition, the information provided by different scholars who
addressed different aspects of rural life in Ceauescus Romania has been
31
Corina Cimpoieru, Workers in the Workers State: Industrialization, Labor,

and Everyday Life in the Industrial City of Rovinari, in Maria Todorova, Augusta Dimou and Stefan Troebst, eds., Remembering Communism: Private and
Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe (Budapest:
Central European University Press, 2014), 333-335.
510 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
compared with this authors own experience of commuting at the time.32

All in all, the main assumption is that a commuting villager could not go
beyond a neighboring county in order to commute to work.
The next step is to determine the percentage of the population unable to
commute, beginning with the counties in which the most significant
working-class protests occurred, that is, the Hunedoara and Braov counties. In order to do this, the population born in the neighboring counties
has been subtracted from the total number of migrants into the respective
county. It should be mentioned from the outset that this method is not entirely accurate, because single persons could marry after migrating and
getting a job. Moreover, the husband or spouse could live in a village in
the respective county or in the neighboring ones. Nevertheless, this method provides enough data to verify a trend.33 Table 3 shows the absolute
figures of internal migration for twelve selected counties and the city of
Bucharest. Data provided in Table 3 has been processed by subtracting
the figures related to the migrants from the neighboring counties. The results are shown in Table 4. Thus, in the case of Hunedoara county, the
figures related to the migrants from Alba, Arad, Cara-Severin, Gorj,
Timi and Vlcea counties have been subtracted from the total number of
inter-county migrants.34 As shown in Table 4, this resulted in a total number of 131,388 long distance inter-county migrants, representing 25.5
percent of the countys total population. In the case of the Braov county,
the total number of migrants from the Arge, Buzu, Covasna, Dmbovia,
Harghita, Mure, Prahova and Sibiu counties has been subtracted from the
total number of migrants into the respective country.35 As shown in Table
4, this resulted in a total number of 146,696 long distance inter-county migrants, representing 25.2 percent of the countys total population.
Moreover, the data provided in Table 4 reveals that another two counties,
Timi and Constana, received a relatively high number of long distance
inter-county migrants (23.5 percent of the total population and 21.8 per32
In her study on the village of Binini, located in the Hunedoara County,

Verdery observes that the average commuting time for the commuting villagers was of two hours. Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic and Ethnic Change (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1983), 58.
33
See Table 3 below.
34
See Table 4 below.
35
See Table 4 below.
cent, respectively). Furthermore, in both cases the working class was well
represented in absolute numbers as well as in the percentage of the active
population. As shown in Table 2, in the case of the Timi county workers
represented 59.1 percent of the countys active population, while in the
case of the Constana county 64.0 percent of the active population was
made of workers. When discussing the particular features of the
Hunedoara and Braov counties, where the most significant workingclass protests occurred, one has to consider the industrial structure of the
population. Thus, a comparison between the above-mentioned four counties Hunedoara, Braov, Timi and Constana with regard to the percentage of the population employed in the secondary sector becomes
relevant. One should be reminded that, in a historical perspective, major
working-class revolts occurred in those industrial branches where the
working conditions were dangerous and difficult (such as mining or shipbuilding), and where the industrial facilities concentrated large masses of
workers (mining, shipbuilding, heavy machinery, construction sites). To
conclude, it might be argued that the larger the number of long distance
inter-county migrants combined with a larger share of the population
employed in the secondary sector led to a higher potential for protest in a
given working-class environment. The calculation presented below for the
Timi and Constana counties supports such an assertion.
Data presented in Table 1 indicates that in the Timi and Constana counties, the percentage of the population active in the secondary sector was
lower than in the Hunedoara and Braov counties, due to a higher percentage of the population active in the tertiary sector. In the case of the
Timi county, the structure of the population involved in 1977 in the secondary sector for the major towns in the county is presented below. For
comparison, the percentage of total active population active in the tertiary
sector is given in parentheses: (1) Timioara, 60.8 percent of the population employed in the secondary sector (36.8 percent employed in the tertiary sector); (2) Lugoj, 57.7 percent employed in the secondary sector
(37.5 percent employed in the tertiary sector); (3) Buzia, 32.5 percent
employed in the secondary sector (36.4 percent employed in the tertiary
sector); (4) Deta, 54.1 percent employed in the secondary sector (32.1
percent employed in the tertiary sector); (5) Jimbolia, 68.0 percent employed in the secondary sector (20.9 percent employed in the tertiary sector); and (6) Snnicolau Mare, 46.5 percent employed in the secondary
sector (34.9 percent employed in the tertiary sector).
512 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Similarly, in the case of the Constana county the percentages of the population active in the secondary sector, for the major countys towns are
indicated below. Like in the case of the Timi county, discussed above,
the percentage of the population involved in the tertiary sector is provided
in parentheses: (1) Constana, 43.1 percent employed in the secondary
sector (54.1 percent employed in the tertiary sector); (2) Eforie, 25.8 percent employed in the secondary sector (70.7 percent employed in the tertiary sector); (3) Mangalia, 48.1 percent employed in the secondary sector
(45.7 percent employed in the tertiary sector); (4) Cernavod, 51.7 percent employed in the secondary sector (39.8 percent employed in the tertiary sector); (5) Medgidia, 59.6 percent employed in the secondary
sector (32.3 percent employed in the tertiary sector).
Concluding Remarks
This study has demonstrated that one can establish a connection between
the percentage of workers unable to commute daily to work and the potential for open protest in Ceauescus Romania. Furthermore, the present
study has argued that the presence of a significant mass of peasantworkers or commuting villagers in large industrial facilities led to a lowering of the potential for open protest by the workers. These conclusions
have been reached by examining the regions and the workplaces of communist Romania where the major working class protests occurred. As
shown below, by looking at the share of the population employed in the
secondary sector concomitantly with examining the percentage of long
distance inter-county migrants this study has demonstrated that the industrial workers who severed their ties with countryside were the most rebellious in late communism. Those who did not cut their ties with the village
and only commuted daily to work were more prone to be submissive to
the regime since they had more opportunities to muddle through during
the sharp economic crisis of late communism.
The main figures that support the conclusions of this study are presented
below. In the cases of Jiu Valley (Hunedoara county) and Braov (Braov
county), the population born in the neighboring counties has been subtracted from the total number of migrants into the respective county. In
the case of the Hunedoara county, the figures related to the migrants from
Alba, Arad, Cara-Severin, Gorj, Timi and Vlcea counties have been
subtracted from the total number of inter-county migrants. This resulted
in a total number of 131,388 long distance inter-county migrants, representing 25.5 percent of the countys total population. In the case of
Braov county, the total number of migrants from Arge, Buzu, Covasna, Dmbovia, Harghita, Mure, Prahova and Sibiu has been subtracted from the total number of migrants into the respective country.
This resulted in a total number of 146,696 long distance inter-county migrants, representing 25.2 percent of the countys total population.
Another two counties, Timi and Constana, received a relatively high
number of long distance intercounty migrants (23.5 percent of the total
population and 21.8 percent, respectively). Moreover, in both cases, the
working class was well represented in absolute numbers, as well as in the
percentage of the active population. In the case of Timi county, workers
represented 59.1 percent of the countys active population, while in the
case of the Constana county, 64.0 percent of the active population were
workers. One should note, however, that in the cases of the Timi and
Constana counties the possibility of smuggling consumer goods from the
former Yugoslavia and Hungary in the case of the Timi county, or
through the commercial seaport in the case of the Constana county,
acted as a sort of safety valve and hampered to some extent the emergence of social protests in those regions. Therefore, it may be argued that
a striking similarity, in terms of industrialization and urbanization processes, of long distance inter-county migration trends, and of distribution
of developmental resources existed between the counties of Hunedoara
and Braov. One should not forget that the Romanian revolution of 1989
was sparked in Timioara, the capital of the Timi county, which supports
the argument that a certain connection between the relatively high number of long distance inter-county migrants and outbreaks of social protest
did exist.
Further research, however, is needed in order to shed light on the political mindset of the peasant-workers. Although they represented a growing social group in the late communist period, the peasant-workers have
not been subject of systematic research to this day. As this study has suggested, this particular category of workers contributed to a lowering of
the potential for open protest under communism. At the same time, many
other aspects regarding the impact the commuting villagers had on the
village life, on one hand, and on the factory/enterprise life on the other
hand, definitely need further clarification.
514 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Table 1 The Industrial Structure of Romanian Towns in 1956, 1966 and 1977: Active Population
in Primary (I), Secondary (II) and Tertiary (III) Employment (Selected Counties and Bucharest)
516 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
*) Excluding suburban communes

Primary Employment: Agriculture and Silviculture;
Secondary Employment: Mining, Manufacturing and Construction;
Tertiary Employment: Other Industries and Services.
Source: Per Ronns, Urbanization in Romania: A Geography of Social and Economic Change since Independence
(Stockholm: The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, 1984), 359373.
518 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Source: Direcia Central de Statistic, Republica Socialist Romnia. Recensmntul

populaiei i al locuinelor din 5 ianuarie 1977, vol.II, Populaie - Structura social-economic
(Bucharest: n.p., 1980).
Table 2. Communist Romania: The Social Structure in 1977, Selected Counties
Table 3. Internal Migration Figures According to the 1977 Census (Selected Counties and Bucharest)
520 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Table 3 (continued) Internal Migration Figures According to the 1977 Census (Selected Counties
and Bucharest)
and Bucharest)
522 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Sources: Direcia Central de Statistic, Republica Socialist Romnia. Recensmntul populaiei i al locuinelor din 5 ianuarie
1977, vol. I, Populaie Structura demografic (Bucharest: n.p., 1980), 696-743.
Remarks: Data presented in the table refer to the 1968 administrative division of the country (39 counties and the city of Bucharest).
After the administrative change of 1981, the Ilfov county was replaced by two counties, Clrai and Giurgiu, while the Municipality
of Bucharest was granted approximately 764 sq km by the creation of the so-called Ilfov Agricultural Sector. The following abbreviations have been employed to denominate Romanias counties: AB (Alba), AR (Arad), AG (Arge), BC (Bacu), BH (Bihor), BN
(Bistria-Nsud), BR (Brila), BT (Botoani), BV (Braov), BZ (Buzu), CJ (Cluj), CT (Constana), CS (Cara-Severin), CV (Covasna), Dmbovia (DB), DJ (Dolj), GL (Galai), GJ (Gorj), HR (Harghita), HD (Hunedoara), IF (Ilfov), IL (Ialomia), IS (Iai), MM
(Maramure), MH (Mehedini), MS (Mure), NT (Neam), OT (Olt), PH (Prahova), SM (Satu Mare), SJ (Slaj), SB (Sibiu), SV
(Suceava), TR (Teleorman), TM (Timi), TL (Tulcea), VS (Vaslui), VL (Vlcea), VN (Vrancea) and B (Bucharest).
and Bucharest)
524 _____________________________________________ Drago PETRESCU
Table 4. Inter-county Migration Trends According to the 1977 Census, Selected Counties (Less Migrants from Neighboring Counties)
Region
Selected
County
Total Population
Neighboring
Counties
Transylvania
Braov
582,863
Hunedoara
514,436
Cluj
715,507
Banat
Timi
696,884
CrianaMaramure
Muntenia
Arad
512,020
Arge
631,918
Dmbovia
493,750
Prahova
817,168
Iai
729,243
Vaslui
437,251
Constana
Dolj
608,817
750,328
Arge, Buzu,
Covasna, Dmbovia,
Harghita, Mure,
Prahova, Sibiu
Alba, Arad, CaraSeverin, Gorj,
Timi,Vlcea
Alba, Bihor, BistriaNsud, Mure, Slaj
Arad, Cara-Severin,
Hunedoara
Alba, Bihor,
Hunedoara,Timi
Braov, Dmbovia,
Olt, Sibiu, Vlcea,
Teleorman
Arge, Braov, Bucharest, Ilfov, Prahova,
Teleorman
Bucharest, Braov,
Buzu, Covasna,
Dmbovia, Ilfov
Bacu, Botoani,
Neam, Suceava,
Vaslui
Bacu, Galai, Iai,
Neam, Vrancea
Brila, Ialomia, Tulcea
Gorj, Mehedini, Olt,
Vlcea
Moldova
Dobrogea
Oltenia
Inter-regional Migrants
(Less Migrants from
Neighboring Counties)
N
%
146,696
25.2
131,388
25.5
50,860
7.1
163,972
23.5
53,410
10.4
37,501
5.9
27,196
5.5
61,409
7.5
29,255
4.0
9,113
2.0
133,042
30,476
21.8
4.0
Remarks: Author's calculations

Source: Direcia Central de Statistic, Republica Socialist Romnia. Recensmntul
populaiei i al locuinelor din 5 ianuarie 1977, vol. I, Populaie Structura demografic
(Bucharest: n.p., 1980), 696743.
Social change and rural

mentality
Between the Rural Household and Political Mobilization The

Circles of Rural Housewives in Poland 1946-1989
Natalia JARSKA
In 1947 rural women could rather easily join one of the courses of cooking and baking, or sewing that were held by the Circles of Rural Women
(Koa Gospody Wiejskich, KGW) in the Polish countryside. The
knowledge that they gained on the course wouldnt probably differ from
similar courses in 1938. In 1984 members of the Circles of Rural Housewives attended 17 thousand courses and displays on the rural household.
Does this mean that during communism nothing changed in the organization and gender order in the countryside?
Of course, the answer cannot be yes. It could be rather yes, but. The
aim of this paper is to look for continuity and changes in the activity of the
Circles of Rural Housewives association for rural women in Poland in the
years 1946-1989. What were the most important areas of activity? What
gender ideology did they reflect? What were the gender roles offered by the
Circles to their members? What was their political context?
The paper focuses on the political mobilization of rural women in communism. I will argue that this mobilization was based on emancipation
slogans, but at the same time it used traditional gender divisions. The
communist message transferred to rural women in Poland was a combination of modernity and tradition; it pursued change without giving up established norms. And while at the beginning it stressed strongly the
need for revolution in rural womens lives, at the end, the aims were
much more modest. In consequence, it had limited transformative power.
Arguing this does not mean that rural womens lives didnt change during
communist rule, but in these social changes, a political project for rural
women was not crucial.
First, the paper will give some general information on rural women in
communist Poland. Then it explains structural organization of the Circles
of Rural Housewives. It is important to see the organization in the context
of the womens movement and rural organizations. The main part of the
paper is dedicated to the description of the Circles activities and their
evolution, and in the end interpretations and answers to the questions
posed in the introduction.
528 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
The research is based on extensive archival materials: reports and analysis

of KGWs activities gathered by the party through its structures responsible of massive organizations and womens movement. Documentation on
the Circles can be found also in Union of Mutual Aid of Peasants (Zwizek
Samopomocy Chopskiej, ZSCh) fond and National Council of Polish
Women (Krajowa Rada Kobiet Polskich, KRKP) materials. This documentation shows an upper level of activities and a general overview, without
giving much information on local activities. Instead, it gives sometimes an
insight into decisions and discussions concerning KGWs aims. The
KGWs periodical Rural Housewife (Gospodyni Wiejska), issued since
1957, doesnt bring any new perspective on the organizations activity. It
mostly confirms what can be concluded from the archival material.
Women in the Polish countryside
When the World War II ended, Poland was still a mainly rural country.
During the period of Stalinism (1948-1956) collectivization was imposed.1 In many regions, especially in central and eastern Poland, it met
strong resistance, performed also by women. After 1956 these politics
were abandoned, and even if the party-state still preferred collective
forms of rural production, it did accept individual farming. This situation
lasted until 1989.
This specific situation in the Polish countryside had an impact also on
womens lives. In general, during the communist period those who migrated from the countryside to the city most were men. Even during rapid industrialization in the 1950s, when rural women were encouraged to take up
jobs in industry and very often responded positively to these politics2
men migrated to the industry easier. In the coming decades this trend was
even stronger. Women stayed in the rural households when men migrated
1
On policies towards agriculture and peasants see: Dariusz Jarosz, Polityka

wadz komunistycznych w Polsce w latach 1948-1956 a chopi [Politics of
Communist Authorities in Poland in Years 1948-1956 Towards Peasants]
(Warsaw: DiG, 1998).
Natalia Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru. Robotnice w Polsce w latach 1945-1960
[Women of Marble. Female Workers in Poland in Years 1945-1960] (Warszawa: Instytut Pamici Narodowej, 2015); Natalia Jarska, Rural Women, Gender Ideologies, and Industrialization in State Socialism. The Case of a Polish
Factory in the 1950s, Aspasia 8 (2015), 65-86.
Between the Rural Household and Political Mobilization The Circles... ___ 529
permanently to the cities, or they became peasant-workers. More and more

women took on responsibility of managing the individual farms. This process was changing their social position and the gender order, but at the
same time they experienced a rather hard life and work conditions (unattractive to men). As decision-makers in the farms, women became more
important to the party-state. In 1970s the main goal for the Circles was to
make the agriculture more productive because women are the majority
of farm leaders.3 After some years of less interest paid to rural women, in
the 1970s and 1980s their political enlightenment was stressed again.
In late 1940s women comprised about 54 percent of the population living
in the countryside (in cities - 57 percent). Yet in the 1950 census, 25 percent (over 670.000) were classified as farm managers, especially in small
farms. In central Poland, 15 percent of individual farms were ruled only by
women, and in western regions up to 40 percent.4 In the 1960s and 1970s,
the Polish countryside experienced feminization of farming. This tendency
slightly changed in 1980s, when young women started to run away from
the countryside. Migrations were caused by harsh life conditions, lack of social care and doctors, and very poor services.5 Still, in 1980 as much as 35
percent (up to 1 million) of the individual farms were managed by women,
but among the smallest the rate was 81 percent. For 2.700.000 women,
work in farming was a main source of income, and 1.200.000 of them were
main workers. Among those who managed the farms alone, over 50 percent were single.6 In collective and state-own farming women never became as important. In 1980s among workers they comprised 25 percent.7
3
Udzia kobiet zrzeszonych w kkach rolniczych w uczczeniu XXX-lecia Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej, XII/2939, Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej [Central Committee of the Polish United Workers
Party, hereafter cited as KC PZPR], Archiwum Akt Nowych [New Documents
Archive, hereafter cited as AAN].
4
Barbara Tryfan, Rola kobiety wiejskiej [The Role of Rural Women] (Warszawa:
Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Rolnicze i Lene, 1976), 44.
5
Udzia kobiet w yciu spoeczno-gospodarczym wsi, XLII/37, KC PZPR,
AAN.
6
Ocena sytuacji spoeczno-zawodowej kobiet wiejskich, XI 1982, XLII/22, KC
PZPR, AAN.
7
Informacja o dziaalnoci na rzecz poprawy warunkw pracy i ycia kobiet
spdzielczy i zatrudnionych w spdzielczoci i ich rodzin, XLII/22, KC
PZPR, AAN.
530 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
The Circles: organization and numbers

The Circles of the Rural Housewives was the only female organization in
post-war Poland that was legitimized by a true tradition. After the war
practically none of the tens of female associations that were active in the
interwar period renewed its activity. The only womens organization was
the League of Women founded in 1945, and not politically neutral from
the beginning. The League established circles of rural women, but as
soon as autumn 1946 they were to be called Circles of Housewives and
became part of the rural organization Union of Mutual Aid of Peasants.8
The decision was made by two womens sections of parties: the communist and the rural one. ZSCh would also create womens sections on
each level. On one hand, this decision meant taking the circles under control of the political parties. On the other hand, it was decided that they
wouldnt be included in the League of Women. Thats why the circles
were able to keep, if not their autonomy their original character. It was
established that the circles would collaborate with the League, but the
connection was rather weak.
Instead, the name stressed connection to tradition. It is important to explain that housewives in the name referred to an important institution of
the rural society. Housewives were married women, wives of individual
farmers. Traditionally they were responsible for breeding animals and
vegetable gardens, and enjoyed certain prestige.9
It was also important that the circles were founded from the bottom. The
circles could rely on their traditions dating back to 1877 when the first circle was founded by a Polish socialist activist Filipina Paskowicka. Their
traditional task was to educate rural women, both in farming (traditional
female labor) and managing the household. In 1938 lots of specialized
Protok ze wsplnego posiedzenia, 1164, Zwizek Samopomocy Chopskiej

(hereafter ZSCh), AAN.
9
Wodzimierz Mdrzecki, Kobieta w rodzinie i spoecznoci wiejskiej w Polsce
w okresie midzywojennym, [The Woman in the Rural Family and Community in Inter-war Poland] in Rwne prawa i nierwne szanse: Kobiety w Polsce
midzywojennej. Zbir studiw [Equal Rights, and Unequal Opportunities:
Women in Inter-war Poland], ed. Anna arnowska, Andrzej Szwarc (Warsaw:
DiG, 2000), 173.
courses on housekeeping and (less) on farming were held.10 Even though

the times were different and the circles would soon take up quite new
tasks and become politically involved, connecting with tradition was important for their legitimization in the eyes of peasant women.
The Circles remained part of ZSCh until its dissolution in 1956. The organization had its Council of Women. After 1949 community councils of
women (gminne rady kobiece) were established to coordinate work
among women in different rural structures. Women who worked in stateowned farms (PGR) were associated in circles that belonged to the
League of Women. Members of the Circles of Rural Housewives, instead,
were also automatically members of the League (it was called collective
membership). As every womens structure, the circles were under control of the Womens Section of the communist party (PZPR), until 1953
when the section was dissolved. Double dependence from the main rural and womens organization represented the double identity of the circles. They were meant to be agents of the communist project of rural
revolution, and rural women emancipation project.
Things were about to change in 1956. After ZSCh was dissolved, the
question about the future of the circles was raised. It was clear that they
should exist, but there were different ideas about what should be their
governance. The Circles tried to become an autonomous rural womens
organization, but they were denied this autonomy. The party decided to
include them into the structures or Rural Circles (Kka Rolnicze) a
multi-task peasant organization. At the same time Circles of Rural
Housewives preserved previous peculiar dependence from the League of
Women. Until 1966 the circles were perceived by the party-state as sort
of womens sections in peasant organization, and part of the regimes
womens organization.
In 1966 the situation changed, because of the partys decision to reorganize womens movement. The National Council of Polish Women was
created (as part of the Front of National Unity) to coordinate four
branches of the womens movement: the League of Women, the organization of female cooperatives, womens section of the trade unions, and
10
Jadwiga Teleyska, Zofia Pramowska, Wytyczne pracy w Koach Gospody

Wiejskich (kursy, konkursy, pokazy) [Guidelines for Circles of Rural Housewives Activities (Courses, Contests, Shows)] (Warszawa, Wydawnictwo
Ksinicy dla Rolnikw, 1938). In 1946 this book was reprinted.
532 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
the Circles of Rural Housewives. The Circles became more independent

from the League of Women, yet without losing connection with the
womens movement.
This situation changed again in 1983, when the National Council of
Polish Women was dissolved. The Circles started to be treated as a separate womens organization, dependent only from the partys structures
responsible of the womens movement. Special Central Committees divisions for womens issues existed from 1946 until 1989, although their
importance varied. In 1980s the Circles activity was also shaped by the
1982 law on rural organizations. They still belonged to the Rural Circles,
attempts to gain full autonomy taken in 1980 (being disappointed by a
law percentage of women in the organizations authorities).11
From this brief institutional history of the Circles of Rural Housewives
we can conclude that they had this double identity or rural-womens organization throughout all the period in question. Yet, it seems that their
attachment to the womens movement was always weaker than to the organizations for peasants, and that every decade this connection with the
womens movement was getting more and more symbolic. The Circles
passed from the formal membership in the League of Women, through
the merely representative Council of Polish Women, to total independence from other female organizations.
This makes the Circles especially interesting for the study of official
womens organizations in communist countries in Eastern Europe. The
Circles were clearly on the margins of the mainstream womens movement. Rural women were always treated differently; the League of Women was very weak in the countryside (and formally present only in stateown farms). The Circles place in the world of communist institutions reflected the ambiguity of the perception of rural women. In spite of the
universal slogans of emancipation, the peasant womens mobilization
project had its original features. This ambiguity was present also in the
programs and activities of the organization. In Poland the communist project for peasant women was shaped also by a special demographic and
structural situation in the countryside.
It is important to note that the Circles were undoubtedly a massive organization. In 1949 they had 312.000 members (when the whole League of
11
Ocena sytuacji spoeczno-zawodowej kobiet wiejskich, XI 1982, XLII/22, KC

PZPR, AAN.
Women had nearly 1.400.000).12 Two years later there were yet 490.000
members, although some of the circles in fact didnt work.13 In 1965 the
Circles had 550.000 members who belonged to over 25.000 circles.14
These numbers were high, but the organization really flourished at the
end of the decade. In 1970 there were circles in 80 percent of villages,
gathering a million members, among which worked 130.000 activists.15
In mid 1970s there were 1.200.000 women associated twice as much as
in League of Women at that time.16 Ten years later 1.300.000 members
belonged to 38.000 circles.17 In late 1980s KGW gathered as much as 47
percent of women working in individual farms.18 Explaining this significant rise in popularity of the Circles is beyond the scope of this article,
but we can conclude that especially in the last two decades of the communist rule in Poland the organization of the rural women had an impact in the countryside, even if some of the circles were weak. Other
numbers which reflect the Circles activities, which Ill mention later, also point to an intensive presence of KGW in the rural milieu. Its message,
translated to several main forms of activity, reached probably all women
living in the countryside.
Continuity and change
What were the main tasks of the Circles? How did they change over time?
In general, many activities that members of KGW took up were the same in
the 1960s and 1980s. Reading reports of the organization from different periods gives an impression that the Circles activities were universal. This
12
Wykaz osigni wrd kobiet od Kongresu Jednoci, 31, 237/V-72, KC

PZPR, AAN.
13
Uchwaa ZSCh i LK w sprawie pracy wrd kobiet wiejskich, 1164, ZSCh,
AAN.
14
Tezy programowe do dziaalnoci K Gospody Wiejskich, 1966, 952,
Oglnopolski Komitet Frontu Jednoci Narodu [National Committee of the
National Unity Front, hereafter cited as OK FJN], AAN.
15
Praca KGW i ich udzia w samorzdzie kek rolniczych, 1970, 956, OK FJN,
AAN.
16
Informacje o dziaalnoci wrd kobiet zrzeszonych w kkach rolniczych po
VI Zjedzie PZPR, XII/2901, KC PZPR, AAN.
17
Dziaalno spoeczno-polityczna wrd kobiet wiejskich, XLII/100, KC
PZPR, AAN.
18
Zaoenia kampanii sprawozdawczo-wyborczej KGW 1986/1987, XLII/137,
KC PZPR, AAN.
534 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
impression comes probably from the fact that the majority of them we
would name politically neutral. What could have changed in cooking
courses? Of course, there is a political context of the activities in Stalinism members were supposed to promote collectivization; in 1980s, times of
deep economic crisis, there was more stress on saving. Although the most
important features of KGW were timeless and universal, it is important to
discover also signs of evolution. And both continuity and changes reflect
the communist project of mobilization of rural women.
The first two periods of activity late 1940s and Stalinism reflect the
same tendencies that can be detected in other massive organizations of
that time. The first years of existence were marked by rather spontaneous
activity, resembling interwar traditions, and not yet openly politicized. As
soon as in 1949 intensive collectivization propaganda was imposed, and
Circles became visibly more involved with Stalinist-style political mobilization.
Activities realized by the Circles before the coming of Stalinism resembled their pre-war experiences. In 1949 these activities were summarized
in a highly critical manner, because they were based on old KGWs traditions, obviously seen as politically wrong. The Circles employed many
pre-war instructors, who taught women cooking, baking, sewing, and
gardening.19 Indeed, in 1947 KGW held over 1600 courses in cooking,
baking, and housekeeping. Ten thousand vegetable-garden teams were
established. Still, in many places women were reluctant to join the circles.20 From the beginning, KGWs activities were distributed in four areas: economic-social, kindergartens, health action (in those years it
consisted in sending peasants to sanatoria and organizing talks for mothers), and cultural (fighting analphabetism and organizing cultural events).
These first tasks were far from political mobilization. However, in late
1947 the Circles established relations with political parties, and peasant
women were expected to pay more attention to village and state issues.21
Making a political mobilization tool from the Circles begun in 1948 with
political purges: about 200 instructors were expelled, and creating Council
19
Sprawozdanie z pracy Wydziau Kobiecego ZSCh za okres XI 1946 I 1949,

1164, ZSCh, AAN.
20
Wydzia Kobiecy, 1164, ZSCh, AAN, 8.
21
Protok z konferencji Wydziau Kobiecego w dniach 14 i 15 grudnia 1946,
1164, ZSCh, AAN, 3.
of Women on each administration level, composed by ZSCh and League

of Women activists, to control KGW.22
Nevertheless, the process was long and difficult. In 1948, in spite of special training, instructors were criticized for their work being devoid of political content.23 The attempts of changing the Circles character didnt
have an immediate effect on their activities. In 1948 over 300 courses of
cooking, 500 of making preparations, and 300 of sewing were carried out.
Rural tasks were limited to vegetable gardens, herbs and milking. Health
action expanded with the establishment of the institution of rural health
leaders.24 The Circles activities were developed also from below
Womens Section of ZSCh couldnt even keep up with the demand. For
central activists this was surprisingly a source of concern, as they feared
that if this engagement wouldnt be directed, it would rather bring
ideological damage and distort the ZSCh political line.25 It is clear that
still in 1948 KGW didnt play a role that was prescribed for them by the
communist party and its allies. The Circles had to be taken under control.
This meant that their new style and activity and thereby a new project
for peasant women was to be imposed from above.
Stalinization of the Circles of Rural Housewives begun in 1949. The most
important change was the involvement of the organization in realization
of the party-states rural policy, in this case collectivization. KGW
started to spread propaganda and helped in establishing collectives since
the end of 1949.26 From now on transferring the states policy towards
agriculture was one of the most important tasks. Consequently, KGW
ceased to be exclusively an organization for pursuing womens aims. Explicitly, the Circles should not focus on womens aims any more.27
22
23
24
25
26
27
Sprawozdanie z pracy Wydziau Kobiecego ZSCh za okres XI 1946 I

1949,1164, ZSCh, AAN.
Sprawozdanie z pracy Wydziau Kobiecego ZSCh za 1948 r. Wytyczne w
pracy za najbliszy okres, 1164, ZSCh, AAN.
Leaders here was the same word as for labor hero in industry. Plan pracy
Inspektoratu Kobiecego za m-c luty 1948 r., 1164, ZSCh, AAN.
Sprawozdanie Wydziau Kobiecego za okres od 1 stycznia do 1 maja 1948,
1164, ZSCh, AAN, 24.
Sprawozdanie Dziau Kobiecego Zarzdu Gwnego ZSCh za pierwsze
procze 1950 r., 1164, ZSCh, AAN, 29.
W sprawie pracy wrd kobiet wiejskich. Uchwaa Prezydiw Zarzdu
Gwnego Zwizku Samopomocy Chopskiej i Zarzdu Gwnego Ligi Kobiet
536 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
Nonetheless, new rural policy was presented as deeply related to womens emancipation. Revolution on the countryside was supposed to
change womens life.28 The political mobilization of peasant women was
expressed in a resolution on work among rural women issued by the
League of Women and ZSCh in July 1950.29 The first paragraphs of this
document were dedicated to equality policies and welfare. The party-state
promised electricity, tractors and health institutions on the countryside.
Collective farming was supposed to raise productivity and free peasants
from primitive life conditions. For women it would bring the possibility
of advancement and individual income. The resolution quoted here the
resolution of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party
on work among women in its passages dedicated to rural women. Collective farming would free women from hard work. Thats why women
associated in KGW should participate in the realization of reconstruction
of the countryside, by becoming activists of rural organizations and administration, also in leading positions.
The same document criticized the up-to-date activity of the Circles. The
most important reproach was their isolation form ZSChs structures and
limitation to small female issues like courses for the household. The
Circles often stressed their autonomy by using their own banners and
seals. Members wouldnt engage in breeding groups, collectivization and
labor heroism. It is worth noting that both ZSCh structures and the Circles themselves were not enthusiastic about being more united. Work
among women was not a priority for the ZSChs authorities. The League
of Women wasnt prepared for rural agitation and was conflicted with
ZSCh. An effect of these errors was the influence of class enemy on
z dnia 27 lipca 1950 r. [On the Work among Rural Women. Resolution of the
Presidia of Central Boards of ZSCh and the League of Women issued on 27th
July 1950]
28
On propaganda on womens advancement in periodical press in Stalinism see:
Dariusz Jarosz, Wzorce osobowe i modele awansu kobiety wiejskiej w prasie
periodycznej z lat 1949-1955, [Role Models and Patterns of Rural Womans
Advancement in Periodic Press in Years 1949-1955] in: Kobieta i edukacja na
ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku: zbir studiw [Woman and Education in
Polish Lands in the 19th and 20th Centuries], ed. Anna arnowska, Andrzej
Szwarc, vol. 2 (Warszawa: Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1992).
29
W sprawie pracy wrd kobiet wiejskich
the Circles. The enemy took advantage of the peasant womens lack of
awareness and backwardness.30 What this document suggested was that
rural women proved to be enemies of the states policy in the countryside.
In fact, women were very active in the anti-collectivization resistance.31
The project for KGW members was to engage them fully in the realization of political goals. Women were to participate in social control of
shops and other establishments and denunciations of rich peasants. For
the first time the program of the Circles had to include professional training in farming. Their tasks in care of children were to be expanded. The
Circles had to spread propaganda and enlightenment among peasant
women, making them aware of the states policy.32
Pressure from above changed the Circles activity. Yet in 1951 KGW
participated in the purchase of grain action and sowing. They organized
an anti-alcoholism campaign33; women were said to be influential in this
area. Besides these new tasks, the Circles continued their health and care
activities, like organization of special summer kindergartens and sending
peasants for cures. KGW, like other organizations, had to participate in
propaganda campaigns, celebrations of feasts and labor heroism. Raising
production inputs was a central and organizing principle. One of the most
important activities was the breeding action which engaged hundreds of
thousand peasant women.34 While concentrating on production goals, rural women improved their professional knowledge.
Stalinist revolution significantly changed the Circles aims and character.
From an organization focused on organizing cooking courses they became an important agent of political and professional mobilization of
30
W sprawie pracy wrd kobiet wiejskich, 8-11.

See: Grzegorz Miernik, Opr kobiet przeciw kolektywizacji najwaniejsze
konteksty, [Womens Resistance to Collective Farming: Most Significant
Contexts] in: Pe buntu: Kobiety w oporze spoecznym i opozycji w Polsce w
latach 1944-1989 na tle porwnawczym [The Gender of Revolt: Women in
Popular Resistance and Political Opposition in Poland 1944-1989: A comparative Perspective], ed. Natalia Jarska, Jan Olaszek (Warsaw: Instytut Pamici
Narodowej, 2014), 81-119.
32
W sprawie pracy wrd kobiet, 12-14.
33
Ocena pracy ZSCh wrd kobiet wiejskich za I kwarta 1951 r., 1164, ZSCh,
AAN.
34
Osignicia kobiet wiejskich w 1954 r. i zadania w roku 1955 w wietle uchwa II Zjazdu Partii, 1164, ZSCh, AAN.
31
538 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
peasant women. However, the old traditions soon reappeared again. After
1956, when Stalinism in Poland ended and collectivization of agriculture
was suspended, KGW returned to some activities given up before. Nevertheless, their expansion in the professional area and political mobilization
lasted until the end of the communist rule.
In 1965, for instance, this half-million organization still engaged its
members in breeding competitions and vegetable supplies. Raising
productivity part of modernization discourse lasted as a main goal. In
the breeding area KGW was supposed to introduce modern methods; it
organized courses and demonstrations of breeding pigs and chickens to
educate its members. Educating and mobilizing women in this traditionally female agricultural labor gave also an opportunity to introduce some
forms of collective farming (groups, cooperatives).
The second most important area of activity was related to housekeeping.
KGW taught women rational nutrition on courses and demonstrations,
modern house arrangements. Rural households should be modern and rationally planned, and the Circles put a lot of effort in spreading new ideas.
Now leaders of households (przodownice gospodarstwa domowego) were a
new type of activist. In villages Modern Housewife Centers places where
peasant women could borrow household goods and where courses were organized started their expansion.35 In 1966 the Circles carried out 9200
courses on cooking and sewing, in which took part 200.000 women. Education for the household was often combined with professional training in
farming, symbolically stressing the double identity of rural women as
farmers and housewives. Three-year agriculture courses included lessons
on rational nutrition and child education.36
Political enlightenment, introduced in late 1940s, remained in the
KGWs program in the framework of social and educational activity
the third main area. It included various old and new tasks. Raising health
in the countryside was an old goal, but now developed to more activities.
The same happened with care work with children: now not only seasonal
kindergarten was organized, but also playgrounds, nutrition campaigns.
KGW was also supposed to develop cultural and educational activity, not
35
Tezy programowe do dziaalnoci K Gospody Wiejskich, 1965, 952, OK

FJN, AAN.
36
Gospodarstwo domowe w centrum uwagi (materia na plenum Krajowej Rady
Kobiet Polskich), 953, OK FJN, AAN.
only among rural women, but also among all village population. It was focused on artistic activities, anti-alcohol campaigns, reading books and press
propaganda.37 In this period political and ideological education of rural
women was limited and not explicit. On a national level the Main Council
of The Circles of Rural Housewives participated in political meetings and
was supposed to transfer their arrangements to all the circles, but in fact on
the lowest level of the organization, members didnt care much about political mobilization, and they were not forced to do so.38
Political activity started to be mentioned again as an important task by the
end of the 1960s, and this trend was getting even stronger in the next decade. The 3rd Congress of Rural Circles established a modified program for
the Circles of Rural Housewives. Among main activities of the KGW
the first to mention was socio-political education of women and their
professional training. Traditional tasks related to household, childcare
and health were on the third position. The Circles were expected to take
part in political campaigns like discussions on the partys congress, celebration of the 25 anniversary of PRL, as well as express their solidarity
with Vietnam.39
Political mobilization became more important in 1970s. This decade, although more liberal in many spheres of social life, was when ideological
pressure on massive organizations was strengthened. In 1974 schools of
socio-political education for rural women were established. Their program included variety of ideological and political arguments, from states
policy in agriculture to information about Soviet women. In the year
1975/76 schools focused on discussing theses before the 7th Congress of
Polish United Workers Party. Courses carried out in these schools were
not only a kind of propaganda tool, but also a recruitment method; some
women became members of the party after finishing the training. To at37
Tezy programowe do dziaalnoci K Gospody Wiejskich, 1965, 952, OK

FJN, AAN.
38
On Lower Silesia case see: Norbert Wjtowicz, Dziaalno K Gospody
Wiejskich w latach 1957-1975 na wybranych przykadach z Dolnego lska,
[The Activity of Circles of Rural Housewives in Years 1957-1975, Selected
Cases from Lower Silesia] in Kobiety na zakrcie 1933-1989 [Women On
the Turn 1933-1989], ed. Agnieszka Klarman, Ewa Chabros (Wrocaw: Instytut Pamici Narodowej, 2014), 278-291.
39
Praca KGW i ich udzia w samorzdzie kek rolniczych, 1970, 956, OK FJN,
AAN.
540 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
tract activists to the schools political program was supplemented with a

presentation of new cosmetics40. They became a massive political education tool; by 1983 over 200.000 women finished courses there41. In the
1970s women were more often promoted in Rural Circles authorities. On
voivodeship (province) level they comprised about 23-31 percent.42
In the 1970s other areas of interest didnt change but they were systematically developed in numbers and forms. Modern professional farming
had to combine with traditional female household duties. Rural women
were expected to transform fragmented individual farming in modern,
specialized, and highly productive agriculture, and be trained in sewing.43 Members participated in many conquests: of improving esthetics in
villages, more fruits, vegetables and flowers, more high quality milk
and hygiene. Professional training in farming was stressed but women
still comprised only 20 percent of students.
In 1970s official propaganda stressed womens identity as mothers. The
Circles of Rural Housewives also strengthened discourses and activities
related to celebration of motherhood. Collective forms of farming and
breeding were now presented not only as modern and more productive,
but also as an opportunity for women to save time for taking care of children.44 In 1975 the Decoration of Heart for the Mothers of Countryside was granted for the first time to rural women. Motherhood had also
a political component: KGW members were supposed to introduce socialist norms of family life and patriotic education in their homes.45
40
Spoeczno-polityczne ksztacenie kobiet 1975/76, XII/2937, KC PZPR, AAN.

PZPR, AAN.
42
Sprawozdanie z dziaalnoci wrd kobiet zrzeszonych w kkach rolniczych,
1974 r., XII/2938, KC PZPR, AAN.
43
Uchwaa Centralnego Zwizku Kek Rolniczych w sprawie kierunkw
dziaalnoci KGW, XII/2937, KC PZPR, AAN.
44
Udzia kobiet zrzeszonych w kkach rolniczych w uczczeniu XXX-lecia Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej, XII/2939, KC PZPR, AAN.
45
Porozumienie Ministra Rolnictwa, Prezes Zarzdu Centralnego Zwizku Kek Rolniczych, Prezesa Zarzdu Centralnego Zwizku Rolniczych Spdzielni
Produkcyjnych i Przewodniczcego Zarzdu Gwnego Zwizku
Zawodowego Pracownikw Rolnych o wspdziaaniu w realizacji
wytycznych polityki spoecznej Partii wrd kobiet pracujcych w rolnictwie,
XII/2937, KC PZPR, AAN.
41
KGW continued its work for improving housekeeping skills of rural

women. In 1973, 270.000 women took part in courses for the household.46 Rural housewives could borrow home appliances in 10.000 rental
offices. Village instructors helped them with their consulting services.
Women, as responsible not only for their individual farm, but also for the
whole village, took care of its esthetic, health, and culture, of children
and old people. The Circles turned to be organizers in many areas of social life of the villages, not only for women. They propagated hygiene
(creating even schools of health), sports, and folklore. In 1970s KGW
had about 2500 artistic groups. Members organized preparation of palms
for the Palm Sunday in Catholic church, or painting of eggs for Easter.
These examples show that in some areas the Circles carried out traditional work. They held 7.500 seasonal kindergartens for rural children.47 In
1970s KGW became a multi-task organization of women, but again it
somehow lost its identity as a womens organization. It became another
village institution.
The relatively prosperous 1970s ended in a deep crisis. After 1980-81
many forms of activity diminished. Due to economic crises the Circles
lost contracts with many instructors. Many Modern Housewife Centers
were closed.48 Nevertheless, KGW received some support, and 250 instructors were hired again. New possibilities appeared after the Law on
Socio-Professional Rural Organizations was issued during the martial law
(in 1982). The new statute of the Circles seemed to free KGW from tributes for the party-state: it said nothing about political education of women, and much about representing womens interests.49
These regulations, however, didnt mean that KGW returned to their traditional role as a womens organization. In fact, political and ideological
aspects of its activity were still very important. It was expected to support
actively Wojciech Jaruzelskis policy. As Ive already mentioned, schools
of political education still existed. KGW celebrated all-important anniversaries and national feasts, and introduced secular rites an alterna46
Dziaalno K Gospody Wiejskich w 1973 r., XII/2938, KC PZPR, AAN.

Informacje o dziaalnoci wrd kobiet zrzeszonych w kkach rolniczych po
VI Zjedzie PZPR, XII/2901, KC PZPR, AAN.
48
Ocena sytuacji spoeczno-zawodowej kobiet wiejskich, November 1982,
XLII/22, KC PZPR, AAN.
49
Regulamin Koa Gospody Wiejskich, XLII/100, KC PZPR, AAN.
47
542 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
tive to the traditional celebrations in the Catholic church.50 Modern

Housewife Centers organized lessons on socio-political issues, which
were attended by three times more participants than courses of cooking
and sewing.51 Political mobilization slightly changed its content, but was
still a central point.
In 1980s KGWs activities resembled those from the previous decade.
Although the political and economic situation changed, the Circles still
organized schools of socio-political education, participated in more
fruits, vegetables and flowers contest, and granted orders for the best rural mothers. Housekeeping courses and kindergartens were yet classic
forms of activity. New elements were related to the current economic situation: rational nutrition meant now changing model of nutrition. For
instance because of serious meat shortages the Circles joined the
pro-rabbit propaganda.52 Among new activities we can find development and promotion of rural tourism and organizing village libraries.
One of the most important changes happened not in forms of activity, but
in the discourse. Mother, citizen, housewife, and farmer those were the
identities of rural women that KGW took into account.53 Mother was the
most important, farmer the less. Motherhood was, of course, politicized.
As mothers, rural women were invited to raise their children in a way the
party-state requested. Educational activity targeted at women, children
and the whole population in the countryside was said to be the Circles
priority since 1981. Activities aimed at strengthening the upbringing
role of the family developed to great extent. As citizens they were responsible for the well-being of their village society: health, water, services, esthetic and cultural events. In 1980s the roles of housewife and
farmer were secondary, or at least, it did not deserve special attention.
From 1946 to 1989 the Circles of Rural Housewives experienced evolution. The trends are clear, but the evolution was not linear. For instance,
political activity was sometimes more, sometimes less important, and was
50

PZPR, AAN.
51
Ocena sytuacji kobiet wiejskich, XLII/100, KC PZPR, AAN.
52
Ocena sytuacji spoeczno-zawodowej kobiet wiejskich, November 1982,
XLII/22, KC PZPR, AAN.
53
Informacja o podstawowych kierunkach dziaalnoci KGW, 1985, XLII/137,
KC PZPR, AAN.
developed in changing context. Focus on professional training can be detected in the first half of the 1950s, and again in the 1960s and 1970s. In
some periods, especially at the beginning and after 1956, KGW focused
more of womens issues (or on what was then understood as womens
issues), in others it became an institution which served the whole local
community. These changes, although not revolutionary, are important
when we analyze the communist project for rural women. Were they
agents of change or rather its objects? Were they expected to conserve
their traditional roles or experience new ones?
These are the questions to answer in the next paragraphs. The general
conclusion drawn from the description of the Circle of Rural Housewives
activities is that despite considerable evolution many aspects of their
character remained untouched during all the period in question. Main
work areas household, kindergartens, health and culture were always
present. Moreover, courses on cooking held in the 1980s did simply continue a pre-war tradition. Meals were different, but the roles of women
and their organization the same.
Communism gender countryside: interpretations
The Circles of Rural Housewives during the communist rule in Poland
developed activities in various areas. Communism via the Circles offered rural women multiple identities: as mothers, farmers, housewives,
social activists On the one hand they transgressed traditional womens
organization character. On the other they were oppressed by universal
tasks of joining the state and other institutions in the realization of political goals. The communist project for rural women combined modernity
with tradition; it expected women to take up new roles but without giving
up the previous ones.
Moreover, identities for rural women were limited. Many of them were
based on a rather traditional perception of womens roles. Taking care of
children and of the household was womens primary duty, and KGWs
program and name reflected it perfectly. Moreover, the culture of
large families with many children was never criticized, and since 1970s
even celebrated. Rural womens identity as a mother was then stronger
than in urban milieu.
The Circles work with old people also reflected quality of care, traditionally regarded as female. KGW members had to look after the whole
544 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
community, transferring to it their qualities and duties. They crossed borders of female activism, but not always crossing gender norms.
Among new roles was that of a professional farmer. Rural women achieving skills was certainly something new. On the other hand, KGW promoted traditionally female tasks in farming: breeding and gardening. In
spite of growing number of female farmers who carried out all the production alone, the Circles stressed only some of the jobs. KGWs activities helped to preserve gender division of labor in the countryside.
Through decades its members tried to be agents of modernity introducing new methods and tools. But still in the 1980s female tasks in agriculture were largely manual and time-consuming. Women spent 13-18 hours
a day working in the farm and household.54 As farmers, though, they remained disadvantaged.
Since late the 1940s members of KGW had to be politically engaged.
What was the model of the politically active rural woman? From the beginning activists of KGW were invited to represent their interests in rural
organizations. In general, in each period they participated in the authorities. At the same time ordinary members were educated in basic political
and ideological issues. This model remained the same during all the period in question, in spite of rather short periods of less intensive political
pressure. Political education of rural women had to serve other roles they
performed: farmers and mothers. It seems that political activism was not
supposed to become an autonomous value for women. Still, political engagement was certainly something new concerning pre-war traditions.
Old and new womens roles shared characteristics of professionalism and
modernity. These qualities were mentioned while talking about the
household, raising children, breeding, health campaigns. This was probably the key transformation rural women had to experience under communism: from backward, superstitious poor peasant women to educated
and aware rational housewife. Modernization was associated with rationalism: planning production or housekeeping, rural women had to act rationally. In the context of family life modern meant socialist values
and secular culture. There was no place for religiosity that had been associated with women by the regime, and especially with peasant women.
54
Udzia kobiet w yciu spoeczno-gospodarczym wsi, XLII/137, KC PZPR,

AAN.
Works related to health, well-being, and sports were seen as an expression of modern opinions on the role of women in a socialist society.55
Socialism in this discourse meant a civilizing and modernizing mission. It
is interesting that the realization of this mission was conceded to women.
Socialism gave rural women modern civilization better living conditions and doctors, literacy and culture. Once they overcame their backwardness, they became agents of modernity themselves. It seems that this
was a key element in the communist project for rural women.
The Circles activities reflected the following paradox: women were becoming agents of modernity and change in the rural world, but they realized it mostly through their traditional roles. They introduced new
customs, but the whole customs area was permanently assigned to women. They organized forms of modern social care, because they as women were said to be the most concerned about care. Usually these
elements of the discourse were not explicit.
Were rural women emancipated (at least in the discourse)? Except the first
decade of KGWs activity under communist rule, emancipation (or liberation) of peasant women was not stressed. Collectivization, which was
supposed to bring liberation from hard work and individual income, failed.
Individual farming, with traditional gender division of labor, could not
have been presented as emancipating. Women remained housewives. This
specific social institution in the Polish countryside was preserved. Still, it
seems that women in the KGWs discourse included autonomy and agency.
This agency was limited to the framework offered by the party-state.
KGW didnt advocate womens emancipation directly. It seems that in socialism rural women simply were emancipated, thanks to education and
better life conditions. In the 1980s official reports started to be more critical
about the situation of rural women. But through decades KGW didnt point
to hard life and work conditions in which women lived in the countryside.
It tried to develop services for women, kindergartens institutions that
were established to make life easier. However, the Circles did not advocate
55
Porozumienie Ministra Rolnictwa, Prezes Zarzdu Centralnego Zwizku Kek Rolniczych, Prezesa Zarzdu Centralnego Zwizku Rolniczych Spdzielni
Produkcyjnych i Przewodniczcego Zarzdu Gwnego Zwizku
Zawodowego Pracownikw Rolnych o wspdziaaniu w realizacji
wytycznych polityki spoecznej Partii wrd kobiet pracujcych w rolnictwie,
XII/2937, KC PZPR, AAN.
546 _______________________________________________ Natalia JARSKA
deep changes in womens roles. It just helped them to fulfill all their duties
as mothers, citizens, farmers and housewives. As Ive already mentioned,
the Circles were not well integrated in womens movement.
It must be added that concrete shape of the Circles work depended also on
the current political situation and reflected peculiarities of each period. It
was strongly related to other discourses on women and activity of other elements of the womens movement. For instance, in the 1970s and 1980s
the discourse on motherhood as primary female identity an identity that
shaped other identities and duties started to be used constantly in partystate propaganda56. The Circles activity reflected those trends. Guidelines
for economic and political activity were related to the economic situation.
The work of the Circles in Peoples Republic of Poland reflected tensions
between traditional gender roles and norms, the communist project of
emancipation of rural women, and modernization of the village life. It
hardly proposed essential changes in gender division of labor in the countryside, and in general gender roles. Although women were to become
more autonomous and engaged in politics and professional life more than
before, the most important activities of the Circles of Rural Housewives
remained focused on traditionally female household duties and childcare.
More than about emancipation, KGW was about modernization and professionalization qualities that had transformative power for rural women.
In fact, in communism, rural women were offered a kind of modern lifestyle less hard work on farms, more productivity, facilities for children,
good and healthy food, literacy and culture. However, all these benefits
were to be achieved in a gender order that remained mostly intact. When
the rule of communism in Poland was ending, the Circles of Rural Housewives still provided courses on cooking and sewing for their members.
56
Natalia Jarska, Obchody Dnia Kobiet w Polsce Ludowej 1945-1989, [Celebration of the Womens Day in Poland 1945-1989] Dzieje Najnowsze 4
(2010), 15-28.
Tradition Interest Labour Organisation: Transformation of

Rural Mentality during the Period of Communism in Hungary1
va CSESZKA, Andrs SCHLETT
Introduction: the two traditions
The agricultural sector and the fate of agrarians severely divided Hungarian
progression throughout the twentieth century. The controversy crystallized
on the issue of small or large estates. The Hungarian agricultural economists had reached a compromise during the period between the two world
wars that the strength of the possession of different types lies in different
factors. While the small-holding is perfect for manual work, the main
strengths of the large estates is that the leader may have naturally higher
qualifications, so he could exploit the achievements of science and technology, market conditions preferably. The large estate has great benefit by
the situation of grain production, while the small holding has an advantage
by those branches of factory, which need more care, manual work, diligence and skill. Such production sectors are, e.g. the production of garden
vegetables, spices and herbs, the wine and fruit production, and special
garden seed production. The paid workers on the large estates do mainly
stereotypical mass work. Regarding the large estate, the production of those
products is more economical, where the benefits of scale economics as well
as the machine and technology can be exploited effectively.
The agricultural labour organizations are mostly determined by the scale
and the technological means being used, and to this contribute which
knowledge, traditions and customs people working in organizations have.
In the period prior to forced collectivisation, there were two traditions of
labour organizations in Hungary. One of them was formed on family
farms, and the other one on large estates. Inside the body of the family
labour interests were divided equally, the division of labour was clear and
they were able to replace each other if it was necessary. The large estate
often tried to take advantage of the same when it used the model of the
family labour organization. The maid from organized work groups usually
consisted of family members. In the case of large estates, it meant a serious
disadvantage, however, that the maids were not interested in the future of
1
Researcher was supported by the Bolyai Jnos Research Scholarship Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
548 _________________________________ va CSESZKA, Andrs SCHLETT
the economy. Workers employed in the large estate can be separated into
two groups. The first consisted of skilled workers permanently employed
(farm labourers); the second were day-workers (temporary employed
workers). For the latter, labour organization was confused; their ties to the
land, to their means, and to their mates were much more loose. This labour
organization was able to function properly only under constant supervision;
supervision and control in the process of work in stages was typical.
Peasant labour organization, work culture
The function of the small-scale peasant households is on the one hand is
to own supply and on the other hand is the commitment of family labour.
This type of production has ensured that all members of peasant households have a job. 2 It is true for all peasant layers that in a family labour
organization they conducted an independent agriculture. In the peasant
farm the husband, the wife and kids have worked together, with the latter
having learned to work appropriate for their age very early on. The family
plant manager was the eldest male member capable of work. It was a patriarchal family labour organization. The peasant economies engaged in
mixed farming; besides crop production livestock represented a significant proportion. The meadows remained in common ownership; the
meadow holding company of the settlement took care of their utilization.3
The rural peasants needed much more extensive professional and cultural
knowledge for the work and prosperity, than the specialist or semi-skilled
wage workers. The peasantry had its own culture ranging from folk art to
homecraft. Regarding the knowledge required for production, the peasant
was polymath compared to that of the proletarians.
Changes
1. Land reform and collectivisation
After the Second World War, the provisional Hungarian government in
1945 passed a sweeping land reform.4 After the redistribution of the land
2
Terz Kovcs, A paraszti gazdlkods s trsadalom talakulsa [The Transformation of Peasant Farming and Society] (Budapest: LHarmattan, 2010), 62.
3
Kovcs, A paraszti gazdlkods s trsadalom talakulsa, 63-64.
4
Zsuzsanna Varga, Az agrrium 1945-tl napjainkig, [The Agricultural Sector
from 1945 to the Present Day] in Agrrvilg Magyarorszgon, 1848-2002
Tradition Interest Labour Organisation: Transformation of Rural... ____ 549
in 1945, instead of the large estates dwarf holdings came into existence,
which were mainly incapable of being. This reform was important for the
communists because of two purposes: first, with fostering among the
peasants the very land hunger; they wanted to win the support of the largest groups of peasants, or at least to weaken their resistance, while early
moves towards socialisation were proceeding elsewhere in the economy;
second, to prepare the ground for later moves toward socialisation of the
countryside. In this they were following the Moscow schedule for the
phases of revolution obligatory in all countries.
The national economies of Central and Eastern Europe were reorganized
according to the Soviet pattern in 1948-49. In 1949 nationalisation was
reinforced and the public sector became the base on which the economic
development could be established. The Ministry of Agriculture at that
time was the centre of agrarian experts, traditionally non-party, but having relations to leaders of democratic, western-type parties. Theoretically
they explicitly opposed the increasingly socialist Hungarian political system and the course of development. They did not agree with the land reform of the government, the agrarianizing, because it did not consider the
production technology, and they thought that the dwarf estates were not
fit for life.
The Information Bureau conference that was held at the end of July 1948
criticised Yugoslavia, because Tito had said that the peasants (including
the rich ones) were the most stable supporters of the Yugoslav State, but
according to Lenin's theory the farm improves capitalism hour by hour.
The excommunication of the Yugoslav communists demonstrated that
there is no independent route; the soviet model has to be used in Hungary, too. 5 A decision was made about the fast collectivisation, and the
cleaning of the Ministry of Agriculture with the mean of a conceptual trial against the agrarian expert (the so-called FM trial), which was meant to
ease this process.6 In order to implement collectivisation the Hungarian
Communist Party had to isolate the countryside totally. After liquidating
[Agrarian World in Hungary from 1848 till 2002], ed. Estk Jnos (Budapest:
Argumentum-Mezgazdasgi Mzeum, 2008), 261-345.
5
National Archives of Hungary (NAH) M-KS fund 276. file 52, volume 2.
6
Mtys Rkosi, ptjk a np orszgt [We are building the Kingdom of the
People] (Budapest: Szikra, 1949) 312-313. See further: va Cseszka, Economic Type Trials in the Rkosi Regime in Hungary (1947-1953), Arhivele
Totalitarismului 3-4 (2012), 30-46.
civil political parties the communists started to annihilate the influence of

Church both in public life and politics. They thought that it would be easier to head the peasants for the kolkhoz if they lose their ideological underpinnings.
From the spring or summer 1948 in the communist party politics the fight
against the church linked up with the liquidation of the holder peasantry
and kulaks and forcing them into cooperation, because this was the only
owner class that could remain politically independent and was able to
support the church financially as well as stick to the values represented
by the church.7 They thought that if they liquidate the public political influence of the church, the peasantry would lose its last ideological supporter, and it would be easier to direct them to the col-farms.
2. Red and green revolution: the introduction of Western technology
into the collectivized agriculture
After the war, the communist seizure of power forced collectivisation and
rapid technological change, the "green revolution" of the 1950s fundamentally changed the lives of people working in the agriculture.
In the fifties, major changes happened in the agriculture of the western
world. The transformation also known as Green Revolution, in some areas has multiplied the productivity. The industrial agriculture production
systems gaining more ground changed the agriculture as a function of the
external materials and resources. They created artificial systems pursuant
to so-call decouple the processes of environmental impacts.
With the industrial, energy-intensive agricultural system using high artificial industrial origin materials and energy, the industrial logic (closed,
space-regulated by people processes based on functional relationships,
etc.) appears as ideal in the agriculture. Accordingly, its basic pursuit is
the independence, the artificial control, and the gradual replacement of
the natural resources with artificial resources.
Jen Gergely, A Mindszenty-per [The Mindszenty Trial] (Budapest: Kossuth,

2001), 281-315. See further: va Cseszka, Gazdasgi tpus perek, klns
tekintettel az FM-perre (1945-53) [Economic Type Trials with Special Respect
to the Trial against the Ministry of Agriculture] (Budapest: Gondolat Kiad,
2012), 95-105.
The achievements of the green revolution spread through Hungarian

agriculture since the early sixties.8 The main motive of the introduction of
western technology was the reconciliation of the contradictions between
policy compliance and economic rationality. In doing so, they tried to introduce production organization systems operating in the West by assimilating them into the ruling socialist ideological approach.
Industrial agriculture, mechanisation and the new advanced technologies
had an impact on the product structure as well. The production area of
high-yielding arable crops increased significantly. Between 1961 and
1970, the production area of wheat, corn, lucerne and sunflower was 2.5
times bigger than the production area of other plants, and by 1972 it was
already 4.3 times bigger, which led to a simplification and a reduced
farmland biodiversity.9
Plant size increased quickly, the degree of concentration of the agriculture strengthened, and in parallel, labour organization changed significantly as well.
The labour organization of socialist agriculture
1. Taylorist operational organization?
The socialist agrarian policy regarded modernization of Hungarian agriculture as mainly a process of increasing production and the domestication of the necessary modern technology. Thus, they tried to adapt the
modern production technology expanding rapidly in the West to the
large-scale organization. In the wake of the rapid growth of use of machines and centralization, specialization was boosted greatly and the
whole production was no longer clear to the subordinates.
The nascent industrial closed system production similar to the industrial
plants in the early twentieth century had an essential feature of the systematization. According to the principle of system approach, they started
from the entire production process by organizing individual branches of
8
9
Judit Beke Lisnyi, Magyarorszg s Dnia mezgazdasgi fejldsnek

tanulsgai, A falu, 25. vf. 1 (2010), 45-49.
Zsuzsanna Varga, 1956 hatsa a kdri agrrpolitika kialakulsra, [1956 Kdrian Impact on the Development of Agricultural Policy] in 1956 okai, jelentsge s kvetkezmnyei [The Causes, Significance and Consequences of
1956], ed. Romsics Ignc (Budapest: Magyar Trtnelmi Trsulat, 2006), 299-315.
production. The complexity played an important role in terms of organizing the system. Efficiency was dependent not only on the system elements, but also on how these elements were adjusted, linked together.10
With the spread of industrial agriculture originating from the end of the
nineteenth century, Taylor's plant organizational principles soon became
dominant in the Hungarian large agricultural holdings.
The development of the principles and methods of scientific work organisation began with F. W. Taylor (1856-1915). Taylor introduced the principles of scientific management and a special system of piece-rate pay.
Taylor developed his functional system of work organisation for the
large-scale industry. He introduced the analysis of labour and time, set
the principles of the division of labour, and devised the establishment of
an efficient wage system.
Following World War I, the effect of industrial organisation and work organisation on agriculture could already be felt. The conscious endeavour
to appropriately adopt the knowledge about industrial organisation grew
stronger. At the same time the first professionals and institutes of work
organisation appeared in agriculture, and agricultural work was studied,
employing scientific and practical methods.11
The essence of Taylors ideas is his concept about supervision. Even before Taylor, it was widely assumed that the management has the right to
supervise work. In practice, this right usually covered only the assignment of tasks with little direct indication on how the workers are supposed to perform the tasks. The hinge of all modern work organisations is
work supervision through the supervision of decisions made in the course
of the work process.12
To achieve this, the first principle is that the managers undertake the collection of the traditional knowledge that workers possessed in the past, then
they classify, organise them and finally measures, rules and regulations are
10
Lszl Bethlendi, Az iparszer termelsi rendszerek jellemz vonsairl,

[From the Characteristics of the Industrial-like Production Systems] llami
Gazdasg, 1975/5, 5.
11
Andrs Schlett, Judit Beke, Agriculture and Employment. The Results of the
Transition in Hungarian Agriculture, Visnyk Kyivskoho Natsionalnoho Universytetu Tekhnolohii Ta Dyzanu 1/75 (2014) 227-228.
12
Cristian Timmermann, Georges F. Flix, Agroecology as a Vehicle for Contributive Justice, Agriculture and Human Values 1 (2015), 2.
established. The second principle: All possible brainwork must be kept

off the workplace and must be focused at design and organisation departments. The third principle: The most conspicuous element of modern
management is the principle of task. The management schedules each
workers job at least one day prior to commencement. In most cases, each
person receives a full description of his responsibilities that outlines the
tasks to be done, the equipment to be used and it includes the exact description of the methods and the timeframe. Preparation and implementation of the tasks is the most important element of scientific management.13
The result of the Taylorist principles applied in industrial practice and of
the transformed work organisation is well known: a rigid yet precise and
efficient hierarchy came into existence.14
The Taylorist organization of work was not unknown to the communist
ideologues and economic operators. Bukharin himself, the influential
ideologue of the Bolshevik Party and main organizer of the Soviet economy, was heavily under the impact of Taylorism. Lenin already in March
1914 wrote in the Bolshevik newspaper Putyi Pravda entitled The Taylor
system without and against the wishes and behind the back of the creators prepares the time when the proletariat takes the entire social production into their hands and appoint their own labour committees in
order to control and distribute the whole social work properly. 15 After
the October Revolution, Lenin therefore set the critical scientific study of
Taylorism as a task in order to apply the results in the Soviet industry and
public administration as soon as possible.16
And as the Taylorism in the 1920s was transferred to the Soviet practice,
then in the fifties to the practice of the Eastern European countries as a
socialist industrial organization methodology, in the sixties we can also
witness a kind of "knowledge import" after the socialist transformation of
agriculture.
13
Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New

York: Cosimo, 2006), 36.
14
See further Schlett, Beke Agriculture and Employment, 225-235.
15
Lenin sszes mvei [The Collected Works of Lenin] (Budapest: Kossuth
Knyvkiad, 1971).
16
Lszl Rehk, Szervezs- s irnytsszociolgia eredmnyei D. m. Gvisianyi
knyvben, [The Achievements of Organizational and Managerial Soziology
in the D. m. Gvisianyis Book] Ltnk, III. vf. 2-3 (1973), 235.
The reorganization of agricultural production, the management of production and economic activities also demanded changes in the methods and
organization. Agricultural production within individual economies until
the mid-1960s was largely done in regional plant organizations. The districts possessed autonomy of major business organization and decisionmaking.17 In the years following the collectivisation, collective farms and
state farms worked even more like the car assembly workshops before
Ford; the knowledge and education of management and those in the lower
levels of governance did not differ from each other.
With the introduction of industrial production systems, the reorganization
of economic governance system had begun. This consisted of highly
qualified corporate elite, middle-order executive leaders, calculators of
norms, inspectors and semi-skilled workers.18 Experts taught at universities or colleges appeared in the economies, experts whose knowledge was
also built a modern well-founded scientific reality with chemical and biological literacy. These agricultural experts considered the Taylorist labour
organizational pattern to be most effective; they learned it in the university. During the industrial influence in the evolution of agricultural production certain agricultural sectors tight relationship to the area was
loosened. The former district (regional) management was centralized, and
a branch management system was developed. The reshuffle had changed
the local decision-making and power relations significantly. The leaders
of the districts enjoyed certain autonomy before having become executives of the central decisions.
The focused and specialized production required the use of a sectoral organizational principle. The sectoral organization of production is: that the
leadership of the various sectors of the industry leaders attended with full
responsibility. In the sectoral organization of production specialization of
management was realized until sectors or sector branches. The companies
produced in non-territorial units and a specialist of the industry group or
sector was the farmer throughout the whole company within the sowing
17
Henrik Szederknyi, Az llami gazdasgok szervezetnek helyzete s

fejldse, [Stand and Development of the Organisation of the State Farms]
Gazdlkods (1971), 19-20.
18
Tibor Kuczi, Taylorizmus a mezgazdasgban?, [Taylorism in Agriculture?]
in Emberek s intzmnyek. Kt zskutca az agrriumban [People and Institutions. Two Dead Ends in Agriculture], ed. Pl Juhsz (Budapest: UMK
Jelenkutat Alaptvny, 2006), 14-15.
area of his sector of crops; he was responsible for the whole production
and harvest. In the case of animal husbandry the situation was similar.
The concentration process of the agriculture begun in the early sixties
continued to accelerate in the seventies, and huge incorporations happened. Between 1965 and 1985 the number of state farms was reduced
from 214 to 125, the number of co-operatives decreased from 3278
to1270, with the average area increasing significantly.19 Agricultural
companies have emerged unprecedented scale in Hungary whose production value rivalled those of large industrial companies as well.20
The farms have achieved significant progress regarding the technical and
biological evolution, but the large-scale technology has come in sharper
conflict with the differences of levels among the management. The company's centralized management went far away from the implementation,
and as the central determination reached to implementation through more
steps than necessary, the possibility of distortion in the implementation
has therefore increased more and more.21
2. The theory of contingency
The theory of contingency in Western organization sociology pointed out
that although the formal organizational structure significantly affects the
efficiency of the organization, there is not an effective structure universally applicable to all organization, because they always need to adapt to
prevailing environmental conditions.
The optimal structure is always determined by various factors (e.g. the
organizational strategy or size). So the optimal structure depends on certain
factors (contingency factors). For example, for a small organization that
has only a few employees a more centralized structure is optimal, where
the decision-making is concentrated on the top of the hierarchy. In contrast,
in the case of large organizations with many employees, a decentralized
19
Ervin Csizmadia, Folytonossg s vltozsok agrrfejldsnkben a

nyolcvanas vek elejn, [Continuity and Changes in Our Agricultural
Development in the Early Eighties] Agrrtudomnyi Kzlemnyek 40 (1981), 4.
20
Zsuzsanna Varga, Between East and West, in Cultic revelations Studies in
Modern Historical Cult Personalities and Phenomena, ed. Anssi Halmesvirtaa
(Jyvskyl: University of Jyvskyl, 2010), 104-116.
21
Zoltn Tszegi, A vllalati bels mechanizmus korszerstse az llami gazdasgokban, [The Modernisation of the Internal Business Actions in the State
Farms] Gazdlkods (1984), 2.
structure is effective, where decision-making is divided into the bottom of

the hierarchy.22 There are a number of contingency factors: strategy, size,
level of uncertainty of tasks, and technology.
To be effective, the organization must adapt the structure to the contingency factors.23
It is easy to see that the great socialist agricultural enterprises regarding
these variables fought with serious organizational anomalies; let us mention strategy, size, level of uncertainty in the tasks, moreover the ability
of controlling tasks (in agriculture the tasks were often carried out in remote locations from the centre), technological needs, and so on.
The increase in production necessitated some degree of decentralization
of adequate internal information, corporate governance, and organizational structure. The state farms and combines tried to break down the
corporate organization into smaller management incentive units in order
to make the management of the production more transparent and tied the
interests of people in the working units to the achievement of more tangible goals.
Since the early seventies, the regional and sectoral organizational principles simultaneous combination was realized in the farm organization.24 In
order to improve the efficiency of the companies a shift happened towards decentralized management within the company.
Work culture
1. Interest alienation motivation
The large companies introducing Taylorist labour organization in terms
of bulk commodities (such as grain) yields soon caught up to the international champions. However, the control of the activities demanding individual moments and autonomous decisions during the production of high
22
23
24
John Child, Predicting and Understanding Organization Structure, Administrative Science Quarterly 18 (1973), 168-185.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, Organizations and Organization Theory (Boston: Pitman,
1982).
Erzsbet Tth, A mezgazdasgi vllalatok bels rdekeltsgi rendszernek
jellemzi s a fejleszts irnyai, [The Characteristics of the Internal Business
Interests of the Agricultural Enterprises and the Trends in the Development]
Gazdlkods (1986), 60.
labour-intensive goods requiring great care and skill proved to be extremely costly.
The technical, organizational change and the division of labour and specialization increase went together with the impoverishment of work content and reduction of autonomy of the workers. Centralization occurred in
the agriculture and affected adversely the work view of the employees.
The labour organization forced manual wage workers into a bareexecutive role and exploited only a small part of their knowledge. Those
production sectors, which needed more care, manual work, diligence and
skills such as horticulture and the production of spices and herbs as well
as the wine and fruit production, were pushed into the background and
became dominant within the scope of backyard farming.
It was a contradiction that the socialist agriculture was characterized by
overemployment. Market economies, e.g. small labour-intensive cereals
sector, even very large-scale farms, prosper with half a dozen employees,
as shown by the example of American family farms. By contrast, the
Hungarian cooperative farms and state farms involved large number of
employees, and contrary to the flexible division of labour of the American farms (where a man can be deployed to perform more tasks), they
were rigid, hierarchical, and worked in a labour organization that included four or five levels of management.25
It is well known that according to the approach of Taylor's theory, which is
named as scientific management, people are basically lazy, do not like to
work, do not like responsibility, and lack self-reliance. Along one interest
they can be caught, and this is nothing more than money. Taylor developed
the performance-based remuneration for the first time (piecework, hourly
wages, bonuses), which is based on the scientifically organized labour.26
According to the socialist ideology, peoples relation to the work originated in the ownership, and after the establishment of socialist ownership,
it did not need any research in the direction of economic conditions or the
subjective sphere. The approach resulting from communist interpretation of
the ownership lived for a long time in the practice of economic life, according to which the interests of the companies and their employees automatically coincide. As they denied the differences among the objective
25
26
Kuczi, Taylorizmus a mezgazdasgban?, 14-15.

Klra Katona, Vllalatgazdasgtan alapjai [Basic Business Economics] (Budapest: Szent Istvn Trsulat, 2004), 87.
interests a priori, they derived differences between the targets exclusively to mental factors.
Since the discrepancy among the goals was driven back to basically mental backwardness, so the incentive system was also designed accordingly.
Thus such a motivational system was created, which sought to achieve
the integration of targets through social mechanism of action. This mechanism of action urged the workers to develop such a value system, which
preferred activities promoting the achievement of corporate objectives.
Persuasion, giving example, establishing new behaviours were intended to
encourage individuals to adapt the company's goals as personal goals. The
culmination of this approach took shape in the Stakhanovite movement.
At the same time the individuals were forced to give up any personal
goals that were against the implementation of corporate objectives. This
was supported on a rhetorical level in that insatiable goals and needs of
the workers were set as petty bourgeoisie or of a Western pattern.27 These
processes naturally worked against identification and prevented the elimination of alienation from work. At the same time they eclipsed everything that belonged to the essential features of the work such as the desire
to create or ambitions to develop the skills and abilities.
The main determinant of the idea of the socialist wage regulations was that
to tolerate too much inequalities is incorrect, because it would go against
the egalitarian traditions of socialism. The pursuit of equalized incomes in
itself blunted the incentive effect and prevented significant characteristic
differences, which arose from the differences between the economic efficiency, from manifesting in the possibilities of wage increases of enterprises as well. As a result, wages had extremely low stimulus.28
From 1968 the efficiency and incentive system, defined on the basis of
performance of plans and over-performance, demonstrated the development of new approaches related to the concept of basic wages. In case of
good and efficient work it has granted the workers amount of additional
income for ten to fifteen per cent of the annual earnings of amounting.29
27
28
29
Ferenc Nemes, rdekeltsg, magatarts, tartalkok [Interests, Attitudes, Reserves] (Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1976), 32-33.
Jnos Kornai, Hatkonysg s szocialista erklcs, [Efficiency and Sozialist
Morality] Valsg XXIII/5 (1980), 15-16.
Ivn Berend, Tprengsek a gazdasgi reform vforduljn, [Thoughts on
the Anniversary of Economic Reform] Valsg XXI/7 (1978), 15-26.
In the compilation of the premium system of the independent plants, it

was a general principle that the premium system in every factory where
it was possible took stock of the planned and executed gain-or-reduce
planned loss. The proportion of personal interest in reverse to the share of
profits was allocated on the basis of salaries, length of service and outstanding work.
The indirect financial benefit system had an important role because of the
narrow differentiation borders of the classic factors of interest (wages
and direct income). Such were housing subsidies, in-kind benefits, corporate resorts, and cultural facilities.
It contributed to this that although low wages did not mean attraction for
employees, incomes from backyards in the seventies became regular and
significant, and they reversed the migration of the previous decades by
making the village attractive for the people.
2. Human relations under socialism?
The elimination of private property, the establishment of so-called community ownership, and higher social interest coming to the fore cut off the
individual interest from the workflow. The full employment and levelling
wage system pointed towards intensification of adverse selection process.
Today it is commonplace that paternalism, the soft budget constraints, violence of the law of value due to the administrative price system meant
the economic and social implications of everyday life. This reality had
the demoralizing effect in the employment sector, as empty generalities,
surface descriptions, equivocation, shifting off, and smokescreens.
With the establishment of closed production systems in agriculture, the
biggest challenge was the elimination of alienation. With the introduction
of modern techniques, machinery workers had been responsible for more
tenfold values assigned before, so the human factor had a determining
role. The inattentive or sloppy work may have caused huge financial
losses. The human attitude on the standards of production has become
much more dominant than it was before. Thus, the human factor has arrived at a prominent place among the system factors in the production.
In the Western organization theory, the "human relations" trend pointed
out first that in terms of the efficiency of labour productivity, the technical side of the work is not dominant, but the social aspect of the work
situation is. When in the so-called Hawthorne experiments took place, the
researchers listened to the workers and involved them in decisions; their

psychological reaction to the work changed and alienation was reduced
significantly.
It is the merit of the human relations trends emerging from the research
result of the Australian-born psychologist Elton Mayo (1880-1949) that
in Western business organization the human side of the work came to the
fore. This trend revealed first that the company is also a social formation,
which is operated by people with different interests, goals, and personalities. In the thinking of the representatives of this movement the picture of
"homo economicus" considerably expands: man will become more social
who in his activities is motivated not only by economic interests but also
by very different interests, values and aspirations.30
The work ethic is an integral part of the personality: the concept of work
is both a consequence of and basis for what he believes as purpose and
meaning of life. It is related to the level and extent of needs, needs of the
short and long-term ideas. What gives him joy, what indulges him, what
he considers to be valuable and worthless. The work ethic, the relation of
man and work is influenced by many factors outside of vested interests:
specific content and social prestige of the work activity, the management
system concerning and seeking to regulate the behaviour of the individual, the immediate personal environment, social and professional development prospects.
The technical, labour organizational change, the increase of the division
of labour and specialization went together with the impoverishment of
work content and the reduction of workers autonomy. The relations of
the established industrial systems of production inevitably created more
tension between the discipline of technical rigor and the employees working skills. Thus, the socialist agricultural companies put increasing emphasis on the fact that they not only use the machines line, but also
foster the best possible human attitudes. For those, on the one hand as
already mentioned it was necessary for workers to detect the connection
of interest, and on the other, that the worker has direct responsibility for
the work. In agriculture, attention was paid to the personalization of the
work in more and more fields, which was implemented in different ways
in the different types of work. In case of machinery managed by the
30
Charles Perrow, Szervezetszociolgia [Organization Sociology] (Budapest:

Osiris Kiad, 2002).
skilled workers the name (responsible) and the value of the machine was
indicated above. It was a shining example for personalization of the
work when on the edge of land of economy, huge tables were set up
along the roads, which contained the name and picture of the sowing, together with the main production data. In the mid 1970s, they naturalized
the seeding master address, as it has been shown that the quality of
each sowing works causes bigger difference in the final product as inherent risk factors such as precipitation, other relations of the weather and
the soil strength. So they implemented humanisation of work, meaning
that the worker can feel the results of his work as his own.
Conclusions
The Hungarian large-scale agriculture has indisputable successes in the
field of yields and returns. In contrast, backlog in terms of cost and economic efficiency was huge. One reason for this was that the large farms
worked with many times greater administrative burden than their competitors in the world market. In the modern western the administration of
main occupation is insignificant in the agriculture, which resulted in significant cost savings. In contrast, the socialist agriculture had growing
administrative demands.
The inclusion of Taylorist labour organization in agriculture brought inertia
into the system. The enforcement and monitoring of work performance in
agriculture brought different options as compared to the industry. In agriculture, work is being organised in rather dispersed-separated locations in
space, so keep an eye and check the employees is inefficient and costly.
The controversy has dampened because due to the backyard and smallscale farming as well as the wasted knowledge in the Taylorist labour organization, there was somehow feedback in agriculture.
All this did not eliminate the fundamental problem: while in the developed Western countries the ownership interest has played an increased
role in the agricultural efficiency (how they evaluate / esteem the machinery, how they save materials and how they adapt to the changing
work patterns, what kind of attention they pay to the work, how great are
the losses during work), the great socialist agricultural plants had high
demand for the device, and the assets deteriorated very quickly.
.
Its hard to do your duty here. Cultured Retail Trade in

Hungary
gota Ldia ISPN
The aims of trade policy in the 1950s and 60s were centred on changing
the earlier mentality of commerce.1 The policy makers sought to establish
a new kind of trade, the so-called cultured socialist trade, whose criteria
were promoted in several forums. Those controlling trade tried to leave
behind the earlier approaches and methods replacing them with new ones.
Accordingly, Commercial activities should be focussed on polite and
considerate work and increasing the quality of service. It should be a
basic requirement that is the main expectation when a job is assessed.2
Socialist commerce tried to be different from its counterpart, i.e. capitalist
commerce, in its purpose, as its main aim was to achieve the best possible
customer service instead of profit. They also tried to define the differences
between forms and methods of socialist commerce and those of capitalist
commerce. According to this, both these branches of commerce have a
similar content but with a major difference: in the case of capitalists, politeness coupled with humble execution only serves the purpose of gaining
profit, whereas in the new system employees could do their jobs in complete equality and politeness by nature meant that the co-workers were
esteemed and consideration was aimed to satisfy their needs.3 The two
1
After the drastic change in ownership rights, most of the retail trade was conducted in shops owned by the state or co-ops: their proportion was the highest
in 1952 (88.5%), but even in 1970, a little over three quarters of them belonged
here and 92% of commercial workers were employed in them, and they were
responsible for 99% of the turnover, which indicates how private retailing lost
ground. Tams Csat: A belkereskedelem Magyarorszgon a 19-20. szzadban
[Internal trade in Hungary in the 19th - 20th centuries] (Budapest: Aula Kiad
Budapesti Kzgazdasgtudomnyi Egyetem, [1995]), 84-85.
Idszer kereskedelempolitikai krdsek s a belkereskedelem 1966. vi
feladatai. Tausz Jnos belkereskedelmi miniszter eladi beszde az 1966.
mrcius 14-i orszgos rtekezleten, [Current issues in trade policy and the
tasks of domestic trade in 1966. A presentation by Jnos Tausz, Minister of
Domestic Trade at the meeting held on 14 March, 1966] Kereskedelmi rtest,
Budapest, LIX/12, 21 March 1966, Supplement 11.
Ferenc Bihari, Az elads mvszete [The art of selling] (Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1963), 3-5.; Az j eladsi formkrl, az udvari-
Its hard to do your duty here. Cultured Retail Trade in Hungary _______ 563
salesmen characters in the film called llami ruhz [State Department

Store] presented in 1953 provide an excellent example of this approach.
The old-fashioned merchant, acted by Klmn Latabr, a well-known actor
of the era, is a thin eager-beaver who, according to a complainant, jumps at
the customers squeezing them in a fur in the summer; he is a vampire who
pushes the customer to the cash desk after the receipt is made out and with
his fast assertive way of speech, he steam-rolls them. In his reproach, the
manager emphasizes this: You are still selling in the manner of twenty
years ago. You see a customer, and you go mad at once. You dont see the
working men in them like you but the 526.40 [HUF] that should be put in
the cash register. The shop assistant providing the positive example in the
film, who is later promoted to a manager, is willing to face workplace conflicts rather than sell faulty or unsavoury clothes.
In this study I intend to show what was meant by cultured trade and what
steps were taken to establish it, based on mainly the trade press and on
the analysis of the documents of the Domestic Trade Ministry. I analyse
its realisation in practice mainly in the context of some villages of the
former Mezcst district, in the Borsod county in North-East Hungary,
for which I used trade related complaints, the minutes of council meetings and those of the executive committee, and also the interviews which
I had made with sellers and tradesmen of peasant origin.
The shop assistants of socialist trade
It was the Soviet socialist trade created in the 1930s that provided the
model to create a socialist trade in Hungary. Based on the research conducted by Amy E. Randall, the Soviet government planned to rationalise
and re-define trade by modernizing and extending the commercial infrastructure, by introducing technological and practical innovations and a
assgrl, a szllodaipar fejldsrl beszltek a felszlalk, [The speakers
talked about the new ways of selling, politeness and the development of hotel
industry] Kirakat, Budapest, II/10, October 1958, 10; Nhny sz a szocialista
erklcsrl, [A Few Words on Socialist Morals] Kirakat, Budapest, V/12, December 1961, 5; Mi a klnbsg a kapitalista s a szocialista kereskedelem
kztt, [The Difference between Capitalist and Socialist Trading] Bizomnyi
Hrad, Budapest, VI/1, 4 April 1965, 6; Gondolatok a vllalat 20. ves jubileumra, [Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of the Company] Bizomnyi
Hrad, Budapest, IX/2, 7 November 1968, 32.
564 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
new cultivated method of distributing goods (announcing that it was successful, honest and clean). The development of Soviet trade was considered by the political leadership as a means of building a state that served
the purpose of bringing the new socialist order, which was said to stand
above the capitalist version in terms of its techniques and morals.4 The
department stores in the big cities were the flagships of these efforts as
they were outstanding both in terms of their product range and the quality
of service conveying the feeling of luxury to the new Soviet middle
class, which tried to express its privileged position honoured by higher
salaries in the material culture too.5
To propagate and spread commercial know-how, quite strange means were
used such as the commercial novel called Szvgynk (Our Labour of
Love),6 which was published in Hungary in 1953 and represented the everyday work and life of Soviet commercial workers. The novel was recommended to trade workers by Kereskedelmi rtest (the official journal
of the Ministry of Domestic Trade).7 With the promotion of the protagonist
of the novel, Lena, who becomes a shop assistant from a cleaning lady then
is promoted to the position of a department manager and finally becomes
the manager of the shop, one can see the different levels of work in commerce. She is the ideal worker: she is honest, pays attention to cleanliness,
responsible, she keeps the regulations, pays attention to her training, she is
a big promoter of innovations and tries to provide for the workers as well
as possible, even if she has to confront her colleagues or bosses. Her colleagues, embodying different types of shop assistants, show examples of
the attitudes to be avoided. There is the shabby street cake seller, the head
of the delicatessen department, who tries to teach her colleague how to
cheat with the scales, and there is a shop assistant who is rude to the customers. One of the central negative characters in the novel is the head of
the Department of Supplies at the Vostok factory, whose embezzlements
committed at wartime are revealed in the end.
4
Amy E. Randall, The Soviet Dream World of Retail Trade and Consumption in
the 1930s (New York: Palgrave - Macmillan, 2008), 67-111.
5
Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practises,
and Consumption, 1917-1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004),
198-215; Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalins Russia (Oxford - New York: Berg, 2003), 6-9.
6
N. Volkov, Szvgynk (Budapest: j Magyar Knyvkiad, 1953).
7
Kereskedelmi rtest, Budapest, XLVI/21, 8 June 1953, 500.
It must have played an important role in propagating commercial knowhow that from the 1950s on, there was a huge increase in the numbers of
women working in commerce (it was the branch where their percentage
was the highest), whereas only half as many of them had commercial education, both among leaders and among shop assistants, as men working in
the same positions.8 Mrs. Andrs P. received a job at the shop supplying
the workers of the power plant in Tiszapalkonya9 in the second half of the
50s. She was eighteen and walked to work from her nearby home village.
She described her boss as a man who liked cleanliness and required it from
his subordinates: at that time I wasnt Jolny, I was [called - I. . L.] Jolika
or Joli.10 And then my boss told me: Look, Joli! First we were on a last
name basis then he switched to a first name basis, [] well, I called him
neither [] by his first one, we showed respect and he deserved it and I
learnt a lot [from him - I. . L.] being a man. [] I learnt cleanliness and
whatever, or preciseness from that man. [] I just paid attention how a
man could control us when there were five or six of us women.11
8
Mria Schadt, Feltrekv dolgoz n. Nk az tvenes vekben [Ambitious

Working Women. Women in the 50s] (Pcs: Pannnia Knyvek, 2003), 47. In
1952 the Ministry of Domestic Trade prescribed that wherever women can be
employed, 80% of the new employees should be women and several positions
were listed where only women were to be employed when the new workforce
was recruited. A belkereskedelmi miniszter 1.098. szm utastsa a ndolgozk felvtelnek szablyozsrl, [Decree 1.098 of the Minister of Domestic Trade on the employment of women workers] Kereskedelmi rtest,
Budapest, XLV/22, 8 June 1952, 414-415.
9
The thermal power station in Tiszapalkonya was established during the forced
industrialization in the first half of the 1950s. Together with the Tisza Chemical Combined Plant, which was started in 1955, they formed the foundation of
the new socialist town of Leninvros, today called Tiszajvros, a green field
investment. The factory complex, which was later complemented with the Tiszai Oil Refinery, and the town were built in a townless region in an area appropriated from the neighbouring villages. The nearby village of
Tiszaszederkny was incorporated in the new town by the name old town and
the housing estate of the town was built in its outskirts. The town and its plants
are situated in the area of the Mezcst District or since 1982, when the centre
of the district was changed, the Leninvros District.
10
The fact that she left out the village version of the nickname shows that the
interviewee integrated in the urbanised conditions.
11
Interview with Mr. and Mrs. P. Andrs. Tiszapalkonya, 8 February 2011. The
names of the interviewees have been altered to protect their personal rights.
566 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
Although my women interviewees who worked in the retail sector did not
get professional education, they managed to learn more by attending
courses, trainings,12 night schools or learning accountancy. They liked to
mention their ability to calculate in their heads13 and the love of customers
expressed by gratefulness occasionally even in present days for the
help they used to give, in order to prove that they were suitable for this
career. For example, Mrs. Andrs P. served the inhabitants of the neighbouring village in the shop that was maintained by the power plant for the
factorys workers, disobeying the orders given by her bosses and not following the directions given in the commercial novel for similar situations.
She considered the incorrect handling of state property and the favours
she did for the micro-community and her family as morally justified by
poverty and penury14: I brought my mother every Saturday everything
that I could that I was able to, [] I didnt pay for that. [] Even the
boss was unaware of that. Maybe he knew about it, but one thing is for
sure, we never lacked anything, no, I didnt pay, I didnt pay for the rice,
the flour, the sugar, I took sausages home, I took home bread, I almost
broke my back [] I was expected at home, I took home fat, I was expected at home like the Messiah.15
The cultural points of view of the new type of commerce modified the
role of shop assistants as they were expected to educate the customers by
recommending the goods properly and by introducing a new socialist customer taste to them, thus helping customers become modern socialist cultured people.16 A way of doing this was political cash desk agitation17
12
There were about every quarter of a year, we dont say school, but a kind of
training. And say the doctor gave a presentation on hygiene and on what to
pay attention to and the like. Interview with Mr. and Mrs. P. Andrs. Tiszapalkonya, 8 February 2011.
13
[B]ut I added like a machine, and never I was there for three years and
never were we in the red and I never made a mistake so no one brought the
paper saying that I dont calculate correctly, I didnt calculate correctly. All
right, its not that I want to praise myself, but that was the truth. Interview
with Mr. and Mrs. P. Andrs. Tiszapalkonya, 8 February 2011.
14
She did not receive with understanding the same request by her neighbour who
she mentioned as a kulak.
15
Interview with Mr. and Mrs. P. Andrs. Tiszapalkonya, 8 February 2011.
16
Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, 209-210. The concept of kulturnost
appeared in the 1930s in the Soviet Union conveying the norms of cultured behaviour to the socially mobile groups with worker-peasant origins. For more on
mentioned in the annual schemes of the well-known Company of State

Department Stores or advertisements aimed to boost the standard of living of village people by introducing the use of certain products to them.
The cultural programmes combined with clothes and fashion shows that
were described in the newspaper column called Progressive methods in
Kereskedelmi rtest had a similarly important role.18
When discussing the characteristics of cultured commerce, most guidelines were focussed on the proper behaviour of shop assistants, and this
this, see: Kelly Catriona, Vadim Volkov, Directed Desires: Kulturnost and
Consumption, in Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 18811940, ed. Kelly Catriona, David Shepherd (Oxford - New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 291-313; Vadim Volkov, The Concept of Kulturnost. Notes
on the Stalinist civilizing process, in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila
Fitzpatrick (London - New York: Routledge, 2000), 210-230. In Hungary the
linguist Jzsef Erddi published an article on the expansion of the meaning of
the word cultured, which, following the Soviet example, started to comprise
peoples behaviour besides their knowledge and mental ability. Expressions like
cultured trade, cultured appearance, cultured way of getting around, cultured eating, cultured serving, etc., partly take over the meaning of the word polite.
Jzsef Erddi, A kulturlt sz dics plyafutsa, [The Glorious Career of the
Word Cultured] Magyar Nyelvr 88/2 (1964), 136-138. My observations
gained credence when I discerned that the contemporary press seem to support
the above-mentioned statement. Moreover, the expression cultured is often
used as a synonym of the words tasty or clean, tidy, and it was also used to
express the ability of self-control, self-moderation.
17
In the early 50s cash desk agitation meant the efforts made by new, politically
educated cadres to reveal those who were said to be the enemies of public
supply (speculators, those who aggregated products and scaremongers) and to
prevent their activities. Judit Tth, ruhalmozs vs. pultagitci, avagy az ellensg ismt a kzellts vonaln prbl zavart okozni, [Product Aggregation
vs. Shop Counter Agitation or the Enemy Tries to Cause Disturbance on the
Front of Public Supply Again] in Tanulmnyok Pest megye mltjbl V [Studies from the History of Pest County V], ed. Anita Kiss (Budapest: Magyar
Nemzeti Levltr Pest Megyei Levltra, 2014), 146-150.
18
In connection with the propaganda of goods see: A Npgazdasgi Tancs
218/19/1952. N. T. szm hatrozata a belkereskedelmi piackutats
megszervezsrl s az rupropaganda fejlesztsrl [Decree No.
218/19/1952. N. T. of the Peoples Economic Council on the organisation of
domestic market research and the development of the propaganda of products], Hatrozatok Tra 1/19 (1952), 155-157.
568 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
point of view remained important until the end of the socialist era. The
interviewees themselves also emphasized that they used to work without
arguments to the satisfaction of customers. I called everyone by their
surnames and I said at your service to everyone, even the smallest children.19 Recalling his childhood memories, a customer who has grown up
since of Mrs. Istvn K., who worked for 15 years in the greengrocers of
the co-op from the mid 60s on, casts light on some stereotypes associated
with state and private shops: you always accepted me so heartily and
nicely, I thought it was your shop. The work was mine and the profit
went to the co-op.20
In contrast with the memories of the interviewees, official documents, letters of complaint and newspaper articles expose a lot of conflicts indicating that it took several decades to meet the requirements of commercial
work laid down in the 1950s. Most commercial complaints sent to the
Peoples Control Committee of Mezcst and after Leninvros was appointed the centre of the district to the PCC of Leninvros between 1968
and 1989 were connected to the village shops and pubs of the district.
Peoples Control Committees were organised at a national, county and
district level from late 1957 on to investigate cases of stealth, cheating,
embezzlement and damages caused by inadvertent attitude and the careless
treatment of social property. Workers could make their oral or written
complaints in public interest.21 The majority of complaints were made in
19
Interview with Mrs. Istvn K. Tiszapalkonya, 6 February 2011.

Interview with Mrs. Istvn K. Tiszapalkonya, 6 February 2011. On the role of
village shopkeepers, who were understanding, helpful (they provided credit
and distributed the goods in an informal way) and were in a close relationship
with the inhabitants as a consequence of the size of the village, which decreases the negative picture of state shops, see: Zuzana Brikov, Consuming Socialism: Domesticated Socialist Shops in the Slovak Village, in Thinking
Together. Proceedings of the IWM Junior Fellows Conference, Winter 2003,
ed. A. Cashin, J. Jirsa (Vienna: IWM, 2003), 1-14.
21
Law VII of 1957 on peoples controlling. Trvnyek s rendeletek hivatalos
gyjtemnye, 1957 [Official Collection of Laws and Regulations 1957] (Budapest:
Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1958), 4956; Trvnyek s rendeletek hivatalos gyjtemnye, 1958 [Official Collection of Laws and Regulations 1958]
(Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1959), 171-174. In connection
with the submissions sent to the PCC I am going to analyse the strategies of
the letter writers, their argumentation techniques, their possible motivations as
well as the formal and language characteristics of the letters: gota Ldia
20
connection with trade.22 The complaints like the contemporary newspaper

articles on the work of the Peoples Control Committees, the findings of
mystery shopping and the remarks sent in, usually inform us about increased prices, weight reduction, wrong amounts on the receipts, the
quality of the service, not keeping the official working hours and unfair
advantages given to certain customers (or selling from under the counter
as it was widely known).23 Complaints were made about unofficial price
increase; it frequently occurred in the case of meat products (a type of
price cheating was the deception of customers, for example when a customer did not know the parts of an animal, so they could sell them cheaper meat at a higher price),24 and in the case of drink portions at cafs
Ispn: Ha nem segtenek Kdrnak runk! A Npi Ellenrzsi Bizottsghoz
rt kzrdek bejelentsek s panaszlevelek. [If You dont Help, Well Write
to Jnos Kdr Public Interest Reports and Letters of Complaint Addressed to
the Peoples Control Committee] Ethno-Lore: A Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmia Blcsszettudomnyi Kutatkzpont Nprajztudomnyi Intzetnek
vknyve XXXI., [The Annals of the Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre
for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences] ed. Balzs Balogh, gota Ldia Ispn, Zoltn Magyar (Budapest: MTA Blcsszettudomnyi
Kutatkzpont, 2014), 180-194.
22
In their cases it was rather the infringement of personal interests that was emphasized instead of the protection of common/state property; therefore PCC as
an organisation began to act like an office of consumer protection.
23
The nationwide investigation on the trade in farmers cooperatives held in
1960 and the annual report of the Peoples Control Committee of County BAZ
in 1972 mentioned similar experiences. Jelents a BAZ. Megyei Npi Ellenrzsi Bizottsg 1972. vi ellenrzsi tapasztalatairl, [Report on the experiences of the Peoples Control Committee of County BAZ in 1972];
Jelents a megyei s jrsi NEB-okhoz rkezett bejelentsek s panaszok alakulsrl, [Report on the proceedings of the complaints and submissions sent
to the county and township PCCs] /1972./ Magyar Nemzeti Levltr BorsodAbaj-Zempln Megyei Levltra, [National Archives of Hungary BorsodAbaj-Zempln County Archives] (hereafter cited as MNL BAZML) XVII.
1205. Nphatalmi s klnleges feladatokra ltrejtt bizottsgok. A
Leninvrosi Jrsi Npi Ellenrzsi Bizottsg iratai, [Committees formed for
the peoples power and diverse tasks. Documents of Peoples Control Committee of Leninvros] box 3.
24
Among the complaints against the manager of the butchery in Tiszakeszi in
1988 it was mentioned that he cuts pig meat and sells it as carcase meat selling the skin at the price of fat. MNL BAZML XVII. 1205. 1988, box 58.
570 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
(pressz) and pubs (kocsma). For example, in 1969 someone complained

that the manager of the drink shop in Szakld was selling his own lowquality nova wine at the highest price and that he was selling the grape
plinka he had bought in the autumn at the price of plum plinka in the
spring.25 In 1979 a man complained about the drink bar (bisztr) in rokt where commercial rum was sold at the price of the more expensive Casino rum, and the cheap commercial brandy was sold at the price of
Cabinet brandy and mixed plinka was sold at the price of plum plinka
and coffee and some other drinks were watered down.26 In the case of the
drink bar in Tiszatarjn an especially surprising complaint was made and it
proved to be true: they were serving cognac with gasoline.27 Incorrect
scales and non-standard drinking glasses were the most common means of
weight or volumetric reduction or in some cases the weight of the wrapping
paper was included in the product. Some complained that incorrect change
was given back or the changes in the prices were indicated in a confusing
way. Quality complaints were mostly made in connection with bread.
In many cases letter writers complained about the quality of the service
and the rude way of speaking. A letter writer who claimed to be a mother
of three complained about the manager of the greengrocers in Tiszaszederkny, the old town of Leninvros in 1981: If I happen to find it
open, I have to serve myself because he is sitting about and is not willing
to dirty his hands. It often happens that he drinks wine called egri bikavr with his friends and woe to those entering the shop at that time
since they can hear all kinds of swearwords.28 In 1975 a complainant
complained about the attitude of the manager of the laundry in Mezcst:
if someone takes something to her to be cleaned or washed she looks
daggers at them. She says that here again, they are bringing the heap of
rags but they take nothing away. When the complainant argued about
the correctness of saying the weight of the laundry at one sight she said
that she wont talk to such dogs.29 The world of drink bars and cafs
25
MNL BAZML XVII. 1206. Nphatalmi s klnleges feladatokra ltrejtt

bizottsgok. A Mezcsti Jrsi Npi Ellenrzsi Bizottsg iratai [Committees
formed for the peoples power and diverse tasks. Documents of Peoples Control Committee of Mezcst] 1969, box 20.
26
MNL BAZML XVII. 1205. 1979, box 31.
27
28
29
lacked nice behaviour to an even greater degree. In 1977 as part of a long

conflict the leader of the drink shop in rokt was accused of the following, but according to the PCC the charges were unsound: He tells the
customers and guests, I quote you bastard, get out of here. It happened
to me regularly. He is always intoxicated and in my opinion thats why he
behaves like that.30 In 1969 the wife of the manager of the drink shop in
Szakld retorted to the ironic remark of a guest in which the guest praised
the homemade wine sold at the highest price illegally, shut up, drink it
and be quiet.31
In 1977 the Ministry of Domestic Trade issued a decree limiting the sale of
alcoholic beverages so as to reduce the cases of intoxication at workplaces
and in general excessive drinking. The decree forbade the sale of alcoholic
beverages at catering units from the time of opening until 9 a.m.32 The regulation, which was called the 9 oclock regulation by the people, was often checked by the local authorities by mystery shopping. According to the
investigation carried out in Borsod County, the majority of catering and retail units kept the main provisions of the regulation and half of the catering
units changed the time of opening to 9 oclock. As a result of this, more alcoholic drinks were purchased in the food and grocery shops,33 and therefore a proposal was made to extend the scope of limitation to the shops
too.34 It was in opposition to the regulation that the barely-detectable
30

32
A belkereskedelmi miniszter 19/1977. Bk. M. szm rendelete a szeszes ital rtkestsnek korltozsrl, [Decree 19/1977. Bk. M. of the Minister of Domestic Trade on the restriction of selling alcoholic beverages] Trvnyek s
rendeletek hivatalos gyjtemnye, 1977 [The Official Collection of Laws and
Regulations 1977] (Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1978), 514-517.
33
A 19/1977. Bk. M. szm kormnyrendelet vgrehajtsnak ellenrzse a
szeszes ital rtkestsnek korltozsrl, [Checking the execution of Government Decree 19/1977. Bk. M. on the limitation to selling alcoholic beverages.] MNL BAZML XVII. 1205, box 15.
34
Finally, the restriction was only extended to retail units in January 1987. Not
much later, in March 1989 the decree on the restriction of alcoholic beverages
was repealed by the Parliament for good. A szeszes italok rtkestsnek
korltozsa, [Restriction of selling alcoholic drinks] szak-Magyarorszg,
Miskolc, XLIII/1, 2 January 1987, 8; A valsg a szeszrendeletrl, [The Reality of the Alcohol Decree] szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc, XLV/84, 11 April
1989, 8.
31
572 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
speakeasies sprang up. In these cases checks were made based upon reports. In 1978 a letter was sent from Igrici on this matter: in the flat of a
widow, Mrs. F. M., there is a real drink shop [...]. It opens as early as 3
a.m. when the workers of the state farm go there and it is open until the
evening, after them the workers of the cooperative come.35 In 1984 a report drew the attention of the checking authorities to nine people who
served drinks at their homes and as this case had already been discussed at
the village meeting, the council turned to the Hungarian Customs and Finance Guard.36 In 1986 in Igrici another letter writers acquaintance
bragged about his cunning son-in-law in Mezcst, which made the writer inform the Peoples Control Committee about it: he distils the plinka
himself selling about ten litres for 150 HUF every week and he doesnt
care about the world, he is afraid of no one as he dates the policeman, the
council, everyone [...]. He hides the equipment necessary for distilling
plinka in the abandoned neighbouring plots.37 The investigation was
made difficult both in the case of pubs breaking the rule and in the case of
speakeasies by the careful approach and the suspiciousness towards the
controllers who arrived in the villages as aliens. Sometimes this is referred
to by the letter writers: In Tiszakeszi alcoholic drinks were sold aboveboard but quietly from daybreak at the pub on the bank of the Tisza. People
wearing workers clothes can drink from early morning. [...] It can be observed in a careful and thoughtful way, although strangers are surely noticed especially if they are well-dressed or come by car. We trust that you
can solve the problem by shutting the early morning pub so that the workers could appear at their workplaces sober!38
In the complaints the well-known lack of product supply of the era39 was
mostly felt in connection with the lack of coal and the lengthy repairs due
35

37
The investigation carried out by the Peoples Control Committee must have
been unsuccessful as in 1988 another complaint with the name of the complainant was sent in about the same person, but this time the drunk son-in-law
himself gave away the secret of his wealth. MNL BAZML XVII. 1205. 1986,
box 41; MNL BAZML XVII. 1205. 1988, box 58.
38
MNL BAZML XVII. 1205. 1980, (Tiszakeszi) box 31. For further details, see:
Hajnali ellenrzsen, [Early Morning Inspection] szak-Magyarorszg,
Miskolc, XLIII/62, 14 March 1987, 6.
39
On the shortage of food from the end of World War II to the end of the 1970s,
see: Tibor Valuch, Magyar htkznapok: Fejezetek a mindennapi let trtne36
to the lack of spare parts discussed below.40 The recurring investigations

in the retail units usually mentioned the issue of product supply. These
investigations cast light on the shopkeepers everyday struggle for purchasing goods: they did not receive the whole amount of the goods they
had ordered, in some cases they got substitute products without any preliminary agreement (for example cherry pepper instead of apple pepper),
deliveries were usually late, the missing products had to be picked up and
delivered by using their own vehicles, they depended on the suppliers and
they did not want to further deteriorate their relationship by law court
cases.41 Due to the lack of goods, personal relationships became more
important among commercial workers too. The leader of a caf (pressz)
in Tiszadorogma, who got a share of the profit, supposed in his report that
it is the personal relationship between friends, relatives or other people
that governs the distribution of beer: the competing local drink shop was
tbl a msodik vilghbortl az ezredfordulig [Hungarian Daily Lives:
Chapters from the History of Everyday Life from the Second World War to
the Turn of the Millennium] (Budapest: Napvilg Kiad, 2013), 135-159.
40
There were many German complaints about the lack of goods and the difficulties it caused in shopping. Their analysis see: Ina Merkel, ...in Hoyersverda
leben jedenfalls keine so kleinen viereckigen Menschen: Briefe an das
Fernsehen der DDR, in Akten. Eingaben. Schaufenster. Die DDR und ihre
Texte. Erkundungen zu Herrschaft und Alltag, ed. Alf Ldtke, Peter Becker
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 279-310; Judd Stitziel, Shopping, Sewing, Networking, Complaining. Consumer Culture and the Relationship between State and Society in the GDR, in Socialist Modern: East German
Everyday Culture and Politics, ed. Katherine Pence, Paul Betts (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 2008), 265-278. The Estonian complaints
about trade usually highlighted the quality and the organisation of customer
service besides the shortage of goods and the difficulties of purchase. Similarly to the examples mentioned by me, impolite service and serving from under
the counter, selling alcoholic drinks in food shops and the gathering of drunk
people around shops were recurring topics. Reet Ruusmann, The Needs of
the Consumers Oblige: Daily Problems and Criticism of the System in Public
Letters in the 1960s and 1980s, Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 4/2
(2010), 124-127.
41
Tmavizsglatok, 1981, [Analyses of topics 1981] A teleplsek lelmiszerkereskedelmi elltsnak helyzete. sszefoglal jelents Leninvros lelmiszerkereskedelmi elltsnak vizsglatrl, [The situation of the food supply chain
of the settlements. A comprehensive report on the analysis of the food supply
chain in Leninvros] MNL BAZML XVII. 1205, box 22.
574 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
supplied with the Borsodi light beer, which sold well, whereas he, like
other shops, had to come to terms with selling the less popular Slovakian
and other import beers.42
Other complaints were made against the activities of the service providing industry, especially those of the services of the Electric Maintenance
Company of the Machine Industry (its Hungarian abbreviation is
GELKA) covering the whole region of the country and the units of smallscale industrial cooperatives (KTSZ). According to a 1981 survey, in the
Mezcst District the repair of radio and television sets was the second
most common service required after that of hairdressers,43 and in connection with this, most complainants complained orally or in writing
about the lengthy repair period of household devices (mainly TV sets and
radios). Although the time required for repairs by GELKA was 2-4 days
on average between 1976 and 1980,44 due to the lack of spare parts, it was
not uncommon to wait several months or in some cases even more. It
took more than a year for the local small-scale cooperative to repair a
Mezcst residents radio. I took the radio back for warranty repair
back in 1975 and it has not been completed up to this day [18 February
1977 - I. . L.], although I went to urge it every week. In January 1977
K. K. the leader told me that he could not repair it for want of spare parts
and as the warranty period had expired, it would not even be replaced
either. Owing to the investigation conducted by the Peoples Control
Committee, the complainant was compensated with a replacement de42

A lakossgi szolgltatsok V. tves tervidszakban trtn fejlesztsre tett
intzkedsek hatsa a szolgltatsok sznvonalra s a ltrehozott kapacitsok
kihasznlsa. sszefoglal jelents a lakossgi szolgltatst vgz vllalatok,
szvetkezetek s a magnkisipar tevkenysgnek vizsglatrl, [The effect
of the measures taken to improve public services during the time of the 5th
Five-Year Plan on the quality of services and the degree to which the created
capacities were used. A comprehensive report on the activities done by companies, cooperatives and private small-scale industry providing public services.] MNL BAZML XVII. 1205, box 22.
44
Vizsglati jelents a Leninvrosi jrsi-vrosi Npi Ellenrzsi Bizottsg
005537. sz. megbzlevele alapjn a GELKA Vllalat 0502 sz. Szervizben
/Leninvros/ vgzett ellenrzsrl, [Report on the investigation conducted in
Service No. 0502 of GELKA Company, according to the letter of commission
No. 005537 of the Peoples Control Committee of the District and Town of
Leninvros] MNL BAZML XVII. 1205, box 22.
43
vice.45 A private soldier in Tiszakeszi held the carelessness of the

GELKA employees responsible for the endless repair period of the faulty
cooker he had bought. I just cant believe that they couldnt get spare
parts for the cooker for sixteen months. [] Unfortunately, as I am a soldier, I dont have the time to deal with this problem so many times. My
wife also goes there in vain, they dont condescend to talk to her, so to
say. The complainant trusting in the intervention and authority of the
original addressee, the editors of the journal of the Ministry of Defence,
hopes that at long last my wife, our little daughter and I can enjoy the
tasty meals we could cook on this device. Although in this case the carelessness seemed to be proved as according to GELKA, the device had
long been repaired, it could have been taken away, the shortage of spare
parts caused serious problems.46 According to the report of the investigation conducted by the PCC in 1981, besides the often experienced spare
part shortage, GELKA blamed the centralized spare part supplying system of the company and the sluggish material supply for the lengthy repair periods and as a result of this, most of the working time of the head
of the service team and those working at the customer service and in the
warehouse was taken up by handling the requests and complaints connected to material shortage.47
Many complaints of commercial nature were made in connection with the
Trading Company of Fuel and Construction Materials (Tzp). Although
the poor range of fuels and construction materials offered by Tzp was
widely known, most complaints were made about coal selling. Most people complained about the quality of the coal. In 1979 a resident in
Hejkeresztr bought 4 tons of coal and more than half of it consisted of
coal powder. It was attested by several witnesses, among them a comrade Policeman. The complainant, who described himself as a worker
and helpless father of two with a small salary, complained that the head
of the Tzp tried to persuade him to sift through the coal and then the
powder would have been exchanged with coal. But I dont have the
money and the time to get it sifted. Ive already carried half of it into the
45
MNL BAZML XVII. 1206. 1977, box 19. (Orally made complaint.)
47
These were the reasons that resulted in the GELKA company leaving business
so that most service places were transformed into small companies everywhere
in the country. A szolgltats s a tancsok, [Service and Councils] szakMagyarorszg, Miskolc, XL/194, 18 August 1984, 4.
46
576 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
coal shed 30 m away and the other half is in front of my gate since the
head of the Tzp office told me not to carry it inside as the quantity of
the powder can be detected more accurately in the open air. However, he
said he could not say when he could come to our place.48 However, sifting bad quality coal seems to have been a routine. It also caused problems
when private merchants and transporters bought the popular fuels and
construction materials, deepening the problem of material shortage and
they re-sold the goods at a higher price or in exchange for bribery.49 In
1983 a complaint was made about this problem in connection with the
Tzp in Mezcst: I have been informed that the few carriages of coal
that arrives at Tzp every day are bought by the carriers in advance and
the people in that district can only purchase it through them. Certainly, at
the carriers own discretion. Thus people depend on the carriers. Why
cant coal be sold to the workers in the district in 1 or 2 tons of portions
and they could employ the carriers?50 (Against the retailers who pushed
up prices the police started law processes in several cases and these received media coverage. Retailing and chain trading were widespread in
the country at that time; in the newspapers they wrote about the vegetable
trading mafia and this phenomenon was extended to the trade of car parts,
plumbing and electric assemblies and PB gas.51) Coal shortage became so
constant that in November 1985 the authority introduced advance booking for coal and fire wood. However, according to an investigation carried out by the PCC in June 1986, a lot of local Tzp did not apply it,
and in the case of booking coal mined in Hungary, it was regular to queue
up. Standing in a queue and handing out calling numbers causes tension
48

lst tartott a KNEB, [The Central Peoples Control Committee had a Session] szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc, XL/176, 28 July 1984, 1-2.
50
51
For instance, see: rdrgt kiskereskedk, [Retailors Pushing up Prices]
szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc, XL/211, 8 September 1984, 12; rdrgtk,
[Price Increasers] szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc, XL/235, 6 October 1984,
12. As the retailers bought up commodities that were hardly available or not
available at all in state operated shops re-sold them with a wide margin, the
Ministry of Domestic Trade issued a decree to regulate who can be seller and
who can be buyer. Burjnz lnckereskedelem, [Overabundant Chain Trade]
szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc, XL/217, 15 September 1984, 2. Bejelentk
inkognitban, [Complainants in Anonymity] szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc, XLI/82, 9 April 1985, 3.
49
among the customers, there are many arguments and the order is often
broken.52
Although there were huge differences between the decades of state socialism concerning the access to consumer products, the complaints about
the quality of trade services were of similar nature. The manager of the
butchery in Tiszaszederkny, who was accused of rude and brutal behaviour in the paper called Borsodi Vegysz (the newspaper of the industrial
cities in Borsod County) and who had to supply ten thousand people from
the only shop in town traced back the problem to the tension caused by
the lack of products in 1964: There are many people who are rude, demanding, and they dont understand: if there is nothing, I cannot give anything. Certainly, they think that I sell it to someone else from under the
counter. It is not true. It cannot be proved [] Some people never want
to stand in a queue and shout. What can you do in such a situation? I also
shout! So please believe me, the customers arent angels either. Its hard
to do your duty here.53 The phenomena connected to shortage economy
and the instable attitude towards state (common) property were all obstacles hindering the spreading of cultured trade and generating situations
similar to the above-mentioned ones.
The transformation of the retail network
Cultured trade included renovations, with the shops becoming specialized
and the introduction of self-service, which made product handling, storing and hygiene better and enhanced the filtering capacity of the system.54
52

Van-e hs a pult alatt?!..., [Is There any Meat under the Counter?!...]
Borsodi Vegysz, Miskolc, I/23, 6 August 1964, 1.
54
Jelents a fogyasztk rdekvdelmvel kapcsolatos vizsglatok tapasztalatairl a fldmvesszvetkezeti kereskedelemben, [Report on the findings of
the investigation concerning the protection of consumers in the trading of
farmers cooperatives] 15 November 1960. Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Orszgos Levltra [National Archives of Hungary], (hereafter cited as MNL
OL) XIX-G-4-xx, Belkereskedelmi Minisztrium, Kultrcikk Kereskedelmi
Figazgatsg, [Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cultural Goods Trade Directorate-General] box 85. 650 nkiszolgl bolt, 30 j vendgl s tbbszz falatoz nylik az idn vidken, [650 self-service shops, 30 new restaurants and
hundreds of fast food restaurants will be opened in the country this year]
szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc, XVI/36, 12 February 1960, 1.
53
578 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
Although according to the reports, by the early 1960s the dark, dank
shops with bells smelling with paraffin disappeared from the villages,
most trade units were located in private houses, which were equipped
with old-fashioned tools and had to struggle with storage difficulties.55
According to the report written by the GP in Tiszapalkonya in 1960, one
of the two stores in the village is a crammed small service room that
cannot be called a shop; it had no storage room, so the crates, bottles,
paints and paraffin were stored in the same area as bread, flour and other
food. The other grocery shop had a small storage room, but they had no
defence against the flies coming from the stall of the co-op, which was 50
metres away, especially in the summer. Although this latter shop was relocated into a self-service unit that year, the drink shop remained near the
stall causing a lot of cases of indigestion and an increased number of polio in the village.56
The trade policy of the early 50s tried to promote tidy, clean and hygienic
shop interiors and product handling by the movement called Lets make
our shops nicer! and by awarding the titles of Nicest shop!, Nicest
selling place!, Nicest shop window, or with the Voroshin movement
imported from the Soviet Union, which tried to strengthen the expectations concerning order and cleanliness in trade through work competition.57 The fact that this phenomenon was not isolated is indicated by the
educational slide film called A tisztasg fl egszsg [Tidiness is half
55
Sokat fejldtt a falu kereskedelme, [Trade has Developed a lot in the Villages] Fldmvesszvetkezeti Hrad, Miskolc, II/11, 5 December 1963, 2;
Elterjeszts a Belkereskedelmi Minisztrium Kollgiumhoz: Irnyelvek a
kereskedelmi hlzat rendezshez, a rgi zletek talaktshoz,
sszevonshoz 1963. oktber 3, [A proposition for the College of the Ministry of Domestic Trade: Principles to regulate the trade system and to merge
and modify old shops 3 October 1963] MNL OL XIX-G-4-xx, box 82; A falu
s a kereskedelem, [Trade and Villages] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc,
XVIII/168, 20 July 1962, 3.
56
MNL BAZML XXIII. 986/a, Kzsgi tancsok. A Tiszapalkonyai Kzsgi
Tancs iratai, Tancslsi s vb lsi jegyzknyvek [Councils of Villages.
The documents of the Tiszapalkonya Council. Minutes of the meetings of the
council and executive committee]. Tancslsi jegyzknyv. Jelents a kzegszsggy helyzetrl Tiszapalkonyn 1960. vben, [Minutes of the Councils meeting. Report on the situation of public health care in Tiszapalkonya in
1960] box 1.
57
Kereskedelmi rtest, Budapest, XLV/39, 5 October 1952, 752.
health], which was made in 1953 and drew attention to keeping the rules
of hygiene in shops and in catering units as well as keeping our homes,
workplace and public places clean. The slide film warned people to abstain from tasting or touching food products and from coughing or sneezing on them and that the shop assistants hands should always be clean,
they should use clean paper to wrap goods, etc.58 Propagating such rules
that are now considered elementary indicates that they were not considered common in Hungary in the 50s, and their adoption can be seen as
cultured trade gaining ground.59
However, the specialization of shops in the 1950s (when a particular
group of articles was sold in a special shop) did not live up to the expectations. According to a proposition written to the College of the Ministry
of Domestic Trade on the trade system, as a result of overspecialization,
in 1963 there were approximately 150 types of shops in the retail sector.
When purchasing food, people had to go to 4-5 different shops (grocery,
butchery, greengrocers, milk, bread, etc.) and the situation was similar in
the case of industrial products. According to the writers of the report,
even in the villages with a low density of population there were separate
shops selling household chemicals, cloths, or stationery, which were not
58
59
A tisztasg fl egszsg. 1953. The issue of hygiene included the socialist

transformation of personal and body hygiene, in fact following middle and
high class patterns from the inter-war period, and to achieve this, intensive informative and educational and propaganda activities were done targeting the
groups of peasants and workers. For more details on this see: Katalin Juhsz,
Body Odour Cleanliness within the Happiest Barracks, Hungary 19601989, manuscript. The study has been published, its Russian version, see: Teoriya Mody 26 (2013), 339-363.
See the announcement of the Public Health Care and Epidemic Centre of
Borsod County, which was published in the press, about washing hands, what
clothes to wear at the workplace, caring about our nails, coughing and blowing
our nose, etc.: Az lelmezsben dolgozk egyni tisztasgrl, [On the Individual Hygiene of those Working in Food Industry]. szakmagyarorszg,
Miskolc, XV/153, 2 July 1959, 4. The announcement of the Hygienic Middle
Cadres of Northern Hungary on the importance of improving public hygiene:
A kzegszsggy rdekben, [In the Interest of Public Hygiene]
szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc, XV/165, 16 July 1959, 2. The announcement of
the Ministry of Domestic Trade on the storing of meat in summer heat: Az
lelmiszerzletek fordtsanak fokozott gondot a higinira, [Food Shops
should pay Special Attention to Hygiene] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc,
XVI/162, 10 July 1960, 2.
580 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
economical for lack of customers.60 Following the example of supermarkets61 from 1962-1963 on, self-service ABC stores selling all kinds of
everyday consumer goods with large ground plans (between 500 and
1500 m) first appeared in housing estates and highly frequented places
and in the 1970s and 1980s, they began to spring up in villages too.62
The first self-service shops were established somewhat earlier, back in
the second half of the 1950s, by modifying traditional shops.63 Selfservice system and supermarkets appeared in the USA already in the 30s,
in Western Europe only right after the war. As they appeared on the scene, a new kind of attitude was required of the shop assistants and of the
customers, which they had to get used to.64 For example a village shop
manager distinguished two kinds of customers in 1964: Some of them
walked around here as if they had been shopping in self-service shops all
their lives. But others [] They know that they can take anything from
the shelf, but they take nothing. For some reason they just dont dare to
60
Elterjeszts a Belkereskedelmi Minisztrium Kollgiumhoz: Irnyelvek a

kereskedelmi hlzat rendezshez, a rgi zletek talaktshoz,
sszevonshoz, 1963. oktber 3, [A proposition for the College of the Ministry of Domestic Trade: Principles to regulate the trade system and to merge
and modify old shops, 3 October 1963] MNL OL XIX-G-4-xx, box 82.
61
Supermarkets and superettes that had a somewhat smaller ground plan were
discussed in several articles in the journal called Kirakat. E. g.: Kirakat, Budapest,
V/6, June 1961, 13; Kirakat, VI/3, March 1962, 10-11.; Kirakat, VI/4, April
1962, 10.
62
The development of commercial units and their system is described by Valuch,
Magyar htkznapok, 83-93.
63
The Hungarian and international experiences of new service methods (selfservice, fast service, self choosing, home delivery, etc.) were also regularly
discussed in Kirakat, and several reports were published in szakmagyarorszg too.
64
For the analysis of the consumers reaction showing generational differences
in connection with this type of trade, which became overwhelmingly popular
in Great Britain by the sixties (based on contemporary documents and oral history interviews) see: Andrew Alexander, Simon Phillips, Gareth Shaw, Retail
Innovation and Shopping Practices: Consumers Reactions to Self-service Retailing, Environment and Planning A, XL/9 (2008), 2204-2221.; Adrian R.
Bailey, Gareth Shaw, Andrew Alexander, Dawn Nell, Consumer Behaviour
and the Life Course: Shopper Reactions to Self-service Grocery Shops and
Supermarkets in England c. 1947-75, Environment and Planning A, XLII/6
(2010), 1496-1512.
reach for them. However, they look around near the shelves from which
they dont want to buy anything. Sometimes they ask about something
[inquiring] what they are good for. So they already like them.65 During
the popularisation of self-service shops in 1960, according to the president of the council in Tiszakeszi, the advantages of the new type of shop
lied in the fact that for women who were burdened with both the work out
in the fields and with household chores, it was easier to access the products on their way to work or coming home, thus eliminating standing in
long queues. The manager of the shop could not show preference to any
customer as all the goods are put on the shelves. Moreover, by packing
the goods out and weighting them in advance, weight reduction and unfair price increase could be eliminated. Due to the cooperation of the customers, shop assistants did not have to jump and run around so much.66
It was stealth and the resulting inventory shortage that shop assistants
were most worried about in connection with the new type of trade. The
cases of shoplifting in the self-service shops were a recurring topic at the
sessions of the council and the executive committee in Leninvros. According to the reports, cigarettes, chocolate, candy and drinks were stolen
in most cases and their value amounted to 10.60 HUF in 1973, and there
were many children and adolescents among the perpetrators. Because taking
65
66
Frds, zacsks leves, [Bath Salt, packed Soup] Fldmvesszvetkezeti

Hrad, Miskolc, III/3, 5 March 1964, 6. The report about the self-service shop
in Mezkeresztes emphasized the difficulties caused by the use of baskets: as
goods can only be put in shopping baskets, they take away their own baskets and
bags from the customers, but especially elderly ladies were not willing to part
with their market baskets without any argument. Kiszolgltam nmagam, [I
served myself] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc, XV/160, 10 July 1959, 5.
MNL BAZML XXIII. 1043/a, Kzsgi tancsok. Tiszakeszi Kzsgi Tancs
iratai. Tancslsi jegyzknyvek, [Councils of Villages. The documents of the
Tiszakeszi Council. Minutes of the meetings of the council] 6/1960, box 1. A
complaint arrived in 1975 in connection with the shop in Szakld with a content
contradicting to what was said by the president of the council of Tiszakeszi: In
the self-service shop there are plenty of things for you to see, there are 7-8
decagrams missing from each kilo, the goods are not packed out, you have to
wait half an hour to get some flour, if I ask for some, the boss says that its not
our task to do that. MNL BAZML XVII. 1206. 1975, box 19. These complaints were rejected by the Peoples Control Committee as slanders since besides the aforementioned things, the shop assistants were accused of entering
into sexual intercourse at their workplace by the complainant.
582 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
records, hearing the witnesses and identification take a lot of time, commercial workers preferred not to report the cases. It can be supposed that
the case mentioned and condemned by the district attorney in Mezcst in
1973 was not exceptional. In this case the teenagers who were caught
stealing were chastised by the shop assistants. As the parents reported the
physical punishment applied by the shop assistants to the police twice,
the attorney emphasized that shop keepers and shop assistants should
learn there is no vigilante justice.67 The police and the attorney wanted
to solve the problem by applying measures intended to educate such as
giving presentations at schools, informing the parents, the schools and by
improving the methods of control, by meting out stricter punishments.68
With regard to the frequency of shoplifting in self-service shops and the
social danger it posed, it was upgraded to the category of felony from
that of offence by the Penal Code in 1971. However, due to the low value
of the stolen things, the humane sentences and the burden that was suddenly thrust on the organs of criminal investigation, thefts under the value
of 500 HUF were relegated to the category of offence in 1973.69
67
According to the contemporary survey conducted among the self-service stores

in Slovenia, it was customary to oblige the suspect to pay back a sum several
times higher than the value of the goods stolen, to swear at them, to force them
to do unskilled work, to ban them from the shop or to oblige them to do their
shopping in that store from that time on. Janez Pecsr, Az nkiszolgl
ruhzakban elkvetett lopsok megelzsnek, feldertsnek s nyomozsnak problmi: V. Medunarodnyj Kriminalistieskij Simpozium, Moskva, 1968, [The problems of preventing, exploring and investigating cases of
shoplifting in self-service supermarkets] Belgyi Szemle 7/2 (1969), 25.
68
Lornd Polgrdi, Az nkiszolgl kereskedelmi egysgekben elkvetett lopsokrl, [On shopliftings in the self-service retail units] Belgyi Szemle 10/8
(1972), 56-58.; Jzsef Ihsz, Az nkiszolgl rendszer boltokbl trtn lopsokrl, [On shopliftings from the self-service shops] Belgyi Szemle 10/11
(1972), 54-57.; Sndor Horvth, Istvn Matuz, Az nkiszolgl bolti lopsok
Csongrd megyei tapasztalatai, [The experiences of shopliftings in the selfservice shops of Csongrd County] Belgyi Szemle 11/1 (1973), 70-71.; Az
nkiszolgls knyes krdse, [The Delicate Issue of Self-service] Kirakat,
Budapest, V/6, June 1961, 10.
69
1971. vi 28. sz. tvr. a Btk. mdostsrl s kiegsztsrl; 1973. vi 14. sz.
tvr. a Btk., valamint a szablysrtsekrl szl trvny mdostsrl [On the
amendment and completion of Decree Law 28 of 1971; Decree Law 14 of
1973 on the amendment of the Penal Code and the law on delinquencies] Trvnyek s Rendeletek Hivatalos Gyjtemnye, 1971 [Official Collection of
In 1960 the president of the council in Tiszakeszi proposed to establish a

confectionary beside the self-service shop to promote culturedness and to
carry out further specialisation, which he considered important for the
cooperative and the economy of the country serving the interest of the
whole village. In his opinion, confectionaries were going to have an evergrowing importance with cultural development and the increased expectations as they provided considerable facilities for relaxation and entertainment. Moreover, during the summer they relieve the pressure on
housewives by selling soft drinks, ice cream and cakes. He regarded the
entertainment opportunities important from the point of view of the
youths: it is a means of keeping them in the village.
The cultural role of confectionaries and in general the village catering industry (inns and cafs)70, in spite of their limited number71, was highlighted
Laws and Regulations, 1971] (Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad,
1972), 203-204, 230 and Trvnyek s Rendeletek Hivatalos Gyjtemnye,
1973 [Official Collection of Laws and Regulations, 1973] (Budapest: Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1974), 228.
70
Eszpressz/pressz (caf): a small catering unit where machined coffee, cakes,
drinks or cold food are sold. The definition is published in: Magyar Nyelvr 85,
no. 1. (1961), 123-124. As cafs (eszpressz) caught on, it became necessary to
give an exact definition of confectionaries. Besides confection producing units
or workshops, all the shops were considered confectionaries in which at least
75%, in the confectionaries of farmers cooperatives 60%, of the turnover consisted of confections, ice cream and coffee. They were not allowed to sell beer,
wine and spirits, except for quality liqueurs. In the villages where there was no
state operated confectionary or caf (eszpressz), the confectionary of farmers
cooperatives was allowed to sell bottled quality beer. A belkereskedelmi miniszter s a SZVOSZ elnke 21/1959. (K. . 3.) Bk. M. szm utastsa a
cukrszda jellegnek meghatrozsrl, [Regulation 21/1959. (K. . 3.) Bk. M.
of the Minister of Domestic Trade and the President of the National Board of
Cooperatives (SZVOSZ) on the definition of confectionaries] Tancsok
Kzlnye 7/9 (1959), 73.
71
In 1965 there were 5 restaurants and inns, 5 confectionaries, 34 drink stores
and 11 factory bars in the Mezcst District. At a county level, without the big
towns such as Kazincbarcika, zd, Storaljajhely and Miskolc, there were 45
restaurants and inns, 80 confectionaries and cafs (eszpressz), 521 drink
stores and pubs and 107 factory bars. Borsod-Abaj-Zempln megye statisztikai vknyve 1965 [Statistical Yearbook of Borsod-Abaj-Zempln County
1965] (Miskolc, Kzponti Statisztikai Hivatal Borsod-Abaj-Zempln Megyei
Igazgatsga, 1966), 226.
584 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
by the contemporary press. In 1962 the chief cultural lecturer of the Association of County Consumption Cooperatives addressed the tasks of village
catering in community culture in an article. In his opinion, each institution
has to participate in public education where a large number of workers go,
therefore the catering units of farmers cooperatives72 are to educate village workers how to entertain in a socialist way, and the cooperatives are to
provide the facilities for that since people also demand that these units
should become public places for meeting and entertainment. He thought
that besides the entertainment programmes of various quality provided by
the catering units of the time (radio, tape recorder, record player, programmes of folk or dance bands and singers performances) literary evenings should also be organised, possibly with the cooperation of cultural
houses, and more educational programmes would be needed (for instance
in the places furnished with television, TV nights should be organised). As
another example, they reported on the cultural or book corners established
in confectionaries and cafs where the guests could borrow periodicals,
daily papers, tabloid journals and books containing short stories while they
stayed there.73 With the confectionaries, which were sometimes established
72
73
Farmers cooperatives mainly dealt with the trade of goods in villages: on the
one hand, by purchasing agricultural produces, on the other hand, by selling
consumer goods through the catering units and the network of village shops
mostly operated by this organisation.
Knyvek, folyiratok, napilapok a falusi eszpresszkban Gyarapodik a
pressz-vendglk szma, [Books, Journals, Daily Papers in Village Cafs
The Number of Caf-inns is Increasing] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc,
XVIII/135, 12 June 1962, 4. Kulturpressz Srospatakon, [Culture Caf in
Srospatak] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc, XIX/100, 1 May 1963, 6. A similar
initiative was called LIBPRESSO (a readers caf (pressz) in a library), and
MOPRESSO. Olvas-eszpressz (Readers Caf /eszpressz/). szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc, XVI/48, 26 February 1960, 1. A Mopressz was established in Gnc in 1967. What is Mopressz? A unit that provides the
services of a movie and a caf (pressz) in one place, comprising the most
comfortable entertainment facilities. Besides, it is an excellent educational factor. For example in Gnc, after work people appear here wearing elegant
clothes, the caf (pressz) provides them with a wide range of meals and
drinks and while they are drinking their beer at the comfortable tables, they
can watch the newest films at a modern wide-screen cinema. Mopressz a
falusi dolgozk szolglatban, [Mopressz Serving Village Workers] Szvetkezeti let, Miskolc, V/9, 8 September 1967, 1.
by transforming big drink stores, cafs and buffets they tried to reduce the
number of the so-called standing bars, their dubious regulars, and to keep
entertainment within cultured limits.74 The two kinds of catering units are
depicted very differently: Although we havent managed to eliminate the
smoky pubs, drink bars and the standing bars with dubious hygienic conditions completely yet, their number is declining continuously. Modern sunlit
clean confectionaries, small inns and cafs (eszpressz) open, which are
preferred by both the youths and the elderly people. Instead of playing
cards and showing off drinking shots and their consequences: fighting and
knifing, today young people are sitting at the tables of small inns playing
chess, talking, listening to music and dancing on the floor of the confectionary, which is brushed clean, and if one of them happens to enter with
muddy shoes on, they reprimand the offender themselves...75 As a result
of these efforts, a new public place was created for women and children in
the villages, which was in contrast with the traditional pubs attended mainly by men. However, the potential of confectionaries and cafs to transfer
cultural values was not so highly esteemed a decade later. In practice most
villages made a new pub out of the places called buffet or caf according to
the inscription.76
The decline of the old methods and places of selling
Through the so-called fair departments of companies and cooperatives,
state trade also appeared in the traditional places where village people did
their shopping, the animal and trade fairs. In this way it managed to cope
with the problems of the undeveloped network of village shops while
74
650 nkiszolgl bolt, 30 j vendgl s tbbszz falatoz nylik az idn

vidken, [This year 650 self-service shops, 30 new inns and hundreds of
snack bars will open in the countryside] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc,
XVI/36, 12 February 1960, 1.
75
A falu s a kereskedelem, [The Village and the Trade] szakmagyarorszg,
Miskolc, XVIII/168, 20 July 1962, 3.
76
Falusi cukrszdk, [Village Confectionaries] szak-Magyarorszg, Miskolc,
XXVI/132, 7 June 1970, 7. According to the report, for lack of tourists, they
couldnt make use of the kitchen made for the buffet, as local people needed
neither lunch nor dinner; there was no music in the room as the farmers cooperative did not have the record players mended which broke several times; although coffee was also served, wine, beer and plinka (spirit) were the most
frequently consumed drinks.
586 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
providing new opportunities for the government to achieve its aim to reduce the market share of private retail and small-scale private industry. The
fair departments were to represent cultured trade both by their appearance
and by being tidy. Besides the necessary equipment (tents, canvas, signboard, lighting materials and tools, transport crates, cash registers, amplifiers) they had to place the goods in a professional, tasty and tidy manner,
to keep everything clean, to treat the customers in an appropriate way and
to indicate the prices and stick to them, eliminating the possibility of bargaining.77 Besides, as a socialist alternative to the traditional fairs, so-called
representative fairs were held (Holiday or Happy Fair on 20 August,78 and
the Autumn Fair, which was mainly held in October), whose attendance
was boosted by advertising them, by organising the transport of village
workers at reduced prices and by giving away prizes in lotteries. Those
who organised the Holiday Fairs in one district in each of the 19 counties
for the first time in 1952 had to supply a wide range of products with the
participation of the local retailers and the selected national companies, they
had to organise high-quality cultural and sports programmes, and they had
to make the event decorative. In Borsod County the fair was organised in
Mezcst, which, according to a report, started sluggishly, but by the afternoon it attracted masses and the attendance reached 30-40000 instead of
the planned 18000. The farmers paid special attention to the pedigree stock
exhibited.79
77
A belkereskedelmi miniszter 26/1956. (K..7.) Bk. M. szm utastsa a

vsrozs rendjrl s az llami kiskereskedelmi vllalatok vsroz rszlegeinek mkdsrl, [Decree 26/1956. (K..7.) Bk. M. of the Minister of
Domestic Trade on the order of fairs and the operation of the fair departments
of state retail companies.] Kereskedelmi rtest, Budapest, XLIX/7, 13 February 1956, 131-133. A vsrozs, [Selling at fairs] Kereskedelmi rtest,
Budapest, XLIX/9, 27 February 1956, 164-165.
78
20 August is a Hungarian religious and national holiday: the day of King Saint
Stephen when people commemorate the foundation of the Christian Hungarian
state. In the communist regime the earlier religious and national character of
this holiday was changed and it was called the holiday of the new bread and
after the new socialist constitution was passed on 20 August 1949, it was declared a state holiday as Constitution Day.
79
The reports from eight counties wrote about a good atmosphere and turnover;
the fair in Kapuvr was mentioned as an exception, where the initial passivity
of the people was caused by scaremongering, which said that anyone buying
anything at the fair was to sign a document and to join the cooperative.
In spite of this, fairs were often criticised as an outdated way of trade

since with the socialist re-organisation of agriculture, peasants traded
with livestock among themselves on a reduced scale; moreover, the growing network of village shops also provided a more modern possibility for
shopping. Therefore in 1960 the Ministry of Domestic Trade called upon
the counties to reduce the number of fairs.80 Ethnographer Imre Dank,
who researched the area surrounding the town of Sarkad in Bks County
until the mid 60s, found that the farmers cooperatives along with the fact
that the Crop Trading Company buys out the crops created a competition
of the fairs. As he observed it, the fact that the farmers cooperatives were
selling in the open-air selling places offering the same product range as
shops also contributed to the decline of fairs; only those products that
were made exclusively by artisans (such as dark coloured clothes, list slippers, jack knives) were in demand.81 He said that due to the household plots,
80
81
Feljegyzs 8 megybl berkezett vidm-vsr jelentsekrl, [A note on the

reports on the happy fairs in eight counties] MNL OL XXVII-G-3, Kiskereskedk Orszgos Szervezete (KISOSZ), [Retailers' National Organisation] 26
August 1952, box 18. At the autumn happy fair organised in Miskolc in 1959,
1,700 prizes were given away in the lottery with complete kitchen furniture, two
televisions, several motorbikes and household devices among them. Az idn is
megrendezik a hagyomnyos szi vsrokat Miskolcon, Szerencsen s zdon,
[The traditional autumn fairs will be organised this year too in Miskolc,
Szerencs and zd] szakmagyarorszg, Miskolc, XV/173, 25 July 1959, 6. The
representative fairs were announced in the villages through loudspeakers or
drums. MNL BAZML XXIII. 1043/b, Kzsgi tancsok. Tiszakeszi Kzsgi
Tancs iratai. Kzigazgatsi iratok, [Councils of Villages. The documents of the
Tiszakeszi Council. Documents of public administration] 1959, box 1. A
vsrokrl, [On the Fairs] Kirakat, Budapest, III/3, March 1959, 10.
Cskkentik a vsrok szmt, [The Number of Fairs is decreased] Kirakat,
Budapest, IV/2, February 1960, 16. As a result of the directive, in County Gyr
the number of annual trade and animal fairs decreased from 160 to 110, in
County Szolnok from 205 to 143, in County Veszprm from 193 to 105, in
County Komrom from 66 to 37. On the topic, see: Gyrgy Moldova, Vsrozk
vgnapjai, [The Last Throes of Fairs] in Gyrgy Moldova, Rongy s arany: Riportok, [Rags and Riches: Reports] (Budapest: Kozmosz, 1969), 58-67.
Therefore in 1952 local state shops were ordered to appear at fairs with the
goods of private retailers that were much in demand (candy, toys, trinkets and
tawdries, shawls), and in 1955 an exact list of goods was given to the fair departments: this way they tried to avoid the possibility that any type of product
could be available only at private retail and artisans shops. A belkereskedelmi
588 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
animal fairs remained important, although their number and extent diminished, because they were the only occasions when people could buy and
sell animals at prices that were not set.82 Relying on the fairs in Ptervsr
82
miniszter 3.028. Bk. M. szm utastsa a helyi kereskedelemnek a vsrokon

trtn rszvtelrl [Decree 3.028 Bk. M. of the Minister of Domestic Trade
on the appear of the local shops at fairs] Kereskedelmi rtest, Budapest,
XLV/43, 5 November 1952, 836; A belkereskedelmi miniszter 155/1955. Bk.
M. szm utastsa a vsroz rszlegek cikklistjrl [Decree 155 Bk. M.
1955 of the Minister of Domestic Trade on the fair departments list of goods]
Kereskedelmi rtest, Budapest, XLVIII/43, 8 November 1955, 773-778.
Another market segment was found by private retailers at the sites of pilgrimage (e. g. Mriapcs), where state trade and the cooperatives have not yet appeared saying We do not support the clerical reaction, which is not right
according to the writer of the article. Az r tudja, ltja, meg is bocstja,
[The Lord knows, sees and forgives] Kirakat, Budapest, IV/12, December
1960, 7. The private trade of Borsod County was characterised by the following conditions. Between 1960 and 1965 the number of private retailers decreased from 513 to 442, two thirds of whom were from Miskolc. Within the
county their number was the lowest in the Mezcst District: 4 in 1960, then 3
people were private retailers. In the county their distribution remained stable
with a slight fluctuation of a few percentages. Taking the biggest groups of the
category of retail shopkeepers, 22-26% of them were greengrocers, approximately 15% of them were toy and tawdry seller, 13% sold tobacco, 10-10% of
them had second hand shops or groceries respectively and 7-9% sold textile,
clothes and fashion products. In the county the number of those in the private
catering industry decreased from 24 to 16 in five years, 80% of whom had a
cook-shop. My own calculation based upon the data of the Central Statistical
Office. Borsod-Abaj-Zempln megye fontosabb statisztikai adatai 1963
[More important statistical data of Borsod-Abaj-Zempln County 1963]
(Miskolc, Kzponti Statisztikai Hivatal Borsod-Abaj-Zempln Megyei
Igazgatsga, 1964), 240; Borsod-Abaj-Zempln megye fontosabb statisztikai
adatai 1964 [More Important Statistical Data of Borsod-Abaj-Zempln
County 1964] (Miskolc, Kzponti Statisztikai Hivatal Borsod-Abaj-Zempln
Megyei Igazgatsga, 1965), 234; Borsod-Abaj-Zempln megye statisztikai
vknyve 1965 [Statistical Yearbook of Borsod-Abaj-Zempln County 1965]
(Miskolc, Kzponti Statisztikai Hivatal Borsod-Abaj-Zempln Megyei
Igazgatsga, 1966), 233.
Imre Dank, letmdbeli vltozsok a dl-bihari sksg parasztsgnak felszabaduls utni letben, [Changes in the Lifestyle of Peasants in the Plain
in Southern Bihar after World War II] Bihari Mzeum vknyve, I. [Yearbook
of Museum of Bihar, I.],ed. Zoltn Hthy (Berettyjfalu: Bihari Mzeum,
1976), 187-188.
and in Mezcst, as a justification of the decline in the number of fairs, a

newspaper article in 1962 lists similar arguments: only the older generation goes shopping in fairs, the youths prefer to go to shops among cultured circumstances and whenever they want to, since fairs are outdated
both in terms of tidiness (according to the author one has to walk in mud
reaching up to the knee to get to the fair on the edge of the village and
the many weather-beaten patched tents are an eyesore) and the quality
of the goods (most sellers on the fair tried to thrust mawkish gypsum
casts called works of art, tapestry depicting lilac deer grazing blue grass,
tawdry toys and household tools, poor quality shawls, etc. on the villagers
slushing in the mud.)83
Almost all of the village people interviewed by me mentioned that they
sold fattened animals piglets, pigs, calves and bulls at the nearby fair,
while the things necessary for village life, such as young plants, chickens
and tools, were purchased there. However, some of them had reservations
concerning fairs, partly reflecting the reasons given by the contemporary
press. The following factors played a role in the decline of the importance
of fairs, although at a different degree in the case of each interviewee: the
change in the rhythm of shopping (e. g. for those villagers who worked in
factories it was impossible to do the shopping in the morning on weekdays), the poor quality of the products on offer at fairs, the accessibility
of the venue (the fields where fairs were organised were relocated to the
edges of the villages) and the changes in customer habits (the rejection of
the crowd in fairs and the rejection of bargaining). It made the common
acceptance of the Holiday Fair more difficult that as the peasants were
organised in cooperatives, they only got a relatively big income after the
annual report at the end of the year and not after the harvest. Therefore
instead of the representative fairs, which lost their significance by 1961,
the occasional open-air sales were supported, organised at the time of the
annual reports.84
As stated above, state trade in markets and fairs rejected the traditional
behaviour such as bargaining according to the customary choreography
83
84
Egy vsr tapasztalatai, [The Experiences of a Fair] Kirakat, Budapest,

VI/12, December 1962, 21.
Az 1960. vi vsrok eredmnyeirl, [On the Results of the Fairs of 1960]
Kirakat, Budapest, V/2, February 1961, 10; Vsrozs a kereskedelem fontos
feladata, [Going to Fairs is an Important Task of Trade] Kirakat, Budapest,
VI/2, February 1962, 10.
590 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
(criticizing the goods, going away and returning, etc.).85 Fixed prices
made shopping more reserved, which corresponded to the conception of
cultured commerce. It also fitted in the process in which bargaining as a
means of sales in shops was eliminated a little earlier.86 Jzsef M. who
used to be the apprentice of a private ironmonger before owning his own
business, which was then nationalised in 1950, after which Jzsef M. became the leader of a state-run shop says in an interview that bargaining
was customary in trade before World War II, and a great stress was laid
on it as a basic commercial technique by his boss at that time, who owned
the shop. Jzsef M. connected its popularity to customers habits: [I]n
those days people liked haggling because there were no fixed prices like
these days, [] now you cant haggle for sure but back then if anyone
came in and couldnt drive a bargain, if no price reduction was given,
they didnt feel comfortable, do you see? [W]ell, you had to be a terribly good speaker. You had to know the customers whims and habits and
when they came in, you were taught to get to know them. [] After the
war, when I became a private entrepreneur, I became disgusted with it, I
[thought - I. . L.] it was stupid, and I saw that I only cheat the customers with it, [] thats the price, I wrote it on the product and I didnt reduce the price by a penny, neither did I want a penny too much.87
85
For further details, see: Imre Dank, Piaci s vsri viselkedsformk, [Behaviour Patterns in Markets and Fairs] in Npi Kultra Npi Trsadalom: A
Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmia Nprajzi Kutat Csoportjnak vknyve XIXII, [Folk Culture Folk Society: The Annals of the Ethnographic Research
Group of the Hungarian Science Academy XI-XII] ed. Lszl Ksa (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1980), 155-189.
86
In 1943 the Minister of Trade and Traffic issued a decree providing that merchants and artisans were to indicate the prices on the goods in their shops
(there were some exceptions such as ironmongers, jewellery and toiletry
shops). A m. kir. kereskedelem- s kzlekedsgyi miniszter 1943. vi
60.000. K. K. M. sz. rendelete, az ruk szmlzsrl s vtelruk feltntetsrl, [Decree 60.000 K. K. M. 1943 of the Hungarian Royal Trade and
Transportation Minister on the billing of goods and the indication of the selling price] in Magyarorszgi Rendeletek Tra [Inventory of Hungarian Decrees] 77/2 (1943), 1083-1086.
87
Interview with Jzsef M. Polgr, 9 April 2011, 2 and 20.
Although a negative attitude towards bargaining already appeared before

1945,88 the price system set by the authorities of the honest socialist
state trade condemning profit orientation and treating the customer as a
partner also contributed to the disappearance of the method of bargaining.89 The price system became more liberal during the economic reforms
(New Economic Mechanism) in 1968. After which a trading company or
cooperative was free to set the prices, except for some products, according to the changes in market demand or supply. Jzsef M. talked about its
significance in an interview: Since 68 fixed prices became adjustable. It
began then, some shop leaders were given permission to change the prices of goods, so they said []. Television was in rage [] I, it cost 4200
and it was so popular that I can sell it for 4300. They said I could do it.
But I reduce the price of another article a little that was not so popular. It
was up to me to see it, if I trade well and there is a little margin, we can
share it with the company. They were interested in making profit. []
88
The local newspaper called Mezcsti jsg published a series of two articles
back in 1911 with the title Down with bargaining!, in which the writer considers it to be a sick symptom of trade, especially because of its time consuming nature. The author spent 1 and 2 hours on bargaining in a clothes
shop and a shoe shop respectively. Le az alkuval! I., Mezcsti jsg,
Mezcst, I/9, 12 November 1911. 2. and Le az alkuval! II., Mezcsti
jsg, Mezcst, I/10, 19 November 1911, 2. For more on this, see: Andor
Tibor Klmn v. Pataky, Az elads mvszete [The Art of Selling] (Budapest: Szerzi kiads, 1932), 45-52. Richard Sennett in his work called The Fall
of Public Man analysing the three innovations of a small retail store opened in
Paris in 1852 all the goods were sold only in big amounts and with a narrow
margin, they worked with fixed prices and the customers could look around
without feeling obliged to purchase discusses the effect of fixed prices on
customer habits and the decline of bargaining. Richard Sennett, The Fall of
Public Man (Cambridge - London - Melbourne: Cambridge University Press,
1977), 141-143.
89
The general reform of prices and wages was carried out together with the end
of rationing at the end of 1951. Seasonal products, such as vegetables and
fruits, were the only exceptions to the retail price system set nationwide; everywhere, their price was free depending on the weather and the production.
When setting the prices, it was social, health care and child care considerations
that were taken into account instead of the production costs, and it also made a
difference whether a particular product was basic or luxury product. dm
Marton, Inflation in Hungary after the Second World War, Hungarian Statistical Review 90/15 (2012), 6-7.
592 _____________________________________________ gota Ldia ISPN
Bla Biszku, he was against it. It is not allowed. There is no building capitalism in socialism. This was socialist trade.90
Jzsef M. was ironic when he remembered the lectures when bank and
financial experts started to teach him and his colleagues who were socialized in the old era of private trade that in trading one can trade.91 Besides the above mentioned flexible price mechanism, such market
regulators appeared in the system of planned economy as the acknowledgement of commercial risks (product supply, defining prices) or the
possibility of trade competition serving the interests of customers.92
During the economic reforms in 1968, the real meaning of trade, which
they tried to forget, was brought back, which they tried to reduce to the
concept of culturedness in the time of the socialist distribution of goods
and the planned economy, which mainly meant the superficial phenomena such as being tidy and clean, polite shop assistants, modern shop network and new ways of serving.
Conclusions
In my study I analysed the transformation of the locales and methods of
traditional, mostly rural shopping in the 1950s-60s. The background for
the socialist modernization of the former trade infrastructure and methods
was provided by the conception of cultured trade. Among the most important elements, we can highlight order and cleanliness; the polite shop
assistants, who were expected to educate their customers by introducing
them to a new socialist taste in consumption beyond an adequate recommendation of the goods; the modern chain of shops (which included refurbishments, specialisation of the shops and the creation of ABC shops);
90
Interview with Jzsef M. Polgr, 9 April 2011, 23. Bla Biszku, who was the
Minister of Interior Affairs in the Kdr government inaugurated in 1957
(1957-1961), one of the masterminds of the reprisals after 1956, the Deputy
Head of the Council of Ministers (1961-1962), Member and Secretary of the
Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (1962-1978)
was removed from the circle of Jnos Kdr, due to the reforms introduced in
the New Economic Mechanism.
91
Interview with Jzsef M. Polgr, 9 April 2011, 23.
92
Ferenc Zala, A fogyasztsi cikkek piaca s a kereskedelem mkdsnek j
vonsai, [The Market of Consumer Goods and the New Features of Trade]
Kzgazdasgi Szemle 14/4 (1967), 457*458.
as well as new service forms, mostly the introduction of self-service.

Claiming these characteristics, the cultured trade tried to distance itself
from the past capitalist and market-driven trade methods and practice.
The politeness deriving from character stood in place of humility. The
narrow, dark grocer shops were to be replaced by modern ones and new
forms of service (e.g. self-service) and the taverns characterized with
shady clients by cafs and confectioners. The state trade appeared at
open fairs with the so-called fair departments of companies and cooperatives, where they had to represent the cultured trade and with the use of
fixed prices, they excluded the method of bargaining from their repertory.
They experimented with the so-called representative fairs organized as
the socialist alternative of traditional fairs, but as collectivisation went on,
they considered the whole fair system old fashioned. In accordance with
it, the system expected a different, more solid behaviour, tidy, clean appearance from the customers on the spots. Since this change proved to be
an extremely complex process, in which there were several factors, their
exploration could not have been full-scale. From the side of state and cooperative trade the greatest obstacles of its realization were the difficulties in the supply of goods of the era and the odd relations toward social
property well illustrated by the announcements written to Peoples Control Committee. At the same time, the memories of some of the interviewees working in trade show how hygiene and politeness became
requirements during their work. The transition of villagers from markets
and fairs to modern shops was aided by administrative measures to reduce the number of fairs, by the loss of importance of fairs due to collectivisation by the re-evaluation of consumption, and finally by the change
in shopping preferences.
Peasants into Agro-Industrial Workers The Communist

Modernization of Romanian Villages, 1974-1989
Cristina PETRESCU
In the overwhelmingly agrarian countries of the Soviet bloc, the modernization of the countryside represented a top priority from the very beginning. Following the Soviet model, most of these countries engaged in the
collectivization of agriculture, a first and crucial step in the socialist transformation of villages. In fact, no other areas suffered more radical changes
under communism than the rural ones, where mutations occurred in such
diverse realms as the agricultural landscapes, the working practices and,
more importantly, the peasants' patterns of thinking and action. This paper
concentrates on a later, post-collectivization stage in the communist modernization of the Romanian countryside, which envisaged a so-called systematization of the rural areas through large-scale demolitions of villages
and selective foundations of agricultural-industrial centers. This policy
corresponded to the Ceauescu Doctrine, which conceived an intermediary
stage between socialism and communism dubbed multilaterally developed
socialist society. Beyond a new name, this stage required the same Marxist-Leninist goals, such as an increasing homogenization of society,
which should have been achieved by using clich solutions as accelerating
the process of eliminating the fundamental differences between physical
and intellectual labor, between village and town.
In order to highlight the similarities as well as particularities of the Romanian case, this paper is divided in three parts. The first briefly illustrates
that at the origin of the above-mentioned plan of rural modernization lay
the (re)interpretation of already exhausted Marxist-Leninist dogmas regarding the transformation of the countryside in the particular context of postcollectivization communist Romania. The second part focuses on the "systematization" of the countryside in terms of legislation, blueprint and consequences. Finally, the third part presents the domestic as well as the
international reaction to this gigantesque program of communist modernization in rural areas, among which the Operation Village Roumains stands
out due to its capacity to stir the greatest transnational support ever the citizens of Romania received. As for the local reactions, the paper illustrates
that, unlike in the case of collectivization, the resistance to systematization
came primarily from outside villages, from individuals whom this plan did
Peasants into Agro-Industrial Workers The Communist Modernization... ___ 595
not directly affect, but who regarded it as an epitome of Ceauescu's aberrant

dictatorial decisions. The quasi non-existence of aggregate actions in the rural areas altered by systematization suggests that the peasants had in the
meantime suffered themselves the effects of communist modernization.
Old Ideas in a New Context
The communist utopia envisaged the equality of all men (and women).
Unlike liberal democracies, which understood this fundamental concept
of political modernity in legal terms, popular democracies emphasized
the economic aspect of equality. For Marx, this had been a matter of fairer distribution of wealth in the higher phase of communism, when the
considerable development of the forces of production would have obliterated the antithesis between mental and physical labor, while the guiding principle of distribution should have been from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs!1 When Stalin imposed his understanding of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in an overwhelmingly agrarian
country (contrary to the predictions of the founding father), he conferred
new meanings to the notion of equality: collectivization represented not
only the socialist transformation of rural areas, but also a means of
eliminating the antithesis between town and village. In Lynne Violas
interpretation, the greatest divide of the Stalin revolution was not of (...)
workers and bourgeoisie, but of town and countryside.2 The process of
collectivization was nothing less than a war against the peasantry, which
Stalin waged merciless under the disguise of building socialism in the
countryside following the Marxist-Leninist principles (in fact, his own
reading of his predecessors' reinterpretation of historical materialism in
the particular context of the Russian society and the Bolshevik revolution).3 In short, collectivization was the fastest method of transforming
peasants into proletarians, private property into collective property, and
1
2
3
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed.
Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), 531.
Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of
Peasant Resistance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 38.
In insisting that peasant activity contrary to Communist policies could be defined as kulak while at the same time maintaining that his approach to the
peasantry was based on scientific Marxist class analysis, Lenin provided his
successors with conceptualizations that would be used in collectivization when
Stalin launched a war against all peasants. Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin, 19.
596 ____________________________________________ Cristina PETRESCU
agricultural production into a state-controlled and plan-based activity.

Otherwise, while the official discourse always presented these fundamental transformations as peasant-friendly, arbitrarily defined kulaks were
losing their lives due to extrajudicial punishment, deportation, imprisonment or simply famine.4
Although the application of the Soviet model of collectivization among
the satellite countries produced a large variety of alternatives, communist
Romania followed the original model quite consistently. After 1989, the
drama of collectivization became one of the most visited topics of research. While collectivization was hitherto synonymous with the liberation of the peasantry from the misery of earning a poor living from
unprofitable plots, post-communist scholarship hypothesized that it was a
forced seizure of land, which was accomplished only through repression
and resulted in the bankruptcy of Romanian agriculture.5 In spite of some
4
The total death toll of the Stalinist period is a matter of debate, let alone only
the deaths inflicted in the process of collectivization. However, it seems that a
consensus has been reached around the figure of minimum 20 million victims,
out of which probably a third were the direct victims of collectivization. See
http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Stalin (accessed 20 September 2015). See
also Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Re-Assessment (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990); Daniel Chirot, Modern Tyrants: The Power and Prevalence of Evil in Our Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994);
Stephane Courtois, ed., Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, rpression (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997).
5
The first collective project on collectivization was launched by the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism (INST) the first post-communist history institute meant to deal, in spite of the name, mostly with communism. The
most significant contributions so far are: Octavian Roske, ed., Dosarul colectivizrii agriculturii din Romnia, 1949-1962 [The File of Collectivisation in
Romania, 1949-1962] (Bucureti: Parlamentul Romniei, 1992); Dan Ctnu
and Octavian Roske, eds., Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia: Dimensiunea politic [Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania: The Political Dimension], vol. I: 1949-1953, vol. II: 1953-1956 (Bucureti: INST, 2000, 2005);
Dan Ctnu and Octavian Roske, eds., Colectivizarea agriculturii n
Romnia: Represiunea [Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania: Repression], vol. I: 1949-1953 (Bucureti: INST, 2004); Octavian Roske, Dan
Ctnu and Florin Abraham, eds., Colectivizarea agriculturii n Romnia:
Cadrul legislativ [Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania: The Legislative
Framework], 1949-1962 (Bucureti: INST, 2007). There was also an international project, supervised by two American scholars, Katherine Verdery and
diversity of methodological approaches and interpretative frames, post1989 historical writings illustrate a wide consensus upon two characteristics of collectivization: (1) the state violence imposed from above during
this process; and (2) the peasants' resistance from below to the imposed
changes. Like in the case of the Soviet Union, neither the number of victims the collectivization made in Romania, nor the incidence of riots are
known, for the archives provide only fragmentary evidence. There is,
however, a wide agreement that this process was highly repressive and
utterly contested. At the same time, studies that combined statistics with
oral history assessed that the long-term effects of Romanian communism
on the rural world went beyond the seizure of land through collectivization. The mutant modernization imposed by the regime implying forced
industrialization eventually destroyed the Romanian traditional village,
but without succeeding in building an adequate urban society instead.6
If one defines the collectivization of agriculture as the socialist state's
main tactic in its efforts of pushing the peasants from their old way of
life,7 then one might say that its main goal was definitely achieved in Romania by the early 1960s. On the one hand, the extent of collectivization
was greater than in other countries of East-Central Europe. While the policies in rural areas increasingly diverged in the post-Stalinist era to the extent that some Soviet satellites slowed collectivization down or even
practically abandoned it, Romania pursued this path until 96% of the arable
Gail Kligman, whose published results are Gail Kligman and Katherine
Verdery, Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture,
1949-1962 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011) and Dorin Dobrincu
and Constantin Iordachi, eds., rnimea i puterea: Procesul de colectivizare
a agriculturii n Romnia, 1949-1962 [Peasantry and Power: The Collectivization of Agriculture Process in Romania] (Iai: Polirom, 2005).
This is the conclusion of a study sponsored by the Romanian Institute for Recent History, which compared two villages with contrasting histories. One
strongly opposed communism and, due to its location in the mountains, was
never collectivized, but it is slowly dying today because of migration to the cities. The second village is Ceauescus birthplace, which was first collectivized,
then turned into a city after massive investments. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and
Grard Althabe, Secera i buldozerul Scorniceti i Nucoara: Mecanisme de
aservire a ranului romn [Sickle and Bulldozer Scorniceti and Nucoara:
Romanian Peasant Servitude Mechanisms] (Iai: Polirom, 2002).
David A. Kideckel, The Solitude of Collectivism: Romanian Villagers to the
Revolution and Beyond (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 81.
land was included in collective farms.8 On the other hand, the accelerated
industrialization, which the Romanian communist leadership launched in
the early 1960s, pulled many peasants towards cities.9 These radical policies definitely changed the traditional rural life, although it did not turn the
uprooted peasantry into a genuine working class.10 Yet, the difference between urban and rural areas in terms of standards of living remained as significant as ever. Using this discrepancy as justification, Ceauescu
continued the assault against the rural world even after the completion of
collectivization. In his attempt to homogenize society for the sake of paving the way to communism, he returned to the worn-out Stalinist phraseology in order to justify his new policies. A slogan from the time of
collectivization, like the elimination of the antithesis between town and
village, received a refreshed meaning in Ceauescu's thinking, which he
started to develop once he felt in full control of the party and the country.
In his report to the Tenth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party
(RCP), held on 6-12 August 1969, he introduced a new concept, the multilaterally developed socialist society, which would later become one of the
most used expressions of the Ceauescu period. Loosely defined as an intermediary stage of development between socialism and communism, this
concept represented the backbone of his alleged contribution to the theoretical development of Marxism-Leninism, while its materialization in Romania became since 1969 the main target of the RCP for the next 20 years.11
8
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Raport cu privire la ncheierea colectivizrii i reorganizarea conducerii agriculturii prezentat la Sesiunea extraordinar a Marii
Adunri Naionale, 27 aprilie 1962 [Report on the Final Conclusion of Collectivization of Agriculture and the Reorganization of Agricultural Management
presented to the Extraordinary Session of the Great National Assembly, 27
April 1962], in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Articole i cuvntri, 1961-1962
[Articles and Speeches, 1961-1962] (Bucureti: Editura Politic, 1962), 287.
9
For more on the communist-style of modernization implemented in an agrarian
country as Romania, see Kenneth Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs and
National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944-1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); Trond Gilberg, Modernization in Romania since
WWII (New York: Praeger, 1975).
10
Drago Petrescu, Explaining the Romanian Revolution of 1989: Culture, Structure, and Contingency (Bucureti: Editura Enciclopedic, 2010).
11
For a definition, see Ovidiu Trsnea, ed., Mic enciclopedie de politologie
[Small Encyclopedia of Political Science] (Bucureti: Editura tiinific i Enciclopedic, 1977), 420-421. See a critical assessment in Michael Shafir,
Among others, the development of the multilaterally developed socialist

society required the achievement of an advanced degree of social and
economic homogenization of the Romanian society. As far as the peasant
population and the countryside were concerned, the Party Program, which
the Eleventh Congress of 25-28 November 1974 adopted, included some
main (and old) ideas among the party's directions of action for Romania's
next historical stage. Accordingly, the transformation into a multilaterally developed socialist society needed the eradication of the essential
difference between agricultural and industrial work, which the process of
mechanization and fertilization in agriculture should have ultimately
solved. The accomplishment of this goal would have also brought a significant increase in the wellbeing of the peasantry, the development of the rural settlements and the achievement of a just and equitable balance between
the living standards in town and countryside.12 The same leveling principles underpinned a newly defined key party policy, which the same document further included aside the usual polices related to the main economic
branches and the essential social or cultural activities, i.e., the policy in the
domain of the systematization of the territory, the cities and the villages.
Its first guiding principle was to guarantee equal living conditions for all
the citizens of the country, (...) and the obliteration of the essential difference between town and countryside by raising the village at the level of
development specific to the city.13
At the time when the Eleventh Congress approved the Party Program and
turned it into the most important document of Ceauescu's regime, this
policy had already been transformed into law and adopted as such by the
Grand National Assembly during the session of 29-30 October 1974. In
all fairness, one should take into account that the living conditions in the
Romanian countryside were far below not only western standards, but also those achieved in most of the other communist countries, in particular
those in Central Europe. Ever since Romania engaged in the process of
modernization, the changes touched mostly the cities (although even
Romania. Politics, Economics and Society: Political Stagnation and Simulated
Change (London: Frances Pinter Publishers, 1985), 39-63.
12
Programul Partidului Comunist Romn de furire a societii socialiste multilateral dezvoltate [The Programme of the Romanian Communist Party for
Building the Multilaterally Developed Socialist Society] (Bucureti: Editura
Politic, 1975), 69.
13
Programul Partidului, 85.
there only partially), but left most of the villages unaltered. Even today,
most houses have electricity, but many still lack running water, canalization, central heating, to name only a few of the commodities of modern
life. In short, the Romanian countryside indeed needed a special policy to
support the wellbeing of the peasantry, but Ceauescu's plans hardly did
that. Law 58/1974 regarding the systematization of the urban and rural
areas paid indeed a special attention to the rural areas, in the same declared purpose of raising the living standards of its inhabitants. However,
this law proved to have very little to do with this declared goal, for it also
envisaged the optimal use of land by imposing restriction in the size of
individual plots destined to building houses and growing vegetables.14
Although it should have been subject of public debate, the program of
systematization, which the law underpinned, represented yet another example of forcefully imposed modernization, which disregarded the individuals involved for the sake of arbitrarily defined societal goals.
The law was not immediately effective, for the implementation of systematization began only gradually, in cities after the earthquake of 1977,
while in the countryside only in the late 1980s. In fact, it must be underlined that this program, which became part and parcel of every five-year
plan until 1989, affected cities much more radically than villages. In the
aftermath of the earthquake, on 1 March 1978, the State Council adopted
a decree for the functioning of the Central Party and State Commission
for the systematization of the rural and urban areas, which created an institutional frame for the application of the program that aimed at the
complete restructuring of human settlements. The most affected areas
were the towns in the Old Kingdom, also more devastated by the earthquake. True, such towns indeed suffered from an acute lack of urban
planning, for they historically developed in the confines of the Ottoman
Empire, and thus outside the Western European influence. However, the
proportion of the changes implied much more than a restructuring of central areas or road networks. Eventually, 29 cities were demolished and
reconstructed in a proportion up to 85-90%. Entire neighborhoods of individual houses were torn down for the sake of building blocks of flats
and so-called civic centers, i.e., a newly located central square with
buildings destined to the headquarters of the regional party and trade union
14
Buletinul Oficial, No. 135, 1 November 1974, http://www.legex.ro/Legea-581974-565.aspx (accessed 1 November 2015).
organizations. Thirty-seven other towns, including several old cities in

Transylvania, which had a clear pattern of urban development like the
corresponding European settlements, but also a significant Hungarian
population, were partially affected by demolitions. However, the epitome
of urban systematization was the capital city Bucharest. In particular, the
establishment of the new civic center around the enormous House of
the People, today the second largest building in the world, became a
symbol of Ceauescu's ideas about urban landscape15 Demolitions for the
sake of new communist architecture also touched an important number of
buildings of historical importance, in particular old churches and monasteries. True, Ceauescu allowed the preservation of several such buildings
through a quite costly and technically complicate translation into a new
location, but these remnants of the past lost all their former glory once
hidden behind enormous blocks of flats.16 In short, the plan of systematization made no exception to the process of decision making in a dictatorship, which ultimately depended on discretionary approval. The
demolitions provoked much personal sufferings, for private properties
were not protected in any way by law, while the compensations one received in the case of such forced removal was totally inadequate.17 The
few Romanian dissidents of the 1980s indeed protested against the arbitrary destruction of the cities, while many western journalists and politicians expressed concern for the effects of this policy, especially after it
15
16
17
The construction of this megalomaniac project required not only huge financial investments at a time of profound economic crisis, but also the life of a
quite a number of individuals involved in its construction, who died because
of the inadequate safety measures on the worksite. Ioan Popa, Robi pe Uranus:
Cum am construit Casa Poporului [Slaves on Uranus: How We Built the Peoples House] (Bucureti: Humanitas, 1992).
For the destruction of historical monuments under Ceauescu, see Dinu C.
Giurescu, The Razing of Romanias Past (Washington, D.C.: National Trust
for Historic Preservation, 1989). See also Lidia Anania et al., Bisericile
osndite de Ceauescu: Bucureti, 1977-1989 [The Churches Condemned by
Ceauescu: Bucharest, 1977-1989] (Bucureti: Anastasia, 1995).
For more on the effects of demolitions upon the urban population, see Irina
Nicolau and Ioana Popescu, O strad oarecare din Bucureti [A Common
Street in Bucharest] (Bucureti: Nemira, 1999); and Alex Axinte and Cristi
Borcan, Evacuarea fantomei: Arhitecturi ale supravieuirii [Ghost Evacuation:
Architectures of Survival] (Bucureti: Asociaia Pepluspatru, 2010).
affected large areas of Bucharest.18 Yet, the urban landscape of Romania

radically changed during the last decade of communism and ever since
bears witness for the malfunctioning of a one-party system, where the
ideas of one man alone can modify the lives of so many individuals.19
Multilaterally Developed Socialist Society in the Countryside
In spite of these profound urban transformations, which even a superficial
observer could have noticed at first glance, the demolition of cities did
not stir much internal or external protests until the late 1980s, when
Ceauescu put high on his agenda the program of rural systematization as
well. To this day, it is not entirely clear what was actually intended, but
many individuals perceived this part of the program, given the previous
experience in urban areas, as an attempt to erase entire villages. As already mentioned, Law 58/1974 stipulated that the changes in rural areas
should have been guided by the never-abandoned principle of obliterating
the difference in living standard between cities and villages. Accordingly,
civic centers, which were to include an administrative building, cultural
and educational units, medical facilities, and commercial centers, should
have been built in all rural settlements. In addition, the villages considered the most advanced were to be developed during a period of 15 to 20
years into economic and social centers with urban character, later on
dubbed agricultural-industrial centers. This evolution implied the establishment of some new industrial units or new branches of factories from
the neighboring cities, and the encouragement of the local production of
traditional or other types of consumer goods. At the same time, the villages considered without any perspective of development were to be
eventually resettled. In this scope, the construction of new houses should
have been banned in such villages, while the existing households should
have been removed to other villages.
As for the wellbeing of the peasantry, the law indeed touched upon the
problem of running water and canalization, but without really providing
any plan of extending these networks to rural areas. The only clear provision of this law regarded the dimensions of the peasant household, which
18
19
Cristina Petrescu, From Robin Hood to Don Quixote: Resistance and Dissent
in Communist Romania (Bucureti: Editura Enciclopedic, 2013).
See images of old Bucharest, before demolitions radically changed its urban
landscape, in Gheorghe Leahu, Bucuretiul disprut [The Bucharest Disappeared] (Bucureti: Editura Arta Grafic, 1995).
should have been no larger than 200-250m2, with an opening of 12 m to

the road.20 Such a plot of land is indeed sufficient for an urban family
house with a small flower garden, but not for a peasant household with a
vegetable garden, and a poultry and animal farm, however small these
might be. How much of the significance of these figures Ceauescu really
understood it is not clear though, for at that time a story related to one of
his working visits, which spread through word of mouth, suggested that
the secretary general was at a total loss with basic mathematics. In an attempt to make it clear to the party cadre how to delimit a plot of 250 m2,
Ceauescu explained that it was enough to draw a square with each side
of 250 m! The story ends here, so one might fairly assume that nobody
dared to contradict him. The events narrated might have never happened,
but they certainly ridiculed his pieces of advice, so-called "indications" in
official parlance. During his working visits throughout the country, the
secretary general of the RCP formulated incessantly such instructions in
any possible domain of activity, in which he obviously could not have
had any competence, while the others felt obliged to obey him without
question. The story above also encapsulates perfectly the compliance of
these people who did their best to follow Ceauescu's instructions without
comments, even when inadequate, absurd or even harmful.21
The program of systematization remained on hold in rural areas until
1986, when the secretary general gave it a boost at the CC Plenum of 2324 June. While urging for the completion of the systematization in all urban centers during the ongoing five-year plan, he stated that the program
should have been urgently implemented in rural areas and settled some
deadlines. Clear results of its effects should have been visible by the end
of the running five-year plan, i.e., 1990, while the overall reorganization
of all villages should have been over by the year 2000.22 A subsequent
20
Buletinul Oficial, No. 135, 1 November 1974, http://www.legex.ro/Legea-581974-565.aspx (accessed 1 November 2015).
21
For more on the significance of Ceauescu's working visits and especially of his
indications, see Cristina Petrescu, Vizitele de lucru, un ritual al Epocii de
aur [The Working Visits, a Rite of the Golden Age], in Miturile comunismului
romnesc [The Myths of Romanian Communism], vol. 2, ed. Lucian Boia
(Bucureti: Editura Universitii Bucureti, 1997), 105-111.
22
Nicolae Ceauescu, Cuvntare la Plenara Comitetului Central al PCR, 23 iunie 1986 [Speech at the Central Committee Plenum of the RCP, 23 June
1986], in Nicolae Ceauescu, Romnia pe drumul construirii societii socialiste multilateral dezvoltate: Rapoarte, cuvntri, interviuri, articole [Romania
internal party report of 18 December 1986 gave an idea about the proportions of the initial proposal. From the existing 13,123 villages, 3,931
should have disappeared, while the surface allowed for constructions in
rural areas should have decreased from 625,258 ha to only 285,839 ha as
the result of razing 2,139,172 households, out of which 1,863,417 were in
rural areas and 275,755 in urban outskirts. This meant that almost 50% of
the peasant households should have been demolished and its owners removed into state-owned blocks of flats. A later discussion of 19 January
1987, which took place in the frame of the Political Executive Committee, suggests that Ceauescu considered this only a preliminary plan,
while the final figures were still to be settled.23
The decisive turn occurred only in 1988, when Ceauescu made public the
first figures, which nonetheless seem provisional and vague rather than definitive and precise. On 3 March 1988, he stated at a meeting with the presidents of the Popular Councils from the whole country that the rural
communes with less than 3,000 inhabitants should disappear, so the total
number of such administrative units should decrease to a maximum of
2,000. The villages should have been reduced even more radically from
the current number of 13,0000 to maximum 5,000-6,000. At the same
time, the secretary general announced that all those who lived in cities but
did not work there should return to live in their home village, while the
teachers, doctors or engineers who commuted to villages should move
where they actually work, for one cannot conduct agricultural work, care
for seek persons or teach children but in the midst of the village and its citizens with whom they should work together for the development of the rural
commune and the building of socialism! To this purpose, he reminded
everyone of the other dimension of rural systematization, about which Law
58/1974 spoke: the building of model agricultural-industrial centers. According to the plan, in every county two to three such centers should have
been finished by 1990, while the long-term target for the year 2000 was the
23
on the Road to Building the Multilaterally Developed Socialist Society: Reports, Speeches, Interviews, Articles], vol. 29: iulie 1985 septembrie 1986
(Bucureti: Editura Politic, 1987), 590.
Mihnea Berindei, Distrugerea satelor romneti n arhivele Comitetului Central [The Destruction of Romanian Villages in the Archives of the Central
Committee], Revista 22, 30 June 2009, http://www.revista22.ro/distrugereasatelor-romanesti-in-arhivele-comitetului-central-6312.html (accessed 19 September 2015).
establishment of 558 agricultural-industrial centers in the entire country.

Once again, the whole effort was subordinated to the overall goal, the construction of the multilaterally developed socialist society, while its direct
effects should have finally carried out the obliteration of the essential differences between cities and countryside, between the working and living
conditions in these areas, accomplishing an increased degree of homogenization in the socialist society.24
A subsequent speech at the meeting with the National Council of the
Working People and the National Council for Agriculture, which was held
on 2 June 1988, presented slightly modified figures than those above.
Then, Ceauescu confirmed that the plan of rural systematization envisaged
a significant reduction of communes by several hundreds, but gave a different target for the year 2000: 2,000-2,200. At the same time, the number
of villages should have been reduced with approximately 50% by giving
up those which did not have any perspective of development or any possibility of providing appropriate working and living conditions for its inhabitants.25 These less radical figures than those announced only three months
earlier indicate that the program was still subject to modification. At the
same time, the very goal of rural systematization remained unchanged, for
it was an integral part of the long-term plan of transforming Romania into a
multilaterally developed socialist society. Thus, up to the very end, party
documents included the same empty phrases regarding the plan of action in
rural areas. For example, the theses for the Fourteenth Congress of November 1989 included (under the heading the fulfillment of the programs of
social and economic development, of the administrative reorganization and
modernization of all localities of the motherland) the following directions
of evolution: In the countryside, agriculture and some industrial branches
24
Nicolae Ceauescu, Cuvntare la Conferina pe ar a preedinilor consiliilor

populare, 3 martie 1988 [Speech at the National Conference of Peoples
Councils Chairmen, 3 March 1988], in Nicolae Ceauescu, Romnia pe drumul construirii societii socialiste multilateral dezvoltate: Rapoarte cuvntri,
interviuri, articole [Romania on the Road to Building the Multilaterally Developed Socialist Society: Reports, Speeches, Interviews, Articles], vol. 31:
septembrie 1987 septembrie 1988 (Bucureti: Editura Politic, 1989), 395-397.
25
Nicolae Ceauescu, Expunere la edina Consiliului Naional al Oamenilor
Muncii i a Consiliului Naional al Agriculturii, 2 iunie 1988 [Exposure to
the Meeting of the National Council of the Working People and the National
Council for Agriculture, 2 June 1988], in Nicolae Ceauescu, Romnia pe
drumul construirii societii socialiste multilateral dezvoltate, vol. 31, 647.
(...) would be developed even further. The schooling and the sanitary systems, as well as the commercial network of distribution, would be bettered,
while cultural and sport activities would be developed, so that the living
standards in the countryside come as close as possible to those in towns, for
this represents a fundamental requirement of the socialist progress. Obviously, the reception of these promises was nil at that time, if one thinks of
nothing else than the popular revolt of December, which broke out unexpectedly shortly after this last party congress.
Beyond these phrases emptied of content by too much use, the program
of rural systematization gradually turned into reality during the very last
year of Romanian communism due to Ceauescu's urge. Documents preserved in the secret police archive illustrate that there was little resistance
to this aberrant project. True, the revolution put an end to rural systematization before it had time to gain momentum. Moreover, the actual proportions and even nature of changes envisaged by the project remained
obscure. While the program certainly involved demolitions in rural areas,
the drastic reduction of villages should have been partially accomplished
by administrative measures. In fact, the Securitate reports show that the
most widespread action undertaken by the communist authorities in the
frame of rural systematization was the so-called operation Merger
(Rom. comasarea), as this institution named the file attributed to this objective. Launched on January 1989 on the entire territory of Romania, the
action envisaged not demolitions, but the merger of 447 villages into
larger administrative units as a means of decreasing the total number of
rural settlements.26 This reorganization, although preferable to demolitions, implied nonetheless notable modifications in terms of personnel,
local transport, local supply, etc. The reports of the regional branches of
the Securitate illustrate that in some counties individuals publicly expressed negative comments and vague dissatisfaction related to the
incorporation of their village into larger administrative units on economic
grounds, as those above-mentioned, or on cultural-historical grounds.27
Such criticism triggered the withdrawal of the proposed unification,
26
Arhiva Consiliului Naional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitii (ACNSAS),

Documentary Fund, file 13,382, vol. 1, f. 91-129; see ff. 92-93 for a comprehensive report on this operation.
27
From the latter type of argument, the most interesting refers to the merger of a
Romanian with a Hungarian village, which was debated and finally retracted,
for citizens argued against the loss of identity. ACNSAS, Documentary Fund,
file 13,382, vol. 1, ff. 110-112.
when this was justified, according to the secret police reports. However, while the decision of merger provoked in a few cases peaceful manifestations or acts of public disorder, in the largest majority of counties
there was nothing to report.28 Obviously, the Securitate regional reports
tend to illustrate that this institution was fully capable of keeping individuals under control and manipulating any spontaneous outburst of unrest.
Thus, such documents might have been downplaying the incidence of
protests for the sake of reporting that everything was under control in
their county, but they nonetheless testify to the widespread consent of the
rural population in the late 1980s rather than the opposite.29
Turning to the other side of rural systematization, i.e., the actual demolitions, the secret police files show that rumors about it circulated in rural
areas at least since 1986, when Ceauescu decided to put this program into immediate action. Thus, the peasantry must have expected the worst.
Yet, a so-called report on the state of the spirit among Romanians suggests that peasants responded to these decisions passively rather than actively, with resignation rather than anger. For instance, a peasant from the
Olt county criticized the idea of rural systematization in the following
terms: Have you heard that [they] are going to tear down the villages in
order to build blocks of flats [...] the land is no longer enough for them.
[...] This is punishment from God, for the year 2000 is coming.30 Such
an affirmation is obviously illustrative for a pre-modern type of thinking,
dominated by religious beliefs and characteristic of a folk culture that in
fact escaped the educational attempts of the communist state to create the
new man. At the same time, it also supports the idea that socialization
under communism destroyed any capacity of articulating common interests, which have never been high in rural areas, but still notable at the
beginning of communist rule. The post-communist testimonies corrobo28
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file 13,382, vol. 1, ff. 106-128.

Drawing from the same archival material, a study concluded that, on the contrary, there were at least some notable reactions. Florica Dobre and Lumina
Banu, Reflectarea n documentele Securitii a impactului programului de
sistematizare n mediul rural [The Coverage of the Impact of the Systematization Program in Rural Areas in Securitates Documents], in Sfritul regimurilor comuniste: Cauze, desfurare i consecine [The End of Communist
Regimes: Causes, Unfolding and Consequences], eds. Cosmin Budeanc and
Florentin Olteanu (Cluj: Argonaut, 2011), 48-68.
30
ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file 7,604, vol. 2, f. 16.
29
rate this conclusion based on secret police documents. For the revolution
put the demolitions to a halt before these actually affected other areas
apart from those around Bucharest, which Ceauescu visited more frequently, the oral testimonies are not numerous. However, those who remembered the circumstance in which their houses were torn down point
out that no collective action emerged in response to rural demolitions
from among the peasantry. On the contrary, each family copped separately with its own problem. Individuals tried to deal with the local authorities or the relevant institutions to escape demolition, and when this
attempt failed, they tried to disobey the evacuation order, but eventually
submitted, after such kind of pressures as the cut of electricity supply or
the display of bulldozers around the house.31 The forced removal from the
family household provoked suffering and distress, especially among the
old people, who were hardly able to cope with the loss of their lifetime
work and living style. However, there is no testimony of aggregate action
against the seizure of households and demolitions.32
Other testimonies illustrate that the peasants' reactions to the program of
rural systematization were primarily driven by traditional patterns of
thinking and action. A witness from the Arge county (which should have
suffered the second most radical program of rural systematization in the
country with a total of 252 villages to be destroyed, the first being the Alba county with 264 villages proposed for systematization), recalled the
following: In the spring of 1988, a gentleman from the regional party
organization came to announce us that we would be resettled. The news
was like a thunder and many people hurried to buy apartments in Piteti,
Mioveni or Costeti [neighboring cities], the witness recalls. Worth remarking is also his obviously post-communist interpretation of the rural
systematization in terms of sources of inspiration and direct consequences
upon their daily routines: We should have been moved to blocks of flats,
where we would have received three meals a day and been taken daily by
31
32
Gheorghe Daniel, Sistematizarea rural [Rural Systematization], Clipa:

Magazinul
actualitii
culturale
romneti,
June
2009,
http://www.revistaclipa.com/1740/2009/06/discipoli/%E2%80%9Esistematiza
rea-rurala%E2%80%9D (accessed 20 September 2015).
It is interesting to note that what seems to have been the most resolute action
against demolitions was an anonymous arson attack upon the building of a village council, to which a bulldozer from the courtyard, probably meant for demolitions, fell victim. ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file 13,382, vol. 1, f. 49.
bus to the working place, after the model Stalin implemented to the Russians. As all learned after 1989, everything that was wrong in Romania
after 1945 was due to Stalin (and less to the local leaders), so these commonplaces also contaminated the memories of the recent past. The same
witness recognized that all peasants were dominated by fear, while their
greatest source of concern was not that much the expected demolition of
houses as the destruction of their cemeteries and the prospect having maze
cultivated on the graves of their ancestors.33 Given these reactions, one
could conclude that the riots against collectivization had hardly left any
trace in the local collective memory by the late 1980s. While the reactions
to the seizure of land during collectivization had been significant and implied collective acts of revolt, the reactions to the seizure of households
were weak and very rarely in aggregated form, as illustrated above. In the
meantime, the logic of building solidarities among village inhabitants had
radically changed from kinship and status oriented bonds into bureaucratically organized relations.34 As compared to those who once tried to defend
their land against collectivization, the generation exclusively socialized under communism learned faster to adapt in order to survive. Thus, reactions
to rural systematization came only from outside the rural world.
A Symbol of Irrational Thinking and Unrestricted Power
In the late 1980s, the acceleration of the program of rural systematization
came to represent the perfect epitome of the arbitrariness of decisionmaking under Ceauescu's rule. In spite of the peasants' compliance, the
systematization of villages stirred the most radical societal response in
this country (albeit ridiculously limited in comparison with events unfolding in other former communist countries at that time). By the mid 1980s,
the systematization of Bucharest and other major cities had already illustrated the scale of changes envisaged by the overall plan. Thus, most
Romanians understood Ceauescu's concept of rural systematization also
as an operation of large-scale demolitions of individual houses and forced
removals of their owners into newly constructed blocks of flats. The
33
V.M., Nicolae Ceauescu a vrut s drme 252 de sate din Arge [Nicolae
Ceauescu Intended to Demolish 252 Villages from the Arge County], Universul
Argeean, 24 July 2015, http://www.universulargesean.ro/recomandari/2169ceausescu-a-vrut-sa-darame-252-de-sate-din-arges (accessed 20 September
2015).
34
This is the main argument in Kligman and Verdery, Peasants under Siege.
vague official statements and the alarming, albeit oscillating, figures did
nothing but endorse these perceptions. In addition, the Radio Free Europe
played an instrumental role in informing the population by repeatedly
criticizing this absurd plan envisaged at a time of crisis and in complete
disregard of Romania's priorities.35 More than any other of Ceauescu's
irrational ideas, the program of rural systematization stirred international
criticism, provoked the first domestic collective letter of protest since the
Goma movement of 1977, and stimulated the first western civic initiative
in Romania's support. Although those directly involved, the peasants who
lost or were about to lose their households brought no input, this issue
seemed to outsiders a cause worth fighting for.
It was from the neighboring Hungary that the first wave of reactions
against the destruction of Romanian villages emerged internationally. The
Hungarian community in Romania, and to a certain extent the German
minority as well, believed that they represented the main target of the
program. For they were the largest minority in the country, while most
Germans had already immigrated to the Federal Republic and left their
villages empty, Hungarians took the systematization of rural settlements
as a disguised attempt to erase the material forms of their cultural heritage in Transylvania. Not only Hungarian dissidents, but also the Hungarian communist leadership protested against the demolition of villages in
Romania, which they characterized as a form of cultural genocide. In
fact, the program of rural systematization opened a vehement dispute between the two communist and allegedly allied countries. This controversy
ended up in Hungary's fierce criticism against Romania's treatment of
minorities in the frame of the CSCE Follow-Up Conference in Vienna,
for this matter was interpreted as an issue of human rights violation.36 After Jnos Kdr's removal in May 1988, the new Hungarian leadership
under Kroly Grsz took the opportunity to express publicly what had
35
36
For critical commentaries broadcast by RFE and monitored by the Securitate,

see ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, file 13,382, vol. 1, ff. 13-16.
For the exchange of statements between the head of the Hungarian delegation,
Andr Erds, and the deputy chief of the Romanian delegation, Teodor
Melecanu, see Vojtech Mastny, ed., The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, 1986-1991: Analysis and Documentation (London: Frances Pinter Publishers, 1992), 177-182. For the statement of the Romanian delegation at
the CSCE Follow-up Meeting in Vienna, which rejected all accusations as pretexts for interference in the internal affairs of another country, see Mastny,
The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, 1986-1991, 141-142.
been hitherto left to the opposition: concern for the condition of the Hungarian minority living in Romania. Under the pressure of the local population and of the refugees from Romania, mostly ethnic Hungarians but
even Romanians, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party acknowledged
openly that this problem existed and addressed a formal letter of protest
to the Romanian leadership.37 The official concern for the fate of the
Hungarians living in Romania also changed the boundary between prohibited and permitted in communist Hungary. Thus, a huge rally of several tens of thousands of individuals who protested against the violation of
human and minority rights in the neighboring Romania could take place
on 27 June 1988, although the communist authorities in Budapest had repressed only days earlier, on 16 June 1988, a demonstration occasioned
by the commemoration of Imre Nagys execution.38
It is indeed ironic that the systematization of villages was not among the
otherwise numerous actions that Ceauescu directed against the members
of the Hungarian community in Transylvania. Although it is hard to assess the outcome of the plan, it is nonetheless clear that it would have affected Romanians and Hungarians alike, had the communist regime not
collapsed. Otherwise, by December 1989, no Hungarian villages suffered
the effects of rural systematization, which did not have time to spread beyond the several villages around Bucharest. At that time, however, nobody could fully comprehend the projected effects of this ambiguous and
irrational program. This was especially true for the international audience, who was dependent on the news coming from Romania. Although
the Securitate also contributed to the conflicting news about this project
through systematic efforts at disinformation, a long series of diplomatic
protests emerged from the other side of the Iron Curtain as well.39 After
37
Ignc Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest: Corvina, 1999),

430.
38
According to some sources, this rally of June 1988 gathered about 60,000 people. Rudolf Tks, Hungarys Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 1957-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 287. According to other sources, there were between
30,000 and 50,000 people. Paul Lendvai, Hungary: The Art of Survival (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), 124-125.
39
For a report regarding the actions to be taken in order to monitor and misinform the international participants to a roundtable dedicated to the preservation of historical heritage, which was organized in Bucharest in April 1989,
Hungary, Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany also reacted in

defense of the rights of the German-speaking minority still in Romania
and the attempt at erasing the German heritage in this country. The Austrian and the West German Foreign Ministers, Alois Mock and HansDietrich Genscher respectively, denounced at the end of July 1988 the
systematization of villages in Romania as a violation of human rights.40
However, other international protests did not immediately follow those of
the countries directly interested. As long as this plan was still in its kernel, western politicians and diplomats could hardly grasp the meaning of
a vague and absurd program as rural systematization.41
Thus, the second wave of reactions against the demolition of Romanian
villages, which emerged locally, at the initiative of dissident Doina Cornea who managed to collect 27 other signatures on a collective letter of
protest, was indeed instrumental in informing the international audience.
Such endorsements to a letter of protest might seem irrelevant in comparison with the protests from other former communist countries, but in Romania of the late 1980s, this was the first open letter signed by more
individuals than one. Cornea herself became widely known as a leading
see ACNSAS, Documentary Fund, File 13,360, vol. 80, ff. 9-10. For a personal letter sent to an address in the FRG, which downplayed the effects of rural
systematization, and a report on the manipulation of a British delegation visiting Romania to see the effects of this program, see ACNSAS, Documentary
Fund, file 13,382, vol. 1, ff. 60-62 and f. 98, respectively.
40
The declaration of Hans-Dietrich Genscher was published in Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 July 1988. The Romanian government was nevertheless able to counterattack his criticism. As neither German nor Hungarian villages were destroyed, the Romanian authorities were able to show German
journalists who came to Romania to cover the systematization of villages that
nothing changed in the Banat, the region where most ethnic Germans still
lived. OSA/ RFE Archives, Romanian Fond, 300/60/1/ Box 3803, File Villages, Systematization, Destruction.
41
Even after demolitions around Bucharest began, the French ambassador to Bucharest still feared that criticism of this plan might have been just a Hungarian
attempt to manipulate western governments against Romania, as Coen Stork, a
former ambassador of the Netherlands to Bucharest in the late 1980s, remembered. Even a well-informed person as Coen Stork understood the intentions
behind this plan only after discussing freely with a refugee from Romania in
Budapest. Coen Stork, interview by author, tape recording, Amsterdam, 3
April 2003.
Romanian dissident due to this protest against the systematization of villages, although this was her third open letter to Ceauescu. Among the
other signatories were a group of workers from Zrneti and several
members of the independent trade union Libertatea. More importantly,
this collective protest was the only one capable of attracting Romanians
and Hungarians alike. The author of the letter, Cornea, framed this protest
against rural systematization not in terms of human rights violations, but
as a plea for the preservation of historical heritage. Thus, in comparison
with Cornea's program of reforms from another open letter, which was
pragmatic and future-oriented, the letter against the systematization of
villages was nostalgic and past-oriented. The village spirituality, as she
formulated, represented the essence of Romanian identity, so the plan that
envisaged the resettlement of peasants into blocks of flats was nothing
less than an attempt to destroy the soul of the nation. In order to put an
end to rumors, she asked Ceauescu to disclose publicly the final goals of
this so-called plan of systematization and then organize a national referendum on this matter of common concern.42 The broadcasting of this letter by RFE annoyed the Romanian authorities so much that the secret
police tried its best to isolate her completely from any possible external
contact and transformed Cornea's round-the-clock surveillance into practically house arrest.43
This harsh treatment represented the direct result of the Securitate's utter
failure to control Cornea, who had managed to fool her shadows, in spite
of her age, and send critical messages abroad, including her warning
against the demolition of villages. In exchange, she would receive from
across the border the greatest assistance a Romanian dissident ever got in
his or her fight against the communist regime, for the issue of the village
demolitions stirred outrage among western audiences and mobilized the
international critics of Ceauescu's absurd policies. Actually, the aberrant
program of systematization became widely known through the documentary made by the Belgian journalist Josy Dubi, whom Cornea met by accident in Cluj and passed the above-mentioned letter of protest hidden in
42
This letter had been drafted before the so-called letter of 23 August, which
included a comprehensive program of reforms, but broadcast by RFE only after it, on 9 September 1988. Doina Cornea, Scrisori deschise i alte texte
[Open Letters and Other Texts] (Bucureti: Humanitas, 1991), 82-85.
43
Doina Cornea, Libertate? Convorbiri cu Michel Combes [Freedom? Conversations with Michel Combes] (Bucureti: Humanitas, 1992), 91-96.
a handy-crafted doll. Later, Dubi deceived the secret police agents shadowing him, met her again and registered an interview for this film with
out-of-the ordinary images from Ceauescu's Romania. Aware of the fact
that he was not allowed to shoot freely in Romania, he pretended to be a
tourist accompanied on vacation by his alleged lady-friend, who was in
reality his camerawoman. They shot with the camera hidden under the
jacket or in a bag, and succeeded in immortalizing images that no other
journalist before captured. More importantly, Dubi managed to get the
tapes with these images out of Romania, after skillfully misleading the
custom officers.44
Broadcast first by the Belgian television on 7 December 1988, a few days
before the fortieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, his documentary registered a huge audience due to an extensive
press advertisement prior to the release. The film was well received not
only in Belgium, but also in many other western countries, where it was
broadcast immediately after.45 Entitled The Red Disaster, the documentary included shocking images for individuals who were living under a
democratic regime, so that only the old people who experienced the last
world war could relate to them. The completely empty shops seemed all
the more intriguing that they existed not in impoverished Africa, but in
another European country that could have been reached by plane in a few
hours. The large-scale demolition of Bucharest reminded people of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, or wartime bombardments. In addition,
Doina Corneas fragile appearance was the shock image of the film: the
western viewer could not have remained untouched by the Mother Theresa
look-alike woman who was standing alone against Ceauescu's oppressive
regime. Although her words were not intelligible, she seemed to embody
the nation's redemption from a miserable and humiliating existence. In
short, her image greatly enhanced the message of The Red Disaster, which
44
Dubi had put the sixteen-mm videotape inside audio cassettes. When the Romanian custom officers wanted to listen to the cassettes which they found in
the car, Dubi distracted the attention of the guards and put his lady-friend to
hide these in her underwear, for she already passed the bodily verifications.
Josy Dubi, interview by author, tape recording, Brussels, 19 July 2002.
45
The great audience during the first transmission by the Belgian television in
French language determined other broadcasting agencies, such as the Swiss,
the Swedish, the Norwegian, the Portuguese, the French, the Italian, and the
Hungarian televisions to broadcast this film a few days later.
not only prepared the ground for the launching of the civil society network
Operation Villages Roumains, but also determined the incredible success
of this grassroots initiative throughout Western Europe.
This documentary had actually a double effect on the other side of the
Iron Curtain, at both state and societal levels. It first triggered a new wave
of diplomatic criticism, which asked the Romanian communist leadership
to stop harassing Cornea or other dissidents and revise its abusive policies.46 On 21 February 1989, the Political Commission of the European
Parliament organized a public audition dedicated to Romania. With that
occasion, Romanian migrs were invited to testify on the human rights
abuses committed by the communist regime and convince the members
of the European Parliament to take measures against Ceauescus regime.
The plan of rural systematization represented an important topic in these
hearings.47 As a result, the European Parliament adopted on 16 March
1989 a resolution that condemned the suppression of basic human rights
in Romania. There were specific mentions of: (1) the plan for rural resettlement; (2) the repression of minorities; (3) the policy of forced natality;
and (4) the psychiatric abuses. In addition, the European Community
froze its ongoing talks on a new trade agreement with Romania. A few
days earlier, on 9 March 1989, the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva had adopted another resolution calling for the monitoring of the human rights violations in Romania, which was at the time
the first such inquiry ordered anywhere in the last five years. The plan for
the demolition of villages and the situation of minority groups were put
46
For more on this, see Emil Hurezeanu, Cazul Doinei Cornea n actualitate II
[Doina Corneas Case in Attention, part II], 22 December 1988, OSA/RFE
Archives, Romanian Fond, 300/60/3/Box 7, File Dissidents: Doina Cornea
(1987-1988).
47
Among those who testified were: Marie-France Ionesco, playwright Eugne
Ionescos daughter, in the name of her father; Ariadna Combes, dissident
Doina Corneas daughter, representing her mother who had been invited, but
was not allowed by the communist regime to travel outside Romania; Dan
Alexe, at the time a recent refugee in Belgium and a close friend of dissident
Dan Petrescu (who was also invited to attend but was not permitted to leave
Romania); Ion Vianu, the physician who took refuge in Switzerland after supporting the human rights movement of 1977, which Paul Goma initiated; and
Mark Almond, a young historian from Oxford, who had visited Romania prior
to the hearing. Alain Debove, Roumanie: Les droits de lhomme devant le
Parlement europen, Le Monde, 23 February 1989.
forth again as the most serious abuses of Ceauescu's regime. The last
such inquiry of a communist country was occasioned by the introduction
of the Martial Law in Poland. The novelty of this resolution regarding
Romania, however, consisted in the fact that another Warsaw Pact country, i.e., Hungary, voted for the first time ever against an alleged ally48
Following this enormous wave of criticism, Ceauescu's Romania by
1989 came to be no longer considered an honorable member of the international community.
The documentary that widely informed about the effects of Ceauescus
policies, in particular about the absurd plan of transforming villages into
so-called agricultural-industrial centers, also triggered the birth and the
subsequent growth of the first western grassroots initiative in support of
Romania. Due to this film, a broad audience in Western Europe was
ready to assist the group of Belgian left-wing intellectuals, who announced the establishment of Operation Villages Roumains on 22 December 1988. The scope of this association was to fight against
Ceauescus systematization plan by encouraging as many western communes as possible to fraternize with a particular Romanian village. As
these rural communities behind the Iron Curtain were beyond reach, the
western local authorities had to inform in writing Ceauescu about their
initiative. The practice of establishing such decentralized links among
small communities from different countries existed in Western Europe
since the end of WWII. Initially a French-German idea of overcoming
wartime adversities, the jumelage (or Partnerschaft) extended on the free
side of the Iron Curtain and even across it, in an attempt to promote
grassroots encounters and cultural exchanges between communities with
similarities of geography, history or economy and common interests of
further development.49 In 1988, the organizers of Operation Villages
Roumains thought that they could protect Romanian villages from destruction with the help of rural communities in Western Europe. Their
plan indeed took momentum and up to the collapse of communism, this
48
49
Dan Ionescu, Romanias Growing International Isolation, Romanian Situation Report, 29 March 1989, OSA/RFE Archives, Romanian Fond,
300/60/3/Box 5, File Dissent/General 1989.
Ccile Chombard-Gaudin, Pour une histoire des villes et communes jumele, Vingtime Sicle: Revue d'histoire 35 (July-September 1992): 60-66;
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/xxs_02941759_1992_num_35_1_2565 (accessed 25 September 2015).
Belgian grassroots initiative expanded to other western countries as well,

while many Romanian migrs contributed to the success of this idea.50
In the end, Operation Villages Roumains became the largest ever network
of transnational support against the abuses of Ceauescus regime. However, this network disappeared into thin air after the demise of communism, for only a few of the established links turned into long-term
mutual relations of the jumelage type. The first encounters with their
Romanian partners almost invariably disappointed the Westerners who
came after the revolution to the rescue with foodstuff and clothing because they encountered greed, obtuseness, indifference, and anything but
gratitude. The communist regime had turned in the meantime the Romanian peasants into agricultural-industrial workers, who were unable to
think further than the immediate biological survival.
Concluding Remarks
The program of rural systematization represented yet another step in the
direction of building a classless society. The intended transformations of
the countryside have no correspondent in other former communist countries. The underlining principles of this program are generous, like all
other communist ideas, and suggest that this should have been a peasantoriented policy. The figures, although ambiguous, illustrate nonetheless
that this program envisaged large-scale demolitions in rural areas and the
replacement of individual households with blocks of flats. In short, rural
systematization meant a radical modification of the traditional peasant
life and habitat in Romania. Like all the other communist plans, this program was the result of arbitrary decisions, which disregarded the opinions
of those directly involved. The demise of the communist regime in December 1989 put an end to this experiment before it had the chance to
50
The success of this initiative in Belgium surpassed the initiators' expectations,

according to the testimony of Paul Hermant, the president of the association.
By the beginning of March 1989, 220 from the 281 Belgian communes had already adopted Romanian villages. With the help of the Belgian television (in
particular of Dubi), of the French League for the Defense of Human Rights in
Romania (on behalf of which Mihnea Berindei and Dinu Zamfirescu were
very active), and of other organizations (such as Mdicins Sans Frontires),
this initiative spread in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain,
Italy and Portugal. Paul Hermant and Eric Masquelier, interview by author,
tape recording, Brussels, 18 July 2002.
spread beyond the outskirts of Bucharest. Although demolitions never

developed to the extent imagined by Ceauescu and his closest collaborators, wherever these occurred, peasant houses were destroyed without riots. This obedience might be explained by considering either the
traditional fatalism of the Romanian peasant, which the poem Mioria
epitomizes, or the fundamental changes that the communist regime imposed in the countryside as well as elsewhere. In short, the absence of aggregate actions can be interpreted in terms of either continuity or
discontinuity. The peasants' compliance when facing the program of systematization stands in stark contrast to the quite notable reactions against
collectivization. This diachronic comparison suggests that the changes
caused by the communist regime in the peasants' patterns of thought and
action offer a more plausible explanation for the inexistence of acts of
protest against rural demolitions. The misery of the Romanian peasants
and the prospect of having their natural habitat destroyed stirred huge
sympathy among Westerners, who took the program of rural systematization as an epitome of Ceauescu's irrational thinking and unrestricted
power. The Romanian peasants, however, failed to capitalize on this
wave of enthusiasm. The very fact that Operation Villages Roumains did
not survive Ceauescu for long also suggests that a more appropriate explanation for the Romanian peasants' compliance in late 1980s (and for
their failure to live to the expectations of their western partners) is in
terms of the changes in patterns of thought and action, which occurred
under communism. The present study argues against a commonplace of
Romanian post-communism, which takes the revolts against collectivization as evidence that peasants were incompatible with communist rule.
Quite the contrary, they proved to have adapted in order to survive, this
author maintains. The illustration of the mutations underwent by the
peasantry during the forty-five years of Romanian communism would require another research though.
Communist propaganda
and representations of the
countryside in the official
discourse in Eastern Bloc
Communist Propaganda and Landowners during the

Agricultural Reform in Poland (1944-1945)
Tomasz OSISKI
Although in 1944 Poland found itself within the Soviet sphere of influence, the majority of Polish society hoped for a change in this status in
the course of the post-war normalization. The Polish Communists, feeling
the strong patronage of Joseph Stalin, commenced the reconstruction of
the functions of the state in the territories located to the west of the Bug
River, which was to become the eastern border of Poland. They also took
effort to eliminate the emergent agendas of the Polish Underground State
linked to the exile Polish government in London. A grave problem of the
new regime was their lack of social support. The Communists tried to
solve this problem by amplifying the difficulties that permeated the socio-economic relations in the agrarian communities of the Second Republic of Poland. The agrarian reform, as planned by the Communists, was
intended to become a key to open the hearts and minds of the Polish
peasants the largest social group of the time. The temporary difficulties
of the early weeks after the proclamation of the Agrarian Reform Decree
of 6 September 1944 were overcome after the troublesome and painful
visit of the Polish comrades to Moscow, with the use of a vast spectrum
of repressions against the expropriated landowners. The methodology that
was so laboriously worked out in the area east of the Vistula was to be
applied later in the west of Poland.
The majority of the lands subject to the reform were taken over by mid1945, which marked the end of the most difficult stage of the project. In the
years 1944-1949, the total of 6,070,000 ha of land were parcelled out.
Lands equalling 2,380,000 ha out of the total were in the old Polish territories, while 3,690,000 ha were located in the Regained Territories. A total of
814,000 new farms were created with an average size of 6.9 ha. Another
254,400 farms were enlarged on average by 1.9 ha. The changes benefited
1,068,400 families of landless peasants and smallholders. In the former
Polish territories, the allotted lands did not reach the size of five ha, while
in the Regained Territories, the allotments were between 7 and 15 ha.1
1
Maciej Batowski, Gospodarka socjalistyczna w Polsce. Geneza Rozwj

Upadek [The Socialist Economy in Poland. Roots Growth Fall] (Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2009), 148-149.
622 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
The Communist rulers thought that getting rid of the landed gentry2 the
antagonizing social group in one sharp and determined move should be
an easy, as if automatic operation, which would cause the peasants to become active agents of the land ownership restructuring process. Yet, in
reality, the potential beneficiaries failed to react with the expected enthusiasm and responded with a degree of reservation, hesitantly waiting to
see what was to happen next. By no means is this to suggest that the
peasants showed no interest in the reform. Overall, there were a lot of
smallholders and rural workers who grew to realize the dramatic nature of
their present status quo, where the land allotment implied a curse of taking one's fate into one's hands and the responsibility for the outcomes of
ones living from the soil. The state needed time to persuade them that it
was going to play the role of their custodian and patron. The beneficiaries
lacked buildings, living stock, grain, let alone agricultural knowledge or
experience. They also feared that one day the old landowners would
come back. They were also afraid of the reaction of the anti-Communist
underground state to their acceptance of land, which would be interpreted
in terms of a declaration of support for the Communist regime.3
The implementation of the agrarian reform also involved the use of the
huge propaganda machine.4 Agitators were active in rural areas and organized meetings for peasants to promote and imprint Communist ideas on
the local ground. The carrier of propaganda communications that is the
most tangible in terms of research is the press. The Communist tried hard
to create a streamlined chain of communication in the form of a controlled system of press distribution, which aimed to inform, educate and
2
For more on the landed gentry as a social stratum, see e.g. Szymon Rudnicki,
Ziemiastwo, [The Landed Gentry] in Spoeczestwo polskie w XX wieku
[The 20th-century Polish Society], ed. Janusz arnowski, (Warszawa: IH PAN,
2003), 205-260.
Henryk Sabek, Polityka agrarna PPR. Geneza, realizacja, konsekwencje [The
Polish Workers Partys Agrarian Policy. The Roots, Implementation and Consequences] (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza, 1978), 194-201, 212-214; Irena
abiska, Ziemianie z wojewdztwa warszawskiego w latach 1918-1945 [The
Warsaw Voivodeship Landed Gentry, 1918-1945] (Toru: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszaek, 2011), 245-255.
Stanisaw Kumierski, Propaganda polityczna Polskiej Partii Robotniczej w
latach 1944-1948 [The Political Propaganda of the Polish Workers Party,
1944-1948] (Warszawa: Ksika i Wiedza, 1976), 163.
Communist Propaganda and Landowners during the Agricultural... _______ 623
integrate the society around the ruling power. It offered a chance to interpret and explain to the readers the events taking place in the country, to
mobilize the society to support the rulers and to unmask the enemies.5
The written word was regarded by the general public as more reliable. A lot
of effort was taken to maximize the exposure of the society to the propaganda by popularizing the practice of reading the press among the masses.6
The following factors, among others, were crucial in this respect: low price,
quick distribution and wide availability.7 The post-war memories written
by the peasants and submitted for various contests organized in the press,
testify to the fact that the seed of propaganda found rich soil.8 The power of
influence of the press materials was amplified by political caricature and
iconographic materials, which effectively shaped the public imagination.9
This article is part of a wider research project on the propaganda image of
the Polish landed gentry created after World War II.
When analysing the Communist propaganda targeted against the Polish
landed gentry during the decisive phase of the agrarian reform (19441945), one needs to ask why the Communists were so determined to eliminate from the society a group that had already been widely criticised by
the majority of the society. In fact, it was a relatively small group, and
they had already been formally eliminated from the society by means of
the relevant act of 1944. Another problem area that needs examination
concerns the issue of what the Communists actually criticised. Was it a
personality model, life style, political outlook, cultural model or the socioeconomic system? Taking into account the fact that all the major Polish
5
Marcin Czyniewski, Propaganda polityczna wadzy ludowej w Polsce 19441956 [The Political Propaganda of the Peoples Poland Regime, 1944-1956]
(Toru: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Grado, 2005), 116-117; Mariusz Mazur, Propagandowy obraz wiata. Polityczne kampanie prasowe w PRL 1956-1980 [The
Propaganda Image of the World. The Political Press Campaigns in the Polish
Peoples Republic, 1956-1980] (Warszawa: Wdawnictwo Trio, 2003), 25-26.
6
Czyniewski, Propaganda polityczna, 115.
7
Mazur, Propagandowy obraz wiata, 25.
8
Wie polska 1939-1948. Materiay konkursowe [The Polish Village, 1939-1948.
Press Contest Materials], ed. Krystyna Kersten, Tomasz Szarota, vols. 1-4
(Warszawa: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1967-1971).
9
Monika Bednarczuk, Obraz rzeczywistoci w karykaturze socrealistycznej, [The
Image of Reality in Socialist Realistic Caricature] in Socrealizm. Fabuy- komunikaty ikony [Socialist Realism. Narratives Messages - Icons], eds. Krzysztof
Stpnik, Magdalena Piechota (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2006), 467.
624 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
political options postulated a transformation of the socioeconomic status

quo of the Polish rural areas after the war, and the atmosphere among the
peasants, the efforts to intensify the deprecatory propaganda against the
landed gentry can be viewed as pointless. Yet, for the people responsible
for the profile of the propaganda messages it constituted a vital component of the positively received slogans like social justice, elimination
of exploitation, socialization of the means of production, or just distribution of goods, which could evoke positive a social response that the
Communists expected to evoke towards the socioeconomic changes that
they tried to implement in various ways.
The first clearly noticeable area of the activity of the landed gentry that
attracted a lot of attention of the Communist press was their political activity. The fall of the First Polish Republic was repeatedly recalled, with a
clear indication that the blame for its collapse must be put exclusively on
the aristocracy and landed gentry, who put their own interest high above
the interest of the state. The group of Targowica confederates opponents of the Constitution of May 3 was particularly eagerly used as a
symbol of national treason. Observations and opinions on the status quo
of the late 18th-century Polish society written by a leading reformer and
an outstanding figure of the Enlightenment in Poland, Stanisaw Staszic,
were also frequently recalled. His authority was to legitimize the rightness of the propaganda arguments.10 The sons of Targowica confederates made their bad name by taking part in an unjustified historical
compromise and they soon adapted to the new political situation, accepting leading functions in the state apparatus ruled by of the partitioners of
Poland. The political choices made by the 19th-century Polish political
elite were also subject to refutation. It was claimed that the defeat of the
national uprisings was caused by the treason of the landlords, who had
consistently blocked agrarian reforms. In 1944, Roman Werfel wrote in
Odrodzenie [Revival] monthly: The people or the manors? this was
the question asked among the members of the Great Emigration. Diplomatic conspiracies or an international alliance for the sake of progress
and democracy? this was the question for the whole time of the Partitions. [] The people answer the advocates of progress, democrats, socialists, young, enthusiastic intelligentsia, liberationists from among the
10
Jerzy Borejsza, Rewolucja agodna, [The Mild Revolution] Odrodzenie [Revival] 10-12 (1945), 1; Z samych panw zguba Polski, [The Lords Augur Ill for the
Future of Poland] Gazeta Lubelska [Lublin Gazette], 22 September 1944.
bourgeoisie, peasants, and less prominent, impoverished nobility. []

The manors answer the lords of the lands and manors, rich bankers in
their palaces and this group of the grand magnates, whose conscience
prevented them from joining the treacherous Targowica deal.11It was no
sooner than 1944 that the grandsons of Targowica confederates were
opposed by the grandsons of the scythemen, of the soldiers of the Legions, of Fathers ciegienny and Brzzka.12
Highlighting the significance of the Russian Revolution for the liberation
of Poland was another important recurrent press motif. The Declaration
of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia of 15 November 1918 was frequently evoked, while the liberation of Poland was understood as part of
the general European wave of democratization movements such as folk
and national liberation organizations.13
The press also held it that the landlords accountable for the twenty
years of the early 20th-century interwar independence, when Poland
again became a manor that granted privileges to just a chosen elite", as
the agrarian reform was delayed again.14 The value of the agrarian reform
project implemented at that time was described by one of the peasants in
the following way: The land parcelling [in 1944 - T.O.] is held on sound
principles, unlike that in Poland before 1939. At that time, we were taken
to the ends of Poland and the landowners took fortunes for the worst plots
that they were happy to get rid of. And we took these lands on credit from
the Agricultural Bank, and then we were sold and left penniless, while the
Lubomirski or Potocki families were having fun.15 The whole sphere of
11
Roman Werfel, Listopady, [Novembers] Odrodzenie [Revival] 8-9 (1944), 1.

Archives of New Records in Warsaw (henceforth as AAN), Polish Committee
of National Liberation (henceforth as PKWN), sig. V/11, I-szy Wojew. Zjazd
Stronnictwa Ludowego w Rzeszowie, [The First Voivodeship Convention of
the Polish Peoples Party in Rzeszw] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej [The Agrarian
Reform Bulletin] no. 7, 24 October 1944, 19-21; Roman Werfel, Nowy etap
historji Polski, [A New Era in the History of Poland] Odrodzenie [Revival]
2-3 (1944), 4.
13
Werfel, Listopady, 1.
14
Werfel, Listopady, 1; Jan Madej, Bra ziemi, [Take the Land] Wie [The
Village] 3 (1944), 1; Jan Aleksander Krl, Nauka na przyszo, [A Lesson
for the Future] Wie 5 (1944), 2.
15
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Stanisaw Warchot, Parcelacja na zdrowych zasadach, [The Parcelation Held on Sound Principles] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej
[The Agrarian Reform Bulletin], no. 6, 23 October 1944, 17.
12
626 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
political life was assessed critically, in which the landed gentry were the
main players: The shadow of Nesvizh covers the whole gloomy period
of the interwar, Sanacja-ruled Poland. The subsidies from the Landed
Gentry Union always accompanied the Sanacja regime was it B.B.W.R.
(Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government) or Ozon (Camp
of National Unity) or the noisy extremist representatives of the latter in
the form of ONR (National Radical Camp).16 As can be observed, concrete political formations were referred to in this text, e.g. Nonpartisan
Bloc for Cooperation with the Government, launched to enable Jzef
Pisudskis stay in power after his May coup, or Camp of National Unity,
launched on the order of Marshall Edward Rydz-migy and called by the
quoted author the fascist-OZON clique. The press often recalled the interwar persecutions of the political opponents of Pisudski in the camp of
Bereza Kartuska, organized with the consent of Jzef Pisudski in 1934.17
The landed gentry were also accused of mounting an armed revolt
against the Government of Poland in the winter of 1919 with the hands of
Rev. [Eustachy] Sapieha.18 This accusation referred to a flawed coup attempt intended to overturn the government of Jdrzej Moraczewski.
The loyalty to the mighty Soviet protector imposed on the Communists
the obligation to undertake a critical view of the Polish-Bolshevik war,
which was called the Kiyvan brawl of 1920. It was also described as a
struggle for the latifundia of the Potocki and Radziwi families19, at the
cost of Polands defeat in the referenda at the Polish-German borderland
and the loss of Opole Silesia and Masuria.20 It may well be the case that
this type of argumentation was intended to veil the fact that, after 1944,
the USSR grasped the former Polish lands, located east of the River Bug.
The landed gentry was regarded as the leading force of Polish reactionaries, which oganized all the ranks of the Polish fascist
16
Roman Werfel, Nowy etap historji Polski, [A New Era in the History of Poland]
Odrodzenie 2-3 (1944), 4.
17
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Stare tradycje i moda demokracji, [Old Traditions
and Young Democracy] Biultyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 5, 21 October 1944, 14;
Wykona dekret o reformie rolnej, Rzeczpospolita [The Polish Republic], 27
September 1944; Zama opr obszarnikw, [To Break the Resistance of the
Landowners] Rzeczpospolita, 28 September 1944.
18
19
20
Werfel, Nowy etap historji Polski, 4.
movement.21 The press discussed the popularity of Franco or Mussolini,

presented the friendly relations of the Polish aristocracy and landed gentry
with the dignitaries of the Third Reich (Hermann Gring, Joseph Goebbels,
Heinrich Himmler), manifesting themselves through common hunting
meetings, where in the midst of forests, they were plotting the treason and
the sale of Poland. These plots led to wrong decisions in Polish foreign
policy, particularly in seeking closer links with Germany and in consequence "stirring things up and orienting the nation against the USSR.22 All
these strong accusations must have had their argumentative power, as the
war against fascism, personified by Adolf Hitler, who was responsible for
mass homicide on an unprecedented scale, was not over.
The political critique of the period 1939-1944 was another vital domain
in the propaganda narrative. Attempts were made to link that period with
interwar Poland to argue in favour of some kind of continuity of the
statehood (for the 25 years of Poland under Sanacja).23 The stakes were
very high successful discrediting of an alternative centre of political
power. The September 1939 defeat24 was interpreted in terms of the
spectacular collapse of the Sanacja-land gentrys Poland. The press
wrote that the USSR passed the test of war with flying colours, along
with the Polish nation, whereas the political leaders disgraced themselves
with escape, despite their previous haughty declarations. They were
called the heroes of the Zalishchyky road, which made reference to the
road by which the Polish government evacuated to Romania.25
21
Werfel, Nowy etap historji Polski, 4; Generaowie reakcji, [The Reactionary

Generals] Rzeczpospolita, 4 October 1944.
22
Werfel, Listopady, 1; Zofia Kamiska, Kto wada polsk ziemi. [Who
Ruled the Polish Lands] Gazeta Lubelska [Lublin Gazette], 17 August 1944;
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Wielkie wito ludowe w acucie, [A Great Folk
Feast in acut] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 13, 7 November 1944, 43;
Reforma Rolna, [The Agrarian Reform] Gazeta Lubelska, 17 August 1944.
23
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Przebudowa gospodarki wiejskiej i psychiki chopa
polsk. pod wpywem Reformy Rolnej. Wywiad z Wiceministrem Rolnictwa i
Reform Rolnych Mgr. R. Bertoldem, [The Transformation of Agrarian Economy and the Peasants Mentality in the Wake of the Agrarian Reform. An Interview with Vice-minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reforms, R. Bertold,
M.A.] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 21, 29 November 1944, 68.
24
25
628 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
A lot of critical remarks concerned the attitude and the conception of the
struggle against the German occupant represented by the domestic agendas of the Polish government in exile. One metaphor that repeatedly recurred in the propaganda press material was the passive policy of
standing in the order arms position. Overt allegations were also made as
for the collaboration of the government with the Germans in order to
suppress the underground Polish Workers Party. The texts published in
1944 also contained strong criticism of the decision to initiate the Warsaw Uprising. The figure that symbolized the thoughtless endangerment
of the life of thousands of youth and of turning Warsaw into a bloodbath was General Tadeusz Komorowski Br, who was also accused of
giving the Uprising soldiers away to Gestapo. Wickedly, the press did not
use his military title, but referred to him as a count in order to signal
clearly his sociopolitical profile.26
These visions of treason could, and among some social groups did influence
the imagination of the recipients of the Communist propaganda. Biuletyn
Reformy Rolnej [The Agrarian Reform Bulletin] observed in an ironic
manner as follows: And why have you, milady, spoken in tears that you
toiled all your life now to be bothered by someone? We know what kind of
toil it was and what it was about. All night long the German soldiers Gestapo SS and officers had fun at your place. Many bottles of champagne
were drunk in this company in your rooms... The orgies lasted long and
happened very often.27 The fact that a given estate lacked its owner was
very often interpreted in relation with the withdrawing German forces28. In a
26
27
28
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, I-szy Wojew. Zjazd Stronnictwa Ludowego w

Rzeszowie, [The First Voivodeship Convention of the Polish Peoples Party
in Rzeszw] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 7, 24 October 1944, 19-21; Nie
oddamy reakcji ziemi i wolnoci, [We Will not Surrender Land or Freedom
to the Reactionists] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 5, 21 October 1944, 14; Rezolucja wojewdzkiego Zjazdu Stronnictwa Ludowego w Rzeszowie w dniu
22 padziernika 1944, [The Resolution of The Voivodeship Convention of
the Polish Peoples Party in Rzeszw of 22 October 1944] Biuletyn Reformy
Rolnej, no. 6, 23 October 1944, 15.
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Jak dzielono ziemi w powiecie przemyskim,
[How Was the Land Parcelled out in the County of Przemyl] Biuletyn
Reformy Rolnej, no. 2, 18 October 1944, 4.
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Konferencja chopw i robotnikw rolnych w
Rzeszowie, [The Convention of the Peasants and Agrarian Workers in
Rzeszw] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 2, 18 October 1944, 6.
short report on the parcelling out of the estate of Cielw, the owner Count
Tarnowski was accused of escaping to Hitler to explain that he feels better
close to him, as he understands him better than a Polish peasant.29
The press also frequently mentioned Count Alfred Potocki, since he was
allowed by the Germans to transport the works of art from the acut
palace collection to Vienna: The frames on the palace walls are so empty-looking. The Lord of acut took all the precious paintings and tapestries with him, with all the vases and crystal glass. The obliging Germans
did not leave their great friend in need, even though they felt the coming
Red Army troops just behind their back. Ten railway wagons were granted to Mr Potocki to keep his treasure tasting of blood and sweat of
many peasant generations.30
As a way of illustrative summary of how these all-political defeats, disgraces and treasons were presented by the press, let me quote more from
one of the articles, being a kind of charge list. It was written in 1944, and
it claimed that the old Polish aristocratic tradition was: About the fathers
of the September defeat, about the leaders who were first to transfer their
treasures abroad, just to escape later on themselves, while the Polish soldier still fought bravely in Warsaw and Westerplatte. About the debauchery and the alliance with the deadly German invaders, who killed millions
of Poles in Owicim (Auschwitz), Majdanek, Sobibr then Dachau and
in so many other camps. This tradition is also about the treacherous politics of the so-called London government in exile, whose order made the
criminal executors in Poland spill over the blood of the nation. Finally,
this tradition is also about the atrocities caused by the criminals who triggered the Warsaw Uprising, then sent its soldiers to the hands of Gestapo.
And it ultimately is about the landlord's escape to the Germans!31 All
these undeniable criminal acts as proclaimed by the authors called for
29
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Chopi w Mieleckiem parceluj, [The Peasants in

the County of Mielec Parcel out the Land] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 6, 23
October 1944, 16.
30
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Wielkie wito ludowe w acucie, [A Great Folk
Feast in acut] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 13, 7 November 1944, 43; Pan
Potocki z acuta, [Lord Potocki of acut] Rzeczpspolita, 30 September
1944.
31
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Stare tradycje i moda demokracji, [Old Traditions
and Young Democracy] Biultyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 5, 21 October 1944, 14;
Jak dzielono ziemi w powiecie przemyskim, 4.
630 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
imminent acts of justice: We will send to court the magnates and all
those who served the Germans.32
The propaganda message was much easier to digest when the dramatic
events of the past were repeating themselves in front of the audience who
participated in them. This is why the violent critique of the Polish landed
gentry was accompanied by the reports of their acts of sabotage of the
agrarian reform by causing damage to their estate, or by cooperating with
the underground anti-Communist authorities, acting against the beneficiaries of the reform. All these forms of activity were treated as attempts to
undermine the new political system.33 The Communist leaders were afraid
of being unable to provide food for the whole population of Poland, which
would be publicly discrediting. This is why they were seeking explanations and excuses.34 The press observed that The Potocki, Sapieha,
Lubomirski and Tyszkiewicz families will try to mobilize the Home Army squads they pay for to sabotage the Agrarian Reform. They will terrorize the peasants and the activists. They will inspire organized looting.35
This policy of hatred towards the Democratic Polish State was to be directed by the protagonists like The Radziwi family of Nesvizh [], todays migrs to London and the magnates, who like Potocki, the Lord
of acut are seeking shelter in Hitlers haven36 As was illustratively argued, they are gnashing their teeth and plot in London how to
incite fratricidal conspiracies and looting.37
32
I-szy Wojew. Zjazd Stronnictwa Ludowego w Rzeszowie, 19-21.

Wszyscy towarzysze do pracy przy Reformie Rolnej!, [All Hands to the Station at the Agrarian Reform!] Barykada Wolnoci [The Barricade of Freedom], no. 6, 19 October 1944, 8; Wykona dekret o reformie rolnej, [To
Implement the Agrarian Reform Decree] Rzeczpospolita, 27 September 1944;
Szkodnicy, [The Parasites] Rzeczpospolita, 9 October 1944; Jan Madej,
Bra ziemi, [Take the Land] Wie, no. 3, 1944, 1.
34
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Pooy kres rozkradaniu majtkw, [Stop the
Looting of the Estates] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 2, 18 October 1944, 3.
35
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Chopi!, [Peasants!] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no.
1, 17 October 1944, 1.
36
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Pooy kres zbrodniom rozbijaczy jednoci
narodowej, [Stop the Crimes of the Opponents of National Unity] Biuletyn
37
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Nie oddamy reakcji ziemi i wolnoci, [We Will not
Surrender Land or Freedom to the Reactionists] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no.
5, 21 October 1944, 14.
33
The Communist propaganda declared that it was impossible to find compromise with such people, extending the list of sins with acts against national unity, spilling over the Polish blood, help brought to deserting
soldiers and protecting the landed gentrys estate.38 An example used
in this context was that of the Potocki Bocza familys estate in the Lublin
region, which was compared to the Majdanek concentration camp, since
its owner, Lord Potocki, was accused of imprisoning activists of the
Polish Workers Party, partisans of the Polish Peasants Battalions and
other peasants. The press also claimed that in all sorts of fratricidal struggle, one could easily discern the hand of the manor39, and the dagger
stabbed in the peasants back, which was the aristocracy's response to
the peasants' attempt at liberation.40
The other vast thematic area represented in the propaganda materials
concerning the image of the Polish landed gentry was that of socioeconomic issues. The actual role of the gentry in their local community was
far more complex and did not exclusively boil down to economic factors.
The landed gentry were local leaders, initiators and animators of community life. They held a lot of honorary functions in agricultural, religious,
economic, cultural and educational organizations, often bearing part of
their costs. The manor was a stronghold of patriotism and Polish national
spirit and the landowner was a soldier, a defender of the native land and a
local military leader. The propagated stereotypes of a spendthrift landowner were hardly true, since this social stratum showed open hostility
and ostracism to this kind of lifestyle. Equally untrue was the belief about
the widespread unwillingness to work displayed by many representatives
of the landed gentry. This latter belief was caused partly by the lack of
understanding of how a landed estate was organized as an enterprise. The
psychological aspect must also be taken into account here. The rich kept a
distance to the poor. The poor criticised the rich for surrounding himself
with a lot of objects and for the use of entertainment that he could do
without.
38
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Rezolucja wojewdzkiego Zjazdu Stronnictwa Ludowego w Rzeszowie w dniu 22 padziernika 1944, [The Resolution of The
Voivodeship Convention of the Polish Peoples Party in Rzeszw of 22 October 1944] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 6, 23 October 1944, 15.
39
Werfel, Nowy etap historji Polski, 4; Zama opr obszarnikw, Rzeczpospolita [The Polish Republic], 28 September 1944.
40
632 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
The landed gentry of the Second Polish Republic were going through the
hard times working to overcome the damaging effects of World War I.
They felt real endangerment of their property and assets, and they were under the constant pressure of the changing economic circumstances. All
these factors translated onto an inflexible approach to workers and peasants, which ultimately led to the point where what was rational economy in
the eyes of the employer was regarded as exploitation and inhumane
treatment in the opinion of the workers. The reports of the sympathy and
the unconditional help that the landowners witnessed after the war make us
believe that the portrait of the socioeconomic relations in the Polish rural
areas cannot be analysed in terms of purely economic relations between the
employer and the worker. The mutual relations were much deeper, and they
covered other dimensions of community life, with the full awareness of the
community members of the distribution of roles among them.
A key concept used by the press to describe the social relations in the
Polish village or the nature of these relations, to put it broadly was the
notion of parasitism.41 This concept is self-evident and requires no further
explanation. I daresay the landed gentry as depicted in the Communist
propaganda were an obsolete, parasitic component of the Polish rural
community, as they added no value to its life. They only used the fruit of
the peasants hard work for their own benefits, leaving the latter only
with minimal amounts of goods to make ends meet. For centuries, they
only provided minimal means for the weak rural community organism,
and they did what they could to prevent this organism from becoming
stronger and growing to try and overcome the disease. In other words,
this relationship was a kind of a chronic disease that was not developing
in a dynamic way. With wisely planned policies, the chronic patient can
be kept ill but alive for long. The whole problem was to convince the society that when they support the new political system, the Communist
leaders would heal them completely and create favourable living conditions for them.
The therapeutic and redeeming Communist propaganda, rich in peasants'
positive testimonies legitimizing the new reality, shaped the mind of the
beneficiaries and made them believe that they witness an act of justice,
41
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Rezolucja wojewdzkiego Zjazdu Stronnictwa Ludowego w Rzeszowie w dniu 22 padziernika 1944, [The Resolution of The
Voivodeship Convention of the Polish Peoples Party in Rzeszw of 22 October 1944] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 6, 23 October 1944, 15.
awaited by the past generations of peasants, who toiled in the landlords manors. It was emphasized by the press that the manors were organized on feudal and outdated principles, which had already been done
away with in the civilized world, since they negatively influenced the effectiveness of agricultural production.42 Peasants have the right to possess
land owing to their hard work.43 It was announced that the transformation
of not only the social structure, but also of cultural and political life of the
rural community was implemented in the complete majesty of the law.44
The objectives of the propaganda campaigns disclose a lot about the
peasants mentality and attitudes towards the reform. In the opinion of the
engineers of the soul, the sense of inferiority, submissiveness and the
feudal veneration of the kissed hand of the lord, which had been cultivated for ages, prevented the determined decision on the part of the peasants to break with the past45. It was discovered that the feudal bond that
wielded its power over the places of living and work as well as over personal decisions led to poverty and ignorance. The peasant activist Jakub
Bojko, who was often quoted by the press, believed that peasants had transferred through generations patterns of enslaved behaviour, which was
why they found it difficult to break with the humiliation, timidity and lack
of self-confidence.46 According to the propaganda, the landowner was
buying for his own the soul of the peasant, who "became his slave worker.47 In view of the above, the Communists needed to win the peasants
trust, so that he could actively participate in land restructuring. The press
42
Zofia Kamiska, Kto wada polsk ziemi, [Who Ruled the Polish Lands]
Gazeta Lubelska, 17 August 1944; M. C., Reforma rolna. Klucz do odnowy
spoeczno-gospodarczej kraju, [The Agrarian Reform. A Key to the Socioeconomic Revival of the Country] Gazeta Lubelska, 9 September 1944;
Przeytki paszczyniane musza znikn ze wsi polskiej, [Feudal Reminiscences must Be Eradicated from the Polish Village] Gazeta Lubelska, 19 August 1944.
43
Jerzy Borejsza, Rewolucja agodna, [The Mild Revolution] Odrodzenie, no.
10-12, 1945, 1; Chopi!, 1.
44
45
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Konferencja chopw i robotnikw rolnych w
Rzeszowie, Biuletyn Reformy Ronej, no. 2, 18 October 1944, 6; Jan Aleksander Krl, Reforma rolna, [The Agrarian Reform] Wie 3 (1944), 2.
46
Jan Aleksander Krl, Chwila dziejowa, [A Historic Moment] Wie 1-2
(1944), 1.
47
634 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
had it that it was only when the peasant became trustful of the state that
he was able to experience a huge change in his mentality: The peasant
woke up and engaged with the full power of his inexhaustible resilience
in the active life, being now a free citizen of the Democratic Polish State.48
The press articles were also full of remarks on the landed gentry and noble mentality, which were scornfully described as stifling component of
the atmosphere in Poland.49 The press descriptions reveal a portrait of
the landowner who was full of vices, who wasted money on palaces,
castles, carts or lost them in Monte Carlo, but he was always unable to
pay taxes or his workers wages. Avoiding paying the workers was said
to be in good taste.50 In particular, the contrast between the dysfunctional privileged class and the peasant as a synonym of the healthy society was extensively exploited: And so it happens that in a park where, in
the olden days, the pale and filigree shadows of the magnates heirs used
to wander, now the ranks of peasants sons parade, brave and strong, resolute and valiant. 51
The class egoism of the landowners was considered the reason for the
lack of previous agrarian reforms. The press overtly wrote about "a tradition to preserve the peasant masses in ignorance and slavery.52 Referring
to official statistical figures, it was written that 19 thousand of landowner families (4 thousand of which possessed their estate of the size over
1000 ha and 353 families with the estate over 3000 ha) possessed as
much land as 3,200,000 peasants families. The landed gentry possessed
about 44 per cent of arable land in Poland. This is where the Communists
sought the roots of the peasants ill fate the peasant was in agony and
clenching his fists.53 Also, the fact that the peasant children had no ac48
Przebudowa gospodarki wiejskiej i psychiki chopa polsk. pod wpywem

Reformy Rolnej, 68; W podobnym tonie artyku: Jan Aleksander Krl,
Gawda wigilijna (O narodzinach nowego chopa), Wie, no. 7, 1945, 1.
49
50
Reforma Rolna, Gazeta Lubelska, 17 August 1944.
51
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Parcelujemy a w stawach trzeszczy, [We Are
Parcelling Out as Much as We Can] Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no. 16, 13 November 1944, 54.
52
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Stare tradycje i moda demokracji, Biuletyn
53
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Chopi dziel ziemi, Biuletyn Reformy Rolnej, no.
1, 17 October 1944, 2.
cess to education meant they enjoyed no opportunities to improve their

social status quo.54 Drawing upon the prominent slogan of the just distribution of goods, the propaganda emphasized that the benefits of the
hard work of the peasants only fed the landowner55 The discrepancy in
the material standing of the classes was huge, hence according to the
press the starving peasant was unable to accept the aristocratic way of
living.56 Suffering poverty, the peasant was not a consumer of industrial
products, which added to the increase in the unemployment rate in the cities. In the eye of the propaganda activists, this whole socioeconomic system boiled down to a relatively simple principle: the worker could not
find employment, because the peasant owned no land.57 The thesis was
intended to have its corollary that it was the agrarian reform that was the
only way to change the aggravated situation into the one where no one
could take over the fruit of the peasant's work.58
The landed gentry were not only deprived of their enterprise but also their
houses - family homes. In this case, the peasants objections were the
most difficult to override. This is why the press wrote a lot about how the
agrarian reform would change the confiscated manors into public spaces
like agricultural facilities, schools, hospitals, or educational facilities for
children all depending on the will of the peasant community.59 The
promised share in the decision-making process was crucial in winning the
public support. It was emphasized that the agrarian reform would change
the cultural life in Poland, since it would activate millions of its new participants. The author of one of such texts made an optimistic assumption
that two hundred new farms would buy hundred times more books than
one manor.60 It was expected that when the peasant is recalled what the
landowner used to tell him: grab your fork, forget the book, it would
54
Kamiska, Kto wada polsk ziemi,; M. C., Reforma rolna,; Krl,

Reforma Rolna, 2.
55
Chopi dziel ziemi, 2.
56
Chopi dziel ziemi, 2; Jan Szczepaski, Spoeczny sens Reformy
Rolnej, [The Social Sense of the Agrarian Reform] Wie, 4 (1944), 2.
57
58
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Prawo do ziemi, [The Right to Land] Biuletyn
59
Chopi!, 1; Ryszard Matuszewski, Skarby sztuki w rzeszowskiem, [The
Artistic Masterpieces in the Rzeszw Voivodeship] Wie, 3 (1944), 5.
60
636 ______________________________________________ Tomasz OSISKI
raise his spirit and make him more confident in reaching a new status
where His Lordship leaves his palace for the sake of the peasant children. Attractive narrative scenarios of the kind showed below were written: In the noble palaces, which in old times only hosted crowds of
distinguished guests, counts and dukes, now the peasant children, ruddy
and fit, will happily learn how to build a new, different peasant life.61
The deliberations presented above only disclose a tiny part of the diversified in form and content propaganda material targeted against the
Polish landed gentry, created in the opening months of the Polish Peoples Republic era. The eminent end of World War II obviously intensified the debate on the future political system in Poland, and on the
responsibility for the war tragedies experienced by the citizens of the
Second Polish Republic. In order to persuade millions of Polish peasants
to accept the Communist narrative, an image of the landed gentry was
built, in which they were held responsible for the centuries-old system of
power rule in Poland, or at least for the huge influence that they wielded
on that system. All that equalled being responsible for the fate of the state
and the nation. Difficult historic events and national tragedies were
picked out of the historical context and used for propaganda purposes. Of
course, the journalist agitators manipulated the facts. They strove to convince the society that the Polish aristocracy and landed gentry showed
genetic lack of responsibility for the matters of the state, which led to
tragic consequences in the earlier and the then-present history of Poland.
At the early stages of the agrarian reform, the authorities wanted to discredit the landowners. This is why the image of that social group that
they created in their press must be regarded as one-sided, biased and
harmful. The primary strategy used to highlight the significance of the
reform was to depict it as an act of social justice, which legitimised the
expropriation and repression of the representatives of the Polish landed
gentry. In a clearly postulative image of the post-war reality promoted by
the new regime, the landowners played the role of an ideal enemy (universal), who displayed a strategic ability of effective transformation,
which they proved to have throughout the ages.
61
AAN, PKWN, sig. V/11, Szkoa dla wsi, [Schools for the Villages] Biuletyn
Kulaks in Political Cartoons of the Rkosi-Era

Judit TTH
The Persecution of Kulaks in Hungary
Following the Second World War, like in other countries in the EasterCentral European block, the system that got established in Hungary was
subordinated to Soviet interests. The new political, economic and social
structure that disregarded the countrys special characteristics and traditions in favour of the will of a foreign power was realized under Mtys
Rkosi, nicknamed Stalins best Hungarian disciple. The exclusive political power of Rkosi, complete with a personality cult, became indisputable following the establishment of a totalitarian one-party system as well
as a ruthless showdown with political adversaries and the former elite by
the late 1940s.1
The primary goal, defined as the basis of this new political structure, had
been the forceful industrialization of the country following the example
from the Soviet Union. Financially, this had been based mainly on revenues
taken from the agricultural sector. The most common form of revenue,
placed within the framework of planned economy, was named compulsory
delivery of produce. This obligation was also the heaviest burden put on
peasants at the time.2 Peasants were obliged to provide ever-growing
1
For literature on Mtys Rkosi, see: Pnksti rpd, Rkosi a cscson 19481953 [Rkosi on the Top 1948-1953] (Budapest: Eurpa, 1996). Compare:
Feitl Istvn, Gellrin Lzr Mrta, Sipos Levente (eds.), Rkosi Mtys
Visszaemlkezsek [Mtys Rkosi Reminiscences], I-II (Budapest:
Napvilg, 2002).
2
For further details on the system of compulsory delivery in Hungary, see: Erdmann Gyeula, Begyjts, beszolgltats Magyarorszgon 1945-1956 [Collection, Compulsory Deliveryin Hungary Between 1945 and 1956] (Bkscsaba:
Tevan Kiad, 1992); Szab Kroly, Virgh Lszl, A begyjts klasszikus
formja Magyarorszgon (1950-1953), [The Classic Form of Compulsory Delivery in Hungary, 1950-1953] Medvetnc 2-3 (1984). The system of compulsory delivery had been abolished as a result of the events of the revolution in
1956 (October 30th 1956). The subsequent government led by Kdr did not
revoke this provision either, but in fact, ratified it in statutory rule No 21, announced on 12th November 1956. For a more detailed analysis, see: Papp
Istvn, A Begyjtsi Minisztrium az 1956-os forradalom idejn s a begyjtsi
638 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
deliveries according to the amount of their crop and certain products on

time.3 In case they failed to do that, they were subject to a number of sanctions, including increasing the amount of delivery, paying compensations
and fines. What followed these measures were so-called on-the-spot penalties, which became publicly known as requisitions, or sweeping the attics. Members of the penalty committees often arrived at the farms
accompanied by police or state security officials. In many cases, the homes
were completely rummaged through from the cellar up to the attic, in a
search for hidden stocks. Generally, all other moveable assets besides the
deliveries were confiscated as well. The first targets of these financial sanctions were always farmers who had been branded kulaks.4
The word kulak, taken over from the Russian, meant the highest class of
rural society, also named large farmers or wealthy peasants. The party
state regarded kulaks as the last remainders of an exploiting capitalist system and, therefore, a major obstacle in the building of socialism and the socialist reorganization as well as the collectivization of agriculture.
Farmers who had been branded kulaks were subjected to a significantly
greater amount of delivery than others. One of the additional burdens was
the so-called agricultural developmental contribution, due to pay from
1948 on.5 Following a modification in 1949, this fee, also named kulak
tax, had to be paid by all landowners with an area larger than 25 hectares, or land exceeding in value 350 golden crowns. This was also the
definition of the social category that was later to be registered as a kulak.
Since truck farms, orchards and vine-lands were counted with a multiplier
rendszer felszmolsa 1956-57-ben, [The Ministry for Deliveries during the
Revolution in 1956 and the Abolition of the System of Compulsory Delivery in
1956-1957] Szzadok 1 (2002).
3
The amount of crop and products to be delivered grew year by year. In the beginning, it involved bread crops only, however from 1949 they also included
forage. From the next year on, peasants had to deliver potatoes, onions, while
from 1951 on, beef cattle, poultry, eggs, milk and wine as well also were delivered. Erdmann, Collection, 87-116.
4
See more in detail in: Zvada Pl, Kulkprs [Kulak-press] (Budapest:
Magvet, 2006); Tth Judit: Padlssprsek kora A beszolgltats Pest
megyben [The Age of Sweeping the Attics Compulsory Delivery in Pest
County] (Budapest: Pest Megye Monogrfia Kzalaptvny, 2011).
5
The payment of agricultural developmental contribution was regulated by edict
No 7090/1948, announced on 27th June 1948.
Kulaks in Political Cartoons of the Rkosi-Era________________________ 639
of 4 and 5, farmers with relatively small areas of these kinds were branded
kulaks. According to this regulation, at the turn of 1948/1949, some 65,000
farmers had been added to the registry list of kulaks.6 Farmers on the list
could not be erased from it even if they found some way to get rid of their
land. Once branded a kulak, they could never free themselves from it.
Beside kulaks defined by the area and value of their land, a further group
the state considered an enemy were individuals engaged in all kinds of
self-sufficient activity. Therefore, people who owned a threshing machine, earlier a mill, a pot-house or were engaged in any kind of business,
were considered kulaks. This led to the expression industrial kulak and
business kulak. Farmers hiring hands were also regarded as kulaks,
since this activity was deemed exploitative. It was not only property,
however, that could cause someone to be registered as a kulak, but also
certain positions held in the previous political system. This is how onetime officials, military officers or even their widows could be listed. They
were named lordly kulaks. There had been certain individuals, however, who fit none of the above mentioned categories but were still considered enemies of the state. They were simply made to appear individuals
of hostile behaviour and hence, put on the kulak list.
6
Registry list of kulaks were assembled locally in each town. It was the task of
local councils to list farmers considered kulaks under the new regulations. Lists
of this kind had been assembled several times by the first half of the 1950s.
These lists have not yet been thoroughly investigated and analysed by Hungarian historians to this very day. This is also why there is no consensus in Hungarian research as to the exact number of people registered as kulaks.
Compare: Hant Zsuzsa, Kulkok. Megklnbztets, megtrs, megsemmists, [Kulaks. Discrimination, Breaking, Anihilation] Rubicon 9 (2010);
Nagy Jzsef, A paraszti trsadalom felbomlsnak kezdetei 1945-1956 [Beginnings of the Disintegration of Rural Society from 1945 to 1956] (Budapest:
Politikatrtneti Fzetek. XXX. Napvilg Kiad, 2009); Valuch Tibor, Magyarorszg trsadalomtrtnete a XX. szzad msodik felben [Social History
of Hungary in the Second Half of the 20th Century] (Budapest: Osiris, 2001);
Varga Zsuzsanna, A falusi trsadalom feszltsggcai az 1950-es vek
kzepn, [Troublespots of Rural Society in the Middle of the 1950s] Mltunk
4 (2006). Getting the data right and establishing the exact number of individuals registered as kulaks is only possible following the thorough exploration of
relevant archival sources. The author of the present study considers an essential
task for the near future setting up a team to examine and review archival
sources in order to create a detailed database containing possibly all people
concerned and important data on them.
640 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
Similarly to the Soviet Union, Stalins death meant a turning point in other countries of the socialist camp, too. In Hungary, Imre Nagy could become prime minister some months later, in July 1953.7 Simultaneously,
the so-called June resolution abolished kulak lists.8 This regulation eased
the tension around farmers branded kulaks, their persecution, however,
did not end. As a result of the turn in political life, Rkosi became less
dominant, but his impact nevertheless, remained significant. Hence, in
spite of the June resolution and soon after it had been passed, Rkosis
notion saying that a kulak remains a kulak even without the list, became a
doctrine to be followed in the actual agricultural policy.9 The short period
of easing tension connected to Imre Nagy was soon followed by a restoration due to a further change of direction in the Soviet Union. This restoration was marked by the return of Rkosi and the strengthening of his
position. Consequently, the anti-kulak campaign regained momentum.
We shall lean on poor peasants, fight the kulaks and join forces with the
middle peasant class said the so-called triple slogan formulated by
Lenin that served as the basis of the peasant policy of the Rkosi-era.
Among these, the fight against farmers branded kulaks was particularly
highlighted. One of the reasons this had been of special importance was
that this social group had not only been a driving economic force but also
played a significant role in the social organization of a certain kind of
community. State power aimed at the restriction of the group of peasants
7
Imre Nagy (1898-1958) had been a significant political figure in Hungary long
before becoming the prime minister of the revolution in 1956, actually from 1945
on. He was minister of agriculture in the period of the redistribution of landed
property following the Second World War. Later, from 1950 on, he was a leading
figure of the Ministry for Food Supply supervising compulsory delivery and later
of the Ministry for Delivery. He became prime minister on 4th July 1953 but was
gradually cut out of political life from the spring of 1955 on. His return and second appointment to prime minister was enabled by the revolution in 1956. See
more in detail in: Rainer M. Jnos, Nagy Imre Politikai letrajz, I-II [Imre Nagy.
A Political Biography] (Budapest: 1956-os Intzet, 1996-1999).
8
Izsk Lajos (ed.): A Magyar Dolgozk Prtjnak hatrozatai 1948-1956
[Regulations of the Hungarian Workers Party Between 1949 and 1956] (Budapest: Napvilg, 1998), 188-193.
9
Speech delivered by Mtys Rkosi at a party meeting in Budapest on 11th July
1953. in: Rkosi Mtys, Vlogatott beszdek s cikkek [Collected Speeches
and Articles] (Budapest: Szikra, 1955) http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01937/html/
szerviz/dokument/rakosis0.htm.
engaged in individual farming, making this impossible for them and ultimately, at disorganising the entire rural society. For this purpose, they had
the wide variety of political and power tools at their disposal.
First, there were the penalties and other punitive measures for the nonfulfillment of compulsory delivery mentioned earlier. Imposing compensations and fines as well as sweeping the attics, however, were only the
first steps in the sanctions applied. Farmers who failed to deliver the required amount of crops were brought to trial for jeopardising public food
supply. It was easy to find pretexts that could be used to take legal action
against farmers for public supply offenses. The most common charge was
failure of compulsory delivery, but there were also sentences for delivering weevil-eaten grain, illegal slaughter of fat stock, hiding or stacking up
products. Some farmers were blamed for harvesting under-ripe crops or
with too-large of a grain loss or ploughing their ground too shallow out of
malice prepense. Farmers not accomplishing their work on time like
tilling or sowing their land according to strict regulations were also
brought to trial. Sentences for farmers usually involved shorter or longer
imprisonments besides penalties ranging from a few hundred forints to a
full confiscation of their property. An important aspect in the severity of
the sentence was in many cases dependent on whether the local agricultural cooperative was in need of that particular part of land or not. The
courts were required to produce sentences that went by the peasant policy
of the MDP (Magyar Dolgozk Prtja, Hungarian Workers Party). The jurisdictional practice in Hungary in the 50s was characterized by the dominance of class-based justice. Judges were required to adequately determine
the defendants class status, since neither the offense, nor the due punishment may be correctly judged without the sufficient knowledge on class
status they believed.10 In reality it meant imposing different sentences
on farmers branded kulaks than small or middle-class peasants.11
10
National Archives of Hungary Pest County Archives (MNL PML) XXV. 1-a2. Documents from Pest County Court. Presidential Papers. Confidential papers 1949-1954.1951/82/24/26. June 19th, 1951.
11
See more in detail: Zinner Tibor, Szakcs Sndor, Habuda Mikls, Svd Lszl,
Szomszd Imre, Mark Gyrgy, Balogh Margit, Trvnytelen szocializmus. A
Tnyfeltr Bizottsg jelentse [Illegal Socialism. Report of the Fact-Finding
Committee] (Budapest: Zrnyi Kiad s j Magyarorszg, 1991); Kahler
Frigyes, Szemtl szembe a mlttal. Vlogatott rsok [Face to Face with the Past.
Collected Essays] (Budapest: Kairosz, 1999); Tth, The age of sweeping.
642 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
Beyond all this, there had been internments. Many farmers were deported
to the Hortobgy and state farms in Tiszntl, the eastern part of the
country. They had been forced to work in one of the 12 closed camps.
Kulaks who had been relocated from their original homes were kept under police supervision in farm buildings and barracks.12 Between 1951
and 1956, a number of young men ready to be enlisted in the army were
forced to do labour service at constructions, mines and large building projects due to their kulak ancestry.13
Beside courtroom sentences, imprisonments and other sanctions mentioned above, various tools of propaganda were ready for use to keep the
peasantry under a constant threat.
Anti-Kulak Propaganda and its Forms
Anti-kulak propaganda is usually traced back to the speech delivered by
Rkosi on 20th August 1948 in the town of Kecskemt14. Prior to this,
however, shortly after the resolution issued by the Information Office
condemning Yugoslavia, at a meeting held for party officials from Budapest on 2nd July 1948, he held another speech. Here, he argued that we
cannot build socialism in our villages as long as there are exploitative
elements like wealthy peasants, kulaks and speculators, sucking the blood
of peasants, thriving freely. He also pointed out that in the three years
since the distribution of landed property15 among the entire peasantry,
wealthy peasants, trading peasants, large farmers have prospered and
gained strength at a much higher pace, even though the state power of
12
13
14
15
Fzes Mikls (ed.): Kitasztottak. Dokumentumok a hortobgyi zrt tborokbl 1950-1960 [Documents from the Closed Camps on Hortobgy 1950-1960]
(Budapest: Alterra, Svjci Magyar Kiad Kft. 2002).
Kocsis Gyula, Nagy Varga Vera, Alkalmazkods, ellenlls, mobilits [Adjustment, Resistance, Mobility] (Cegld: Cegldi Fzetek 30, 1995).
This speech delivered by Rkosi can actually be considered the beginning of
collectivization. He, thus, made it clear to the public that the reorganization of
agriculture following the example from the Soviet Union is imminent.
Edict No 600/1945 of the national provisional government on the abolition of
the former system of large farms and on allocating landed property to masses
of farmers engaged in agricultural activities. In the course of the distribution
of landed property, an area of 5.6 million hectares had been allocated to more
than 642,000 claimants. As a result, the number of smallholders in Hungary
grew significantly.
peoples democracy made every effort to support the working peasant

class. This is exactly why, as he pointed out, it is important that working
peasants can feel and understand that they have found a true, helping ally in
us with foresight. An ally who wants to help in all their troubles, someone
who protects them from the greed of the bloodsucking leech in villages.16
From this moment on, kulaks, referred to as wealthy peasants, trading
peasants, large farmers, or, according to Lenin, bloodsucking leech[es],
became the primary targets of the propaganda campaign of state power.
What was the main reason for this?
One of the primary goals of communists was the reorganization of agriculture according to the Soviet example, the most complete form of collectivization possible. As already mentioned, they saw the main obstacle
in the large farmers involved in individual farming. The party state, thus,
made every effort to restrict their activity and make their lives impossible. One way to achieve this was to discredit them and make them appear
antipathic in front of smallholders and the middle peasant class. Great efforts had been made to make them appear as a group of people whose activity only harms economy and society alike. It had been widely
suggested that they cause trouble not only in their own villages but are in
fact actively hindering national prosperity. By failing to fulfil their obligations, in other words, sabotaging them, they not only break the law of
the peoples democracy but are in fact jeopardizing progress and general
well-being. They are, therefore, harmful to the entire society, meaning
they must be considered enemies who have to be fought permanently.17
16
17
Mtys Rkosi, Marxism-Leninism is the Only Way to Victory, in Mtys

Rkosi, Building the Peoples Country (Budapest: Szikra, 1949), 55-56.
Where people listen to what the party is saying, the crops will be larger and
better, there will be more income, more to spend on clothes, shoes, more for
the family and more for the young [] Kulaks and reactionaries from the
clergy do not want this: peace, the flourishing of our country and the prosperity of working peasants. This is why they put off work, aim to do harm, give
misleading advice. They have to be exposed in front of all workers, young and
adult, they have to be confronted, these avowed enemies of workers and
peace. National Archives of Hungary (MNL OL) M-KS 276. f. 89. cs. Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Leadership of the Hungarian Workers Party. (1948-1956) 178. . e. Propaganda plan of the Alliance
of Working Youth (Dolgoz Ifjsg Szvetsge, DISZ) for supporting the agricultural work in the autumn. 9th September 1950.
644 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
While the hate campaign against farmers branded kulaks was in full
swing, the party leadership made every effort to get smallholders and the
middle peasant class on their side. A central point in this campaign was
the argument that the only possibility for these groups to prosper was to
join common farming, that is, an agricultural cooperative. It had also
been emphasized that large farmers kept only their own interest in mind,
opposed collectivization and tried to dissuade everyone they could from
joining the cooperatives. The communist party manouevered, in the end,
according to its peasant policy, attempting to make smallholders and the
middle peasant class believe that they had been helping them, fostering
their prosperity and protecting them from large farmers. It was through
this divisive policy that they tried to pit certain groups of rural society
against each other. Beyond instigating controversies, they also expected
people, in the name of public vigilance, to expose kulaks violating the
laws of peoples democracy and even report them to the police. In the
words of Rkosi, people had to be made aware that all kulaks, without
exceptions, had something to hide, something that makes them antipathic
for middle peasants. These are the things we have to expose to middle
peasants. And anytime a kulak dares make headway or breaks the laws of
our peoples democracy, fails to produce goods or deliver them, profiteers, speculates and practices usury, we have to bear down on them relentlessly. The strong hand is the only thing kulaks understand, that is the
only thing that keeps them in check.18
The MDP (Magyar Dolgozk Prtja, Hungarian Workers Party), in
achieving its political objectives, laid a great emphasis on agitation and
propaganda activity.19 To use contamporary language, political information
was actually aimed at letting people know about decisions made by the party and the government and in fact, convince them of their justness. This activity was primarily carried out by official educators working in the bonds
of local party organizations. The promotion of collectivization was considered priority in the propaganda on the countryside. Official educators also
18
The Tasks of Our Party. Speech delivered by Mtys Rkosi on the session of
the Central Leadership of the MDP held on 5th-6th March 1949, in Rkosi,
Building the Country of the People, 436.
19
For this purpose, the Department of Village Propaganda was established within the ranks of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda. MNL OL M-KS
276. f. 89. cs. 176. . e. Work plan of the Department of Village Propaganda.
19th July 1950.
encouraged farmers to accomplish their agricultural work as quickly as

they could, to comply with compulsory deliveries and to join working
competitions. This propaganda work, however, had to be coupled with a
further priority, namely, mobilizing against the enemy. Propagandists,
functioning as the mouthpiece of the representatives of polical power, had
to argue that certain tasks could only be achieved through a consistent fight
against kulaks.20 Educators acting on orders from above had to point
out that kulaks were enemies of the state and that therefore it was essential
to incite a strong class hatred against them and mobilize smallholders
and middle peasants for the fight against kulaks.21
The reason the party leadership considered this particularly important was
that they knew that we can only proceed with the building of socialism
through the reeducation of working peasantry. Peasantry, thus, had to realize that their only viable alternative was to join agricultural cooperatives.
They were, however, aware that the majority of rural society had a strong
attachment to their traditions, their values and, thus, their land. Hence, it
came as no surprise to them that the outcome they had expected came about
very slowly and even then, rather as a result of pressure and coercion.22
Beyond the propaganda aimed at dividing the peasantry and inciting hatred, they had applied a number of methods to discredit and deride kulaks. The so-called drumming23 became a common practice in villages. In
busier places, following a shorter or longer drumbeat, they announced
20
21
22
23
Organizations and individuals engaged in informing the public of delivery

regulations must be made to understand that these regulations can only be
successfully implemented within the framework of a fight against kulaks and
other adverse elements. MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 55. cs. Documents of the Organizational Committee of the MDP. (1948-1953), 163. . e. Motion of the
Department of Agitation and Propaganda on the propaganda work concerning
the state delivery regulation. 7th April 1951.
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 89. cs. 178. . e. Minutes of the meeting held by the
Department of Agitation and Propaganda, 2nd February 1951.
Concerning the re-education of peasantry, the record regrets to say: In this
area, we have not achieved significant results in most counties. MNL OL MKS 276. f. 89. cs. 178. . e. Minutes of meeting held by the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, 2nd February 1951.
In the village archives concerning this period, the so-called drum books had
been preserved. These books contain the passages read aloud during the
drummings. See in detail in: Galn Barcs Eszter, Post-1945 Drum Books
from Pest County, Levltri Szemle 4 (2010).
646 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
useful information like the time the market opens or where you can vaccinate your dog. They used this opportunity, however, to announce the
names of people who had been convicted for failing their compulsory deliveries. The penalties inflicted were also read aloud and clearly served
the purpose of arousing fear. They wanted to make clear what people
could expect if they rebel against the system. A further practice aimed at
deterrence and showing an example was putting photographs of farmers
exposed of crimes into shop windows or having their names put out on
the shame-table of the village. It was, however, the press that was widely
considered to be the most efficient tool of anti-kulak propaganda.
The rebirth of the press after the Second World War was soon followed
by its muzzling and reorganization. The market of press products saw a
significant change after 1948. In Hungary, like in other countries belonging to the Stalinist area of interest, this was synonymous with the consequent and relentless introduction of the Soviet press model. Szabad Np
(Free People), the newspaper of the communist party, had already been
serving the purpose of direct political propaganda in the coalition period,
actually ever since its restart in 1945. This was taken to a new level after
1948, when it became the official newspaper of the Hungarian Workers
Party following the union of communists and social democrats. It got intertwined with the Rkosi-era and came to symbolize it.24
The structural change involved winding up press products of the opposition, and it certianly affected journalism itself. On the one hand, journalists of a civilian background had been replaced by new ones of a workerpeasant ancestry and loyal to the party. Their primary task had been to
enforce the priority of party policy and turn press products into tools in
the building of socialism. The audience had changed as well. The main
target group of these newspapers, besides party officials, consisted primarily of workers and peasants. All this had certainly shown in the choice
of subjects, with articles focusing on the increase of production, the
strengthening of the alliance between workers and peasants and the fight
against the internal enemy. The articles in these newspapers did not depict real life but rather reflected an idealized state the party saw and
wanted people to see as well. Consequently, the articles clearly outlined
the socialist type of person that had been propagated by the system. As
24
Kkay Gyrgy, Buzinkay Gza, Murnyi Gbor, The History of Press in Hungary (Budapest: An edition of the Hungarian Journalist Association Gyrgy
Blint, 1994), 197-198, 204.
to individuals working in agriculture, this had meant a type of person who

recognized the importance of the socialist sector and worked in it, complied with compulsory deliveries, following the example of industrial
workers, took an active part in working competitions, was alerted by the
activities of the enemy and fought it consistently.
Parallel to the national events and following the same pattern, the daily
and weekly newspapers of other parties were terminated one by one.
Consequently, by the summer of 1950, only newspapers of the MDP remained in circulation in every county. The structure of the press of state
power had been complete.25
In order to ensure that the party press acts according to the will of the party,
it was kept under tight political supervision.26 Beyond strict ideological
control, this also included the employment and the training of journalists.
Certainly, there had been no political differences between central and
county newspapers. The task of local newspapers was to present national
party policy through local issues and examples. Party newspapers, every
single copy of them, were regarded as tools of political and economicpolitical propaganda that served, in the words of Lenin, as collective agitators. They expected, thus, the newspapers to transmit party policy
through their articles {} to the working masses, to promote production
and efficiently confront reactionaries.27
25
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 89. cs. 213. . e. Motion on the establishment of independent county daily newspapers and the termination of smallholders newspapers. 14th June 1950. See more in detail: Tth Judit, Establishing the
Structure of Press of the Party State in Pest County, in Halsz Csilla, Tth
Judit (eds.), Studies from the Past of Pest County III, Pest Megye Mltjbl 14
(Budapest: Pest County Archives, 2009).
26
The Central Leadership of the MDP established a special department called the
Press Department with the task of supervising and controlling party newspapers.
It had, however, not been independent for long; in March 1953 it was merged
with the Department for Agitation and Propaganda. From then on, it worked as a
subordinate department with the same task. MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 54. cs. Documents of the Central Leadership of the MDP. 35. . e. 23rd March 1949. County party committees were responsible for the supervision and control of county
party newspapers. MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 55. cs. 80. . e. 15 July 1949.
27
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 89. cs. 213. . e. Motion on the establishment of independent county daily newspapers and the termination of smallholders newspapers. 10 June 1950.
648 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
Consequently, no issue could appear that did not discuss arguments made
by enemies of the state and their destructive efforts. The enemys activity was to be seen and exposed behind every error, failure and problem.
Hence, they used every opportunity to call on people to maintain their
alertness; in fact they expected readers to report sabotages or their exposure themselves. Mobilizing against the enemy had, thus, become an essential task of the press. As a basic expectation, they had to point out the
treacherous methods applied [by the enemy] and, through that, how they
intended to attack democracy.28
As early as from July 1948 on, central and local party newspapers issued
articles on the failures and harmful activities of kulaks, at that time usually named large farmers.29 These kinds of articles did not just describe a
single incident but also published the name of the perpetrator and the
penalty inflicted. In these cases, journalists used police reports and excerpts from court decisions. Beyond humiliating the victim, such articles
clearly served the purpose of deterrence and spreading fear. As a further
common form of humiliation, kulaks were derided and depicted in caricatures with overdrawn features in the party newspaper Szabad Np or
Ludas Matyi, a popular contemporary humor magazine.
The Portrayal of Kulaks in the Caricatures of the Newspaper
Ludas Matyi
The primary role of Ludas Matyi, being a humour magazine, would have
been entertainment and making readers laugh. This, however, was far
from reality. Similarly to the party newspapers mentioned in the previous
chapter, this paper had also been under close supervision by the party and
its content had been heavily influenced by politics.30 Through direct or28
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 89. cs. 213. . e. Aspects to be considered for press in
the countryside 2nd September 1950.
29
Exploitators of the villages against the bread of the country, The alertness of
working peasants exposes the sabotage of the kulaks, Criminal proceedings
started against kulaks committing sabotage, The peoples fist hits the murderous gang of kulaks, Members of the murderous, anti-democratic kulak gang
before a martial court (Headlines from the party newspaper Szabad Np)
30
For more details on the newspaper Ludas Matyi, see: Takcs Rbert, Nevelni s
felkelteni a gylletet, [To Educate and to Incite Hatred] Mdiakutat 1 (2003)
http://www.mediakutato.hu/cikk/2003_01_tavasz/03_nevelni_es_felkelteni
ders concerning the edition of the paper, the communist leadership ensured that cartoons be used for political purposes, exploiting the characteristics of this genre to the full. As they pointed out: The role of Ludas
Matyi is to address in a comprehensible and suggestive way those people
who are not concerned with politics and are not familiar with issues of
internal or foreign policy. It uses the tools of satire, parody and debunking to explain, and in fact, inform them of events of importance: the
plans, the crises, the inner contradictions, the immorality, the decline and
the crookedness of the enemy camp.31
This kind of presentation was easily accessible to everyone, and, hence,
suitable to convey the main political messages even to individuals with little time to read.32This was further supported by the fact that Ludas Matyi
had been the most popular newspaper among all press products in Hungary, reaching a circulation of about half a million with every weekly issue.
The political content behind the depiction of kulaks in Ludas Matyi was
meant to suggest and in fact make readers aware that these farmers were in
every sense obstacles to progress, making them the enemies of not only the
system, but, in fact, the entires ociety. The cartoons making fun of kulaks
had, thus, clearly become tools of mediating the policy of dividing the
peasantry initiated by Lenin. Beyond aiming at pitting small peasants and
the middle peasant class against kulaks, the caricatures had been designed
to incite hatred and in terms of alertness the fight against kulaks.
Farmers who had been branded kulaks were depicted in a uniform fashion
with the same external and internal characteristics. In their portrayal they
relied on the axiom that the kulak was the burgeois of the village. His
income derives from exploitation. They suck the peasants blood through
usury and treacherous trading.33 Fatness, his most conspicious feature,
is also a result of this. It is a symbol of the deeply-rooted notion that large
farmers had thriven through the exploitation and the oppression of the rest
of the peasantry. We must add that this feature marks a clear difference
31
Cite: Takcs Nevelni s felkelteni a gylletet.

there are not many artistic genres that attract such vivd attention in wide
classes of society as caricatures do. Caricatures, with their special drawn, illustrative depictions educate us in an entertaining way. They teach us, they
encourage us to take action, reveal connections that had bee nunrecognized by
science or literature. This is what essentially makes up its significant social
role. Cite: Takcs, Nevelni s felkelteni a gylletet.
33
MNL PML XXXV. 1. 2/102. . e. 10 May 1950.
32
650 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
between large farmers and members of the small and middle class peasantry: the latter are always thin and lean. Further external markers include
a moustache and the inevitable hat and boots.
Based on these features, attributes like the tormentor of servants/peasants
and overbearing became permanent. As a further characteristic, kulaks
had been portrayed as intending to do harm wherever they could: they
were inglorious rogues, spreading destruction and ravage everywhere.34
Also, kulaks were depicted sabotaging wherever they could: they failed to
finish agricultural work on time, to comply with compulsory delivery, or
even if they did, they delivered weevil-eaten grain or rusty fat.35
The figure of the kulak as a scaremonger misleading people with bad advice is a further permanent motive. This was connected to sabotage,
which was thought of as attempting to persuade others not to fulfil their
obligations to the state. As an even more serious offence, though, they
were charged with dissuading small and middle peasants from joining agricultural cooperatives and thereby obstructing collectivization, an essential objective of the system.36
A further recurring topic was the accumulation and hiding of certain
products. In the early 1950s, Hungary was, as it is well known, struck by a
severe crisis of public food supply. Kulaks, among other social groups that
had been declared public enemies were made responsible for these general problems. Even though it is true that in these years, the country was
plagued by droughts, it was clearly the failed policy of the communist
party that had been the main reason for this severe situation. Folowing the
example from the Soviet Union, forced industrialization drew vital revenues from agriculture. Also, a significant proportion of produced goods
were exported in order to finance the import of industrial raw materials.
The severe situation led the Secretariat to issue a statement saying that,
beyond the objective reasons mentioned above, the main cause of the
34
And, with a silent but destructive wotk, they do, in fact, harm, wherever they
can, Szabad Fld, 7 August 1949.
35
In the course of the threshing, we must reckon on the sabotage of the kulaks
Kulaks will do all they can to hinder the successful completion of reaping and
threshing as well as the harvesting of the crops. MNL PML XXXV. 1. 2/103.
. e. 29 May 1951.
36
Kulaks do all they can to mislead working peasantry. MNL PML XXXV. 1.
2/103. . e. 29 May 1951.
difficulties in public food supply were adverse social groups, certainly,

among others, kulaks.37
After having introduced the typical activities and characteristics featured
in cartoons, we must certainly address the naming of kulaks. Being a famous and basic characteristic of kulaks, fatness appeared in the naming,
too. The most common form was Farmer Fatty, but it appeared in other
versions, too, like Mr Fatty, neighbour Fatty or simply the Fatties. In
some cases, there was also a proper name attached to the surname functioning as a speaking name; it was in most cases Pl (Paul) or Jnos
(John). The names were sometimes also alliterative like Kelemen Kulak,
where kulak as a generic term became a proper name. Women were
simply referred to as Mrs Fatty.
These permanent figures were, thus, portrayed in short cartoon stories doing the same behaviours like sabotaging compulsory deliveries or hiding
products in every case. Kulaks were made fun of based on certain features or shortcomings originating from the activities attributed to them.
The intention was to create an immensely antipathic sort of person by
highlighting these external and internal features. This sort of stereotipical
depiction became a commonly used tool of the communist regime to further humiliate, dishonour and ridicule long-suffering farmers.
Considering the thematical variety of caricatures ridiculing kulaks in
Ludas Matyi, we could analyse a great number of illustrations. Within the
framework of the present study, however, it is useful to highlight the
aforementioned characteristic features and activities, since these had been
the topics that most cartoons were born from.
It is also instructive to keep track of the chronology of small changes in
the topics. From as early as 1948 on, one marked type of cartoons was the
one discussing collectivization. The drawings usually portrayed kulaks
agitating against agricultural cooperatives or inflitrating a cooperative
with the evil intention of corrupting it from the inside. We must, however, add that, concerning agricultural cooperatives, the magazine also reserved space for cartoons propagating collectivization.38 In this latter
37
38
MNL OL MK-S 276. f. 54. cs. 413. . e. 20 September 1950.

A fine example of combining the depiction of the kulak engaged in anticooperative propaganda on the one hand, and agitation for the organization of
cooperatives on the other, is the title page of Ludas Matyi issued on 1st September 1950. It portrays a farmer saying the following to a kulak: You, Mr
652 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
kind, kulaks usually appear as figures wishing bad luck for collectivization or worrying about its success.
The period of the cruelist persecution of kulaks, between 1948 and 1952, is
marked not only by the greater number of cartoons in Ludas Matyi, but also the greater variety of topics. These are the pictures featuring all the
commonly known attributes. It is also a true reflection of the accusations
the regime raised against kulaks and the ones it referred to when sentencing
farmers branded kulaks. Consequently, in this period, beside the kulak opposing collectivization it was the figure of the kulak hiding his products,
sabotaging compulsory delivery as well as ploughing, sowing, reaping and
threshing and committing the so-called black slash (slaughtering livestock illegally) that was most frequently portrayed. A recurring motive is
the kulaks nightmare. All that appears in his nightmare is what is coveted, ideal, useful and expected from the perspective of the regime like
properly done reaping, threshing and ground work, farmers fulfilling their
duties with diligence and on time, a rich crop and fortunate weather.
In the beginning it was common to portray kulaks together with priests
who agreed with them on every issue; they were called the reactionary
clergy. In the cartoons they rejoice together when they see the alertness
against the enemy slacken or they are glad to see unfavourable weather or
a bad crop. As a result of the persecution of the clergy and parallel with
the worsening of their situation, however, their portrayal was clearly
pushed back.
As I shall discuss at a later point, as early as in the first half of 1953, the
number of anti-kulak cartoons showed a decrease and at the same time
their subject matter saw a change. Even though we can still encounter kulaks hiding their products and sabotaging compulsory delivery, most cartoons from this period depict kulaks simply as lazy figures putting off
work. Collectivization, the inevitable topic of earlier years, remained, but
the emphasis was no longer on organizing agricultural cooperatives but
on cooperatives functioning in an ideal way as well as showing successful
account discharges. As a prominent feature, they showed livestock that,
unlike their keepers, were fully aware of the obligations toward the state
and usually remind them of these, too. These animals always act according to the expectations of the system, in many cases actually even overfulfilling the standards
Fatty, said that you shall eat your hat, should the number of cooperative
members in the village increase. Well now, enjoy your meal!
While portraying animals this way only became dominant from 1953 on,
we can also encounter recurring animals spanning the entire period that
are certainly, without exception, symbolic figures. The hamster, therefore, stands for kulaks hiding their products, while the croaky crow and
the hooting owl symbolize kulaks prophesizing and wishing others bad as
well as engaged in scaremongering.
The caricatures published in the newspaper Ludas Matyi offer a fitting
opportunity to analyze the conditions of the society as well as the agricultural sector from a number of perspectives. The anti-kulak propaganda is
only one of them, while certainly a very important one. This subject matter was very characteristic for the newspaper. This is why this analysis
offers an insight into the main features of the partys peasant policy. On
the other hand, the changes in the topics chosen and their depiction also
reflect changes in power and policy matters. Also, in an absurd sense, we
can keep track of the functioning mechanisms of a totalitarian system, the
changes in power relations coming from Moscow in the caricatures of
this contemporary humor magazine. Considering chronological aspects,
thus, through the thorough analysis of these caricatures we can follow the
way and the pace with which the editors of the newspaper reacted to the
changes of political processes.
As already mentioned in the first chapter, the speech delivered by Rkosi
on 2nd July 1948 can definitely be considered the starting point of antikulak propaganda. The editors of Ludas Matyi followed suit and, focusing on the subject matter, placed three cartoons depicting kulaks in the
edition of 17th July. We must add, however, that the first portrayal, featuring the trademark characteristics, appeared some six months earlier, in
the edition of 28th January 1948. Nevertheless, the picture of the fat,
paunchy kulak farmer with a big moustache and wearing a hat and boots
only became a regular content of the paper following 17th July. As to the
naming of kulaks we can see that the popular and infamous Farmer
Wealthy and its variants appeared only later. In the early days they were
labelled large farmers or simply kulaks in the pictures.
In the period of the most severe persecution, between 1949 and 1952,
there had hardly been an issue without one or even several cartoons of
kulaks. This frequency fell, however, in the first half of 1953, due to the
political atmosphere that was softening following Stalins death in Hungary, too. In this period, only some two thirds of the issues featured kulaks and usually in only one cartoon.
654 ___________________________________________________ Judit TTH
A significant change in the frequency of the portrayal of kulaks, however,

came about with the political turn connected to Imre Nagy. Following the
June Decree, we can still encounter cartoons depicting kulaks but only
occasionally, some nine times altogether in the second half of the year.
The issue from 30th July 1953 is the last one featuring the individual
name Mr Wealthy. After this, the name kulak only appears as a generic
term. As already mentioned, the June Decree had terminated kulak lists.
The sentence in Mtys Rkosis speech of 11th July, saying that a kulak
remains a kulak even without a list, caused some doubt as to the policy
concerning kulaks. Hence, it was unclear if the former firm hand was in
fact affected by the more moderate policy represented by Imre Nagy.
This hesitant attitude was perceivable not only among the administrative
and jurisdictional staff but also in the editorial office of the paper Ludas
Matyi. As a sign of vague behaviour, they did issue cartoons of kulaks
but usually settled for an unnamed, mere depiction of large farmers. All
this is a sign of a softening of anti-kulak propaganda from the second half
of 1953 on, even though the loyalty to the political power and Rkosis
views was still present. Let us see two clear examples from the paper.
In the above-mentioned speech, Rkosi also says: the horn of the kulaks
has grown. It is our task now to break down their big horns.39 Hence, he
thought that the abolition of kulak lists had boosted their self-confidence.
Following suit, the Ludas Matyi issued a two-image caricature in its edition of 23rd July entitled Illustration to Comrade Rkosis Speech. In the
first picture, two kulaks are walking with large horns, and in the second
they are shown with their horns broken down. Two weeks later, there was a
montage of small images making a stand for Rkosis policy. The longer
text, entitled It is not the list that defines a kulak made this even clearer.
In the following year, cartoons depicting kulaks had practically vanished
from the paper; in 1954, there was actually one single such cartoon in
Ludas Matyi.40 Rkosis position, however, was reinforced by the spring
of 1955. Imre Nagy was dismissed as prime minister and the editors of
the humor magazine had to respond to this change. Following suit, from
10th March 1955 on, anti-kulak propaganda regained ground. By 6th October, 11 cartoons were published in a total number of 10 issues.
39
Mtys Rkosis speech at a party meeting in Budapest on 11th July 1953. In:
Speech delivered by Mtys Rkosi at a party meeting in Budapest on 11th
July 1953, in Rkosi, Vlogatott beszdek s cikkek.
40
Ludas Matyi, 20 May 1954.
In summary, thus, we can say that the anti-kulak propaganda issued in the
paper Ludas Matyi had followed smoothly the twists and turns in political
power between 1948 and 1955. During the premiership of Imre Nagy,
caricatures deriding kulaks fell back or were practically terminated, while
under Rkosis rule before June 1953 as well as after March 1955, they
were prominently featured. The changes in the depiction of kulaks are
proof that the world of humor was deeply affected by the totalitarian system and a strictly ideology-based social criticism as well as the aspects of
shaping public opinion on the basis of political power. Also, an important
representative of the media was compelled to follow the changes of political power within the communist dictatorship with a subservient loyalty.
Refashioning People in Collectivized Countryside: Turks and

Tatars in Dobruja during the 1950s1
Manuela MARIN
Introduction
This paper focuses on the way in which Communist propaganda, represented by the official newspaper of the Constana/Dobruja Regional Party
Committee, Dobrogea Nou [New Dobruja], fashioned, in the case of the
ethnic Turkish and Tatar population, a new social and ethnic identity befitting the social, economic and political context of the 1950s.
I will resort to a qualitative analysis of press articles, as well as to Paul
Ricoeurs concept of narrative identity2, in order to show how the new
identity construction promoted by the communist state for the Turkish
and Tatar minorities made use of their active involvement in the socialist
transformation of agriculture. In this context, identity emerges as discursively constructed through communist propaganda (in this case, the print
media, represented by the local newspaper Dobrogea Nou), and implicitly as a reflection of the prescriptions of the official ideology. Thus,
identity construction implies a process by which identity is imposed.3
At the same time, according to Judith Butler, identity is performative, in
the sense that it is constructed through discourse. This discourse permanently reinforces certain norms or sets of norms, which thus acquire a key
role in identity definition.4
By propaganda I understand a structured and deliberate process of communicating certain ideas and values. Its purpose is to persuade people to
1
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PNII-RU-TE-2012-3-0077.
2
Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1992), 113-168.
3
Clin Morar-Vulcu, Republica i construiete oamenii. Construcia identitilor politice n discursul oficial n Romnia, 1948-1965 [The Republic
Constructs Its People. The Construction of Political Identities in Official Discourse in Romania, 1948-1965] (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Eikon, 2007), 45.
4
Brian Longhurst, Greg Smith, Gaynor Bagnall, Garry Crawford, Miles Ogborn,
Elaine Baldwin, Scott McCracken, Introducing Cultural Studies, Second Edition (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2008), 133, 142.
Refashioning People in Collectivized Countryside: Turks and Tatars... _____ 657
think and act in a certain way, meant to ensure the achievement of certain
specific objectives that benefit the organizers of the process.5 Thus, I consider communist propaganda to be a means of mass education, constituting what Katherine Verdery and Gail Kligman refer to as the pedagogy of
power. In order for propaganda to reach its educational aim, a new common language must be created in order to describe, define and include into a new category system both the individuals and their everyday
realities. For this classification system to become functional, a policy of
differentiation is necessary in order to identify, from an ideological point
of view, the attributes and actions valued positively or negatively within
the new socialist moral system.6
In the context of this study, the publication Dobrogea Nou represents an
instrument of party propaganda that ensures the transmission of the discourse meant to inscribe individuals and their everyday experiences within a new classification system, and which I will analyse in connection
with the theme of the identity construction prescribed for the Turkish and
Tatar minorities by the Romanian communist regime. As I will show in
the course of this paper, press articles identified human models from
among the members of the two ethnic minorities. Although their evolution was exemplary, these were accessible characters, with whom both
ethnic Turk and Tatar and Romanian readers could identify. In this context, the articles that appeared in Dobrogea Nou suggested, by the examples they offered, that integration into the new socialist society, by
taking on ideologically sanctioned social and professional roles, could
transform the way in which the individual positioned him-/herself and
was positioned within the social context.
At the same time, the way in which the model of the ethnic Turkish and
Tatar socialist new man was represented in discourse was also the result
of a policy of differentiation. In this respect, in the course of my analysis I
will show that the distinction between categories of individuals, valued or
not valued by the Party, resulted in a reversal of the social order that
characterized the old bourgeois-landlord regime. This change allowed
5
Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind. A History of Propaganda from the

Ancient World to the Present Day (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2003), 6.
Gail Kligman, Katherine Verdery, Peasants under Siege, The Collectivization
of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2011), 211, 215-218.
658 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
the members of the Turkish and Tatar minorities to take on new ideologically sanctioned and valued types of social roles, which placed them in
the foreground of social life and became defining in their identification
within the community they belonged to.
In the context of the present paper, social identity refers to the way in
which the individual positions him-/herself and is positioned by the party
propaganda discourse within a certain context or social group. This identification derives from taking on a professional role that bestows upon the
individual or individuals in question a certain social status and places
him/her within a certain social class. At the same time, I will argue that
the participation of ethnic Turks and Tatars in the collectivization of agriculture also redefined their social identity from another perspective,
namely that of consumption. Consumption involves a series of actions
connected with the identification, procurement, distribution and even
production of goods and services, regardless of whether they are destined
to be eaten, used or experienced.7 Another concept needed within my
analysis is Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwoods concept of marking
services. It underlines the social character of goods, which are used in order to mark solidarity, exclusion and differentiation.8 Thus, as I will show
in the second part of the paper, the participation of ethnic Turks and Tatars in the collectivization of agriculture granted them the same access to
the available consumption goods as the Romanian majority. This supposedly contributed to the redefinition of their social identity and to the way
in which they were perceived within their local community. In other
words, the access of the Turkish and Tatar population to the material welfare generated by their participation in collective farms ensured, according to party propaganda, their integration on equal terms with the
Romanian population. Thus, they not only considered themselves to be
equal, but were accepted as such by the Romanians with whom they coexisted in rural Dobruja.
7
Paulina Bren, Mary Neuburger, Introduction, in Communism Unwrapped.

Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, eds. Paulina Bren, Mary Neuburger
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5.
8
Mary Douglas, Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption, Routledge, London cited in Brenda Luthar, Shame, Desire and Longing for the West, in Remembering Utopia: The Culture of
Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia, eds. Breda Luthar, Marua Punik
(Washington DC: New Academia Publishing, 2010), 346.
For the purpose of the present study, ethnic identity is, in its turn, discursively constructed, and marks an individuals belonging to and identification with a certain ethnic group. As I will show in the course of the paper,
although recognized and used as such in the articles published by Dobrogea Nou, the Turks and Tatars ethnic identity only functioned as a general reference point, whose role was to confirm the fact that the Romanian
state granted its national minorities equal rights to those of the Romanian
majority.
The aims of my analysis are twofold. Since the great majority of the
Turkish and Tatar population was concentrated in rural areas, while the
collectivization of agriculture represented one of the main preoccupations
of the communist regime in the 1950, the first part of the paper will show
the way in which the articles published by Dobrogea Nou connected the
issue of the socialist transformation of agriculture to the overturning of
the old bourgeois-landlord social order. In connection with this issue,
the latter part of the paper will document the newspapers attempt to
show how the voluntary participation of the Turkish and Tatar population
in the collectivization of agriculture bestowed a new social role upon
them and, implicitly, a new social identity, in accord with the Romanian
social and political context of the 1950s. Along the same lines, I will also
show that the broad access to education and consumption goods that the
communist regime granted to all its citizens, regardless of nationality,
contributed, in its turn, to the redefinition of the Turks and Tatars social
identity.
Abduraman Abdurain understood...9
A significant part of the articles published by Dobrogea Nou deal with
the issue of the collectivization of agriculture and the way in which it radically changed the life of those who lived in the Constana/Dobruja region. Written either as features or as correspondence pieces sent to the
newspaper, the articles by or about various representatives of the Turkish
and Tatar minorities in Dobruja followed the same interpretive pattern,
contrasting a gloomy not very remote past with the happy and plentiful
present as members of the collective farm. For those involved, this
change did not only involve access to the material welfare offered by the
9
Petre Zrnescu, Abduraman Abduraim a neles, [Abduraman Abdurain

understood...] Dobrogea Nou, 6 December 1955, 2.
660 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
socialist organisation of work in agriculture, but also a radical change in

their social status.
Seen from the perspective of the schema10 of class struggle, this evolution
resulted in the overturning of the social order of the old bourgeoislandlord regime. Thus, the establishment of the Romanian communist
regime created the conditions in which the ethnic Turks and Tatars could
take on new ideologically sanctioned and valued social roles, which became defining for their identification within the community they belonged
to. However, according to communist propaganda, performing such roles,
which place the formerly socially disadvantaged individuals in the position
of winners of the new social order, was only possible once the Communist Party had acceded to power. Justified by the ideological objective of
creating a better and more just world, the implementation of the Partys
program in the agricultural sector involved not only an agrarian reform in
favour of the great majority of the peasants, but also the beginning of the
social marginalization of the former local and landowning elites.
Having become the main target of the class conflict in rural areas, in
which the party engaged alongside the broad masses of peasants, the former landowners were demonized in the articles published in Dobrogea
Nou not only for their earlier exploitation of the working peasantry, but
also for their so-called involvement, alongside the imperialist forces hostile to the Eastern bloc, in undermining the communist regime and its
plans for the socialist transformation of agriculture. Such a hostile or
inimical attitude was motivated by the publication in question, in line
with Marxist-Leninist ideology, by the desire of the former landowners to
regain the social and political position they had previously held, and
which was a consequence of their economic position. Following this line of
reasoning, the marginalization of the representatives of the old regime was
justified by social and economic as well as political considerations. From
this perspective, their central social role was also successfully adopted as a
convincing example of the just nature of the new socialist order by those
who had been exploited and who had consequently been pushed to the
10
Schemata are akin to media packages or frames, that is, combinations of

metaphors, examples, slogans, and visual materials writers use to shape diverse but related information, in Jeffrey Brooks, Thank you, comrade Stalin!
Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 21.
margins of society. Moreover, in order to confirm the legitimacy and

fairness of the partys politics towards the co-existing nationalities, the
articles in Dobrogea Nou emphasized the fact that the social marginalization of the Turkish and Tatar minorities during the old regime was also
motivated by considerations of ethnicity.
The articles published in Dobrogea Nou aimed to recount as convincingly as possible the experience of a history of exploitation and, at the
same time, to highlight the major impact of the establishment of the Romanian communist regime and its policies of socialist transformation of
agriculture upon the everyday life of Turks and Tatars in rural Dobruja.
To that end, they printed, sometimes in the first person, the accounts of
those in whose case the political changes that took place at the end of
World War II supposedly put an end to the hardships and the regime of
exploitation their former landlords had subjected them to.
The common point of these bitter memories was recalling violence, but
also the absurd forms of exploitation that a significant part of the Turkish
and Tatar population had fallen victim to at various points in their lives.
In this context, I must note that the characters cast in the role of exploiters
were identified, without discrimination, both among the members of the
two minorities and the Romanian population.
In a dialogue recounted by a Dobrogea Nou journalist, the president of
the Amzacea collective farm, Abduraman Abduraim, remembered his life
before the onset of the Romanian communist regime as follows:
In the village, I knew only one landowner, Iuseim Bilal, the kulak, I too
worked for him as a farm hand for several years. The rest of the land belonged to the landowners Androne, Brtucu, Drgulinescu and Boncot.
We, the whole village, around 100 families, were their farm hands. All
our belongings, our palms and our clay hut. Dues, forced labour from
dawn till dusk, winter and summer, and, with the permission of the landlords, of Bilal, the kulak where wed been starving for years, we could
clean ourselves up for one hour a week. [] Not to mention the other
torments. The stewards whip and punches, the masters curses, were the
same everywhere. For the same Abduraman Abduraim, life during the
former regime meant extreme exploitation, squalor and poverty: The
years passed more slowly, or faster, but none of them was better than the
other. [] Life continued to be hard on him. He changed landlords, he
662 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
embraced a trade, but the trauma of poverty was not something he could
patch up. The patches were too small, and he didnt have the skill. 11
What is more, the articles published in Dobrogea Nou pointed out that
this economically grounded social marginality was often seconded, in the
case of the Turkish and Tatar minorities, by marginalisation on ethnic
grounds. Thus, to Curt Omer Abibula, social disrespect was even more
cruel because he carried the sin of being a Tatar on his shoulders.12
Gevrie Memet, the secretary of the Medgidia Regional Womens Committee, was of the same opinion, stating that Before, we were twice persecuted, first because we were poor and then because we were Turks.13
Due to the fact that after 1948 religion had been the target of the new political regimes atheist policy, but especially since Islam represented a
core element in the lives of the ethnic Turks and Tatars of Dobruja, some
of the articles published by Dobrogea Nou identified or associated the
Muslim religion with the exploitation characteristic of the old bourgeoislandlord regime. In connection with this issue, two major themes recur in
the articles published in the Dobruja regional newspaper. The first singled
out the Muslim religious servant (the imam) as the exploiter of the masses, who used religion and the moral authority bestowed upon him by his
function in order to enhance his exploitation powers. The second denounced the message of passivity, of resignation in face of the immutability of the destiny supposedly delivered by religion, and which the
representatives of the old regime allegedly used in order to consolidate
and maintain their exploitation. This mentality was said to have contributed to the preservation of the social and political status quo, since the
complete fulfilment of the individual by transcending his condition was a
goal that could only be attained in the afterlife.
The village of Curcanul in Constanta county was ruled and terrorized
by Rustem Suna, an old imam. By using the ignorance of his congregation, but especially the moral prestige he enjoyed among them, Rustem
Suna had brainwashed the Turkish population with stories about his holiness because in this way he could exploit them at his convenience.
11
i la Amzacea i-a fcut sla belugul, [Amzacea Is a Land of Plenty] Dobrogea Nou, 22 February 1959, 2.
12
Munca i viaa aceluiai om, [The Work and Life of the Same Man] Dobrogea Nou, 24 April 1955, 5.
13
Voteaz alegtorii de naionalitate turco-ttar, [The Ethnic Turkish-Tatar
Electors are Voting] Dobrogea Nou, 4 March 1958, 1.
The pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the main religious obligations for any
Muslim, which attracted upon the pilgrim the respect of the community
he belonged to, allegedly resulted in extra income for the imam, because
it was from there that the imam brought new methods of exploitation
and plundering, and it was at the holy places [that] he learned the
school of the Easts feudal exploitation. Thus, the hardworking Turkish
and Romanian ploughmen became more and more humble, more heavyshouldered and down-trodden by oppression and by cruelty.14
Because sometimes the reality of the poverty and abuse inflicted by the
former landlords was hard to understand, especially for ethnic Turkish
and Tatar children, the family resorted to the argument of religion in order to explain the situation to them and to urge them to resign themselves
to their destiny: This was Allahs will, or at least this is what is mother
had kept telling him ever since he had been a little child: Its Allahs will
that there should be beys and poor folks like us Abduraim!, he was often told in his mother tongue.15
Although there seemed to be no way out of the difficult situation they
were in, some of the oppressed ones thought or dreamed of the fact that
things would change in the future. Almost prophetic, the lines va veni
i vremea mea/S-i pun fru i-n spate a [One day itll be my turn /To
put a rein and saddle on you] appeased Abduraman Abduraims sorrow
and alleviated the pain caused by Imam beys beatings, even if, since
he was only a child, he didnt quite understand what it meant.16 In his
turn, the peasant Ilias Gazi bravely withstood the poverty and injustice
inflicted on him by the few whose gold and riches were amassed by the
sweat of those who toiled, because he knew that the time would come
when the working peasant, taking his fate into his own hands, would
forge for himself a happy life, in which, together with the workers in
mills and factories, he will walk proud, serene, tough and unforgiving
towards those who are enemies of the working peoples happiness.17
14
Fostul moier Rustem Hagi Suna, satrap al plugrimii muncitoare din Curcanul, [The Former Landlord Rustem Hagi Suna, Tyrant of the Working
Ploughmen in Curcanul] Dobrogea Nou, 17 March 1949, 5.
15
Petre Zrnescu, Abduraman Abduraim a neles, [Abduraman Abduraim
understood] Dobrogea Nou, 6 December 1955, 2.
16
Zrnescu, Abduraman Abduraim a neles, 2.
17
Traian Satcu, Ilias Gazi e din zi n zi mai fericit, [Ilias Gazi is Happier Every Day] Dobrogea Nou, 3 November 1951, 2.
664 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
The times that all those who did not belong to the privileged categories of
the old regime had been yearning for arrived once the country was freed
[] by the glorious Soviet Army.18 This was when Curt Omer Abibulas
eyes cleared of the bitter tears, and alongside other oppressed peasants he
started to hum, together with the workers in the cities, the song that resounded more and more loudly across our homeland: Arise ye workers
from your slumbers.19 And this was also when Abduraman Abduraim not
only understood the significance, but also became a witness and participant
in making real the song he once used to sing in his moments of despair.20
The agrarian reform of 1945, and particularly joining the collective farm
were singled out in the accounts printed by Dobrogea Nou as the moment when a new life began for the ethnic Turkish and Tatar peasants, a
moment that, through its immediate consequences, changed their existence for the better once and for all:
But our actual new life began with the collective farm. Since 1952,
weve become the true masters of our land, weve reaped the fruits of our
own work. The Party lifted the fog from our minds, first ours, who had
joined it, and then the whole village followed us. [] Some were hesitant, they had doubts about us. But, year after year, the collective farm
proved itself. People began to understand its purpose []. Now our village also leads a life of plenty.21
These wonderful people () are also different22
As mentioned earlier, the ethnic Turks and Tatars participation in the
collectivization of agriculture redefined their social identity from two different perspectives. The first concerns the roles they performed in organising and carrying out the work in the collective farm, roles which,
according to the official rhetoric, changed the position they placed themselves in and in which they were placed within the local social sphere.
18
Satcu, Ilias Gazi e din zi n zi mai fericit, 2.

20
21
i la Amzacea i-a fcut sla belugul, [Amzacea Is a Land of Plenty] Dobrogea Nou, 22 February 1959, 2.
22
Fiul colectivitilor, [The Son of the Collective Farmers] Dobrogea Nou, 22
February 1959, 2.
19
This (self-)positioning epitomized the upturning of the old social order

and promoted the merit-based recognition of individuals who, regardless
of their nationality, managed to contribute to the significant changes
brought about by the establishment of the communist regime in Romania.
The second perspective concentrates on the issue of consumption and the
way in which the access of the Tatar and Turkish population to the welfare generated by work in the collective farm redefined their social identity, but also the nature of their relationship with the Romanian majority.
Thus, the articles published by Dobrogea Nou reported on the way in
which the work of the ethnic Turks and Tatars within the collective farm
changed their perception about themselves, but also the way in which
they were perceived by the Romanian population. In this context, I must
mention that the entire official discourse emphasized the peaceful coexistence between Romanians and the other national minorities in Dobruja, even in places where the latter represented the majority:
Here, in Independena commune, there are Romanians and Tatars who
live, contemplate the future, share the same joy. Equals in both rights and
duties, joint owners of the land in the collective farm and the comradeships,
the Romanian and Tatar working peasants contribute to the flourishing of
their villages. Together, they have their say in matters concerning the administration of the commune.23
Having attended an informal meeting of the Cobadin collective farmers,
the author of the article describes not only their attitude towards Abduraman Abduraim, but also the way in which his behaviour and his attitude
suggested that he was aware of the social prestige he enjoyed among the
people in his village, among whom, naturally, there were also Romanians. When asked about a problem that had occurred in the activity of the
collective farm, Abduraman Abduraim rose from the couch and, wading
through the sleet with his boots, strode towards them. The collective
farmers respect him. No sooner had he approached them than some of
them already made room for him in their group. How could they not respect him? He is the farms builder bricklayer. After all, he is no longer
a mere Turk, but a leading collective farmer. It is his work and the
work of several others to which they owe the three stables and the two
23
Romnii i ttarii laolalt, [Romanians and Tatars Together] Dobrogea

Nou, 27 March 1956, 3.
666 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
large concrete storehouses, the winter stables, the poultry farms, the sow
maternity, the two barns and other annexes.24
For those who lived in the villages of Valu Traian and Valea Seac,
brought together in one collective farm, Abib Bechir was not only the
president of the farm, but also all collective farmers friend, adviser, and
genuine brother. Because he was permanently preoccupied with the
economic and organisational consolidation of the collective farm and
improving the collective farmers standards of living, they elected him
as their leader for many years.25
Muslim Ablachim was nominated as a candidate for the elections for
deputies in the peoples councils by the working peasants of Basarabi
commune. This was in recognition of his activity within the collective
farm, where you can see him working enthusiastically and where, as
chief of the leading brigade, he made sure that the members of the brigade come to work regularly, and the work is done thoroughly and carefully. Moreover, using his prestige among the villagers, he persuaded
() the working peasants Zachir Casm, Izet Amet, Mihai Taseglu,
Deulet Suliman, and Suim Samadin to join the collective farm.26
At the same time, the change of the way in which the ethnic Turks and
Tatars situated themselves and were perceived within a certain local social context was also related to the results of the work they performed
within the collective farm. Thus, Dobrogea Nou reported the cases of
leading workers belonging to the two minorities, and the way in which
their activity triggered a reconfiguration of their status and their social
identity.
Calil Beget became a sort of celebrity in his natal village of Valea
Neagr, not merely as a result of his efforts to improve himself intellectually and professionally, but especially due to the enthusiasm and dedication with which he worked in the local collective farm. When asked by
the Dobrogea Nou reporter why Calil Beget [was] a worthy and skilful
man, the Valea Neagr villagers accounted for the source of his social
prestige from different perspectives:
24

Abib Bechir - preedintele, [Abib Bechir - The President] Dobrogea Nou,
10 August 1959, 2.
26
I.P., Colectivistul Muslim Ablachim, [Collective Farmer Muslim Ablachim]
Dobrogea Nou, 30 November 1950, 2.
25
Some say this is why Calil Beget is good at working in the fields, because he reads books on farming, and he reads books because theres a
home library at his house. Others say that the young like him so much because he has a way with words and knows how to get close to them.
There are some who also say hes so talented that hes always on stage,
he plays a part in all the groups.27
In other cases, such social recognition was officially confirmed. For example, at a meeting of the nfrirea collective farm in Topraisar, leading farm worker diplomas were handed out, after which words of praise
were directed to several worker peasants who were commended, among
whom Gafar Chemal, Lungu Gheorghe, Dinca Sava, Calila Iliaz and others. The deserving ones were also warmly congratulated by the pioneers
of Unit No. 39 of the 7-grade Romanian school in the village, as well as
by the citizens present in the hall.28
Those who ensured the operation of machinery at collective farms enjoyed similar prestige deriving from their hard work. This was the case of
the machine operator and party candidate Kenan Burmanbet from the collective farm in the village of Moneni, Negru Vod district, a characteristic Tatar face (), ebony-coloured hair, hard to hold back under the
workers cap, which is pushed back towards the nape of the neck, so that
it doesnt limit the horizons, [and which] reminds of Ostrovskis heroes
from How the Steel Was Tempered. He had had an unhappy childhood:
a hungry child wearing a torn shirt was playing fearfully in the shade of
the walls, over 2 m tall, with which lady Rdulescu, owner of 1,500 hectares, had surrounded her mansion, building a new Chinese wall. After
23 August 1944, these Chinese walls were demolished, and Kenan
Burmanbet treads on them free and unhindered, knowing he is their rightful owner. For all these reasons and for many others, party candidate Kenan Burmanbet, wearer of the leading machine operator badge, gave his
combine a part of his own soul. This explained why in his hands, the
combine pressed its limits and he broke record after record in harvesting
crops. The author of the article noted that Kenan Burmanbets successes, as
well as the exceptional enthusiasm with which he worked on harvesting
27
M. Dabila, De ce Calil Beget e om vrednic i priceput, [Why Calil Beget Is a

Worthy and Capable Man] Dobrogea Nou, 14 April 1961, 2.
28
Abibula Servet, n consftuirea popular de la cminul cultural, [During the
Popular Meeting at the Community Centre] Dobrogea Nou, 27 October 1954, 3.
668 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
wheat, led to social recognition among the members of the collective

farm, who know that he is the machine operator who goes on all day
long, without breaking down; that in the morning he is the first on the
threshing ground, and in the evening he is the last one to leave, when the
crickets begin to sharpen their lutes, and the golden steppe quivers with
sounds and whispers, trembling with song and mystery.29
Like Kenan Burmanbet, chief farming engineer Osman Besin at the MTS
(Machine and Tractor Station) in Castelu represented the category of new
people, young people raised by the party who, once they had learned
their trade, devoted themselves successfully and enthusiastically to their
work. Although almost all collective farm presidents called him by the
term of endearment our boy, Osman Besin scolds them when they fail
to deal with a task with proper care. At the same time, he dedicated part
of his free time to talking to the machine operators clarifying various
production or agro-technological issues. The Dobrogea Nou article also
mentioned an event that took place in the summer of 1958 which, in the
authors view, demonstrated as clearly as possible the regard and trust
which the farming engineer in chief at Castelu MTS enjoyed in all neighbouring villages. One of the Castelu tractor drivers, Traian Ragamentu,
a rather restless character, left his workplace and the house where he
lived. Asked by his father to bring him back on the right track, Osman
Besin, like an elder brother, looked for Traian and persuaded him not
only to come back, but also to become one of the most hard working
tractor drivers.30
At the same time, a series of articles published in Dobrogea Nou
showed how work in collective farms changed the social position and
identity of Turkish and Tatar women. This was the case of Afizea Osman,
of Raritea village, Adamclisi district, Constana region. The memory of
the years when she was a servant made her work zealously, and she became known in the collective farm as Afizea the foremost worker. In
recognition of her merits, the management made her a team leader, and,
in turn, this team ranked first in the competitions organized within the
collective farm. Afizea Osman's team also stood out by its participation in
various public activities such as cleaning and repairing the school premises,
29
30
tefan Cimaru, Kenan Burmanbet, Dobrogea Nou, 24 July 1959, 2.

February 1959, 2.
planting trees or clearing new land. As a culmination of her work for the
prosperity of the collective [...] farm, the members of the party organization decided to accept Afizea Osman as a party candidate.31At the same
time, Dobrogea nou periodically published a wall of honour of the
foremost workers in the agricultural sector. These foremost workers also
included ethnic Turkish and Tatar women who had stood out in their collective farm with a record number of work days performed (such as Sanie
Suliman, a collective farmer at Flacra agricultural collective farm, Mereni commune32).
The participation of ethnic Turks and Tatars in the collectivization of agriculture also redefined their social identity from another perspective, that
of consumption. Thus, a series of articles published in Dobrogea Nou in
the latter half of the 1950s recorded the signs of the good life enjoyed by
all collective farmers, regardless of nationality.33 As shown above, the
fact that the ethnic Turks and Tatars had access to the socialist welfare
ensured, according to party propaganda, their integration as equals within
31
32
33
Petcu Petre, efa de echip Afizea Osman este femeie, [The Team Leader
Afizea Osman Is a Woman] Dobrogea nou, 19 December 1959, 2.
Colectiviste fruntae, [Leading Collective Farmers] in Dobrogea nou, 30
December 1951, 3.
It is not by chance that material welfare and consumption began to emerge as
favourite topics of the press articles analysed in the latter half of the 1950s.
There are two main explanations for this phenomenon. According to party
propaganda, the completion of the collectivization of agriculture in the Constana district, in 1957, meant that the good economic results needed to be
documented, as well as the positive changes supposedly generated by this process in the lives of the collective farmers. At the same time, this editorial
choice reflected the social and economic situation in the country at the time.
Thus, in order to avoid the occurrence in Romania of events similar to those
that had taken place in Hungary and Poland in 1956, the party leadership
raised the living standards of the population by raising income, and by increasing the number and variety of available consumption goods. See in this respect
Mara Mrginean, Spaiu public, spaiu privat. Experiene cotidiene n centrele
siderurgice ale regiunii Hunedoara, 1945-1968, [Public Space, Private Space.
Every Day Experience in Siderurgical Centers of Hunedoara Region] in ntre
transformare i adaptare. Avataruri ale cotidianului n regimul comunist din
Romnia [Between Transformation and Adaptation. Avatars of Daily Life
During the Communist Regime in Romania], eds. Luciana M. Jinga, tefan
Bosomitu (Iai: Polirom, 2013), 45-74.
670 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
the Romanian population. Thus, they not only considered themselves

equals, but supposedly were accepted as such by the Romanians with
whom they co-existed in rural Dobruja.
Along these lines, some articles in Dobrogea Nou recorded the achievements of collective farms in which Romanians, Turks, Tatars [] now
live a decent, increasingly abundant life.34 One such example was that of
the collective farm in the commune of Topraisar, suggestively named
nfrirea [Comradeship/Brotherhood], where, alongside Romanians, the
58 Tatar families had become, due to the results obtained thanks to the
Partys care and its policy of supporting the working peasantry, deeply
convinced that socialist work [would] ensure them a happy future.35
What is more, the articles in Dobrogea Nou highlighted on several occasions, sometimes by using the accounts of those in question, the way in
which the Turkish and Tatar peasants living standards increased as a result
to their joining the collective farm in their native place. Thus, in the place
of huts at whose windows frogs could knock with their paws [] new
houses began to emerge, built with the help of the state.36 One of Dobrogea Nous volunteer correspondents, Abdula Aidar, cited figures to describe the new life, which the inhabitants of Hagieni village, Negru Vod
district, led as a result of working at the collective farm: out of 80 families,
72 had supposedly built new houses, 20 families had bought folk furniture
from the consumer cooperative, another 12 families bought radios, 8 got
sewing machines, 25 young collective farmers now own bicycles, while
another 16 own watches.37
In addition to such general articles which recorded the signs of material
welfare in the lives of collective farmers in various rural places in Dobruja, the newspaper Dobrogea Nou also published texts that described the
concrete ways in which the fact that certain ethnic Turks or Tatars joined
the collective farm changed her everyday lives for the better. One of these
34
Via nou, [New Life] Dobrogea Nou, 4 February 1958, 3.

Traian Satcu, Se schimb viaa ranilor muncitori romni i ttari din gospodria colectiv nfrirea, [The Changing Life of Romanian and Tatar
Worker Peasants at the Brotherhood Collective Farm] Dobrogea Nou, 26
March 1951, 2.
36
10 August 1959, 2.
37
N.C., Abdula Aidar i alii din Hagieni, [Abdula Aidar and Other People of
Hagieni] Dobrogea Nou, 28 March 1959, 4.
35
is the feature on Regep Schender published by one of the newspapers reporters. What set him apart among the numerous collective farmers who
displayed the material welfare acquired by working at the farm was the
fact that he owned a brand new Java motorcycle. The motorcycle was not
the only sign of material welfare in the life of collective farmer Regep
Schender. As the journalist noticed during a visit to his home, old Regep used his wages and the money resulted from selling the produce he
had got in exchange for working at the collective farm to reconstruct and
furnish his house in order to accommodate his extended family. Afterwards, he purchased for his home the goods that at the time represented
the supreme luxury in terms of household furnishings, namely a radio38
and a sewing machine.39
Another example was that of collective farmer Curt Omer Abibula. With
his earnings from the collective farm, he built a new house, then erected
another one for one of his sons, bought a radio, luxury furniture, a sewing
machine and many other things that he hadnt even dared to dream about
in the past. However, this was not an isolated case, because there are
quite a few worker farmers like him in Silitea. () collective farmers
are better dressed, eat much better than in the past, there is abundance in
their homes.40 What is more, comparing his life before 1945 to the life
after joining the collective farm, the same Curt Omer Abibula is no
longer ashamed of his children, as he was in the past, but on the contrary
he is proud, since in front of them shines the bright future bestowed upon
them by the great parent the party.41
The articles published in Dobrogea Nou suggested that the ethnic Turks
and Tatars access to education also contributed to the redefinition of
their social identity. In this context, the term education has two distinct
38
In the late 1950s, a Pionier radio cost 400 lei, a Soviet-made radio (Riga) cost
1,600, while a German radio could be purchased with 4,000 lei. See OSA Archivum, HU OSA 300-60-1 Box 55 Communications: Radio 1955-1956 (I am
grateful to my colleague Mara Mrginean for kindly providing this information). At the same time, the net average national salary varied between 400
lei in 1956 and 750 lei in 1959. For more information on this subject, see
Marginean, Spaiu public, spaiu privat, 55.
39
G. Mihescu, Viaa nou n GAC. Jawa lui Regep, [New Life at the Collective Farm. Regeps Jawa] Dobrogea Nou, 30 August 1958, 3.
40
Via nou, [New Life] Dobrogea Nou, 4 February 1958, 3.
41
672 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
meanings. The first refers to the process that took place within the national education system and whose beneficiaries were primarily the schoolage members of the two minority groups. The second connects education
to eliminating illiteracy and acquiring professional skills suited to the requirements of the Romanian communist regimes economic policies.
The access to education of the Turkish and Tatar populations was presented in the articles that appeared in the Dobruja party daily as only one
of the many consequences of the Romanian states policy of granting
equal rights to all its citizens, regardless of nationality. Thus, in addition
to a series of articles that painted a general picture of the development of
Turkish and Tatar language education,42 Dobrogea Nou illustrated, with
concrete examples, the way in which access to education completely
changed the lives of several members of the two national minorities.
For Memet O. Seit of Hagieni village, attending the literacy school meant
not only acquiring specific competences, but also the beginning of his career as a voluntary correspondent. His first article printed in 1949 in the
newspaper Dobrogea Nou had a great impact in Hagieni village,
which encouraged him not only to continue sending in correspondences,
but also to improve himself in order to live up to the importance of his
task. In his own words: I am proud to be a volunteer correspondent for
our party press, to join, with the weapon of my writing, in the struggle for
the construction of socialism in our country. This gives me new strength
to work and provides me a further impetus to fight with even more determination for the accomplishment of this great task.43
42
See Irian Fauzi, Rezoluia Biroului Politic al Comitetului Central al Partidului

Muncitoresc Romn, [The Resolution of the Political Bureau of the Central
Committee of the Romanian Workers Party] Dobrogea Nou, 3 February
1949, 1, 3; Emilian Satmari, Hussein Mujdaba, n spiritul liniei trasate de
Partid, prin reforma nvmntului. n oraul i judeul Constana au luat fiin un numr de 66 de coli de limb ttar, [In the Spirit of the Partys Directives, Doing Education Reform. In the City and County of Constana, 66
Tatar Language Schools Have Been Opened] Dobrogea Nou, 24 October
1949, 1; Ana Foleteanu, Deplina egalitate n drepturi a minoritilor
naionale din RPR, [The Fully Equal Rights of National Minorities in the
Popular Republic of Romania] Dobrogea Nou, 7 September 1952, 2; Mutalp
Sagit, nvmntul la colile turco-ttare din regiunea noastr, [Education in
the Turkish-Tatar Schools in Our Region] Dobrogea Nou, 7 October 1960, 2.
43
Memet O. Seit, Din viaa i activitatea mea de correspondent, [From My
Life and Experience as a Correspondent] Dobrogea Nou, 5 May 1955, 2.
After attending a literacy school, Agi Mambet Pachize, a collective

farmer at Izvoru Mare GAC, also became volunteer correspondent of the
newspaper with a rich balance of success in fulfilling her mission of
honour and trust as servant of the truth.44
The same message of personal improvement by education lies at the core
of the life story of Abib Bechir, the president of the collective farm in the
commune of Valu Traian. Because before the liberation of the country
he knew only how to sign his name and count his work days, and although he was over 50 years old, the Party sent him to do advanced studies. Thus, Abib Bechir became an agricultural engineer. Due to the
knowledge he had acquired, but especially in recognition of the importance of his work, he was re-elected, for several years in a row, as a
leader of the collective farm at Valu Traian.45
The case of chief agricultural engineer Osman Besin of Castelu MTS is
relevant for the way in which access to education changed not only the
destiny of a young man, but also his social status. From a poor peasant
family of Basarabi, he went, together with his brother, to the technical agricultural school in his native town. Later, encouraged by the party organisation in the collective farms where they worked, the two brothers
successfully sat the entrance examination for the distance learning degree
of the Faculty of Agriculture in Bucharest. Due to the help received
from the party and the state [] which provided them with the necessary
conditions to accomplish their dream, they graduated from university
and were assigned as agricultural engineers to various collective farms in
Dobruja. Osman Besin eventually reached the Castelu MTS, where, as
shown above, he was respected and appreciated by those he worked
with.46
Also, the articles published in Dobrogea nou mentioned that women's
access to education significantly improved the quality of their work. This
brought them social recognition as they managed to surpass all expectations and achieved record productions. In this respect, one of the articles
44
Corespondeni fruntai [Leading Correspondents], Dobrogea nou, 5 May

1959, 1.
45
10 August 1959, 2.
46
February 1959, 2.
674 _______________________________________________ Manuela MARIN
described how, by acquiring knowledge on cattle breeding and keeping, a

group of female workers from the livestock department of the Ttaru collective farm unit managed to increase their labour productivity. In order
to raise the level of professional education of newly promoted women
in the animal husbandry sector, the activists of the women's committee
organized a mobile library in the very cow barn. Seeing that the women
did not show any interest in reading certain specialist literature, the same
activists organized collective presentations of a few brochures. This
strategy yielded results because:
Discovering that, by learning from brochures, they can better keep the
cows and obtain an increasingly higher milk production, some women,
including Geta Glicel, Leana Snagov and Feride Mustafa, started to borrow brochures in order to read them in their spare time. As they acquired
more and more knowledge from those books, these women's standards
regarding the quality of their own work began to rise. They proposed to
discuss the issue of some cattle keepers who came late to work or who
didn't perform quality jobs. The article showed, with concrete examples,
how these women's labour productivity was influenced by raising their
level of professional education and how their industrious work brought
them social recognition. Among them, two stood out, i.e. Nasia Izmi who
achieved from her four cows, an average production of 2,668 litters of
milk per cow, and Memnune Vait- with 2,200 litters of milk per cow.47
Conclusions
The present study has analysed the way in which communist propaganda,
represented by the official newspaper of the Regional Party Committee
Constana/Dobruja, Dobrogea Nou, constructed, for the ethnic Turkish
and Tatar populations, a new ethnic and social identity befitting the social, economic and political context of the 1950s. In this respect, I have
shown how the new identity construction promoted by the communist
state in the case of the Turkish and Tatar minorities made use of their active involvement in the collectivization of agriculture. Thus, the analysis
of the articles published in Dobrogea Nou indicates that the participation of ethnic Turks and Tatars in the collectivization of agriculture redefined their social identity from a double perspective, that of their work at
47
Musebie Nasurla, Cartea ne-a ajutat s obinem producii mari, [Education

Helped Us Increase Production] Dobrogea Nou, 19 March 1961, 3.
the collective farms, and that of their wide access to the material welfare
generated by their involvement in this form of organisation of agricultural
work. At the same time, the analysis of the content of the Dobrogea Nou
texts suggests that, even if important, the ethnic identity of Turks and Tatars functioned mainly as a reference point within the official discourse
that highlighted that Romanian citizens enjoyed completely equal rights,
regardless of their nationality.
Community Homes and Cultural Education in the Rural

World: Communist Propaganda Clichs as Reflected in the
Kulturlis tmutat (ndrumtorul Cultural) in the Years
1948-1949
Klra LZOK
Simultaneously with the elimination of political pluralism in 1947 and
starting the nationalization of economy (1948), the party campaign aimed
at monopolizing and unifying cultural life in Romania began. The Romanian Labour Party devised its own schedule in order to create the new
culture in the course of 1948 after monopolizing the entire political and
economic life. The new socialist culture to be created was characterized
by complete centralization, party state coordination and homogenization.
The process has been discussed by several researchers in the past 25
years, starting from Victor Frunza1 and Marian Niescu2 to Ana Selejan3,
to only name the most important ones. The clearest presentation however
was offered by Cristian Vasiles monograph published in 2010. The relating chapter of this book clarifies institutional and personal relationships,
as well as the triple correlation of propaganda guidelines, current policies
and cultural life.4
In line with the reorganization process of artistic life, an intensive campaign of community education began both in cities and villages. In our
thesis we are going to analyze some of the means and techniques by
which the Romanian Labour Party (PMR) propagated its cultural education campaign in its very first years (1948-1950) in the rural area of the
latter Hungarian Autonomous Region (Regiunea Autonom Maghiar
1
Victor Frunz, Istoria stalinismului n Romnia [The History of Stalinism in

Romania] (Bucureti: Humanitas, 1990), 271.
2
Marian Niescu, Sub zodia proletcultismului. O carte cu domiciliul forat
(1979-1995). Dialectica puterii. Eseu politologic [In the Sign of Proletkult. A
Book Under House Arrest (1979-1995). The Dialectics of Power. A Politological Essay] (Bucureti: Humanitas, 1995).
3
Ana Selejan, Trdarea intelectualilor. Reeducare i prigoan [The Betrayal of
Intellectuals. Reeducation and Persecution] (Sibiu: Cartea Romneasc, 2005).
4
Cristian Vasile, Literatura i artele n Romnia comunist 1948-1953 [Literature and Arts in Communist Romania 1948-1953] (Bucureti: Humanitas,
2010), 38-70.
Community Homes and Cultural Education in the Rural World... _______ 677
in Romanian) mainly inhabited by Hungarians. This indoctrination campaign was centrally organized and implemented in rural areas through the
chain of local cultural community homes.
We would like to address these issues on the level of the organizing activities of these local cultural community homes and through the prism of
the textual manifestations that supported these activities (programs, and
the official journals of these community homes: Mveldsi tmutat).
My primary sources were the reports of the Mures County Agitation and
Propaganda Division of the Romanian Labour Party (hereinafter RLP), the
issues of the Szabad Sz, edited by the Romniai Magyar Npi Szvetsg
(Hungarian Popular Union from Romania), as well as the issues of the
Mveldsi tmutat, the official journal of the cultural homes chain
1. Establishing the chain of cultural centers: the level of action
In order to reorganize cultural life, a fully elaborated institutional system
had to be set up. On a national level artistic life and community culture
fell under the Ministry of Art and Information. In the regions with a large
Hungarian population, those in charge of the organization of community
culture were the local cells of the Hungarian Popular Unions (HPU) cultural department, the labor unions cultural committees, as well as the local agit-prop departments of the Romanian Labor Party.5 The HPU as a
global Hungarian political organization disposed of massive support in
these counties, and reached the lowest levels due to its suitable structure.
5
A MNSZ szervezetei cselekven belekapcsoldnak a kultrotthonok

munkjba. A kultrotthonokban s npi atheneumokban rendezik az egyttl
nemzetisgek mveldsi megmozdulsait, [The HPUs organizations take
part actively in the work of cultural centers. Cultural events of the cohabiting
nationalities will be organized in cultural centers and popular athenaeums]
Szabad Sz, Marosvsrhely, 14 October 1948, 3; Megalakult a marosmegyei
Npmveldsi Egyeslet. A klnbz kulturlis s irodalmi egyesletek
csatlakoznak az tfog jelleg szervhez, [The Maros County Association for
Popular Culture has been created. The different cultural and literary associations join the expansive body] Szabad Sz, 22 April 1948, 3; Proces-verbal de
constituire nr. 1 [Minute-book no. 1 of inception], Arhivele Naionale Direcia
Judeean Mure [hereafter cited as ANDJ Mure], Secia Propagand i Agitaie. Procese verbale, rapoarte, planuri de munc i tabele. 31.01.1948 - 31.12.
Comisia interimar pentru cminele culturale din judeul Mure, 2 April 1948.
678 _________________________________________________ Klra LZOK
In April 1948 Cultural County Associations were established nationwide.

These operated in the subordinacy of the Romanian Labor Partys county
agit-prop departments. It was their duty to assess all cultural institutions
and civil organizations in the villages and cities and incorporate them into
the already existing or newly created cultural centers in villages and Popular Athenaeums in cities.6 According to the official standpoint, the cultural center was destined to reconcile and guide the rural cultural groups
that had previously worked without a standardized plan, often hindering
each others activity.7 The same task was fulfilled in urban environments
by the so-called popular athenaeums, as well as community colleges organized in county centers.8
The rural cultural centers were established according to a well-defined
schedule. The delegate of the countys Popular Culture Committee in the
district/village assessed the existing cultural and civil organizations (already existing cultural centers, farmers associations, cultural clubs,
choirs, schools, libraries of schools, churches or associations), created the
cultural center, and earmarked its budget. The deed of foundation and the
budget were sent by the local leadership to the central office. In addition
he created or controlled the activity of those organizations that had previously centrally been assigned to the cultural center (Local Tourist Office,
cinema, the Cartea Rusa bookshop and distributor9, ARLUS10). He reported all this on a form that he handed in upon return at the Propaganda
and Agitation Departments Cultural Committee. These reports are the
source of the above-described processs reconstruction.11 The inventories
6
Megalakult a marosmegyei Npmveldsi Egyeslet, [The Maros County

Association for Popular Culture has been created] Szabad Sz, 22 April 1948.
7
Npi mveldsnk fejldse, [The Development of our Popular Culture]
Utunk, Kolozsvr, 25 May 1948, 8.
8
Npi mveldsnk fejldse, 8.
9
The Cartea Rusa was established in 1945; by the middle of 1947 the Scnteia
journal already reported the publishing of 1 300 000 Romanian and Hungarian
volumes (10 June 1947, 3).
10
ARLUS [Romanian-Soviet Friendship Company] was a national mass organization established to propagate the Romanian-Soviet friendship. Its job was to
broadcast and popularize Soviet science and culture; one of its tasks was the
organization of the Romanian-Soviet Friendship Month that preceded the 7th
of November.
11
Raport de activitate [Activity Report], 11-12 May 1948 M. Niraj, 100; 8-9-10
May 1948 Sovata, 101; 24 May 1948 Sangiorgiu de Pdure, 108. ANDJ
are also a good source for the research of the cultural situation before
1948, the existence and activity of civil organizations, farmers and industry associations, libraries.
All cultural centers and popular athenaeums were led by a council. The
councils composition was centrally determined by a decree.12 Among the
15 elected members of the county councils there was compulsorily the
county leader, the school inspector, the gendarme commander, the countys representatives in the national assembly, the garrisons commander,
the county medical superintendent, the financial director, the delegates of
the mass organizations (the unions county council, HPU, ARLUS, The
Democratic Federation of Women in Romania). As the above list shows
it, the councils were not formed of specialists, but of official delegates of
mass organizations and state offices. Their presence was formal; therefore their decisions were taken in accordance with instructions received
from the authority.
The dispositions specified that exclusive rights in organizing cultural
events were due to cultural centers and popular athenaeums.13 It was
strictly prohibited to organize any kind of events in schools, church institutions or privately. Choirs, theatre clubs and farmers clubs were allowed14 only if they were integrated into the RLP, the HPU, or cultural
associations set up by mass organizations.
As a second step, in the fall and winter of 1948 several mass organizations (HPU, ARLUS) issued a statewide circular15 to all of their local orMures, Secia Propagand i Agitaie. Procese verbale, rapoarte, planuri de
munc i tabele. 31.01.1948 - 31.12.1948.
12
The council consisted of 11 elected members, its other rightful members: delegates of political parties, judge, doctor, veterinary, forestry supervisor, agricultural supervisor, the cooperatives president, the gendarme commander, priest
and the school director. [Utastsok a kultrotthonok tancsainak megvlasztsra, [Guidelines for the Election of Cultural Homes Councils]
Mveldsi tmutat, Bukarest, August 1948, 46.
13
Raport pe luna mai 1948 [Report for the Month of May 1948] ANDJ- Mures,
Secia Propagand i Agitaie. Procese verbale, rapoarte, planuri de munc i
tabele, 31.01.1948 31.12.1948, 132.
14
Raport pe luna mai 1948, 132.
15
Krlevl az ARLUS-szervezethez, [Circular Letter to the ARLUS Organization] Mveldsi tmutat, September 1948, 29; Magyar Npi Szvetsg
Kzponti Intzbizottsga Krlevl az sszes MNSZ-szervezetekhez,
680 _________________________________________________ Klra LZOK
ganizations. They asked therein that cultural centers should receive support and that the possibility of cooperation should be made clear. All local organizations were asked to hand over their libraries to the cultural
centers and organize events only within the centers frame.
By 1949 all formal criteria were met, and the central leadership attempted
to organize its propaganda actions within these institutions with the
sometimes enthusiastic, but mostly passive attendance of local people.
2. The cultural campaigns ideological basis: the level of the issued texts
2.1. Programmatic statements
The campaigns prominent personality was Edgr Balogh, the president
of the HPUs Cultural Section. The new guiding principles reached the
Hungarian public opinion through his statements. The occasion came
with the Petfi celebrations organized for the 1848 revolutions centenary. The directives are traceable in three texts. The first one is Edgr
Baloghs speech made at the Petfi contests opening ceremony,16 the
second one is the competitions final statement (also palpably penned by
Edgr Balogh),17 while the third one is the programmatic article Npi
kultrnk megjulsrl van sz [It concerns the revival of our popular
culture] published in the first issue of Mveldsi tmutat.18
We are at war, we are leading an ideological campaign, and we do not
accept any kind of reactionary cultural activity that misleads our people
and drives it to idleness19 this was the battle cry issued by Edgr
Balogh in his speech at the Petfi contests opening ceremony. The aim
[Hungarian Popular Unions Central Syndicate Circular Letter to all HPU
Organizations] Mveldsi tmutat, November 1948, 67.
16
Nem trjk meg a npnket flrevezet, ttlensgre sorvaszt reakcis
kultrtevkenysget, mondotta Balogh Edgr a Petfi versenyek megnyit
nnepsgn, [We Will not Tolerate Reactionary Cultural Activity that Misleads our People and Wastes it to Idleness said Edgr Balogh at the Opening
Ceremony of the Petfi Contests], Szabad Sz, 30 June 1948. 1.
17
Az orszgos Petfi verseny zr hatrozata, [The Closing Resolution of
the National Petfi Contest] Szabad Sz, 1 July 1948, 3.
18
Npi kultrnk megjulsrl van sz, [It Concerns the Rejuvenation of our
Popular Culture] Mveldsi tmutat, July 1948, 5.
19
Nem trjk meg a npnket flrevezet, ttlensgre sorvaszt reakcis
kultrtevkenysget, 1.
was a new popular culture created by the working class that would disclose and interpret reality,20 mobilize for political and economic duties,21
and tightly interweave with politics. The new culture accepted some of the
old cultures elements, and considered a part of the Petfi, Arany, Attila
Jzsef, Bla Bartk and Kodly legacy as transferable into this new culture.
The statements also emphasized that all these would be carried out on the
soviet models basis22 insisting on the loyalty towards Romania.23 These
commitments represented the newest directives of Romanian cultural policy towards the Hungarian population, but also appointed the place of
Hungarian culture in Romania within the frames of Romanian culture.
These programmatic statements called upon writers and artists to join.
For the success of our popular culture we need appropriate literary and
artistic material, as well as proper cultural instruments. We therefore ask
our writers and artists to join us.24
2.2. Mveldsi tmutat the starting years (1948-1949). Structure and
themes: the new cultures terminological canon
In his monograph devoted to the epochs cultural life in Romania, Cristian Vasile dedicates a separate chapter to the syntagm cultural guide
that was permanently present in the common talk concerning the trends
and policies in cultural life after 1945. Guidance, ndrumare was needed
20
We want a living culture, the culture of the workers fight and work. We require this of writers, artists, scientists. That they be the peoples writer, the peoples artist, the peoples scientist. That is to say they should identify with the
people and express its striving and battle. Npi kultrnk megjulsrl van
sz, 5.
21
The presentations should mobilize to political and economic duties, the plays
should be about the peoples fight for freedom and its martyrdom, the poems
should congratulate our worker-heroes, the dance should express todays great
recruitment, the brotherly joinder of forces of our peoples, the song should make
us march to the rhythm of work. Npi kultrnk megjulsrl van sz, 5.
22
We have the opportunity to take it over from our great neighbor, the protector
of our peace and freedom. Npi kultrnk megjulsrl van sz, 6.
23
Our future is certain only if we can manage our freedom and put our forces
into the service of our common home country. Our Hungarian culture can thus
receive its original character within the Romanian Peoples Republic. Npi
kultrnk megjulsrl van sz, 6.
24
Az orszgos Petfiverseny zr hatrozata, [The Closing Resolution of the
National Petfi Contest] 3.
682 _________________________________________________ Klra LZOK
for the efficient operation of professional and artistic clubs. The new
Writers Union, the Graphic Artists Union and the Composers Union
meant to replace the eliminated former literary and artistic clubs were organized by its means. The Directia Generala a Presei si Tipariturilor
(The General Directorate of Press and Prints) was established in order to
offer guidance and control the press and publishing.25
The main official paper of cultural centralization and propaganda aimed at
villagers was the Mveldsi tmutat (Cultural Guide) published in July
1948 under the supervision of the Ministry of Arts and Information (Ministry of Arts after July 1949). This was the sibling paper of Indrumtor Cultural (Kulturlis tmutat) published from January 1948 until 1980.26
Its opening article was the above-mentioned Npi kultrnk megjulsrl
van sz by Edgr Balogh. According to the publications heralding review published in Szabad Sz, the aim of Mveldsi tmutat was to
deliver material with a democratic message for the cultural centers.27
All events organized by the cultural centers were based exclusively on
material and offers provided by the Mveldsi tmutat, using any other
material was only possible with the special permission of the countys
25
Cristian Vasile, Literatura i artele n Romnia comunist 1948-1953 [Literature and the Arts in Communist Romania 1948-1953] (Bucureti: Humanitas,
2010), 50-52.
26
The Mveldsi tmutat lived on after May 1956 until December 1985 under
the name Mvelds [Culture], first as the monthly paper of the Ministry of
Education and Culture and the National Council of the Trade Union in the
Peoples Republic of Romania. After 1962 it became the paper of the State
Committee of Culture and Arts, in October 1971 the periodical of the Council
for Socialist Culture and Education, and in August 1980 it turned into the
journal of the most extensive propaganda festival of the Ceausescu regime, the
Megneklnk, Romnia [Song to Romania] national festival with the same title. During this period, the papers role and influence within the Hungarian
minoritys cultural life changed several times, but the present paper is not
aimed at presenting and analyzing these issues. Romniai Magyar Irodalmi
Lexikon. Szpirodalom, kzrs, tudomnyos irodalom, mvelds III (Kh-M),
[Encyclopedia of Hungarian Literature in Romania. Literature, Publicism, Scientific Literature, Culture III] ed. Dvid Gyula (Bukarest: Kriterion, 1994).
27
Megjelent a Mveldsi tmutat els szma. A magyar falvakba is
megszervezik a kultrotthonokat, [The First Issue of Mveldsi tmutat
Has Been Published. Cultural Centers Will be Organized in Hungarian Villages as Well], Szabad Sz, 9 July 1948, 2.
cultural council. This was the last step in the liquidation of any incidental
individual cultural activity, since the lack of democratic material was
no longer an excuse to organize the villages cultural life individually. On
this level it is more about the work dictated by the Plan, than about organizing cultural life and educating the rural population: The cause of popular education is from now on not individual work or self-abnegation, it is
not only our duty towards our people, but work demanded by the state.28
The Mveldsi tmutat transmitted every month a compilation of 6465 pages; it also assigned the articles proposed employment on the last
page (presentation, scientific article, reciting choir for children, etc.), and
compiled well-defined programs for every Sunday.29 It is not worthwhile
to attempt a content analysis on two years material (however, that is my
long-term aim); the purpose of this paper is to study the topics of the
starting years, as well as defining their role in the propaganda actions carried out in Hungarian villages.
The papers structure and topics was rather schematic. One can best see
this by comparing the last pages that contained the compilation of programs. The text itself can be divided into 2 big units: materials to be set
forth in the cultural center and trendsetting articles with the character of
exchange of experience.
a.) The frame of programs to be presented consisted of performances with
appointed topics. The first article that served as editorial usually analyzed
the months most important political issue (foreign policy,30 internal affairs,31 cultural problems,32 the socialist reorganization of agriculture,33
28
Megjelent a Mveldsi tmutat els szma.

E.g.: Hogyan hasznljuk fel a Mveldsi tmutat jliusi szmnak anyagt?, [How to Use the Materials of the Mveldsi tmutats July issue?]
Mveldsi tmutat, July 1948, 64.
30
A npek harca a bkrt- 1949. prilis 20-25.-i prizsi Bkekongresszus,
[The Peoples Fight for Freedom. The Paris Peace Conference, 20-25 April
1949] Mveldsi tmutat, June 1949, 1.
31
A Romn Npkztrsasgban az llam gondjt viseli a np egszsgnek. Milyen rksget hagytak rnk a reakcis kormnyzatok?, [The State Takes
Care of the Peoples Health in the Peoples Republic of Romania. What Kind
of Legacy Have the Reactionary Governments Left Us?] Mveldsi tmutat, August 1948, 15.
32
Kzoktatsunk reformja [The Reform of our Public Education] Mveldsi
tmutat, October 1948, 3.
29
684 _________________________________________________ Klra LZOK
nationalization,34 etc.) or the current anniversary of the communist heroic

poem (Lenins birthday, the anniversary of Lenins death,35 Stalins birthday,36 the October revolution). Every issue also included lectures on the
current agricultural work,37on the justification of agricultures socialist reorganization,38 or on discussing the Soviet Unions results.39 Instructional
articles related to different natural phenomena are also to be found.40
b.) The lectures circle of subjects was broadened by shorter writings
meant for public reading. These either discussed the current issues within
fictional frames, or talked about their application in the Soviet Union.41
c.) The topics settled by these lectures recurred in the poems as well. The
current discourse was mirrored by the rate of the poets nationality. In the
first years the proportion of Hungarian, Romanian and Soviet poets was
2:1:1.
d.) As far as the efficiency of propaganda material was concerned, the
most important written elements of the paper were the theatrical scenes,
33
E.g.: A mezgazdasgi gpek kzs felhasznlsnak elnyei, [The Advantages of the Collective Use of Agricultural Machines] Mveldsi tmutat, April 1949, 1; A kollektv gazdasgok a dolgoz parasztsg jltnek
s boldogsgnak biztostkai, [The Collective Farmlands are the Safeguards
of the Working Peasantrys Well-being and Happiness] Mveldsi tmutat,
October 1949, 30.
34
Az llamosts jelentsge, [The Importance of Nationalization] Mveldsi
tmutat, August 1948, 21.
35
Lenin hallnak huszontdik vfordulja, [The 25th Anniversary of Lenins
Death] Mveldsi tmutat, January 1949, 3.
36
Joszif Visszarionovics Sztlin a vilg dolgozinak vezre, npnk felszabadtja s bartja, [Iosif Visarionovici Stalin Leader of the Worlds Workers, Our Peoples Liberator and Friend] Mveldsi tmutat, December
1949, 5.
37
Ksztsk el a tavaszi vetmagokat, [Let Us Prepare the Seed-corn for
Spring] Mveldsi tmutat, February 1949, 21.
38
Szvetkezeteink a dolgozk jltrt kzdenek, [Our Cooperatives Fight for
the Well-being of Workers] Mveldsi tmutat, October 1949, 43.
39
E.g. about the accomplishments of the Soviet Unions five-year plans first
quarter: A szovjet np jabb gyzelmei, [The Latest Victories of the Soviet
People] Mveldsi tmutat, June 1949, 7.
40
E.g.: Az let kezdetei a fldn [The Beginnings of Life on Earth],
Mveldsi tmutat, November 1948, 19.
41
The columns title: One day in the kolkhoz.
since these were the most accessible to villagers due to their simplicity.
These scenes transmitted the current political stereotypes imbedded in the
villages everyday life (kulak sabotage,42 unstable middle peasants,43 the
young hero becoming a communist,44 work contest for accomplishing the
State Plan,45 etc.)
e.) Every issue included a music sheet supplement for the cultural centers choirs; these usually were adapted Hungarian folksongs, Soviet,
Chinese or Korean work marches, or in case of special issues for an anniversary, marches fitting the event. In some issues these were completed
by choreography of Hungarian, Romanian, or one of the Soviet blocks
other peoples folk dance.
f.) The papers other large unit was the material containing practical advice for the cultural centers organization. The issues of the first year answer many of these questions, starting from the furniture and up to the
technical details of plays, or teaching the notes and organizing a choir, as
well as spreading the posters that advertise the centers events. These
were later taken over by the column About and for cultural centers that
included reports on different events written by the people in charge of
cultural events.
As the above structure shows it, in the 1948-1949 period four major topics were to be found in the paper. These topics set up the new worlds
frame and try to make the public aware of the new concepts.
The first circle of topics included those that popularized the different
steps taken by the new political settlement (reviewing the new Constitution,46 the functioning of the peoples councils,47 the work of the peoples
42
Gheorghe Pogoneti Aurel, Kisrtet a gabonaraktrban, [Ghost in the Granary] Mveldsi tmutat, May 1949, 50; Grigorescu Marin, Gazduram
korsja, [My Masters Pitcher] Mveldsi tmutat, August 1949, 61.
43
Legnykrben, [Asking for the Lads Hand] Mveldsi tmutat, June
1949, 34.
44
F. Bodnarenko, Megedzik az aclt, [Hardening the Steel] Mveldsi tmutat, February 1949, 49.
45
Maria Grigorescu, Fogads, [Reception] Mveldsi tmutat, May 1949, 69.
46
A Romn Npkztrsasg Alkotmnya, [The Constitution of the Peoples
Republic of Romania] Mveldsi tmutat, July 1948, 7.
47
A Nptancsok, az llamhatalom helyi szervei, [The Popular Councils, the
States Local Organs] Mveldsi tmutat, April 1949, 10.
686 _________________________________________________ Klra LZOK
judges,48 the State Economy Plan,49 etc.). On the other hand, these attempted to make the public aware of the new social stereotypes resulting
from its ideology, such as the alliance of the working class and peasants,50 the collective guilt of kulaks, womens new type of engagement.51
The other large topic is related to foreign policy. This transmits towards
the village people the bipolar antinomic worldview (peaceful/ rich/ developing socialist countries /possessing a healthy world view opposite
the imperialist powers that drift the world to war/ keep the working class
in poverty/ stand on the brink of ruin).52
Agriculture is the third, probably most detailed topic, and the first that
carries certain bipolarity. On the one hand the paper strongly propagates
the new ideological terminology linked to the socialist reorganization of
agriculture. The lectures analyze in detail the notions of kulak, poor peasant, middle peasant and dedicate long pages to discussing the necessity of
compulsory delivery as a result of the alliance between the peasants and
the working class.53 The inevitable need to enter the cooperatives in order
to grow,54 etc., and the Soviet accomplishments to follow are also fully
explained. These notions are updated and introduced into the villages
everyday vocabulary through the published theatrical scenes.
48
A npbrk megvlasztsa, [Electing the Peoples Judges] Mveldsi tmutat, June 1949, 16.
49
Az llami Gazdasgi Tervrl, [Of the State Economic Plan] Mveldsi
tmutat, February 1949, 1.
50
Munksosztly s dolgoz fldmvessg szvetsgrl, [Of the Alliance between Working Class and Peasantry] Mveldsi tmutat, January 1949, 13.
51
Mrcius 8.- a nk nemzetkzi napja, [The 8th of March is International
Womens Day] Mveldsi tmutat, March 1949, 7.
52
Nemzetkzi helyzetkp. A demokrcia s a szocializmus harca a bkrt,
[The International Situation. Democracys and Socialisms Fight for Peace]
Mveldsi tmutat, April 1949, 13; A knai np hatalmas gyzelmei,
[Huge Victories of the Chinese People] Mveldsi tmutat, December
1949, 28.
53
A dolgoz parasztsg tmogatja a gabonabeszolgltatst, [The Working
Peasantry Stands by the Surrendering of Corn] Mveldsi tmutat, September 1948, 3.
54
Falusi fogyasztsi szvetkezetek szerepe a Romn Npkztrsasgban, [The
Role of Rural Consumer Cooperatives in the Peoples Republic of Romania]
Mveldsi tmutat, June 1949, 25; Szvetkezeti letnk j irnyai, [The
New Directions of our Co-op Life] Mveldsi tmutat, July 1949, 1.
Besides publicizing the RLPs economic line, the paper also undertakes
the task of agricultural consultancy lets not forget that farmer societies
had been liquidated with the establishment of cultural centers. However,
this consultancy discusses matters that are obvious to peasants (the
weather,55 weeding56) and describes the methods of soviet agriculture.57
The order I used reflects the priorities followed by the Mveldsi tmutat in 1948-1949. Interestingly, on this list of priorities, the topic of
culture in its classical sense is only fourth. From the perspective of their
methodological character, the articles written on this topic can be classified as follows: a.) practical guidance related to the cultural centers organization (building a stage, organizing a library, reading clubs, book
offers, adapting folk songs, folk dance choreography), always presenting
the Soviet pattern;58 the description of cultural events (reports on cultural
contests59), and b.) the propagation of the RLPs cultural policy (explaining the new law of education,60 campaign against illiteracy,61 etc.)
The least highlighted topic is the nationality issue. Apart from a single
lecture that specifically discusses this problem in one of the first issues,62
the matter appears more on the level of visuality (covers, images), and
55
Harc a termszet eri Ellen, [Fight Against Natures Forces] Mveldsi

tmutat, September 1948, 27; Az idjrsjelentsrl, [About the Wheather
Report] Mveldsi tmutat, March 1949, 24.
56
Hogyan vdekezznk a gyomok Ellen, [How to guard against weeds]
Mveldsi tmutat, June 1949, 19.
57
E.g.: Termkbetakarts a Szovjetniban, [Harvesting in the Soviet Union]
58
The columns title: From the cultural life of Soviet villages.
59
A marosvsrhelyi Petfi-versenyek, [The Petfi Contests in Marosvsrhely] Mveldsi tmutat, August 1948, 28; Nagy tmegeket mozgostott a
hromszki szakszervezetek tehetsgkutat kultrversenye, [The Unions
Talent Spotter Contest has Moved Great Masses in Hromszk] Mveldsi
tmutat, September 1949, 94.
60
A np fiai eltt a mvszeti plykat is megnyitotta a tangyi reform, [The
Educational Reform has Opened Artistic Carriers for the Peoples Sons],
Mveldsi tmutat, September 1949.
61
Harc az rstudatlansg Ellen, [The Fight Against Analphabetism]
Mveldsi tmutat, February 1949, 17.
62
A nemzetisgi krds megoldsa a Romn Npkztrsasgban, [Solving the
Nationality Issue in the Peoples Republic of Romania] Mveldsi tmutat,
October1949, 13.
688 _________________________________________________ Klra LZOK
carefully avoids any delicate points, presenting it in the spirit of building

socialism together.
It is important to note the papers language. Although the new terms existed in the everyday Hungarian language, they were often used not in
Hungarian, but in their Hungarianized Romanian form: direktva, elektrifikls, planifikls.63 According to Stefano Bottoni these new
words and figures of speech this Romanian-Hungarian mixed language
gave expression to communisms habitual life, the penetration of Romanian modernization to the Szeklerland.64
3. Tentative interpretations
The paper and accordingly the events organized by the cultural centers
follows the consequent application of the totalitarian propagandas
basic techniques described by Jean-Marie Domenach65:
1. raising issues in a simplified manner, developing a way of thinking
along antinomies on all issues (socialist countries imperialist exploiting states, poor peasant kulak, etc.);
2. repeating the same ideological thesis and correlation, deducing it from
different contexts, through different genres;
3. building the different argumentations on feelings/aversions that had existed and had been stored in collective consciousness (the most simple example
is the contrast between the poor peasant and the well to do farmer);
4. updating historical events or setting a current problem in historical perspective (abusing the 1848 revolutions centenary), using thoughts of historical personalities, writers, scientists taken out of context in order to fit
them into the current political discourse (Petfi, Ady, etc.).
The Mveldsi tmutat as a press product could not in itself have had
great influence on the rural population; its texts were probably only read by
63
64
65
This question was later answered in a larger context, of course by the linguist Szab Zoltn in Igaz Sz. Szab Zoltn, A nyelvmvels egyes krdseirl, [On Some Issues of Language Cultivation] Igaz Sz,
Marosvsrhely, IV-V (1954), 131-136.
Stefano Bottoni, Sztlin a szkelyeknl [Stalin Among the Szeklers]
(Cskszereda: Pro Print, 2008), 168.
Jean-Marie Domenach, Propaganda politic [The Political Propaganda]([Iai:
Institutul European, 2004), 63.
the person in charge of cultural life.66 However, the presentations, public

readings, recitations and plays organized in the cultural community homes,
compulsorily on the basis of its published material transmitted all the better
the new ideological canon towards the villagers. The methods essence lay
in the fact that the rural population possessing oral cultural traditions could
only be indoctrinated by the means of the same oral form.
The propaganda campaigns other characteristic feature is that unlike
the urban practice it uses already existing popular traditions. It transfers
popular traditional elements into the new cultures frames, but only after severely filtering them, and giving permission only for materials with
a progressive content. Using the popular formal elements, it shuffles its
own slogans into the villages collective consciousness. The most illustrative examples are those propaganda poems, workers marches that were
to be sung to the tunes of a folksong, according to the Mveldsi tmutats instructions.67
At the same time the chain of cultural centers organized on the basis of
the Hungarian Mveldsi tmutat, the Romanian ndrumtorul Cultural, the German Kultureller Wegweiser/Volk und Kultur and the Serbian Kulturni Uputnik represented the guarantee for the partys leadership
that apart from small national particularities, the countrys every village
received on Sundays the same centrally developed and unified propaganda material. The same lectures were read publicly, the same songs were
sung to the compulsorily assembled crowd. By making the exclusive use
of Mveldsi tmutat compulsory in the organization of events, all incidental local and not suitably controlled initiatives were shut out.
Starting from the 1950s the Mveldsi tmutats topics shifted from
the first two years intensive rural education more towards the organization of urban cultural life. The above-mentioned topics of the starting period can still be found in its structure, but its guidance was aimed less
and less at the rural populations indoctrination.
66
67
A kulturlis megbzott figyelmbe!, [To the Attention of the Cultural Commissioner] Mveldsi tmutat, October 1948, 2.
Munks-paraszt egysg [a Hideg szl fj desanym dallamra], [WorkerPeasant Unity [to the Tunes of Mother, there is a Cold Wind Blowing]
Ideological Upbringing in Estonian SSR School Lessons Based

on the Example of Extolling Soviet Agriculture
Eli PILVE
Introduction
This article focuses on ideological upbringing in Soviet school subject
lessons, aiming to show on the background of the restructuring of the
content and form of general educational policy how Soviet power was
glorified and how among other things its agriculture was also idealised
within the framework of the ideologization of teaching in schools. Alongside everything else that was hitched to the propaganda bandwagon was
the agricultural system based on large manorial estates that preceded the
Republic of Estonia as well as the Land Reform Act passed in the Republic of Estonia that, in terms of its overall idea, resembled the Soviet land
reform implemented in 1940, yet which was presented in Soviet rhetoric
as the domination of the bourgeoisie over the subjugated rural proletariat.
The overwhelming majority of people in Estonia, that is 67% of the population, lived in the countryside as of 1939. According to the agricultural
census of that same year, there were nearly 140 000 farms in Estonia, of
which over 48 000 had been created in the course of land reform. Of
those 140 000 farms, 85% were the main source of subsistence for the
holders of those farms. Farms were relatively small with an average size
of 22.7 ha. Nearly 2/3 of all farms were in the size range of 10-50 ha and
the relative proportion of large farms was very small (the relative proportion of farms that were larger than 100 ha was 0.3%).1 In Soviet rhetoric,
the land reform of 1919 was presented as being counter-revolutionary,
with its primary result having allegedly been the redistribution of land between two groups of exploiters. While most of the land belonged to the
owners of the large estates prior to the Land Act, it allegedly passed into
the hands of Estonias kulaks after land reform. Supposedly, 20 000
families of the rural proletariat were tied down to small plots of land of
1
Indrek Paavle, Sovietisation of Agriculture, in Estonia since 1944: Reports of

the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against
Humanity (Tallinn: Inimsusevastaste Kuritegude Uurimise Eesti Sihtasutus,
2009), 37-78; Eli Pilve, For Land, for Liberty, Akadeemia (February 2008),
301.
Ideological Upbringing in Estonian SSR School Lessons Based:..._________ 691
undetermined size, which ensured the kulaks with a permanent supply of

cheap labour.2
Private property did not exist in the Soviet Union. According to the constitution, property existed only in the form of state or cooperativekolkhoz property. The land was owned by the state but most arable land
was at the disposal of socialist collective farms (kolkhozes) and state
farms (sovkhozes). The Constitution of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic initially differed from that of the Soviet Union in issues related to
ownership and land use. It permitted small private property in commerce
and industry and peasants were allowed to have private farms without
touching their size. The concept of the kolkhoz was initially missing from
the ESSR Constitution and it was added to the constitution only as late as
1949. The steps taken in agriculture that accompanied Estonias sovietisation were conditioned by the hitherto existing difference between the
two economic systems and by the need of the occupying regime to safeguard itself.3 All these transformations, however, can be seen as the Soviet leaderships plan to ruin Estonias agriculture so that the establishment
of kolkhozes later on would proceed less painfully and more rapidly. The
most effective method for this was the reorganisation of the tax system so
that rural inhabitants would lose all desire to be landowners themselves.
At the same time, propaganda was started up to vilify farm life prior to
the occupation and to depict the Soviet state as a land of plenty, regardless of the fact that reality told an entirely different story. In its own bizarre way, the socialist planned economy contributed to the depiction in
propaganda of the plenty that allegedly existed since the plan always had
to be exceeded and this created a situation where on paper, more grain
was sown than there was land cultivated for growing grain, and animals
Gustav Naan (ed.), Eesti NSV ajalugu (kige vanemast ajast tnapevani) [History of the Estonian SSR (from Earliest Times to Today)] (Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, 1952), 331. [This book was intended to serve as teaching
material for secondary schools and institutions of higher education, as well as
for independent reading; reprints were issued until and including 1957. Authors note]
3
Indrek Paavle, Sovietisation of Agriculture, in Estonia since 1944: Reports of
the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against
Humanity (Tallinn: Inimsusevastaste Kuritegude Uurimise Eesti Sihtasutus,
2009), 37-78.
692 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
bred faster than physiologically possible.4 The same sort of exaggeration

was reflected in the content of school textbooks as well within the
framework of propaganda and ideological upbringing. As one example of
many, we may highlight here the introduction to the Estonian literature
textbook published in 1955 for the tenth grade of secondary school,
which begins with an historical overview that includes as a compulsory
component the glorification of the Soviet system and also of agriculture
as part of that system. It is explained how the rapid development of capitalism in both agriculture and industry spread throughout Russia and in
Estonia as one of its provinces in the latter half of the 19th century, yet
that Estonia remained an agrarian region regardless of the development of
capitalist industry, where the greater and better portion of the land belonged to the estate owners. There is nothing that is untrue in what is said
in and of itself, yet here the important factor is the depiction of Soviet
rule as the saviour and benchmark of humanity. The same pattern repeated from textbook to textbook the kulak stratum that lined its pockets at
the expense of the farmhands and cottagers continually exacerbated friction between classes, which reached nothing short of its crest in the capitalist Republic of Estonia, which was then referred to as a bourgeoisnationalist dictatorship. It was only the allegedly long-awaited Soviet regime that put an end to the severe exploitation of the rural proletariat and
industrial workers,5 even though it partitioned the already small farms
and made them even smaller with the land reform of 1940. Farms with up
to 12 ha of arable land were too small to support a family. They were furthermore saddled with taxes6 and quotas,7 the purpose of which essential4
Peeter Kaasik, Eesti pllumajanduse reorganiseerimine 1940/1941. aastal [Reorganisation of Estonian Agriculture in 1940/1941, manuscript in the possession of the Estonian Institute for Historical Memory].
5
See for instance Estonian National Archive (henceforth ERA) R-2345.3.102,
Sgel, E. (ed.) Eesti kirjanduse ajalugu I: pik keskkooli X klassile [History of
Estonian Literature I: Textbook for the 10th Grade of Secondary School] (edited manuscript, 1955), 2-11; Naan (ed.), Eesti NSV ajalugu (kige vanemast
ajast tnapevani), 328-372, 394-400.
6
A regulation issued on 20 January 1941 by the ESSR Council of Peoples
Commissars hiked real estate tax by 50-200% on all farms that had been larger
than 30 ha, or also smaller farms if they had used paid manpower, prior to the
land reform of 1940 according to the size of the farm and the number of paid
employees. The enactment issued on 22 May 1941 by the ESSR Supreme Soviet Presidium changed all taxes in the sphere of agriculture that had hitherto
ly lay solely in wearing the peasants out in order to pave the way for collectivisation in the longer perspective. The land reform of 1940 was presented considerably differently in propagandistic texts, including school
textbooks. Thus it was written in the book Eesti NSV ajalugu (History of
the Estonian SSR), which was originally written as a textbook, that the
Soviet regime gave 53 000 farm hands and poor rural folk over 550 000
hectares of land taken away from kulaks and exploiters as the result of
land reform. Farm hands and the poor were given long-term state loans,
even though at the same time, working farm folk were allegedly exempted from the obligation to pay debts. Working farm folk were also supposedly relieved of the need to make large expenditures for purchasing and
renting land, to say nothing of taxes and compulsory quotas, of course.8
Ideological Upbringing
In discussing Soviet ideological upbringing, this article has in mind first
and foremost psychological propaganda techniques forced on the population, the aim of which was to shape or reshape the notions and behaviour
of people living in the Soviet empires territory so that each one of them
would feel that they were Soviet people first and foremost and not so
much Estonians or Latvians, for instance. In connection with this, the vilification of the former way of life in the countries annexed to the empire
and the glorification of the Soviet way of life, regardless of how justified
or groundless it actually was, formed one part of ideological upbringing
in the Soviet Union.
been in effect. Agricultural tax started being calculated on the basis of all
sources of income, meaning vegetable plots and orchards, hayfields, livestock
including draught animals, etc. Kolkhozes and recipients of new land were exempted from agricultural tax for one year [Kaasik, Eesti pllumajanduse reorganiseerimine 1940/1941. aastal].
7
Compulsory sales quotas were established in the spring of 1941, the fixed price
of which was far less than cost price. [Olaf Mertelsmann, Turumajanduselt
ksumajandusele, [From Market Economy to Command Economy] in Eesti
NSV aastatel 1940-1953. Sovetiseerimise mehhanismid ja tagajrjed Nukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa arengute kontekstis [Estonian SSR in 1940-1953.
Mechanisms and Consequences of Sovietisation in the Context of Developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe], ed. Tnu Tannberg (Tartu:
Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2007), 419-492]
8
Naan (ed.), Eesti NSV ajalugu (kige vanemast ajast tnapevani), 395.
694 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
The term brainwashing came into widespread use in the 1950s to characterise the methods implemented by the communists in China after seizing power in 1949 to change the peoples ideological world view.9 This
term is often used in the discussion of ideological upbringing. Professor
of Communication at the University of Houston Garth S. Jowett and Professor of History at Oxford University Robert Service have written at
length on the origin of the term brainwashing.10 The French theologian
and social critic Jacques Ellul has examined the nature of propaganda in a
broader perspective.11
Professor of European History at Johns Hopkins University Jeffrey
Brooks has studied the development of Stalins personality cult,12 which
cannot be ignored in discussing Soviet propaganda. John Alexander
Swettenham, a researcher at Canadas War Museum, can also be mentioned with certain reservations in relation to the research of Stalins personality cult.13 Professor of History at the University of Richmond David
Brandenberger has thoroughly examined Stalinist mass culture,14 and
Harvard University professor emeritus Richard Pipes has studied Soviet
propaganda and its consequences in his works.15 The historian and author
of several history textbooks in Estonia after it regained its independence,
9
Garth S. Jowett, Ajupesu: poleemika Korea sjavangide mber ja mdi ltted, [Brainwashing: the Korean POW Controversy and the Origins of a Myth]
in Propagandast ja mjustamisest. Uusi ja klassikalisi ksitlusi [Readings in
Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays], ed. Garth S. Jowett,
Victoria ODonnell (Tallinn: Tnapev, 2010), 279-280.
10
Jowett, Ajupesu: poleemika Korea sjavangide mber ja mdi ltted; Richard Service, Seltsimehed. Maailma kommunismi ajalugu [Comrades! A History of World Communism] (Tallinn: Varrak, 2010).
11
Jaques Ellul, Propaganda tunnusjooned, [The Characteristics of Propaganda]
in Propagandast ja mjustamisest, 17-83.
12
Jeffrey Brooks, Thank you, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001).
13
John Alexander Swettenham, The Tragedy of the Baltic States. A Report Compiled from Official Documents and Eyewitnesses Stories (London: Hollis and
Carter, 1954).
14
David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism. Stalinist Mass Culture and the
Formation of Modern Russian National Identity 1931-1956 (London: Harvard
University Press, 2002).
15
Richard Pipes, Kommunism. Lhiajalugu [Communism: A Brief History] (Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2005).
Lauri Vahtre, has in a well-grounded manner ridiculed the absurdity of

Soviet propaganda and its self-contradictions.16
Soviet propaganda endeavoured to ideologically (re)educate its citizens,
for which reason it had to permeate all of society, especially the educational system. In and of itself, propaganda in the educational system is
nothing new. No contradiction whatsoever was permitted between propaganda and school instruction in Napoleons empire already.17 A number
of researchers of Estonian school history, including Anu Raudsepp, Toomas Karjahrm, Vino Sirk and Veronika Varik (whose referenced research papers have been published under her maiden name Nagel), have
with a greater or lesser degree of directness expanded upon how the implementation of essentially the same requirement operated in the Estonian
SSR.18 Doctor of sociology Veronika Kalmus wrote her doctoral dissertation especially on the role of school textbooks in reflecting society.19 The
historian Tiiu Kreegipuu has examined the implementation of history as a
16
Lauri Vahtre, Absurdi impeerium [Empire of the Absurd] (Tallinn: Tammerraamat, 2007).
17
Jaques Ellul, Propaganda tunnusjooned, in Propagandast ja mjustamisest, 27.
18
Anu Raudsepp, Ajaloo petamise korraldus Eesti NSV eesti ppekeelega
ldhariduskoolides 1944-1985 [The Organisation of the Teaching of History
in General Education Schools in the Estonian SSR where the Language of Instruction was Estonian, 1944-1985] (Tartu: Tartu likooli Kirjastus, 2005);
Anu Raudsepp, Ajaloo petamise korraldus Eestis eesti ppekeelega
ldhariduskoolides stalinismi ajal (1944-1953), [The Organisation of the
Teaching of History in General Education Schools in Estonia where the Language of Instruction was Estonian during the Stalinist Era (1944-1953)] in
Eesti NSV aastatel 1940-1953: Sovetiseerimise mehhanismid ja tagajrjed
Nukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa arengute kontekstis (Tartu: Eesti
Ajalooarhiiv, 2007); Toomas Karjahrm, Vino Sirk, Kohanemine ja vastupanu. Eesti haritlaskond 1940-1987 [Adaptation and Resistance. Estonias Intellectuals 1940-1987] (Tallinn: Argo, 2007); Veronika Nagel,
Hariduspoliitika ja ldhariduskorraldus Eestis aastatel 1940-1991 [Educational Policy and the System of General Education in Estonia in 1940-1991]
(Tallinn: University of Tallinn Dissertations in Social Sciences, 2006).
19
Veronika Kalmus, School Textbooks in the Field of Socialisation (Tartu: Tartu
likooli Kirjastus, 2003); Veronika Kalmus, pidiskursus muutuvas hiskonnas, [The Teaching Discourse in a Changing Society] in Knelev ja
kneldav inimene. Eesti erinevate eluvaldkondade diskursus [Speaking and
Spoken Man. Discourse of Estonias Different Walks of Life], ed. Viive-Riina
Ruus (Tallinn: Tallinna Pedagoogikalikooli Kirjastus, 2000), 205-218.
696 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
means of propaganda and the way culture as a whole, including the educational system, was organised in the Soviet era.20
An idea of precisely how ideological upbringing was actually carried out
is provided by the minutes of meetings of the EC(b)P Central Committee,
documents from the ESSR Ministry of Education collection at the Estonian National Archives, of which the hitherto little used reports from inspectors perhaps merit highlighting, and also the recollections of
contemporaries that are deposited at the Estonian National Museum and
which the author of this article has further collected in the course of research for this paper.
General Ideological Principles of the Soviet Educational System
According to Lenin, the reorganisation of school was one aspect of the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and it was inconceivable that school could
be separable from politics.21 Propaganda extolling the Soviet regime began immediately after the annexation of Estonias territory by the Soviet
Union. During the first year of Soviet occupation in 1940-1941, the replacement of societys nationalist values with Soviet values already began. It took consistent and systematic shape after Estonia was once again
occupied. In the autumn of 1944, the Organisational Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (hereinafter
VK(b)P CC) issued the decision Concerning the shortcomings and tasks
of the Estonian SSR Party Organisations political work, which according to Tiiu Kreegipuu, can be considered the source document for the sovietisation of the post-war Estonian SSR. This also laid the foundation for
ideological upbringing, with its primary emphasis on the struggle against
20
Tiiu Kreegipuu, Nukogude Kultuuripoliitika printsiibid ja rakendused Eesti

NSV-s aastatel 1944-1954 kirjanduse ja trkiajakirjanduse nitel. Magistrit
[Principles and Applications of Soviet Cultural Policy in the Estonian SSR in
1944-1954 on the Basis of Literature and the Press. Masters dissertation]
(University of Tartu, 2005); Tiiu Kreegipuu, Ajaloo rakendamine propagandarelvana ehk kuidas kujundati ajalooksitlus Nukogude vimu kehtestamisest 21. juunil 1940 Nukogude Eesti ajakirjanduses aastatel 19451960, [Use
of History as a Propaganda Weapon, or How the Historical Treatment of the
Establishment of Soviet Rule on 21 June 1940 Was Shaped in the Soviet Estonian Press in 1945-1960] Tuna 3 (2007), 46-69.
21
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Teosed, 28. kide. Juuli 1918 - mrts 1919 [Works, vol.
28. July 1918 - March 1919] (Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, 1955), 69.
bourgeois nationalism.22 The concept of bourgeois nationalism derives

from the Marxist approach to nationality and was adopted by the socalled Bolsheviks even before they seized power in Russia. The basis for
the treatment of bourgeois nationalism was initially the doctrine of classes, according to which societys most important classes were the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, whereas bourgeois-nationalist ideology was
ascribed to the bourgeoisie and proletarian internationality was ascribed
to the proletariat. Generally speaking, nationalist culture that supported
bourgeois nationalism became the main enemy of the Bolsheviks and
proletarian internationalism. Bourgeois nationalists were turned into
the most important type of (internal) enemy, which was combined with
the figure of both the class enemy and the nationalist enemy.23 The treatment of bourgeois nationalism made it possible to connect it to everything and everyone who in any fashion got in the way of the official
ideology. Thus formerly respectable farmers were suddenly class enemies
and bourgeois nationalists since private property was forbidden in the
Soviet Union. This sort of labelling and accusation ran through school
textbooks as well. For instance, guidelines from the Peoples Commissariat for Education altogether demanded that the bourgeois system had to
be criticised in secondary school geography lessons when considering the
Estonian SSR. It had to be stressed that the Land Act of 1919 did not
solve the land question bearing in mind the interests of working peasants and that Estonian industry was incorrectly developed so that the result was unemployment. In parallel, the great, hard-fought achievements
that had been won by putting economic life on the rails of socialism after
the working peoples revolution of 21 June 1940 had to be emphasised.24
This requirement is illustrated very well by an example provided by David Brandenberger about the conviction of a Soviet history teacher who
conceded that perhaps his pupils do not know all the facts perfectly, but
22
Kreegipuu, Ajaloo rakendamine propagandarelvana ehk kuidas kujundati ajalooksitlus Nukogude vimu kehtestamisest 21. juunil 1940 Nukogude Eesti ajakirjanduses aastatel 1945-1960, 46-69.
23
Olev Liivik, Campaign against bourgeois nationalism and repressions in
Estonia, in Estonia since 1944: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity (Tallinn: Inimsusevastaste Kuritegude Uurimise Eesti Sihtasutus, 2009), 113-129.
24
ERA R-1013.1.217, pages not numbered, guidelines related to the geography
lesson plan for secondary school grades III, IV and VI, circular, 17 February
1941.
698 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
there is one thing that they definitely know: they understand who they
have to hate and who they must love.25
Ideological-political instruction was to be given not only in the subject of
geography, but it was to be imparted in all school lessons.26 In accordance
with the Party programme, there were no such forms of science and art
that were not connected to the great ideas of communism and to the extremely diverse work of communist economy.27 According to Aleksander
Valsiner, the ESSR Deputy Peoples Commissar for Education, only
mathematics should be considered in mathematics class and only natural
science in natural science class, but the approach had to be Marxist and
correspond to the requirements of dialectic materialism. Every suitable
topic also had to be considered from a social standpoint.28 In the case of
arguments presented from a social standpoint, however, their validity in
relation to reality was not important. Instead, their compatibility with Party ideology was decisive. In the Soviet Union, school was training school
where the truth in terms of world view was known, and it was not advisable or even permitted to seek that truth.29 As late as 25 March 1974, for
instance, the faculty council of Tallinns Secondary School no. 1 adopted
a decision that made it compulsory to teach pupils to relate critically to
their own opinions that were not in harmony with established truths.30
25
Brandenberger, National bolshevism, 76.

Ideelis-poliitilise kasvatuse ksimused nukogude koolis, [Issues in Ideological-Political Education in Soviet Schools] Eesti Bolevik [Estonian Bolshevik]
17 (1946), 1215-1221.
27
Venemaa Kommunistliku (bolevike) Partei programm, [Russian Communist (Bolshevik) Party Programme)] in NLKP kongresside, konverentside ja
Keskkomitee pleenumite resolutsioonid ja otsused I [Resolutions and Decisions from CPSU Congresses, Conferences and Central Committee Plenums I]
(Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, 1956), 449-451.
28
Aleksander Valsiner, hiskondlik-poliitiline kasvatus ppetundides, [SocialPolitical Education in School Lessons] Nukogude Kool [Soviet School] 2
(1941), 123-128.
29
John Alexander Swettenham, The Tragedy of the Baltic States. A Report compiled from official Documents and Eyewitnesses Stories (London: Hollis and
Carter, 1954), 107; Karjahrm, Sirk, Kohanemine ja vastupanu. Eesti haritlaskond 1940-1987, 76.
30
Tallinn Municipal Archive (hereinafter TLA) R-205.1.95, 62-63, book of
minutes of the Faculty Council of Tallinns Secondary School no. 1, 8 May
1973 - 29 September 1974, minutes no. 17, 25 March 1974.
26
Here it must be borne in mind, however, that anything can be written on

paper, and the way teachers actually imparted established requirements
and the official ideology presented in textbooks in class depended on
each individual teacher.
The Realignment of Teaching in Schools in the Estonian SSR: New
Curricula and Textbooks
From the beginning of the Soviet occupation, the ESSR Peoples Commissariat for Education, which was renamed the ESSR Ministry of Education in 1946 and was in turn run and controlled by the ECP Central
Committee and its school department (its propaganda and agitation department looked after education in 1948-1951 only), started designing all
aspects of education in Estonia. The ideological supervision of education
and the review of school programmes were among the tasks of the Central Committees school department. Ideological upbringing was understood as being the shaping of Soviet man, the cultivation of patriotic
feelings and the struggle in the name of communist ideals,31 an essential
part of which lay in the glorification of Soviet agrarian policy, among
other things. Praise of the kolkhoz system and the socialist way of life
can be found in any textbook from the Soviet era.
A temporary curriculum was drawn up for the 1940/41 school year. The
existing textbooks did not meet the new curriculums conditions. Since
writing new textbooks was time-consuming, the authorities began by first
revising existing textbooks. To say nothing of the fact that it was considered inappropriate to use the proper name Republic of Estonia in teaching
materials, all calculation assignments in algebra problems that treated the
capitalist economic system had to be replaced, for instance.32 Even just
31
Raudsepp, Ajaloo petamise korraldus Eestis eesti ppekeelega

ldhariduskoolides stalinismi ajal (1944-1953), 389-418.
32
ERA R-14.1.300, 23, R. Aavakivis review of the textbooks Matemaatika pik
humanitaargmnaasiumile [Mathematics Textbook for Grammar Schools] by
E. Etverk and G. Rgo, Matemaatika harjutustik gmnaasiumile, I klassi kursus [Mathematics Exercises for Grammar School, 1st Year Course] by K. Ratassepp and G. Rgo, Matemaatika harjutustik gmnaasiumile, II klassi kursus
[Mathematics Exercises for Grammar School, 2nd Year Course] by K. Ratassepp and G. Rgo, Matemaatika harjutustik gmnaasiumile, III klassi kur-
700 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
the mention of the purchase or sale of a farm in textbooks was inappropriate under the new conditions and had to be replaced with different examples.33 Heroes of labour and kolkhoz workers appeared in assignments
in the corrected textbooks, naturally along with idealised Lenin and Stalin, the Great October Revolution, the heroic Red Army, etc.34
When the sovietisation of Estonias educational policy just began in
1940-1941 and the educational system in effect in the Soviet Union was
established in Estonia, it nevertheless still remained fictitious to a great
extent and did not extend to the content of education. The actual alteration of teaching was carried out starting in 1944 when educational policy
started being organised according to the example of the Russian SFSR in
terms of content as well.35
The regulation jointly issued by the Estonian SSR Council of Peoples
Commissars and the ECP CC on 27 December of that same year required
the reorganisation of teaching and educational work in schools on the basis of the principles of Soviet pedagogy and no longer the revision but rather the elimination of textbooks from the era of independence and the
German occupation.36 The question of ideology was the top priority in
publishing new textbooks. The Party and the government directed their
publication.37 The first unconditional requirement for textbooks was the
complete firmness of their communist orientation.38 Thus the new textbooks presented the working class, that is the Soviet people, as a uniform
sus [Mathematics Exercises for Grammar School, 3rd Year Course] by K. Ratassepp and G. Rgo, 30 August 1940.
33
ERA R-14.1.300, 21, R. Aavakivis review of the textbook by J. Grnthal and
G. Rgo Algebra pik keskkoolile [Algebra Textbook for Secondary Schools],
not dated.
34
Swettenham, The Tragedy of the Baltic States, 107-108.
35
Raudsepp, Ajaloo petamise korraldus Eesti NSV eesti ppekeelega
ldhariduskoolides 1944-1985, 10-11.
36
ENSV Teataja 2 (ESSR Gazette), 1945, Joint regulation of the Estonian SSR
Council of Peoples Commissars and the Estonian Communist (Bolshevik) Party
Central Committee on improving the work of schools, 27 December 1944.
37
Nagel, Hariduspoliitika ja ldhariduskorraldus Eestis aastatel 1940-1991, 52.
38
Boriss Jessipov, Nikolai Goncharov, Pedagoogika. pik pedagoogilistele
koolidele II [Pedagogy. Textbook for Pedagogical Schools II (Tartu: Pedagoogiline Kirjandus, 1947), 161.
mass that lived in the same way, fought for the same values and reacted
to what was happening in society in the same way.39
The new curricula in all subjects adopted in 1948 were considerably more
ideologised compared to before and pressure intensified even more.
While it had been permitted to continue using textbooks put together in
the Republic of Estonia in several subjects until the 1949/50 school year
while waiting for new textbooks, henceforth the authorities even wanted
to remove textbooks put together in Estonia in the new Soviet era. The
greatest number of ideological lapses was reportedly found in literature
readers. Quite a few textbooks put together in Estonia nevertheless still
remained in use. In the 1952/53 school year, 45 of the 115 textbooks in
use had been written in the Estonian SSR and the remainder were translations of Russian SFSR textbooks.40 Decisions were adopted in succession
to increase the relative proportion of internationalism, Soviet patriotism,
atheism, labour indoctrination, and other such subjects in education. In
terms of content, these subjects all repeated more or less the same thing.
The pressure admittedly decreased after Khrushchevs speech in 1956 at
a closed night session, yet the Party programme adopted in 1961 continued to state that peaceful coexistence between countries where society is
structured differently did not mean a weakening of ideological struggle.41
Thus an Estonian literature textbook for grades 8 and 9 published in 1958
asserted that Soviet literature is inspired by the idea of socialism, serves
the interests of the masses of working people and is tied to the revolutionary working class.42
The strongest expression of the work of official ideological upbringing
was found in school textbooks in particular throughout the era of occupation.
39
See for instance Anna Pankratova (ed.), NSV Liidu ajalugu III. pperaamat
keskkooli XI klassile [History of the Soviet Union III. Textbook for the 11th
Grade of Secondary School] (Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, 1951), 271.
40
Raudsepp, Ajaloo petamise korraldus Eestis eesti ppekeelega
ldhariduskoolides stalinismi ajal (1944-1953), 389-418.
41
Nukogude Liidu Kommunistliku Partei programm (vastu vetud NLKP XXII
kongressi poolt) [Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(adopted by the 22nd Congress of the CPSU)] (Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus,
1961) 108-113.
42
ERA R-1589.5.95, K. Mihkla, . Tedre, Eesti kirjanduse pik VIII-IX klassile
[Estonian Literature Textbook for the 8th - 9th Grades] (edited manuscript,
1956) 6.
702 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
The sociologist Veronika Kalmus, who has specifically researched the

role of textbooks in socialising pupils, recognises that the school textbook
is a part of the ideological apparatus of power of any regime, for which
reason regimes try to use textbooks as quickly as possible to implement
and embed new ideologies.43 Since one part of Soviet ideology was labour indoctrination and the glorification of collective agriculture, this was
also reflected in all textbooks of that time. For instance, there are several
short texts on work in a kolkhoz at the very beginning of the Estonian
language textbook for the 2nd grade published in 1955. Certain corrections were made in these texts in the manuscript of the textbook. Thus it
was written in the original version that if children work hard in the kolkhoz, they will receive good pay. This kind of wording most likely expressed a way of thinking that was too capitalist and in the corrected
version, pay has been crossed off and replaced by the sentence: If you
work hard, you will help a great deal.44 One assignment in the same
textbook is to tell how work was done in the old days and how it is done
now. A poem is illustratively presented in which a worker bemoans that
he did work for which he wasnt even thanked but was cursed instead,
and that he worked in spite of others and for his own honour.45 Clearly
the task of the teacher here was to compare the hard life of earlier times
with the happy life in the kolkhoz. Whereas it was not only the past and
the present that had to be compared but also the Soviet Union and its satellite countries had to be compared with capitalist countries. As if in passing, the chapter The Estonian SSR on the Road to Communism in the
Estonian SSR history textbook claimed that after World War II, the Soviet Union reorganised its economy for the needs of peacetime without any
crises and civil upheavals, and without foreign aid, unlike the capitalist
countries.46 Similar points of emphasis were incorporated into every text,
regardless of what the particular topic happened to be.
In his memoirs, the historian and history teacher Hillar Palamets agrees
with Veronika Kalmus and recalls that it was textbooks in particular that
were the primary bearers in transmitting Soviet ideological pressure.
43
Kalmus, School Textbooks in the Field of Socialisation; Kalmus, pidiskursus muutuvas hiskonnas, 205-218.
44
ERA R-1589.1.252, H. Aver, Eesti keele pik II klassile [Estonian Language
Textbook for the 2nd Grade] (edited manuscript, 1955) 5-6.
45
ERA R-1589.1.252, Aver, Eesti keele pik II klassile, 6.
46
Naan (ed.), Eesti NSV ajalugu, 424.
With a few exceptions, teachers generally did not fulfil this role.47 In the
more liberal conditions of the thaw,48 teachers even dared to say a thing
or two about the content of textbooks as well, but this referred nevertheless to the dry text of the teaching materials, their profusion of detail, and
their failure to take local conditions into account. The situation concerning textbooks for teaching foreign languages was particularly problematic
because they were translated as well and thus were actually meant for
Russian-speaking pupils.49 The educational reform of 1958-1959 consequently promised to put together more original textbooks. This opportunity was used very eagerly in Estonia, so that in the mid-1960s, 97 original
textbooks and 33 translated textbooks were in use in general education
schools in Estonia.50 Control over their ideological content, however, remained in effect. For instance, a history textbook published in 1975
praised the development of socialist Czechoslovakia, which had been
achieved due to its brotherly friendship with the Soviet Union. Thanks to
this friendship, rural life in Czechoslovakia had changed completely,
working people had joined agricultural production cooperatives and unlike earlier times, there was now no longer any exploitation. In Rumania
as well, farmers had gained experiences in agricultural cooperatives, after
which the Rumanian Workers Party set a course for creating a higher
type of agricultural production cooperatives and brought the collectivisation of agriculture to completion. Needless to say, the exploiter classes
disappeared from Rumania as well with the building of socialism and the
working class, the farmers organised in cooperatives, and the working intellectuals became the countrys true masters. With the help of the Soviet
Union, Rumania had turned from a backward agrarian country into a successful industrial and agrarian state. The hard life of farmers in the United
States was highlighted by comparison in that same textbook. The bankruptcy of small and medium-sized farms in the USA and their supplanting
from agricultural production had sharply increased in connection with the
47
Authors interview with Hillar Palamets, 15 May 2010.

The period from the latter half of the 1950s to the first half of the 1960s is referred to as the thaw, when the extensive state policy of violence ended in the
Soviet Union and the progress that had begun in economic life brought with it an
increase in the standard of living and improvement in peoples living conditions.
49
Nagel, Hariduspoliitika ja ldhariduskorraldus Eestis aastatel 1940-1991, 71.
50
Raudsepp, Ajaloo petamise korraldus Eesti NSV eesti ppekeelega
ldhariduskoolides 1944-1985, 41-46.
48
704 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
revolution in the development of science and technology, and the intrusion of monopolies into agriculture. Due to reduced incomes and attempting to use every possible means to avoid bankruptcy, they were forced to
submit to long-term loan slavery.51 Admittedly, these examples are from
translated textbooks but this did not in any way affect the requirement of
censorship and ideological upbringing.
Ideological Upbringing in Reports of School Inspectors
and in Recollections of Contemporaries
School inspectors were one authority that was responsible for supervising
how ideological upbringing was actually carried out in school lessons in
addition to official teaching materials. These reports are mostly very
vague, describing raising, enhancing and improving in a few words as
was typical for Soviet rhetoric. Yet there are more expressive reports. For
instance, a report by a school inspector for a small Estonian rural settlement named Pudivere describes a third grade mathematics lesson where
pupils solved assignments about the fulfilment of grain quotas. In class,
the teacher asked one boy how big his fathers grain quota was. The boy
replied that it was 140 kg, upon which the teacher marvelled that it was
so little and asked if it had been delivered to the state. The pupil replied
that it definitely had been delivered and that there was no other way. This
last reply had been very well phrased in the inspectors opinion. Thereafter the teacher explained to the entire class: There really is no other way
because the worker and the intellectual also want bread. They in turn help
the farmer. You scratch my back and Ill scratch yours.52 The inspector
was also very satisfied with the history teacher at Tallinns Secondary
School no. 10, who had explained Marxist-Leninist doctrine to the pupils
as the only correct view of the world and knew how to tie the topics of
the lesson to the present time. For instance, when talking about the era of
Alexander II, the teacher appropriately compared the political and economic situation of the peasants back then to the current situation in the
51
52
P. M. Kuzmichov and others, Uusim aeg 1939-1974: pik XI klassile [Contemporary History 1939-1974: Textbook for the 11th Grade] (Tallinn: Valgus,
1975) 49, 54, 120-121.
ERA R-14.4.27, 81-83, Virumaa County school inspector Juhan Heinpalus
report for November and December of 1946, not dated.
Soviet Union.53 But not all reports were laudatory. According to Arnold
Kurve, the school inspector for Viljandi County, only few teachers managed to fulfil the requirement to educate pupils ideologically.54 So everything depended on the school, the teacher and presumably also on the
extent to which the teacher knew how to or wanted to transform himself
in the lesson visited by the inspector. Similarly, the report also depended
on the inspector in terms of what he wrote and how he wrote it. Oral recollections confirm that there were inspectors who referred to shortcomings orally without reporting them to higher institutions.55
The same conclusion can be reached on the basis of memoirs collected
orally and those deposited at the Estonian National Museum: everything
depended on the particular school and teacher. Anni Teidaru, who taught
Estonian language, singing and geography for 40 years, recognises in her
memoirs that teaching material had to be tied in with politics in every
school lesson during the Soviet occupation. The teacher was required to
submit a lesson outline for each lesson to the school leadership and three
aspects had to be noted in the outline: the instructional, the educative and
the political. They got written down but that last one was usually left on
the paper only.56 Enno Augjrv of the Jrvakandi Incomplete Secondary
School also recalls the at least seeming fulfilment of regulations. According to him, politics intruded into teaching back then to the same degree as
into life in general at that time. The attitude and wishes of the local Party
organiser substantially affected school life. The necessary concepts were
prescribed by the regime and entered into teaching plans. Their fulfilment
was strictly supervised.57 Yet continual supervision was carried out on
paper in regard to the lesson outlines and this was done within each individual school. Inspectors and the schools own leadership nevertheless
visited classes at random.
53
ERA R-14.4.27, 110-111, City of Tallinns Nmme Rajon Soviet of Workers

and Soldiers Executive Committee Education Department School Inspector
Hella Lumistes report for the 2nd quarter of the 1946/47 school year (November, December), not dated.
54
ERA R-14.4.28, 94, Viljandi County school inspector Arnold Kurves report
for September and October of 1947, not dated.
55
Authors interview with Allan Liim (principal of the Estonian SSR A. H. Secondary School no. 1 in Tartu, 1956-1970), 2010.
56
Estonian National Museum, correspondent reply no. 781, 24.
57
Estonian National Museum, correspondent reply no. 781, 258.
706 ____________________________________________________ Eli PILVE
Conclusions
Soviet propaganda endeavoured to ideologically (re)educate its citizens,
for which reason it had to permeate all of society, especially the educational system, where it was manifested most in the content of textbooks.
During the first year of Soviet occupation in 1940-1941 already, the replacement of societys nationalist values with Soviet ones began, acquiring consistent and systematic form after Estonia was once again occupied
in 1944. The question of ideology was the top priority in publishing new
textbooks. The Party and the government directed their publication. Pressure increased continually and the new curricula of 1948 were even more
ideologised compared to earlier curricula. That was not all, however.
While until that point the use of revised textbooks that had been put together in the Republic of Estonia was permitted in many subjects, henceforth even textbooks put together in Estonia in the new Soviet era were
no longer suitable. Instead, translations of original textbooks put together
in Moscow were preferred. Even so, locally written textbooks remained
in use for the most part, at least in Estonia.
Decisions adopted in succession to increase the relative proportion of internationalism, Soviet patriotism, atheism, labour indoctrination, and other such topics in educational life characterised the channelling of Soviet
educational life. In terms of content, however, they all more or less repeated the same idea. Pressure admittedly weakened after Khrushchevs
speech in 1956 but this did not change the ideological orientation. Pictures of Stalin and stories glorifying him admittedly disappeared from
textbooks but socialism as the only correct world view remained unchallenged as before.
The Soviet regimes ideological pressure could manifest signs of
strengthening or weakening in different decades, and this in turn could to
a certain extent be reflected in the content of school instruction and textbooks, but this held true primarily in relation to technical details, like for
instance whether textbooks could be written locally in the union republics
or only translations of school books originally intended for Russianspeaking pupils were permitted. Ideologically speaking, textbooks still
had to present one message throughout the entire era of occupation a
happy life of abundance in the Soviet Union, which was depicted as a
true wonderland. Here airplanes flew higher than anywhere else, but that
was not all. Here fields yielded the best harvests as well, cows produced
more milk, and people lived incomparably better in sovkhozes and kolkhozes than as private farmers in capitalist countries barely making ends
meet. The Soviet regime was ascribed the role of the humane and monumental saviour in propaganda, having among other working people also
liberated unfortunate rural folk from the yoke of capitalism and given
them the gift of the happiness of the kolkhoz.
The Collectivization Process in the Soviet and Romanian Films.

A Comparative Perspective
Mihaela GRANCEA, Olga GRDINARU
The four Soviet films capture different aspects of collectivization, starting
with two silent films Old and New/The General Line (Staroie i novoie/General`naia linia, 1929), The Earth (Zemlya, 1930), then two films
symptomatic for their period The Country/Rich Bride (Bogataia nevesta,
1937) and The Chairman (Predsedatel`, 1964). The Romanian films analysis include the well-known films, such as In Our Village (n sat la noi,
1951), Mitrea Cocor (1952), The Deployment (Desfurarea, 1954), Vifornia (The Whirlwind, 1959). The study also mentions three relevant Romanian films Vntoarea de vulpi (Fox Hunting, 1980), Un surs in plin
var (A Smile in the Middle of Summer) and Setea (The Thirst, 1961).
1. The Collectivization Process in the Soviet Films
1.1. On Soviet Earth and Old and New Aspects at the Dawn of
Collectivization
The collectivization process was captured from various angles and perspectives in Soviet films, but two silent films stand out from the artistic
point of view: Sergei Eisensteins Old and New (1929) and Alexander
Dovzhenkos Earth (1930). Both films are made by great and well-known
film masters and theorists of montage during the same period the collectivization of agriculture under the First Five-Year Plan. While the two
films are undoubtedly the finest examples of film art, they are also representations of the Soviet key stages and socialist ingredients collectivization of agriculture during the cultural revolution.1 Both silent films bear
the personal mark of their makers and represent more than simple propaganda statements in Soviet film industry. They may and must be regarded
1
The cultural revolution (1928-1932) coincides with the First Five Year Plan and
its main objectives were the rapid industrialization and the total collectivization, directed by Stalin from above. On the other hand, changes in the Soviet
culture (literature, arts and film) were broadly initiated from below (Cf. James
Goodwin, Eisenstein, Cinema, and History (Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1993), 140.
The Collectivization Process in the Soviet and Romanian Films... _________ 709
as a means of illustrating the interaction of Soviet cinema and society,

as Paul E. Burns pointed out.2
S. Eisensteins film has two titles, given the complicated genetic process:
the film The General Line (General`naia linia) was conceived as a celebration of the collectivization process in 1927 (being a reflection of Leon
Trotskys conception), a demonstration that should have showed the future of the Soviet peasantry using the force of the cinematographic image3, but by the time the director was able to finish the film, the political
context changed so that the initial film was re-edited and re-named Old
and New, still retaining many original features4, the usage of unprofessional actors that emphasizes the impression of authenticity, the usage of
oneiric sequences. Old and New5 was censored and withdrawn from the
screens, as it was considered wrong from the ideological perspective. We
may only suspect that even after a serious censorship, the images of contemptuous office workers in the city, refusing the funding of a tractor to a
group of collective hard workers in the village were far too sensitive despite the fact that the conclusion of the film states that In this way the
differences between the city and the village are diminished. Other aspects of the film that were negatively received: the long scene where
priests perform their ritual for rain calling and the almost cynical presentation of peasants life before collectivization.
The film is a poem dedicated to technology as a means of the socialist
transformation of agriculture. Technology is at the same time the effect of
collectivization and the cause of its progress. Eisensteins film presents
the new technological means: the milk separator, the tractor, the thresher,
2
Paul E. Burns, Cultural Revolution, Collectivization, and Soviet Cinema: Eisensteins Old and New and Dovzhenkos Earth. Film & History (11.4. 1981),
84-96.
3
Tudor Caranfil, Vrstele peliculei. O istorie a filmului n capodopere [Ages of
Film. A History of Film in Masterpieces], vol. III (Bucureti: Editura Meridiane, 1990), 205.
4
On a detailed film account of the films script and production history see Vance
Kepley Jr., The Evolution of Eisensteins Old and New, Cinema Journal
14/1 (Fall 1974), 34-50.
5
Old and New/The General Line (Staroie i novoie, 1929): script and director
Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov; cinematography Eduard Tisse; composer Taras Buievsky; actors Marfa Lapkina, M. Ivanin, K. Vasilyev, V.
Buzenkov, I. Yudin, E. Sukhareva, G. Matvei.
710 ___________________________ Mihaela GRANCEA, Olga GRDINARU
and the reaper. The film excels as a discourse of a work didactics in the
collectivized agriculture and offers the lay revelation regarding the
technologic progress as part of the social progress. Three basic motives of
the propaganda film are to be found in this film: the eulogy of technology
(especially the tractor), womans emancipation and the communist innocent love. All these motives are taken over in later films, while the last
flourishes in Ivan Pyryevs musical comedy.
The Earth (Zemlia, 1930)6 was the third part of Dovzhenkos Ukraine trilogy (after Zvenigora (1928) and Arsenal (1929)), and it was inspired by
the collectivization process, as well as the Kulaks resistance to the newly
imposed norms regarding the Ukrainian villages and the elimination of the
so-called rural capitalism. A. Dovzhenko, named the first intensely personal artist in Russian cinema7, depicts the life of the Ukrainian peasants,
also inspired by the figure of his grandfather8 and by events from his home
district. It was considered a controversial subject for a film, given the violent reactions of Kulaks in Ukraine, resisting the collectivization.
Both mentioned films have similar scripts, specific to propaganda films:
two groups of peasants (mainly poor and Kulaks) react in different ways
to the imposed collectivization process, but despite the hardships and the
Kulaks opposition, the collectivization thrives9. In the case of Eisensteins film, the Kulaks opposition is represented by mocking Marfa (the
promoter of collectivization), cattles poisoning and difficulty in getting
finances for a tractor, while in Dovzhenkos film, Vasyl, the successful
initiator of collectivization, is killed. Both misfortunes are transformed
into victories, as the cattle is being healed by a witch and the finances are
obtained by Marfa, while Vasyls death proves to have a unifying force
for the community, dedicated now to the new cause of collectivization.
6
The Earth (Zemlia, 1930): script and director Aleksandr Dovzhenko; cinematography Danilo Demutsky; composer L. Revutsky; actors S. Shkurat, S.
Svashenko, Iu. Solntseva, E. Maksimova, N. Nademsky, I. Franko, P. Masokha, V. Mikhailov, P. Petrik, E. Bondina, L. Liaschenko.
7
David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 4th ed., (Little,
Brown, Great Britain, 2002), 249.
8
Vance Kepley, In the Service of the State: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko
(London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 4.
9
Bolshevik papers as Pravda, Izvestia presented Earth as a pro-Kulak film, with
ambivalent pictures, not so efficient in inducing hatred to a class enemy, as Eisensteins Old and New. Ironically, even Eisensteins film was soon announced
to be ideologically unsuitable for partys direction.
In both films, the poetic images of the countryside and the metaphoric
scenes are amazing, suggesting both the richness of land and the inequality of the old social structure: extreme poverty of individual peasants and
sufficiency of the Kulaks (and therefore their selfishness and resistance to
collectivization). Both films have key scenes, where there are public
speeches for collectivization, as well as individual discussions on the
matter; both films have montages of the production process dairies in
Old and New and bread in Earth. The end of both films is suggestive for
the social and cultural background: in Eisensteins film Marfa drives the
new tractor (see the Soviet feminist variant of emancipation); in Dovzhenkos film Vasyls death is followed by the first atheist funeral in the
area, an ardent speech in favour of collectivization and a symbolic rain
over the rich crop.
The grand panoramic images of the Soviet land have a descriptive, as
well as a symbolic role, leading to the idea that the immense potential of
the land cant be achieved without a proper management collectivization. The discrepancy between the extreme poverty, the rudimental agricultural means and the prosperity of the rural landscape is eloquent. The
propaganda role of these films consisted in inducing the idea that collectivization was the only way for a good management and proper living
conditions for the 100 million illiterate, brutish and backward peasants
handed down by the old social structure (citation from the beginning of
Old and New). The fact that the so-called glorious solution of collectivization expropriated a social class (and class enemy10) Kulaks former
peasants who became landowners (due to 1906 Tzars law regarding land
ownership), was either silenced or poetically expressed in these films.
It seems that in 1921 in Ukraine there were 193 voluntary collective
farms, while in 1928, 9,734 embracing 2.5 percent of all farms and 2.9
percent of all the land.11 Around the time when Dovzhenko started working on The Earth, in the final version of the First Five-Year Plan for collectivization (April 1929) 25 percent of the land was projected to be
10
Kepley, In the Service of the State, 77.

According to V. Holubnychy, Collectivization, in V. Kubijovy (ed.) Encyclopedia of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, vol. 1, 1984),
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CC%5CO
%5CCollectivization.htm, (Accessed May 15, 2015). See also a detailed report
in Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the
Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
11
collectivized (instead of the initial 12 percent). At the time of the films

post-production, more radical plans were adopted, as forced collectivization was instituted throughout Ukraine, following Stalins orders to liquidate Kulaks as a class (known as dekulakization, purges, terror and
party-orchestrated famine). By the release of The Earth, 65 percent of the
Ukrainian farms and 70 percent of the land was collectivized, while Kulaks were only a remembrance of the past land ownership. Thus, Dovzhenkos misalignment with the state policy and disputable position in
the Ukrainian cultural history and his apology: I conceived Earth as a
work that would herald the beginning of a new life in the villages. But the
liquidation of the Kulaks as a class and collectivization events of tremendous political significance that occurred when the film had been
completed and was ready to be released made my statement weak and
ineffectual. (At the Central Committee in Ukraine I was told that I had
brought shame on Ukrainian culture with my work and my behaviour was
called to order. A statement of repentance was demanded from me, but I
went abroad for about four and a half months.)12 Moreover, during the
turbulent months of 1930 Stalin ordered the end of forced collectivization, but unexpectedly, half of the coerced Ukrainian peasants left the collective farms; shortly after, forced collectivization was reinstituted. And
while in 1931 images of abundance from The Earth were screened
abroad, in Ukraine a state-enforced famine was the harsh reality of several years to come.
Due to Dovzhenkos poetic and lyrical film depicting of a political subject13, the reception of the film was overall positive, as The Earth has an
ambiguously artistic approach on a controversial and complex issue.
However, the success of The Earth was short, as it was soon described as
ideologically vicious and even counter-revolutionary.14 Severe critical comments soon followed and the film ended up in the same list as Eisensteins Old and New.
Both renowned Soviet directors found it necessary to create a filmic representation, an artistic legacy for generations to come on the political and
12
13
14
Bohdan Y. Nebesio, The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko, Journal of

Ukrainian Studies 19/1 (Summer 1994), 21.
Lubomir Hosejko, Olexander Dovzhenko: Poet of the Seventh Art,
UNESCO Courier (July-August, 1994), 66.
John Wakeman, World Film Directors, Vol. 1 (The H. W. Wilson Company,
1987), 263.
economic transformations throughout the Soviet Union. In Dovzhenkos

opinion, those were times when not only economic, but also mental transformations took place15, times worthy to depict with all their disturbances
and excitement.
While both directors were pioneers in the theory and practice of montage,
alongside with Vsevolod Pudovkin and Lev Kuleshov, Dovzhenkos type
of montage may seem more appealing to the heart and senses than to the
mind, which would rather be Eisensteins case.16 Despite the fact that
both directors stage meticulously their montage in the analysed films,
Dovzhenkos style seems less intrusive and it is made in a symbolic manner. For example, see the ending of the film, named the longest and most
elaborate example of parallel montage in the history of the cinema17,
where a new type of funeral is followed by the communitys unification,
by a new birth and a symbolic cathartic rain over the crop.
A distinctive authentic note must be mentioned when talking about
Eisensteins initial films the fact that he didnt use professional actors. He
explained his inclination toward using untrained people in his films firstly
by the subject of his films (mainly class conflict), then by the envisioned
new and different society with no budget restrictions.18 On the other hand,
Old and New used complex photographic effects and a new structural approach, called overtonal montage consisting in organizing secondary facets of the composition to increase or undercut the main part of the imagery.
Various camera angles, cerebral and cold technical aspects, crowd movements and other structural issues on montage were of no use to the increasingly invasive cultural revolution, in the form of Socialist Realism and its
specific doctrines and requirements, while the Western critics, scholars and
directors considered him the epitome of the creative director, and an impressive literature is dedicated to Eisenstein and his work.
15
Alexander Dovzhenko, Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 58.
See Sergei Eisensteins essays on intellectual montage, written in 1929: Beyond the Shot, The Dramaturgy of Film Form and The Fourth Dimension in
Cinema.
17
Adams P. Sitney, Alexander Dovzhenko, in Cinema: A Critical Dictionary
The Major Filmmakers, vol. 1 Aldrich to King, ed. Richard Roud (London:
Secker and Warburg, 1980), 288.
18
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sergei_Eisenstein (Accessed
May 15, 2015).
16
Some other social and mental changes are represented in both films,
changes that are related to collectivization: the fading importance of religion, the relevance of newly installed social norms, as well as new horizons for womens involvement in society. In Eisensteins film there are
different and significant camera angles while filming the Orthodox procession (from an elevated angle, suggesting the godlike vision upon subjects and therefore human incapacity), the discussion between peasants
(the same medium level, suggesting equality), and the leaders speeches
(from below angle, suggesting their increasing power over the audience
and thus the importance of collectivization). In Dovzhenkos film, the
novelty is represented by the refusal of Vasyls father to bury Vasyl in the
traditional Orthodox manner, an aspect that was new in those years. Belittling religion and spiritual authority was also represented in other films of
that era (see Eisensteins Strike (1925) and Pudovkins Storm Over Asia
(1928)). It was a bold representation of a secular mentality winning over
the deeply rooted Russian Orthodox mentality. In fact, the following
montage is much more powerful in suggesting the inability of religion in
front of the new wave of social changes (the scene where the priest curses
Vasyls family and community and despite his efforts, the community is
united by Vasyls death).
On the other hand, S. Eisenstein appeared to have tried to combine the
new Communist mythology with the religious-messianic mythology,
solving the opposition between present and past, old and new. The abundance of rich images in his films and various mythological hints is only
several aspects to mention (see also Marfas milk separator, shot to resemble Aladdins magic lamp in Old and New).
As for Dovzhenkos film, we may highlight that the simple narrative plan
brings it closer to poetry than prose, reflecting some philosophical concerns on a transition period in the Ukrainian history (the difference between Semens death and Vasyls death). Due to some controversial
reactions before the films release and especially after its release in the
Soviet Union, there are probably six different versions of Earth because
of cut scenes and various censorship directives.
Ironically, while in the 30s Eisensteins and Dovzhenkos films were
studied abroad, contributing to bettering the diplomatic relations between
USA and USSR, millions of people were dying during the Ukrainian Holodomor. Moreover, we may add that despite the fact that both great directors were seen as central representatives of the Soviet culture (and
implicitly propaganda) in the West, they were regarded as anti-Stalinist

and opposing the party line in their personal representations of contemporary subjects in the Soviet Union.19
1.2. A Comedy on Serious Matters
The musical comedy The Rich/Country Bride20 had an obvious escapist
character after the harsh years of Ukrainian party-induced famine, directed by Ivan Pyryev, the well-known Soviet director, awarded six Stalin
Prizes21, considered the high priest of Stalinist cinema.22 The rich large
fields, the time of harvesting, the merry atmosphere of a collective and a
minor conflict caused by a beautiful and hard-working girl are the main
aspects of the film. All these aspects are symptomatic for many other
Pyryevs films from the Stalinist era. The only features that may remind
of his young years and his work with the great Vsevolod Meyerhold23 are
19
20
21
22
23
See also M. Shkandrijs reflections on this matter: How Dovzhenko came to

be claimed both as a central showpiece of Soviet propaganda and an example
of Ukrainian pantheistic spirituality, anti-Stalinism, and deep patriotism is one
of the great paradoxes of his artistic development. Perhaps more M.
Shkandrij, Review of Ivan Koshelivets Oleksander Dovzhenko: Sproba
Tvorchoi Biohrafii in Journal of Ukrainian Studies 8/1 (Summer 1983), 87.
The Country Bride (Bogataia nevesta, 1937): director Ivan Pyryev; script
E. Pomeschikov; music I. Dunaevsky; cinematography V. Okulich; actors
F. Kurikhin, M. Ladynina, B. Bezgin, I. Liubeznov, S. Shagaida20, A.
Dmokhovskaia, A. Antonov, I. Matveev, L. Sveshnikova.
Stalin Prizes were awarded to Ivan Pyryev in 1941, 1942, two in 1946, 1948
and 1951, making him the most appreciated director in the Soviet motion picture industry.
Irina Graschenkova considers that Pyryevs career may be divided into four
parts: the administrative one and three creative parts, dedicated to different
subjects and interests: as an actor at Meyerholds theatre and Eisensteins proletkult spectacles and director; the Stalinist stage (the most successful so that
colleagues called him Ivan Groznyi); the last stage is dedicated to adaptations of Dostoevskys writings. http://www.kinobraz.ru/old/piryev.htm (Accessed May 17, 2015).
Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) was a great man of theatre, experimentalist
and opponent of socialist realism, a fact that earned him Stalins antipathy,
disgrace, imprisonment and execution. His work was regarded as avant-garde
and his theatre was closed, as his work was considered estranged from the socalled Soviet people. Meyerhold was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955, after
Stalins death, during the cultural Thaw.
the influence in actors theatrical gestures and manner of acting in some

early films. As for the most manner of acting, Stanislavskys24 system
was mainly used, referring to actors emotional memory, with a holistic
and psychophysical approach.
The film The Country Bride retains all the successful features of the Stalinist era, being a typical Soviet film with perfect characteristics, both ideologically and in terms of popularity25. A lyrical musical comedy, the film
invites the spectator to enter almost a magic world about the peoples pursuit of happiness, with an irreplaceable final as a big wedding table.
Among other typical scenes in Pyryevs films we may mention the major
working scenes, social aspects as competitions between brigades, collective
farm problems, no erotic scenes, pathetic heroism and memorable songs,
which became instant hits with the Soviet audience. This stage in the directors life has its muse, Marina Ladynina, Pyryevs second wife.
The time of harvesting is presented humorously as a tactical matter, resembling a military operation, as a brigade leader of tractor-drivers
states, while analyzing the results of the harvest, compared to another collective. The harvest is the reason for postponing the wedding between a
tractor driver, Pavlo, and Marinka, a hard-working girl. The Soviet aspects that matter in choosing a wife/husband are revealed: hard-working;
a collective worker, not individualist. The female brigade leader asks Marina if her fianc is a Stakhanovist26 or a lazy man, while the bookkeeper Kovynko tries to separate Pavlo and Marinka, lying that she is more of
a dancer and a singer than a collective worker. Kovynko attempts to lie
about Pavlos success at work, but fails. The brigade leader of tractor24
K. Stanislavsky (1863-1938) Russian actor and theatre director, famous for a

complex system of acting with a great influence especially after World War II,
supporter of socialist realism, playing a huge role in establishing special traits
for the Soviet cinema. He referred to his approach as spiritual realism and
wrote several works, including an autobiography, entitled My Life in Art.
25
The censorship of those years had exact, demanding and sometimes moody
constraints on form and subject imposed after the declaration of the official
style in 1932, while its main guidelines were established in 1934. See more on
the evolution of Soviet cinema style, content and technical aspects in Peter
Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society: From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin
(London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd., 2001).
26
A Soviet miner Aleksei Stakhanov (1906-1977) rewarded for his outstanding
persistence in increasing production, contributing to reorganization of work in
coal-fields. His example gave birth to a social movement Stakhanovist
movement after 1935 in an attempt to raise the efficiency of workers
throughout the Soviet Union.
drivers states that Pavlo is the first tractor-driver in the area and advises
Marina to marry a tractor-driver.
The three important motives of the propaganda film, exposed earlier in
Eisensteins film analysis, are present in this comedy as well with a
slightly different accent laid rather on the eulogy of work than technology, while the womans emancipation is represented in the image of the
energetic and robust female worker (kolkhoznitsa). See a cult-image for
the Soviet film the female brigade armed with rakes, following a tractor
driven by a young man contaminated by the female joy and their
March. The film also presents the competition between the tractor brigades and the song March of the tractor brigade or Stallions of
Steel27; both songs became instant Soviet hits.
The climax of the film is the sunny harvest day, when both Pavlo and
Marina doubt their sincere love due to Kovynkos intrigue. The rapid
montage of grain and faces of the female workers suggest the rapid
rhythm of work; the impediment in taking a special award for Pavlos
brigade of tractor-drivers is this very misunderstanding between the two
lovers and a minor tractor malfunction.
A rotating panoramic view on the sunny fields and working people has its
idyllic and romantic charm, emphasizing the richness of the crops, the
hard-working Soviet people rising to the challenge of managing properly
these vast abundant horizons before the rain falling. The dark clouds and
the approach of the rain complicate the harvesting process, but even the
bookkeeper comes to help.
In the evening the end of the harvest is celebrated with songs, dances and
prizes. After another comic misunderstanding between Marina, Pavlo and
Kovynko, the two lovers are reunited in the last waltz of the night, interpreted by the collective farms band. The idealized Soviet lifestyle is obvious especially in the brigade leaders reply that People suffer only
because of love. Life in the Soviet collective farm (kolkhoz) is represented as a peaceful and rewarding type of living, among fellow workers
and breathtaking views of abundance, where almost nothing (bad) happens and despite all minor issues love blossoms and good triumphs.
As for the harsh reality of those years, it was different from the idyllic
scenes presented in popular escapist films, as those were the years of the
27
The music was composed by the successful Soviet composer Dunayevsky.
Great Purge (1936-193828) or the Great Terror29 a large-scale campaign

of political repression not only of peasants, Kulaks and government
members, Red Army leaders, but also intelligentsia. Yezhovshchina (Time
of Yezhov) is the name of the most intense purge in the Russian historiography due to the name of the head of the Soviet secret police, Nikolai
Yezhov (1895-1940), a victim of the purge, too. Terror, insecurity, suspicion, police surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment and execution were the
traits of that period, everything orchestrated against the so-called enemies of the Soviet people and counter-revolutionary, found guilty of
political crimes.
Among those dreadful years, November 1937 may be considered the
gloomiest in the history of the Soviet cultural life, when more than 200
writers were repressed, as long as an entire generation of actors, film
makers and artists, who received later the title of the Executed Renaissance. Vsevolod Meyerhold together with Les Kurbas and several other
directors are regarded as the most prominent representatives of the Executed Renaissance (in Ukrainian Rozstrilyane vidrodzhennya30), the group
of extraordinary artists of the 20s and 30s executed by the Stalinist totalitarian regime. The fact that Shagaida (the actor playing the role of the
barber in The Country Bride) was shot by the time Pyryevs film was released offers a glimpse into the so-called peaceful and serene Soviet lifestyle. Les Kurbas (1997-1937) had the same tragic destiny, being
executed in 1937, guilty of nationalistic perversities during the socalled Ukrainization/nativization process. Only several exponents of
this brilliant generation survived, among which we mention A. Dovzhenko,
28
According to Robert Gellatery, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social
Catastrophe (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007). Other
scholars support the idea that only the peak of this terror phenomenon was
during that period, dating roughly the so-called vast social engineering campaign at the beginning of the 1930s. See David Shearer, Policing Stalins Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), and Paul Hagenloh, Stalins Police. Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR 1926-1941 (Baltimore: The John
Hopkins University Press, 2009).
29
Cf. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow.
30
The term was used by Yuri Lavrinenko, a researcher of Ukrainian literature,
who used this title to describe the best literary works of that generation (See
Yuri Lavrinenkos book Rozstrilyane vidrodzhennya: Antologia 1917-1933
(Kiiv: Smoloskip, 2004).
M. Rylsky, M. Bazhan (who remained in the Soviet Union) and U. Samchuk, G. Shevelov, I. Bakhrianyi (who emigrated). Although this group
didnt reject communism as a political ideology, they were mainly against
the norms of socialist realism and the so-called red graphomania, offering different creative developments of proletarian culture and adopting
achievements of the European culture. In other words, these various artists rejected the mandatory ideological meaning of literature, art or the
so-called partijnost principle (party-minded principle consisting of the
work of art as an act of affirmation of loyalty to the state31), focused on
the veracious and authentic representation of life and society. Some other
representatives of similar artistic movements within this generation valued quality of the artistic product and disregarded mass art, any type of
propagandistic work and didactic writing, while others stood for promoting the Revolutions ideals. It is evident that all these variations of Proletarian culture were repressed and considered harmful and perverse in
the party-controlled cultural atmosphere of the late 1930s. The Ukrainian
cultural Renaissance of the 1920s should have been quashed and levelled
in the so-called harmonious background of Socialist Realism.
Another relevant example of the extreme Soviet censorship during those
years would be the fate of Eisensteins film Bezhin Meadow (Bezhin lug),
filmed between 1935 and 1937. The subject was collectivization of farms
and its joyful and tragic aspects, based on Pavlik Morozovs32 story. Although there were two versions of the film, both of them were severely
criticized; the director was removed from his duties as a professor, while
the executive producer Boris Shumiatsky was arrested and shot as a traitor in the early 1938. The film was destroyed33 and only several shots,
photographs and drafts were used later to compose a photo-film.
31
See more on this principle visible in literature of the Socialist Realism in K.

Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, Third edition (Bloomington and
Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 2000).
32
Pavel Morozov (1918-1932) is a Soviet pupil from the Ural region, famous as a
pioneer-hero and symbol of the fighter against Kulaks. According to Bol`shaia
Sovetskaia Entsiklopedia, Pavlik Morozov was the organizer and chief of the
first pioneer group in the village Gerasimovka (3rd edition, 1969-1978)
http://bse.chemport.ru/morozov_pavlik.shtml (Accessed May 15, 2015).
33
Naum I. Kleiman, Eisenstein, Bezhin lug (pervyi variant), kul`turnomifologicheskie aspekty, in Formula finala (Moskva: Eisenstein tsentr,
2004), 126.
1.3. Restoring the Former Glory of Collective Farms

The Chairman (Predsedatel`, 1964)34 is considered the most famous film
of director Aleksei Saltykov (1934-1993), who started his career as a director in post-Stalinist years, filming around 20 films. It is a fine example
of post-Stalinist cinema, retaining many Stalinist features and motives
the idyllic pastoral scenes, the working scenes, the harvest and the wedding, the war hero, the conflict between brothers, the relationship between the (spiritual) father and the son, the post-war Soviet village but
from a naturalistic perspective. The film consists of two parts: The Brothers and To Be a Human Being. As in The Earth, a funeral of a collective
worker, Praskovya, is followed by a birth; the final scene is the smile of
the girl who brings the news of the birth to the funeral cortege. The funeral is special, as the cortege meets the collective cows on the way like a
special parade of the collective farms growth (compared to Yegors first
day in the village when several cows were so weak that they werent able
to stand by themselves).
The script of the film is simple: Yegor Trubnikov, a war veteran (with no
hand) returns to his native village two years after World War II with the
aim to restore the collective farm. Discussing this with Semyon, his
brother, a relevant reply stands out: Since its still the Soviet power, then
collective farms will be, too. Theres no other way. Semyon regards
with cynicism his brothers idea to become the chairman of the collective
farm; he mentions that they paid with blood and sweat for their land,
while the Soviet power protected them poorly both from Nazis bullets
and paws (alluding to the origin of one of his sons).
Preparing for the harvest, a young man uses the same metaphor of
fighting (Well take Berlin!) for working in the fields, although the
group of workers looks far looser than the model brigades from the film
The Rich/Country Bride. The Chairman resembles The Rich Bride the
harvest and a delayed wedding, a storm and a conflict regarding the quality of the work; the difference lies in the manner of filming and naturalistic manner of acting, as well as some dramatic notes. There are also
some scenes when the Soviet authorities competence in several areas is
34
Predsedatel`, 1964 director: Aleksei Saltykov; script: Yuri Nagibin; cinematography: Vladimir Nikolaev; music: Aleksandr Kholminov; actors: Mikhail
Ulyanov, Nonna Mordyukova, Ivan Lapikov, V. Nevinnyi, V. Vladimirova, K.
Golovko etc.
questioned; there is a tension between state and kolkhoz, between party

and man, between the required and the right thing to do in managing the
collective farm. Stalins death brought a welcomed change in the complicated situation of the main hero, whose party membership was under
question due to his marital status (this was only an official pretext) and
his direct and offensive manner of discussing various issues regarding the
collective farm.
While establishing that the wheat is ready to be harvested, the group of
people gathered around the chairman comment on the fact that there is no
permission from the above to start the harvest: Bureaucracy is worse
than drought for the earth. The collective workers decide to harvest in
the old way, with no tractors in order not to lose the good crop. Confronted with the fact that the chairman started the harvest with no clear indications and no mechanical support, Yegor calmly mentions: Wheat is the
best counsellor and you underestimate the poetry of manual labour.
Yegors decision is regarded as anti-Soviet and he is threatened to be expelled from the party. There is an attempt to replace Trubnikov as the
chairman, but even Donya, his sister-in-law, and his brother vote for him
(after a fight between the brothers and an open conflict). His thankful
speech is a heartfelt Soviet slogan, expressed with tears in his eyes: Together till death toward communism!
The second part of the film starts with scenes of the Ukrainian winter
landscape and a meeting of chairmen of collective farms, where Yegor
highlights the fact that their aim is to make efficient each element of the
collective farm and not to boast with big numbers. Yegors official wife
comes to visit him after reading an exaggerated article about Yegors collective farm and its success in the paper. This visit has negative consequences, as Trubnikovs integrity is questioned, as well as his party
membership. Many troubles are caused by Semyons incriminatory declarations against the chairman, his brother; Semyons wife warns Yegor
about her husbands dealings. However, Trubnikov finds an ally in a man
of a high position, who proposes to award Trubnikov the prize of Hero
of Labour. In a discussion between the two, being asked: What do you
believe in?, Yegor answers: In the party, in the Soviet power.
As for the cinematographic devices, director Saltykov uses the intellectual montage: in the scene when Yegor swears heavily (the sound is off), a
flock of crows and other birds start flying and croaking, as if startled by a
great noise. The death of Yegors son with a local woman is represented
through an ellipse the doctor consults his son, Yegor goes to town for
serum, then Semyon stays near the fence, with his cap in his hands,
watching his brother carving with his only hand a small coffin. Stalins
death is announced on the radio at the train station, while people are
gathered to listen to the news. The filming from above suggests the idea
of authority, while the mourning faces of the listeners express their regret.
On the other hand, the complicated plots around Yegor were ceased, this
aspect obvious in the following montage his friend released, his only
wife (as he called his village lover) near him, the village developed according to the bold plans of Yegors step son there was a school, a hospital, large roads and newly planted trees. The final succession of scenes
suggests new starts, a new era and new horizons for the Soviet dream.
As we have already mentioned, many Stalinist motives are used in this
film, but many of them are either endowed with a new meaning or lost
their initial pathetic notes due to the social and political changes (Stalins
death, the Thaw35). The war hero, the mutilated by war soldier is a constant theme in Stalinist imagery, as opposed to the Apollonic Soviet beauty, a theme presented here differently than in the famous A. Stolpers36
film, Story of a Real Man (1948), based on B. Polevoys book.37 These
types of heroes are found worthy to be presented as heroes, revealing
their extreme forms of physical disability, being part of what could be
35
A post-Stalinist period (1954-1964), also known as Khrushchevs Thaw

(Khrushchovskaia Ottepel`), the term being coined after Ilya Ehrenburgs novel
The Thaw (1954). The period was famous for less censorship and no repression
due to the fact that Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his purges in his famous
Secret Speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party. The following
years were characterized not only by a cultural heyday, but also by some economic reforms, some freedom of information in the media, arts, and culture.
36
A. Stolper (1907-1979) a Soviet director and screenwriter, director of 14
films, awarded two Stalin Prizes for Story of a Real Man in 1949 and Far from
Moscow in 1951. He is famous for his film adaptations of K. Simonovs war
writings Wait for Me (1943), Days and Nights (1945), The Alive and the
Dead (1964).
37
B. Polevoy (1908-1981) Soviet reporter and writer, well-known for his writing
Story of a Real Man about a Soviet World War II pilot Alexei Meresyev who
managed to fight again as a pilot during the war with prostheses instead of his
frozen and amputated legs. He was named a Hero of Socialist Labour and
awarded the Stalin Prize for literature, as well as three Lenin Orders, two Red
Banners, the Red Star and even the Gold Medal of the World Peace Council.
named the cultural and ideological phantasy of Stalinism: the radical

dismembering of male subjects.38
Yegor Trubnikov is a war hero with no right arm and behaves as such,
with no false pretences of being regarded as a whole man or as a hero,
showing understanding and patience for those who were afraid of fighting
in the war or of fighting for anything in their lives. In the scene with Polina who takes Yegor in (becoming his lover), she calls him the only
whole person shes seen. He offers to babysit for his brothers twins so
that Donya, his sister-in-law, could help at the harvest, mentioning that he
is useless in the fields. Even in the final scene with his treacherous brother, he finds power to forgive Semyon and to offer him a better life. Moreover, Yegor is the only one to have the courage to begin the harvest
before the orders were given to do so; he opposes the officials in the town
regarding the payment for the collective farms workers; he is the one to
voice his opinions about other important and dangerous matters. He
seems to be the only whole, integral person among all the others from
the spiritual perspective (in Russian polnotsennyi means literally of
complete value; a war invalid was considered nepolnotsennyi). The Stalinist idea of a war cripple was re-semanticized, as the war hero needed
no pathetic confirmation of a previous status as a useful and whole person; he accepts his condition and behaves as such, without hiding his pain
in the inexistent arm or his inability to take his boots off.
Other important revolutionary motives, such as the relationship between
the father and the son (present also in the Russian classic literature) or between the Bolshevik leader and the apprentice39, the conflict between
brothers, have another representation in the film. The conflict between
brothers is of a different nature simplifying, the good brother is deterred
and hindered by an envious brother; however, there is no triumph over
evil or punishment for the evil deeds, as the despicable brother gets a
chance to start over his life with his family away from the temptation to
38
See more on this subject in Lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008).
39
Katerina Clark explores this subject in the Soviet writings of the revolutionary
times and in Socialist Realism. We consider that the same motives were represented in the same obedient manner and with the same ideological correctness
in the films of the Stalinist era, following a pattern, a successful recipe so useful in Socialist Realism. (Clark, The Soviet Novel, 2000).
destroy his brothers achievements. The relationship between Yegor and

his step-son is a natural relationship between a jealous and orphan son and
his mentor; Trubnikov has a conversation with the boy, in which he explains that he has no ambitions to take the fathers place. Nevertheless, this
relationship is not explored, as it would have been in the Stalinist era; Yegor only helps the boy to dream and to imagine the poor village ten years on,
making small steps toward those huge changes on paper at that moment.
Although the truthfulness of the presented transformations of a Soviet village around a restored collective farm may be questionable, the film is
first of all the mis-en-scne of the society itself during those years, of its
ideals and concerns, of its sorrows and joys. The main idea of the film is
representing the post-war village, the lamentable state of the collective
farms and all the hardships endured by simple people so that their big
dreams would come true. The film is sincere enough in revealing the
post-Stalinist aspects of life and the tensions between what was desired and
what was true (see the scene when Yegor talks at a meeting about unrealistic figures of some collective farms or the unrealistic expectations of the
plans), between bureaucracy and life, between dogmas and human souls.
2. The Collectivization Process in the Romanian Films
The Romanian communist propaganda started after the nationalization of
the cinematography industry and the commerce regulation regarding the
cinematographic products.40 The Romanian film production became substantial during the communist period, because film was the most efficient
instrument of political propaganda due to its artistic expressivity, popular
language and appeal for feelings.41 Unlike the first Soviet silent propaganda films on collectivization, the first Romanian films on this subject
(1951, 1952) have the questionable advantage of the actors speaking.
Although the gross-plans are used, as in the Soviet case, the Romanian
propaganda discourse minimizes the power of suggestion and representation. In other words, the silent film is more efficient in terms of propa40
41
The Decree 303 (November 2, 1948), see http:// www.monitoruljuridic.ro/.../

decret-nr-303-din-3-noiembrie-1948-pentru... (Accessed September 20, 2015).
Cristian Vasile, Cinematografia n anii stalinismului (1948-1950). Control
ideologic i structuri instituionale [Cinematography in Stalinist Years
(1948-1950). Ideological Control and Institutional Structures], Revista istoric [Historical Journal] XXI/1-2 (2010), 5-29.
ganda, as the image has more importance than the words. Naturalism is
also better represented in the silent Soviet films, as the Romanian films
present it as a secondary aspect its metaphorical role disappears in time.
For example, in Eisensteins film the milk is filmed as if it is light, the
fundamental element of the cosmic life, a basic element of food; in the
Romanian films nature is a significant character only in two analysed
films In Our Village and The Deployment.
2.1. First Romanian Steps onto Propaganda Films
The first Romanian communist film about peasants was La noi n sat (In
Our Village, 1951)42, a propaganda film, a pleading for the socialist
agrarian community as a solution for levelling the social differences and
ensuring the economic prosperity. Although the film is about the struggle
to eradicate poverty, it is an altered representation, as no one walks barefoot or dies of hunger, the interior of the rooms is decent, while the village seems flourishing in several panoramic images. The threatening
beast lays in the bosom of community, the beast that endangers the collective happiness chiabur43 (a wealthy peasant). We are surprised by the
42
La noi n sat [In Our Village] (script: Petru Dumitriu, adaptation of the short
story Noapte de iunie [June Night]; image: Wilfried Ott; George Grigoriu; director: Jean Georgescu, Victor Iliu; music: George Grigoriu; main actors:
Constantin Ramadam, George Manu; 1951).
43
In the village Mgura, Dumitru, the son of a wealthy peasant Ilie Scpu, kills
the old Ion Lepdat in a fury crisis, Ion Lepdat, a participant at the revolt in
1907, was guided by his son, Ionic, a party member, to dedicate to collectivization. Pantelimon decides after Ions death to enter the cooperative and to
marry his daughter Leana to Mihil (Scpus hand, member of the local party organization) and not to Dumitru, exposed by a half-hearted peasant. The
end is a happy one, as the killer is captured by militia, while the wedding participants dance joyfully. Moreover, the president of GAP becomes a woman.
Thus the Soviet filmic experience is respected, as in the Soviet film the woman plays a significant role in building socialism the woman standing by the
tractor is the symbol of the socialist transformation of agriculture. The partys
project was explained for the villagers by Ionic Lepdat; he presents a synthesis at a preparatory session and also at his fathers grave but in a hilarious
manner: We rely on the poor peasantry, we make alliances with the middle
peasantry, and we fight continuously against the rich peasantry (chiaburime)
[...]; The working class is here to help you, as well as the entire world, with
scores and scores of countries and peoples, and in front of them is the Soviet
fact that the producers of the film have shadowed poverty and presented
it plainly only later, in the film Desfurarea (The Deployment, 1954)
and Vntoarea de vulpi (Fox Hunting, 1980).
The communist happy-end determined by the registering in GAP
(Gospodarie Agricol Colectiv collective farm) is ensured by two
filmic referential episodes: a wedding where everybody sings, laughs and
dances on the rhythms of popular music interpreted by professionals
dressed impeccably in almost luxuriant traditional costumes. Far away,
on the field, the wheat-ears sheer in the wind, as generally speaking, the
landscape is presented idyllically, ethnographically, in a traditional
manner with a powerful suggestion of prosperity. These types of idyllic
images are taken over from the Soviet cinema; especially recognizable
are the scenes of Eisensteins Old and New as a leit-motiv with the descriptive role of the immensity and abundance of the Soviet land. This
image became an aesthetic clich in Soviet films, as well as in other films
of the Eastern bloc. Moreover, gross-plans and panoramic images are
abundantly used although with a smaller suggestive power.
The rural community of Malu Surpat from the film Mitrea Cocor (1952)
is virtual. The villagers use a trans-regional and historical language, as
parallel terminologies are used that define the social perspective. Thus the
landlord is named ciocoi (upstart) by the poor/proletarian peasants (the
term ciocoi defined the parvenu in the depreciative language of the 19th
century)44, and the estate manager is named logothete. The peasants are
barefoot and have a naturalist aspect, as the Socialist Realism became a
mandatory aesthetic approach. The exploiters on the other hand, are
vulgar, hideous, and merely caricatures. Mitrea Cocor, like the heroes
from the Soviet films, has a figure of a revolutionist. Unlike the atheist
perspective of Soviet films, marking the end of the religious era (and a
sort of mockery to the inefficiency of the Orthodox rituals awaiting for
rain in Eisensteins Old and New), Mitrea Cocor does not approach the
religious matter in such harsh terms although the main heroes declare
their atheism and agnosticism.
44
Union. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOl2EerT3W0 (Accessed September 10, 2015).

See the following novels: Nicolae Filimon, Ciocoi vechi i noi [Old and New
Upstarts] (1863); Duiliu Zamfirescu, Tnase Scatiu, 1907.
The film45 starts with several sequences that present the romance between
the teenagers Mitrea Cocor and Nastasia, but the storm bursts and a
wooden bridge falls into the water, together with Mitreas parents. The
young orphan remains in the care of his elder brother (Ghi Lungu) who
owns a mill and wants to disinherit Mitrea by sending him as a hand at
Cristeas manor to work only for his housing and food. Mitrea spends 7
years of his life working there; this is an experience that brings a radical
trait in his character, and he becomes a rebel without a clearly defined
cause. The friendship with the worker Cerne, which becomes initiatic,
then serving in the army and the war would transform Mitrea into a
communist conscience.
To this experience of the Eastern front Mitrea owes his so-called
illumination (as a war prisoner in Russia; he has the opportunity to
know directly from the source the Stalinist dogma and practice). The
mystification, present for decades in the communist historiography,
refers, firstly, to the volunteering of the Division Tudor Vladimirescu, a
military structure made of military and officers kept as Soviet prisoners;
it was said that for the socialist transformation of the state and out of pure
admiration for Stalin, these people would fight against Fascism and
become the agents for the communist model in the liberated Romania.
Stalin organized such divisions in 1943 for Poland and Romania in order
to have the necessary instruments for Stalinization of these countries.
Romanians who chose this type of regimentation tried to escape the
Gulag. Mitrea Cocor is part of such a division; meanwhile, the villagers
find out of Mitreas destiny and keep saying to his brother that Mitrea
would come back to claim his inheritance. The film shows historical
sequences: the 23rd of August, 1944 (the armistice with Russians is
evoked in laudatory terms), the countrys entrance in the Western front.
During a permission, Mitrea Cocor marries Nastasia.
Other dynamic sequences are fragments of war documentaries, the beginning
of communist power and the agrarian reform. While Ghi counts his
45
Mitrea Cocor film adaptation of M. Sadoveanus novel, published in 1949;

script: Valeria Sadoveanu, Profira Sadoveanu; directed by Marietta Sadova
and Victor Iliu; operator: Wilfried Ott; music: Sabin Dragoi; the main role interpreted by Septimiu Sever; premiere in 1952). This is a propaganda film, inspired by the filmic rhetoric and aesthetic approach from Nezabyvaemyi 1919
god [The Unforgettable Year 1919], a film from 1951 http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxvg_5JkFxA (Accessed September 15, 2015).
money, the agrarian proletarians gather and ask for land from the
landlord. Although Cristea goes to intimidate the peasants, Mitrea Cocor
disarms him. Mitrea is present for parcelling the land an action with an
almost sacred significance. A communist happy-end presents Mitrea
Cocor, in his military uniform, participating at the ploughing supposed by
the parcelling of the land. The last images are focused on a family portrait
a Soviet cinematographic clich Nastasia with the baby in her arms,
smiling happily. Mitrea Cocor seems illuminated by the belief in a bright
future and utters some words that suggest that the horizon has been cleared,
as now they all know who are their friends and enemies. In the
background, the peasants are ploughing, as the landlord and mayor receive
their punishment. These last sequences are accompanied by the soundtrack
Romanian traditional songs on ploughing, performed by an orchestra.46
2.3. Romanian Kulaks and Marginals in Films
The Deployment47 (1954) was considered a canon for film adaptations, as it
is a film adaptation of Marin Predas story, written in 1952. The film presents the category of chiabur48 (the Romanian version of kulak, introduced
officially by the Resolution of the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of PMR (Romanian Workers Party) on 3-5 March 1949) as the small
and middle class land-owner who had a relative economic independence
and used occasionally daily workers. According to propaganda, chiabur
46
See Toate plugurile ar [All the Ploughs Are Ploughing] interpreted by Miron
Neagu in the 30s; this is a urban version of a Transylvanian folk song. See
http://www.versuri.ro/
(Accessed
July
2015).
See
also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIE5C9iX_Iw (Accessed September 15,
2015).
47
Script: Marin Preda; directed by Puiu Calinescu; actors: Colea Rutu, Ernest
Maftei.
48
This category included peasants who had more land than they could work with
their family (over 5 ha) and used workers (agricultural proletarians). The term
was officially introduced by Rezoluia edinei Plenare a CC al PMR din 3-5
martie 1949 [Resolution of Plenary Session of the Central Committee of
P.M.R on 3-5 March 1949] that supposed the socialist transformation of agriculture, a socio-political project of Soviet inspiration. The project was a fundamental one for the victory of the system and it was based on the
involvement of the poor peasantry and on the alliance with the middle class
peasantry. The process supposed a specific dynamics imposed by the fight
against chiaburime.
was the enemy of the Stalinist project of agricultural collectivization. After the agrarian reform, the landlords disappeared, and these land-owners
possessed almost 90% of the arable land in Romania. The peasants fulfilled their dream to have land and the idea of a socialist transformation
was difficult to assume. That is why propaganda tried to convince the agricultural proletarians (peasants with little land, no land at all, daily workers) that the enemies are chiaburii49, following the Soviet experience.
Among the secondary characters, but with a huge role in the collectivization process we mention the engineer and the regional secretary. The first
one is responsible for signing up the people in the collective farm and it is
a caricature of an intellectual, an old man with an obsolete appearance,
semi-illiterate (confusing the name and the surname). The second one
(Ion urlea) is a bright figure, empathetic and devoted to communist ideology understood as a human religion. He is sociable and able to choose
the right people for the right position in the microsystem of the village.
He is accompanied by other party activists and the secretary of the local
party organization (the embodiment of the communist vigilance, interpreted by Ernest Maftei).50
The character of the main protagonists is revealed through the family relationships so that Ilie Barbu and his wife Gherghina have a simple relation, specific to the traditional gender work division. Gherghina is the
social trigger of his husband, while the relation of the bookkeeper Voicu
Ghioceoaia and his wife is different, as he verbally assaults her and treats
her as a possession. The latter couple is representative for the middle
class (chiaburi) and they seem to be the opposition of the first couple
(poorer, but happier).
49
Mihai Fulger Propaganda n filmul romnesc. ranii nu mai vor pmnt, Istoria filmului. Articole. [Propaganda in the Romanian Film. Peasants Dont
Want Land Anymore. History of Film. Articles] (August 18, 2014):
http://www.istoriafilmului.ro/articol/.../propaganda-in-filmul-romanesc-2taran... (Accessed September 21, 2015).
50
The film presents in a subliminal manner the internal fights within the Romanian Workers Party due to the fight between the local party members separated in two groups those supporting the party line and the so-called
deviationists. See also Cristian Tudor Popescu Filmul surd n Romnia
mut. Poltic i propagand n filmul romnesc de ficiune (1912-1989) [The
Deaf Film in the Tongue Tied Romania. Politics and Propaganda in the Romanian Artistic Film (1912-1989)] (Iai: Polirom, 2011), 85-87.
The ritual of entering the collective farm is captured in a lively manner.

Usually this step was accomplished at the village hall, where the traditional
music was playing, as the deployment had to take place in a festive manner. People came dressed in nice clothes and were emotional about this
event. The peasants use a mixed language, mirroring the transition period
officially, comrade is used, along with sir, brother and others. In two
of the analysed films In Our Village and The Deployment the social
time specific to the rural world is expelled, as the community is concentrated on the act of signing up for the collective farm. At the village hall there
are always people, as villagers are always waiting for something to happen.
Their presence also suggests their inclination toward being manipulated, as
in the films there were also scenes where hesitation replaced satisfaction
after speaking with those hostile to collectivization.
Unlike other propaganda films, in Desfurarea (The Deployment) the
power of suggestion is overestimated. The details that form the atmosphere of the film contribute to the credibility of characters and play a defining role. For example, Ilie Barbus household is modest, almost poor,
but it expresses genuineness, as we witness a family meal and some sequences with no folk vibe. On the other hand, both the house, and its interior of Voicu Ghioceoaia are in tone with the owners ambitions and
character several fat pigs, ostentatious furniture, trinkets and a radio,
while the owners are in a state of drowsiness.
The clothing is significant in this film, as chiaburii and party members
wear city clothes and boots, while the peasants are barefoot and dressed
poorly. Ilie Barbu the positive hero is representative for this social
class, with only one hectare of land, a traditional house, a small yard with
flowers, a horse thoroughly looked after, several chickens and three
sheep. Before going to the authorities, Ilie takes his hat after taking care
of it, as a symbol of masculinity and dignity.
We may say that The Deployment has a specific narration of a communist
thriller, with strategies to name a convenient president of the collective
farm, with a manipulated and corrupt representative of the local administration51 and internal party fights. Ilie Barbu is lured by Prunoiu (local
51
The system of quota for the state was modified by a group of people in the film.
In real life, this system was designed in such a way that the peasants were incapable to make ends meet after paying their quota. In some cases, peasants ended
up in accepting the collectivization as the last option for their survival. The system of quotas was introduced to ruin the Romanian villages. See also Vladimir
administrator) to collaborate with chiaburi and to ensure a place in the

future collective farm. Refusing to collaborate with his exploiters, Ilie is
trapped in this complicated deployment of the socialist project. On the
other hand, he is invited to become a bookkeeper of the collective farm
by his former friend, now the regional secretary. A significant scene is
the one when Ilie manages to buy a pair of shoes the symbol of entering
another social class, representing the poverty and hope of the marginal
figure of society. A fierce propaganda against collectivization takes place
so that many peasants have second thoughts and have to be convinced by
Ilie, who is wounded by chiaburi and then beaten. Ilie Barbu resists heroically to these attacks and after the militias intervention, delivers a classic communist speech on the new life, a new era of humaneness, when
the man is to be appreciated according to his work.
In our opinion the most virulent propaganda film concerning collectivization is the film Setea (The Thirst, 1961), a film that makes use of comical
situations and language. The main hero is Mitru Mo, a peasant with no
land, a demobilized soldier returning to his native village in Transylvania,
eager for a new life, dedicates himself entirely to the cause of the agrarian
reform (1945). Interwar Romanian politicians are ridiculed through some
representative characters the decrepit lawyer of noble origin who tries
to speak with the peasantry (we suppose the inspiration was Iuliu Maniu,
a martyr of a Romanian gulag, who died in 1953 in Sighetu Marmaiei
prison). Thus elites of the interwar period are minimalized, while chiabur
is presented with regional features. The last images of the film have a
clear propaganda nature and resemble those of Mitrea Cocor. The peasants are told by a communist that after the reform everything is going to
be different; the peasants are shown with flags, going to divide the
land. The two most important steps toward collectivization are presented
as almost mythical moments signing up for the collective farm and dividing the land.
The special character of the film, the omissions of truth, the Manichean
typology of the heroes are due to the historical context. The collectivizaTismneanu, ed., Comisia Prezidenial pentru analiza dictaturii comuniste din
Romnia. Raport final [Presidential Committee for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. The Final Report] (Bucureti, 2006), 426. The
system of quotas was a system of partial control of food, and especially a means
of constraint for the peasants to give up their individual property.
tion process officially ended in 196252, thus the film was used as a propaganda tool in this accelerated process of socialist transformation of agriculture. The villagers had to understand that only collectivization could
ebb away the thirst for land. Consecrated actors play in this film, and the
pathos of the actor Ilarion Ciobanu is evident. Moreover, some images
turn to advantage the Soviet experience and the art film imposed by the
Romanian director Victor Iliu (1965). According to the Soviet cinema
school, the aesthetization of the film was a necessity. The public was impressed by dynamic and suggestive scenes, ensuring the possibility to enter their conscience.
Comedies about collectivization were also filmed after the process was
declared finished. The most exotic of them is Un surs in plin var53
(A Smile in the Middle of Summer). The collectivization process is over,
while Fni, the main hero, who was gone several years from the village,
avoids CAP (Cooperativ agricol de producie Collective production
farm) a sort of paradise in which the community seems to enjoy the socalled virtues of a traditional self-sufficiency that cohabitates with the
structures of the communist system. Thus the president is the wise man of
the village who is responsible for diversifying the economic production
of community, endowing it with necessary tools in order to fulfil the public
happiness a kitchen garden, orchard, mushroom farm, pig farm. Nae
Grigore, the president of the collective production farm is patient with
Fnis attitude and trusts his discernment.
The world in transition is represented in colourful and mixed clothing: folk
clothes combined with city clothes, girls on bikes, no carts drawn by horses. In opposition, Fni still has a rudimentary cart drawn by a stubborn
donkey and a big cart drawn by a pair of nice horses. On the other hand,
Fni always carries a red umbrella, as a sign of his differentiation from a
simple collectivist peasant. This group Fni and his animals is filmed
as an exotic appearance. Fni is the prodigal son, obsessed with the idea
to make money, an individualist perceived as a marginal or a man with no
52
At the special Plenary Session of the Central Committee of PMR (Romanian

Workers Party) in April 23-25, 1962.
53
Un surs n plin var [A Smile in the Middle of Summer]: script: Dumitru
Radu Popescu, film adaptation of his story Pdurea [The Forest]; directed by:
Geo Saizescu; actors: Sebastian Papaiani as Fni, Dem Rdulescu one of his
brothers, Draga Olteanu Matei, George Constantin, Puiu Clinescu; 1963.
pragmatic sense. For the sake of his beloved girl Fni accepts in the end
to enter the cooperative thus freeing him of the feverish greed.
The narration of the comedy follows the official discourse, as officially
there are no longer enemies of the socialist transformation of agriculture,
only people who dont understand the essence of a subject upon which
they have no sufficient information. During Fnis absence important
steps were taken by the society emblematic images are the radio, tractor
and harvester, electricity and the phone pillar. This propaganda film
seems more efficient, as it constructs the illusion of collective prosperity;
the public lie becomes a natural state. The communist pedagogy concluded that the comedy genre satisfied more needs: the peasants were convinced that collective production farms were communities of economic
prosperity and social harmony and due to comical scenes the sequences
remained longer in the public conscience.
2.3. Conflicts within the Communist Party
The film Vifornia (The Whirlwind)54 refers to events of the year 1959 in
a Transylvanian village, filmed in 1973. This is a social drama, presenting the symbol of the whirlwind as the key-moment in the activists mind,
which came to accelerate the collectivization process. This defining moment is marked by the understanding of the fact that the villagers have to
choose between being an individual landowner or a collective farmer, regarding the collectivization as an alternative, not as a command.
Varlaam tefu, a former regional secretary, after being accused by the
Regional Committee of some mistakes in guiding villagers in the collectivization process is sent, as an enforcement and rehabilitation process as
an instructor in a belated process. Collectivization had to be completed in
three weeks, according to the committee. The film starts with the session
opened by Adam, the regional secretary, a dogmatic, simple and aggressive party activist, responsible for some vilification letters in his youth
against Varlaam. tefu leaves with his mother, a traditional and religious
woman the embodiment of the stereotype of the rural Transylvanian
woman. Although having accepted the new system, she is still a believer
and goes to church on a regular basis. The Whirlwind presents scenes
54
Script: Petre Slcudeanu; directed by: Mircea Murean; actors: Silviu Stnculescu, Ion Besoiu, Eugenia Bosnceanu, Ernest Maftei; filming location: village Gligoreti Cluj; premiere: November 19, 1973.
with priests and church with no mockery regarding the sacred space so
that the old woman is credible and lively.
At the beginning of his mission, Varlaam considered teacher Dobrot an
undeclared enemy of the party policy and a reactionary regarding collectivization, despite his status as a party member and respected member
of the community. On the other hand, agitator Baldomir regards Adam
and tefu as obsessed with rules and directives. Meanwhile, Varlaam
tefu comes to realize the differences of approach by activists and
theoreticians of the party. The adjective liberal designates the nondogmatic people, while chiaburi are not mentioned as the enemy of the
collectivization, and the focus is on the socialist transformation of
agriculture. The so-called deviationists were at that historical moment
responsible for the late collectivization process.
It is obvious that the films on collectivization make rare and minimal
concessions concerning the real representation of the recent history. We
find out only that the teacher, due to his liberal ideas, would be
relocated despite the difficult winter. A subtle image suggests the
asymmetry between the politics of the party and the reality a tank
ground in snow on which the teacher was supposed to be relocated. There
is a reaction of the villagers against teachers relocation (despite his
stagey self-accusing speech), suggesting also the hostility against
collectivization in the Transylvanian village. The pub is the place for
these reactions, as the traditional social location, where under the
influence of the popular music, after a drink or two, people regret their
goods given to the collective farm.
The conflict between tefu and Adam is presented as the one between the
liberal and dogmatic party members. On the other hand, the film
induces the false idea that people were free to choose entering the
collectivization. Adam ends up informing the regional authorities of the
failure in the collectivization process, blaming tefu and his liberal
visions. Meanwhile, Varlaam tefu perceives the fact that the
collectivization process cant be accomplished in the unrealistically
established three weeks. In a dialogue between the two opponents, tefu
even suggests that Adam doesnt understand the significance of the
collectivization project and especially the necessity to communicate with
the local community openly. Moreover, some features of Adams
character are unveiled, suggesting rather his opportunism than
dogmatism. In this explosive context, Paraschiva discusses with the First
Secretary of PMR (Romanian Workers Party) and complains about the

entire situation. The solution is for villagers to understand and follow the
collectivization process, underlining their choice according to their belief
in the cause of collectivization.
The session with the villagers takes place after a whirlwind, where people
come dressed in traditional clothes. From the aesthetic perspective, the
images of the various people present at the session are remarkable. Given
the alternative to stay or to leave the collective farm, most villagers
choose to stay. These images attempt to erase from the collective memory
the reality of the 50s and the repressions that continued until the 70s.
The film presents another communist happy-end. The three men of the
tefu family are reunited under the tender rays of the sun. From the
artistic point of view, the film is not a masterpiece, but it is well thought
and done, as the director relied on the qualities of the black and white
film and gross-plan so that the feelings of the main characters are
emphasized. This propaganda film attempted to cover the bloody history
of the Romanian collectivization. The communist elite was exonerated,
including Nicolae Ceauescu as the state sub-secretary in the Ministry of
Agriculture (from May 1948) and then as the deputy minister of the Ministry of National Defence and Chief of the Political Superior Direction of
the Army (form March 1950), who actively participated at the implementation of the Stalinist model of the socialist transformation of agriculture
in Romania. The repression orchestrated by Ceauescu on December 4,
1957 in the village Vadu Roca (Vrancea) was inhuman and sinister. As
the general-lieutenant of the army, he liquidates the peasants rout. The
fact that peasants from Lieti occupied village halls and set fire to the lists
of people enrolled in the collectivization encouraged the peasants from
Vadu Roca. Ceauescu ordered to open fire at 9 oclock in the morning;
9 peasants died and 50 were wounded. After arrests and so-called trials,
people were condemned to imprisonment in the functioning Romanian
gulag. A year later, the communist leader returned the papers (in which
they signed up for the forced collectivization) to some peasants from a
nearby village Nneti while in Vadu Roca the collectivization was
restarted in 1960.55 This bloody episode is described in a sober and suggestive tone in an important autobiographical book.
55
We may say that at a symbolical reading of the film, Adam and tefu are
Ceauescus masks. Moreover, such actions were also specific to Stalin who
2.4. Art Film or Escaping Censorship

The film Vntoarea de vulpi (Fox Hunting56) is probably the best film on
the forced collectivization in Romania, in the Oltenia region. Somehow the
film escaped censorship and this is probably due to the aesthetic value and
the avoidance of approaching ideological matters. The fact that it was a film
adaptation of a representative of the cultural elite favoured by Ceauescu
(Dinu Sraru) may have also contributed to this miraculous survival.
The film abounds in subliminal messages and although satisfying the system (due to presenting the enlightened figure of the political leader), it
suggests the disappearance of the old world through the individual tragedy in the background of collectivization.
The main heroes of the film - Ni Lucian (Mitic Popescu) i Ptru cel
Scurt (Mircea Diaconu) attempt to escape collectivization by applying
some shifts for the traditional peasantry. In the middle of the winter the
two friends start building houses in the middle of some agricultural lands
so that these lots wont end up as a collective property. They continue
their practices and habits by going to an illegal hunt (that is the
metaphorical expression of the peasants beats even the canny foxes
may be killed).
Mircea Daneliuc introduces some episodes that dont correspond to the
narration of the novel. The film presents in a dream the premonition of
Ptrus death and the flourishing of an entire orchard, while Ni despite
surviving the collectivization of those troubled parcels, dies on the inside.
The film starts and ends with images from Ptrus funeral. The novel
ends with a chapter that supposed Nis entering the collective farm, as
his timid attempt to avoid this by building the foundation of a house was
in vain. Ptrus funeral in the novel is represented in a short and
emotional scene a willow spray buds on the cemetery fence.57
56
57
revoked some orders regarding forced collectivization in Ukraine and then reinstalled them shortly afterwards.
Vntoarea de vulpi [Fox Hunting]: Script: Dinu Sraru i Mircea Daneliuc,
based on the novel Nite rani [Some Peasants] by Dinu Sraru; directed by:
Mircea Danieluc; image: Clin Ghibu; montage: Mria Neagu; image: Clin
Ghibu; actors: Mitic Popescu, Mircea Diaconu, Valeria Seciu, Zaharia Volbea, Aristide Teic, Gheorghe Cozorici; 1980.
Dinu Sraru, Nite rani [Some Peasants] (Bucureti: Editura Eminescu,
1974), 250-257.
As an art film, Fox Hunting imposes due to the naturalism of its script,
the general atmosphere of poverty and misery, the psychology of the
main heroes and the veracity of the actors interpretation and terse dialogue. [...] Vntoarea de vulpi in one of Daneliucs most emotional and
melancholic film, with few grotesque touches [...] with a powerful poetic
accent [...] and with a minimal inclination towards parable, although the
two peasants drama may be extrapolated to the entire Romanian village.58 I. Mare also mentions the montage as the most daring aspect,
more radically used as other Daneliucs films, because the director
breaks the narrative in short fragments that complete themselves and offer glimpses of past: the seasons are mixed like only the moods of
memory can do, and many scenes are filmed from different angles, enriching the significances.
Taking into account that at the Meeting at Mangalia on the 3rd of August
1983, Nicolae Ceauescu declared his desire to see only films that would
reflect the human model of communism, even with the risk of embellishing the heroes, the cinema makers avoided the approach of the matter of
collectivization in this mentioned film, managing to express some unspoken truths.
Conclusions
As we have revealed in our study, due to the prominence of the Soviet
cinema as an outstanding evolution of the seventh art and of the hegemony of the Soviet State in the Eastern bloc, many cinematographic techniques, leit-motifs, clich images, classic plots and montage techniques
had been taken over by the Romanian cinema industry. The canon of the
Socialist Realism imposed both in literature and cinema played another
important role in pointing out similarities in the representation of the collectivization process in the Soviet Union and Romania. The plot of many
films on collectivization respect a successful formula the tragic situation of peasants, the conflict between Kulaks/chiaburi (and a fight or a
murder), the victory of proletarian peasants and start of collectivization
process (despite a funeral, which is the stage for propaganda discourses),
58
Ionu Mare, Vntoarea de vulpi. Cinema n stare pur. Ziarul Metropolis

[Fox Hunting. Cinema in Pure State. Newspaper Metropolis] (23 April
2014), http://www.ziarulmetropolis.ro/vanatoarea-de-vulpi-cinema-in-starepura/ (Accessed August 6, 2015).
the happy end represented by a wedding and/or birth or the image of a

happy family.
On the other hand, the Romanian cinema developed significantly different features from the Soviet cinema despite roughly following its model.
For example, although declaring their atheist beliefs, main heroes dont
despise or mock religion; people who embraced the socialist changes are
sometimes depicted as still believers and church-goers. The social differences are represented less dramatically and subtler in the Romanian case;
see especially scenes from Mitrea Cocor and Desfurarea, where the
difference doesnt seem scandalous, as the poor peasant has a modest, but
happier life. Nevertheless, the exception is constituted by the servants in
Mitrea Cocor and Setea, who live in the animals stables.
Both Soviet and Romanian films avoid representing reality and only offer
hints and allusions to some real aspects (especially in post-Stalinist
films), but generally speaking, they offer a propaganda version of events
regarding the collectivization process, as most tragic historic events are
not even mentioned. These fictional versions presented by filmic narrations had the role to induce a desirable direction in the case of troubled
and belated process of collectivization. As we have already mentioned,
the first Soviet silent films, despite their controversial ideological character, were more successful in representing the propaganda message than
the later Romanian films.
The communist comedies on collectivization The Rich Bride and A Smile
in the Middle of Summer have a special escapist role and their existence
was only possible after the end of the collectivization process. These comedies present the simple and idyllic life of Soviet and Romanian collective
farms, a light plot and some humorous episodes despite the possible complications. A typical communist happy-end defines the genre.
The post-Stalinist analysed films reuse some specific features of the former period, but introduce some new aspects the enemy is not presented
in the figure of a Kulak/chiabur, but in the conflicts within community
(The Chairman) and party (The Whirlwind). Some new surprising elements are presented in films vilification and informing letters, the socalled relocation of some people due to their contrasting ideas with the
party line, mentions of former imprisonments, conflict between the workers and the paper plans, between the so-called liberal and dogmatic
party members, mention of fake/unrealistic numbers as results of collective farms as consequences of the cultural and political changes.
As for the art films, they occupy a special place in the cinematographic
heritage, be it the case of Soviet controversial propaganda films Eisensteins Old and New, Dovzhenkos Earth or Romanian poetic film adaptations Daneliucs Fox Hunting from the last communist decade.
To conclude with, the communist filmic representations of the collectivization process offer a vast space for further explorations and research not
only as stages of the film history, but also as markers or concealers of
important and sometimes tragic historic events. Far from being comprehensive, our study presents relevant aspects of some representative Soviet
and Romanian films on the subject of collectivization. From different
decades, the analysed films unveil various cultural and political changes,
while sometimes dissimulate or pass over in silence some cruel and dramatic events. Both Soviet and Romanian films on the subject of collectivization present a desirable image of society in the process of building
communism, being forbidden to represent reality and its horrific aspects
(dekulakization, purges, gulag, state-induced famine, food control, etc.)
and inducing an ideologically comfortable version of events. The seventh
art had to serve the party and its objectives so that to educate perfect citizens for the perpetual building of the golden future, collectivization
representing only a part of it.
Hungary and Stalins Plan for the Transformation of Nature

through Propaganda1
Zsuzsanna BORVENDG, Mria PALASIK
New Research Methodologies
The single party system and Stalinist dictatorship that came into power by
1949 had a hitherto unseen impact on the natural environment in Eastern
Europe. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Hungarian Workers Party
lead by Mtys Rkosi2 began based on Soviet practice to implement
nature transformation policies the likes of which had never been seen in
Hungary before or after that period. Their decisions not only affected water-supply management, soil cultivation and forestry, but also introduced
new crops completely foreign to Hungarys climate in other words, politics began to formulate expectations for the natural sciences as well. The
causes and arguments behind introducing new crops go back as far as the
1920s and 1930s when the production results of Soviet agriculture failed
to reach even pre-1917 levels, and scientists, especially geneticists came
under enormous social pressure, the majority of whom accepted (or was
forced to accept) that the new socialist biology had to serve national agriculture in direct and immediately profitable ways. In the words of Tams
Bereczkei quoting one of the Soviet geneticists, the Party and the State
were facing the grandiose task of improving production3 and a key
figure of this plan was Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.4
1
2
3
This study is based on Zsuzsanna Borvendg, Mria Palasik, Untamed Seedlings: Hungary and Stalins Plan for the Transformation of Nature, in Stalins
Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its implementation in Eastern Europe (to be published in 2015) and Borvendg Zsuzsanna, Palasik Mria: Vadhajtsok. A sztlini termszettalaktsi terv tltetse Magyarorszgon
(1948-1956) (Budapest, Napvilg Kiad, 2015).
Mtys Rkosi (1892-1971) was the head of the Hungarian Communist Party
(1945-1948) and the Hungarian Workers Party (1948-1956).
Tams Bereczkei, Tuds a semmibl: a Liszenko-gy, [Knowledge from Nowhere: The Case of Lysenko] Termszet Vilga 3, (1998) http://www.kfki.hu/
chemonet/hun/teazo/liszenko.html (Date of Access: 8 September 2012).
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976) was a Soviet agronomist and plantbreeder who created the Theory of Michurinist Biology claiming as predecessor the autodidact horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855-1939).
Hungary and Stalins Plan for the Transformation of Nature... ___________ 741
How Lysenkos faux scientific doctrines had become the norm is summarized by Bereczkei as follows: The pressing issue was that basic genetic
research had fallen far behind the megalomaniac ambitions of plant improvement. Michurin, who was treated as a veritable culture hero, simply
crossed different fruits with one another with a lot of diligence but no scientific background to go with it would have been up to genetics to supply effective theoretical basics and methodological principles for creating
new forms of plants. Whats more, they constantly demanded that he put
his theories in practice to boost stagnating agricultural production when it
was obviously not possible. Although there were brilliant professionals
among Soviet geneticists, they could perform no miracles. Only Lysenko
believed himself capable of performing miracles and thus created Michurinist Biology in order to connect the practice of plant improvement
with his own genetic theory. As a result, he made promises regarding agriculture that those wanting to believe received with standing ovation,
promising that by directly changing the gene pool, he would produce
plant species with greater crop yields within two or three years something that would take classic genetics 15-20 years based on Mendelian
inheritance and the laws of Darwinian selection. Classic geneticists knew
that these laws could not be bypassed and one cannot achieve sudden
changes in species due to the conservatism of genetic material and the
relative slowness of natural selection. However, the future of Soviet genetics became more and more dependant of what results it would achieve
in agricultural practice, and obviously, it was Lysenko who had received
all official funding on account of his grand promises regardless of the fact
that he could not deliver any results. People simply believed him because
Lysenko was a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, director of the Genetic Institute of the Academy as well as president of the Lenin Academy of
Agricultural Sciences. Referring to Michurins work, Lysenko concluded that
inherited characteristics are determined by environmental circumstances rather
than by genes. He rejected the principles of modern biology and modern genetics in particular, deeming the inheritance of acquired characteristics a proven
fact. See Sndor Igali, A liszenkoizmus Magyarorszgon, [Lysenkoism in
Hungary] Valsg 2, (2002), 41-43; Mikls Mller, Liszenko emlkezetes
eladsa a Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmin 1960-ban, [Lysenkos Memorable Presentation at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1960] Magyar
Tudomny [Hungarian Sciences] II (2011), 1356.
742 _________________________ Zsuzsanna BORVENDG, Mria PALASIK
they wanted to believe him and all Lysenko did was fuel an already dominant small-minded and practice-oriented value system.5
Nature transformation had been an ongoing process in the Soviet Union
since the 1920s and was present in everyday propaganda as well, but it
received a boost with the great Stalinist plan for the transformation of
nature in 1948.6 Following Lysenkos presentation at the 1948 August
session of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lysenkoism became an official school of biology. Alternative research was completely
silenced in the Soviet Union, journals were discontinued and the few opposing researchers that remained were at best discharged.7 Lysenkos
practice was based on the idea that altering the environment would result
in new species and with the right procedures, the conscious manipulation
of environmental factors would result in changes in the genetic pool.8
Although the Hungarian sciences had been experimenting with new
plants that were not native to temperate climates, these experiments were
always determined by the economy and economical considerations rather
than ideological agendas.9 However, this situation changed in the fall of
1948 when the August - September 1948 issue of Trsadalmi Szemle, the
scientific journal of the Hungarian Workers Party, published the Soviet
Communist Partys Central Committee-approved version of Lysenkos
August 1948 presentation at the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
5
Bereczkei, Tuds a semmibl: a Liszenko-gy.

Zoltn Hajd, Krnyezet s politika: a termszettalakts zsenilis sztlini
terve, [Environment and Politics: The Brilliant Stalinist Plan to Transform Nature] in Vltoz krnyezetnk [Our Changing Environment], eds. Jzsef Tth,
Zoltn Wilhelm (Pcs, Janus Pannonius Tudomnyegyetem, 1999), 131-145.
7
Bereczkei, Tuds a semmibl: a Liszenko-gy.
8
Bereczkei, Tuds a semmibl: a Liszenko-gy. According to Professor
Bereczki, These manipulations were, of course, unsuccessful since as we all
know the characteristics acquired during individual life cycles are not transferred to the genetic pool.
9
Zoltn Hajd, A szocialista termszettalakts krdsei Magyarorszgon,
1948-1956, [The Issues of Socialist Nature Transformation in Hungary between 1948-1956] in Tj, krnyezet s trsadalom. nnepi tanulmnyok
Kevein Brny Ilona professzor asszony tiszteletre [Landscape, Environment
and Society. Jubilee Papers in Honor of Professor Ilona Kevein Brny], eds.
Andrea Kiss, Gbor Mezsy, Zoltn Smeghy (Szeged: Szegedi
Tudomnyegyetem, 2006), 246.
6
The new scientific policy was forcefully introduced to scientific research

by plans created and approved by central politics,10 whereby following
Lysenkoism and questioning the fundamental principles of genetics became a central directive. Soviet scientists were invited to Hungary in order to advise Hungarian agricultural and biological research institutes,
starting with the Month of Soviet Culture held in February 1949, which
was attended by a Soviet delegation headed by Deputy Minister of Health
Alexander Schabanov (physician) along with agrobiologist Ivan
Gluschenko, member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and close colleague of Lysenko himself, who held many lectures for Hungarian experts on Lysenkos basic principles.11 Hungarian experts, too, paid more
frequent visits to Soviet scientific institutes and acquired scientific degrees at Lysenkoist institutions. Delegations of 200 peasants were sent to
the Soviet Union for experience exchanges every year,12 but agricultural
scientists were also sent there for similar purposes in 1950 and 1951.13
Dr. Sndor Igali (1926-2003), a contemporary researcher began his career
at the beginning of the 1950s in the same Institute of Genetics that opposed Lysenkoism.14 In 2002, he, as a trustworthy witness, gave the following account of how the obligatory propagation of Lysenkoism
affected scholars: The forced propagation of Lysenkoism was done by
the most loyal champions of the communist party, banding together with
opportunistic non-party cohorts. After the turning point [1948], they
occupied all leading positions from ministers to heads of department and
only left a few indispensable and internationally renowned experts in
place. The directors of research institutes, the head professors of university
10
Igali, A liszenkoizmus Magyarorszgon, 43.

Gbor Iby, I. E. Gluscsenko professzor ltogatshoz, [To the Visit of Professor
Gluschenko],
Erdszeti
Lapok,
(March
1949),
49-50.
http://erdeszetilapok.oszk.hu/00845/pdf/EL_1949_03_49.pdf (Date of Access:
8 September 2012)
12
Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Orszgos Levltra (MNL OL) [The National Archives of Hungary] M-KS 276. f. 54/92. . e., MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 54/102.
. e.
13
MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 54/136. . e., MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 54/149. . e.
14
In memoriam Dr. Igali Sndor, [In Memory of Dr. Sndor Igali] in Az Orszgos Frdric Joliot-Curie Sugrbiolgiai s Sugregszsggyi Kutat Intzet tven ve, [Fifty Years of the Frdric Joliot-Curie National Research
Institute for Radiobiology and Radiohygiene] ed. Istvn Turai (Budapest:
OTH Nyomda, 2007), 145-146.
11
departments, the department secretaries of the Hungarian Academy of

Sciences and all ministry and authority decision-makers were Lysenkoists. They had also occupied leading positions in Hungarian scientific associations and represented Hungary in international institutions,
committees and associations so that Lysenkoism could also be disseminated through administration. There were, of course, exceptions, thanks
to which genetics though forced into illegality had survived even the
darkest years of the dictatorship. The infectious seeds of Lysenkoism had
spread to varying degrees and the severity of the damage and the susceptibility of experts involved were different as well. It advanced most rapidly and most thoroughly in agriculture, thus placing the greatest pressure
on the agricultural sciences. This disease was worst among plant improvers but did not affect stockbreeders too badly. Although vets were closely
involved in agriculture, they were less susceptible to this illness and recuperated relatively quickly. Biologists were also mostly unaffected.
Doctors, aside from a few isolated cases, remained immune to it. [] Lysenkoism, aside from the lecturers of the Marxists and Leninist faculties
of universities, was only mentioned in publications by a few scholars and
even then was given as brief and unimportant a part as possible.15
The Political Decision
The Stalinist transformation of nature soon affected the rhetoric of Hungarian Workers Party leaders, a rhetoric that reflected the resolution to
adhere to the Soviet model. The topic was first touched upon very carefully by Mtys Rkosi in his pre-parliamentary election campaign
speech in Celldmlk on 8 May 1949, saying that in most producing
groups, socialist peasants are all pondering how they could improve production, quantity and quality; therefore, experiments with new crops and
new methods of production. Ern Ger16 put this in more concrete terms
at the discussion of the first five-year plan in December 1949 by saying,
We must introduce new crops such as cotton, which we intend to plant
on 57,500 hectares in the final year of the planned period; furthermore,
15
16

Ern Ger (1898-1980) received key positions in government and economic
matters after 1945, becoming Minister of Trade and Transportation, Minister
of Transportation, Minister of Finance, Minister of State and Minister of the
Interior as well as Deputy Prime Minister.
we must experiment with the production of rivet wheat, kenaf, tea, citruses and the rubber-yielding kok-saghyz [sic]. However, this was not
merely about the introduction of new crops; the approved five-year plan
emphasized that by 1954, agricultural production must reach 142.2 % of
production rates in 1949, where crop production must yield 135 % and
stock-breeding must reach a growth rate of 151.1 %.17 In other words, a
drastic improvement in quantity was also required in accordance with the
Soviet model; however, the act only mentions new crops in a single sentence, merely saying that, Experiments are to be conducted on producing
new crops hitherto non-native to Hungary within the planned period. Cotton production is the highest priority; therefore, efforts must be made to
produce Hungarian cotton in increasingly greater quantities to meet the
raw material demands of the Hungarian textile industry. In order to do so,
57,500 hectares of cotton are to be planted by the final year of the
planned period.18 The May 1951 modification of the act reinforced these
policies by saying, Experiments are to be conducted on introducing and
producing new crops hitherto non-native to Hungary within the planned
period. [] In order to meet the raw material demands of the textile industry in increasingly greater quantities, land use for cotton production
must be increased from 345 hectares in 1949 and 57,500 hectares by the
end of 1954 to a total of 115,000 hectares by the end of 1954. [] Furthermore, the production of kok-saghyz, kenaf as raw material for the textile industry and peanuts as raw material for the oil and sweets industries
shall be implemented.19 However, the Secretariat of the Hungarian
Workers Party had passed a regulation on the principles of agricultural
research long before the modified act issued on 23 August 1950. Its appendix included a list of each new crop to be introduced to Hungary20 and
17
Ern Gers speech in Parliament, 9 December 1949, 279, Orszggylsi

Napl [Parliament Journal] Session 15 of Parliament, 9 December 1949.
Source:http://www3.arcanum.hu/onap/pics/a.pdf?v=pdf&a=pdf&p=PDF&id=
KN-1949_1/KN-1949_1%20144&no=0 (Date of Access: 8 September 2012).
18
Act XXV of 1949. Article 32, Source: http://www.1000ev.hu/index.php?a=3&
param=8370 (Date of Access: 10 December 2012).
19
Act II of 1951. Article 28 (3), Source: http://www.1000ev.hu/index.php?a=3&
param=8380 (Date of Access: 10 December 2012).
20
The proposal was made by the Agricultural and Cooperative Department of the
Hungarian Workers Party on 22 August 1950. The proposal was approved by
the Secretariat of the Hungarian Workers Party with the addendum that the
agricultural experts and scholars were required by law to adhere to its

regulations. The introduction of the regulation labeled the majority of agricultural researchers reactionaries21 who were disciples of the Mendel
and Morgan school of biology, who formally accept the materialist approach but in reality are following an idealist approach.22 It also stated
that the majority of researches have unfavorable connections to the Soviet
Union, oppose Soviet science and look down on its results, and experimental institutes are also unwilling to learn about and implement the
scientific results of the Soviet Union. Scholars were also accused of detaching agricultural research from practice and their research departed
from the aim of solving the most crucial problems of the national economy or worse, that they concealed their results in order to prevent their
implementations in the economy. Failure was blamed on damage caused
by the enemy, faulty management and the lack of politically trustworthy
research cadres. It then listed seven items that were to be implemented
in order to solve these deficiencies. First, ensuring the supremacy of materialist biology and instructing the Ministry of Agriculture to organize
the widespread public dissemination of research results produced by the
application of Michurinist biological theory and practice. The second
item emphasized the need for systematic and production oriented research. The third item regarded the popularization of Soviet methods
while the fourth item highlighted the need to educate researchers on the
agricultural results of the Soviet Union. The rest of the items concerned
reducing the administrative burdens of researchers and ensuring the education of new cadres. However, the Information Appendix attached to
the regulation proposal at the party secretariat is even more telling than
the proposal itself. It provided guidelines for agricultural scientific research by field for the upcoming years, including crop production, crop
improvement, crop health, animal health, agricultural machine testing,
forestry, horticulture and factory organization. For the current topic, some
of the most important research provisions regulated the production of
rice, cotton, vernalization, and the implementation of irrigation systems.
necessity of disseminating information on materialist biology had to be emphasized further. MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 54/114. . e.
21
The label reactionary had become the most widespread concept at this time
and was used often to stigmatize known or presumed enemies of the system.
22
All references cite the following document: MNL OL M-KS 276. f. 54/114. . e.
Crazy about Cotton

In 1948, cotton production began on a sparse 22 hectares in the warmest
counties of Hungary and primarily in the counties of Bks and
Szolnok.23 The scientific community did not share the blind optimism of
politics and lobbied for moderation with decision-makers; even veterans
like Ern Obermayer, spearhead of rice improvement experiments, had
warned about the foreseeable failure, saying that Hungary is further to
the north than any other cotton producing lands in the world; therefore, it
would require great efforts to realize large-scale successful public production of Hungarian-grown cotton. He also warned in his paper of how
uneconomical the experiments would be; however, communist leadership
would not bow neither to the wild forces of nature nor to common
sense. In fact, the short-lived career of cotton had become the most memorable and most expensive mistake of the completely irrational agricultural craze of the Rkosi era.
At the end of 1948, the National Cotton Production Company was established in order to implement large-scale cotton production.24 Its tasks included the introduction of cotton as well as other special crops to
Hungary, and it was required to plant cotton over approximately 362 hectares of land during 1949 while the five-year plan had envisioned cotton
production over 57,500 hectares of land by the end of the planned period.
The headquarters of the company was located in Budapest with eight offices, two factory farms, two plant improvement sites and four experimental sites under its supervision.25 Consequently, the directors of the
National Cotton Production Company looked upon crop cultivation as
their own special privilege and refused to share the glory of it on account of its political importance. The director of the company was agriculturalist Ferenc Schller, who had done everything in his power to bypass
the officials of the Ministry of Agriculture as well as the Agricultural
23
Ern Obermayer, A rizs s a gyapot meghonostsa, [Introducing Rice and

Cotton] Termszettudomnyi Kzlny 4 (1949), 212.
24
A Gyapottermeltet Nemzeti Vllalat alapt levele, [Founding Document of
the National Cotton Production Company], 30 December 1948, MNL OL
XIX-K-1-ee 2. d.
25
A Gyapottermeltetsi Nemzeti Vllalat szervezete, [Organization of the National Cotton Production Company] 3 May 1950, MNL OL 276. f. 93/251. .
e., 98.
Department of the Party, preferring to maintain contact with the National

Planning Office in agricultural matters, and the Agricultural Science Center and its successor in scientific matters.26 He even established a crop
improvement department within the company despite the fact that the cotton production company was not in charge of scientific research. The party, of course, did not approve of the companys independence and
decided that its operation would have to be reevaluated after the campaign and political influence would be reestablished through worker and
peasant cadres.
The importance of cotton production increased with the escalation of the
international situation and the desire to become completely independent
of the capitalist world; therefore, the Soviet Union required not just Hungary but every other member state of the Comecon as well to produce
cotton. The office of the Comecon had devised a draft that requires
members of the Comecon to become mostly independent in cotton production and completely independent of the capitalist countries in hemp
and linen production. To this end, it prescribes the large-scale increase of
production of the above-mentioned plants. The Comecon wishes to improve production by increasing the size of land used for production, by
various ways of agricultural technological regulation (such as irrigation,
increased fertilization and seed improvement), increasing maximum production rate with these technologies and finally, by providing producers
with various benefits.27 Hungarys assigned tasks and requirements were
tailored to fit the implemented five-year plan, and stipulated that Hungary
should produce cotton on 60,000 hectares of land by 1953 and implement
an irrigation system over 10,000 hectares. Although these numbers did
follow the envisioned Hungarian figures, they also surpassed previous
expectations; therefore, it was necessary to increase land used for cotton
production as early as 1950.
The prioritization of cotton was the reason behind the arrival of Soviet
advisor A. Skoblykov to Hungary during 1950 to inspect scientific and
26
27
Feljegyzs a szerzdses termelsbonyoltsval foglalkoz nemzeti vllalatokrl, [Note Regarding National Companies Engaging in Contractual
Production] (13 March 1950), MNL OL 276. f. 93/219. . e., 58.
Elterjeszts a Titkrsg rszre. A KGST legkzelebbi lsszakn napirendre kerl krdsek, [Memorandum to the Secretariat. Issues to Be Discussed at the Next Session of the Comecon], 19 April 1950, MNL OL M-KS
276. f. 54/95, . e., 129.
production results and share his experiences to assist cotton production.

He suggested the establishment of a separate research institute in Szkkutas, home to one of the largest experimental cotton fields of the country.28
With the establishment of the Cotton Production Research Institute operating under the Agricultural Research Center, the monopoly of the National Cotton Production Company had ended. The new institute not only
incorporated the crop improvement department of the Company, but the
funds required to establish the institute had been taken directly from the
national company budget.29 Mikls Derera, former director of the experimental site in Szentes became director of the Szkkutas institute, and the
scope of the National Cotton Production Company was reduced to actual
production, the organization of fieldwork and contracting producers.
During 1948-49, Hungary only experimented with small-scale cotton
production. The actual cotton skirmish began in 1950 when Hungary
began planting the non-native crop despite every alarming figure and no
longer did so primarily on the fields of individual volunteering farmers,
but in state farms and producers cooperatives on a larger scale. In the
spring of 1950, 6,200 hectares of land had been planted with cotton despite the fact that 1949 cotton yields had proven that Hungary can only
produce cotton with great expenses, hard work and a very small average
crop yield. While the price of 1 centner of ginned cotton was 545.5 HUF
in 1950, production costs of one yoke30 of cotton were as high as 1,400
HUF.31 In 1949, the almost mature crops looked like they would yield 1.5
centners of cotton per yoke; however, frost in October and rain in November reduced the national average crop yield to a mere 25 %. In other
28
29
30
31
Javaslat a Gyapottermelsi Kutat Intzet szervezsre, [Proposal for the

organization of the Cotton Production Research Institute] 25 October 1950,
MNL OL 276. f. 93/184. . e.
Elterjeszts a Npgazdasgi Tancshoz a Gyapottermelsi Kutat Intzet
megszervezsre, [Memorandum to the National Economic Council on the
Organization of the Cotton Production Research Institute] 27 December 1950,
MNL OL 276, f. 93/223, . e., 106-108.
Ancient unit of measurement in Hungary: 1 cadastral yoke = 1,600 square
fathoms, 5,755 square meters or 0.575464 hectares.
FM Mezgazdasgi Fosztlynak feljegyzse, [Note by the Agricultural
Department of the Ministry of Agriculture] 24 May 1950, MNL OL 276. f.
93/252, . e., 211.
words, there was a crop yield of only 37.5 kilograms per yoke, which
means that the cost of 1 centner of cotton was 3,730 HUF.
Although cotton production figures were clearly discouraging, building
socialism knew no bounds. The designated fields were all planted with
cotton despite the fact that production conditions were completely lacking, including soil preparation equipment, warehouses to store the harvested crops, drying equipment, not enough sunflower planting seeds for
crop protection, and the financial difficulties of purchasing pesticides and
machinery.32 Consequently, some state farms and producers cooperatives
attempted to avoid these requirements; for example, Szolnok County received orders to produce cotton on 230 hectares of land, but cotton was
only planted on a bare 132 hectares, prompting the National Cotton Production Company to recruit individual farmers. Their offer was attractive
enough to soon allow them to increase the amount of land designated for
cotton production.33 The farmers were, of course, not informed of the requirements of the foreign crop; they practically had no idea of what they
signed up for other than what they had heard from educators visiting the
houses of eligible farmers in the target areas, educating them on the importance of producing cotton and the invincibility of socialism. People
thus signed contracts, partly because they had very little choice and were
also ensured that they would be compensated in case of an unsuccessful
attempt to produce cotton something that naturally did not happen.
Cotton proved to be a difficult crop that required manual cultivation, but
the local labor force was too small in most farms, forcing them to recruit
seasonal workers.34 However, providing these workers with accommodation, supplies and establishing their working conditions had been poorly
done as shown by the following brief excerpt on the state of state farms:
The plantations were full of weeds, and the head of the local office of
the National Company observed during his inspection that some eighty
workers were pulling out weeds with their bare hands, their nails torn off
32
A Gyapottermeltet Nemzeti Vllalat jelentse az llami gazdasgoknl

tartott szemle utn, [Report of the National Cotton Production Company after
Holding Audits at State Farms] 15 February 1950), MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 17.
d. 2764/1950.
33
Gyapottermeltetsi elirnyzat mdostsa, [Modification of Cotton Production Plans], undated, MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 17. d. 8.214-Gy-3/1950.
34
Report of the National Cotton Production Company after Holding Audits at
State Farms, 15 February 1950, MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 17. d. 2764/1950.
or damaged so severely from the thorns of the Tribulus terrestris plant that
they were unable to continue their work. Furthermore, the doing of work
[sic] was so minor that the cost of unfinished required labor was multiple
times greater than the price of one standard scraping machine. Farm working conditions are criminal. There are 430 seasonal workers but only 100
beds had been commissioned and no beds have arrived yet; instead, the 430
workers received 60 blankets. Workers sleep on the floor and had become
completely infected with lice. The farm does not have enough transportation power to deliver lunch to the workers, which lead to the workers abandoning work at 3 pm even during inspection due to lack of food.35
Cotton production faced a lot of difficulties, including administrative
problems. Since cotton required warmth and sunshine, the most eligible
areas were the southern regions of Hungary that were currently in the
immediate vicinity of Yugoslavia, one of the greatest enemies of Hungary
at the time.36 The heavy industrial investments planned for the southern
region had to be transferred further up north on account of the unfavorable Tito government; nevertheless, cotton refused to adapt to these political considerations and the southern regions remained the most favorable
ones for cotton production. Since it was a top priority crop, it required
near-constant supervision; however, these borderline fields were not
open to just anybody civilians were forbidden to trespass and border
guards were ordered to shoot trespassers on sight.37 From 1 July 1950,
one required a special license an internal passport, if you will to come
within 15 kilometers of the border, and the area within 2 kilometers of the
35
sszefoglal jelents a gyapottermels helyzetrl, [Report on the state of

cotton production] 23 May 1950, MNL OL 276, f. 93/251, . e.
36
Cotton plantations formed a homogenous stretch of land except for fields belonging to the Szeged district, home of the world famous Hungarian paprika.
However, there had been cases where cotton occupied fields more suitable for
paprika production. Lszl Grg, Magyarorszg mezgazdasgi fldrajza
[The Agricultural Geography of Hungary] (Budapest: Tervgazdasgi Knyvkiad, 1954), 99.
37
Istvn Orgovnyi, Hatrvdelem Magyarorszg dli hatrn 1948 s 1953
kztt, [Border Security at the Southern Hungarian Border between 1948 and
1953] in A Nagy Testvr szatcsboltja. Tanulmnyok a magyar titkosszolglatok 1945 utni trtnetbl [Big Brothers Miserable Little Grocery Store.
Studies on the History of the Hungarian Secret Services after World War II],
eds. Gyrgy Gyarmati, Mria Palasik (Budapest: llambiztonsgi Szolglatok
Trtneti Levltra LHarmattan Kiad, 2012), 156.
border was inaccessible without a permit from the Border Guard under
the State Security Authority. These permits were one-use only and had to
be requested at each visit, making the work of cotton producers and
workers especially difficult; therefore, the National Cotton Production
Company sent a request the Minister of Agriculture asking for unlimited
access to these cotton fields for the agents of the company.38
Similarly, in order to gain access to weather forecasts, another ministry
permit was required; therefore, the cotton production company wrote a
letter to the Minister of Defense requesting that they receive all relevant
climate data from the Meteorology and Weather Research Institute.39 We
have no information of the Ministrys reply, but the company soon issued
another letter explaining that the data was required by Comrade
Skoblykov, that knowing the weather forecast would obviously be very
helpful to agricultural workers, especially in the case of such high priority industrial crops as cotton, and mentioning the name of the Soviet advisor and the hope of success in the struggle for cotton had eventually
convinced the Minister of Defense as well, who agreed to the company
receiving the classified weather forecast biweekly.
It is probable that harvest reports went through embellishing touch-ups
since 19 % of all cotton fields had completely fallen out of production
due to bad weather and yet the national estimate for the cotton harvest
was 3.2 centners per yoke40 and subsequent reports talked about improved prospects for production.41 Also, were we to accept the validity
of official reports, we would have difficulties understanding the resistance of state farms and producers cooperatives when faced with the
1951 plans for cotton plantation. Contracts were pushed by agitators
across the country, but there was hardly any increase in the amount of
38
MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 17. d. 11696/1950. Border approach permit issued to

agents of the National Cotton Production Company. Undated. According to the
letter, the quarantined territory had 1,725 hectares of cotton plantations or 30 %
of Hungary's borderline cotton plantations.
39
ghajlati adatokhoz hozzjruls, [Contribution to Climate Data] undated,
MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 17. d. 8214-Gy-51/1950.
40
Feljegyzs az 1950. vi gyapottermels begyjtsrl s az 1951. vi gyapotterletekkel kapcsolatban vgzett munkrl, [Note on the 1950 Cotton Harvest and Work Done on Cotton Plantations in 1951] 13 September 1950, MNL
OL 276, f. 93/219, . e., 100.
41
Gyapottermelsi jelents, [Cotton Production Report] 16 October 1950,
MNL OL 276. f. 93/184. . e.
contracted land. Farmers talked of a lack of labor force and the unsuitability of their lands, and the chairman of the Ivncsa council outright took
the unopened document containing these planned figures, crumpled it up
and shoved it in his desk, swearing as he left the companys agent behind.42 However, figures had to be met at least on paper and the amount
of cotton plantations continued to grow compared to the previous year.
Regardless of resistance, the central development policy continued to call
for increasing the size of cotton plantations. In the spring of 1951, a regulation was issued that surpassed every expectation imaginable, especially
considering the situation discussed above, by including cotton production
in the agricultural plans of four northern counties Komrom, Ngrd,
Borsod-Abaj and Szabolcs-Szatmr.43 The year of 1951 did not bring
any substantial changes to the way cotton was cultivated; labor force was
still insufficient, cotton fields were weed-infested and farms prioritized
the harvest of grains over de-weeding cotton plantations.44 They did recruit seasonal workers again, but these workers also refused to work in
poor working conditions. Work hours were raised to ten hours per day,
school children were taken on field trips to de-weed cotton, but results
did not improve. In the fall, however, harvesting cotton became even
more problematic Hungarian climate caused cotton to mature slowly
and plants had to be checked every two or three days to pick the freshly
matured cotton blubs, which meant that harvesting had to be done manually and using machinery was out of the question. Farms attempted to increase labor force by making Sunday an obligatory working day;
however, in villages where church law was still respected, this measure
was met with fierce resistance. Participation in the cotton harvest was also made obligatory from the upper grades of elementary school to higher
education,45 and considering that elementary school children had to bend
42
Then these scoundrels come with this shitty cotton! MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee
19. d. Ldi Bla ivncsai tancselnk felelssgre vonsa, [Interrogation of
Bla Ldi, Chairman of the Council of Invcsa], undated.
43
Gyapotvets belltsa az szaki megykben, [Configuration of Cotton
Planting in the Northern Counties of Hungary] 23 March 1951, MNL OL XIXK-1-ee 18. d. FM 8214-Gy-307/1951.
44
MNL OL 276. f. 93/354. . e. Phoned-in report on 7 July 1951, 84-85.
45
University and college party committees argued in favor of involving Hungarian youth in cotton harvests by saying that Universities notoriously divorce
theory from practice, especially in the liberal arts, and picking cotton would allow Hungarian youth to engage in practical issues. MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 19.
down constantly while picking cotton, we can only imagine how difficult
it must have been for an adult to engage in such activity for ten hours
every day. Not to mention that the picked bulb had to be examined and
sorted into the different pockets of a cotton-picking apron according to its
quality. There was still no means of transportation that would have supplied workers with regular meals and hot beverages despite the fact that
harvests lasted until frosty November, and there were still no warehouses
to store cotton, let alone dry it.
The 31 October 1951 report of the Association of Working Youth46
(Dolgoz Ifjsgi Szvetsg, DISZ) on the lack of provisions for children
sent to the cotton plantations by the Labor Force Reserve Office47
(Munkaertartalkok Hivatala, MTH) is truly appaling.48 The Association
of Working Youth was instructed to mobilize 5,000 students to harvest
cotton; however, the association refused and decided to send 4,400 children from the Labor Force Reserve Office instead in order to harvest cotton for four days. The children were transported to the designated farms
by special trains, but their transportation was already on par with deportation conditions. Provisions arrived to the station late so dinner had to be
thrown into the trains through the windows, and when the children arrived, their hostel was not heated. Those more fortunate had straw mattresses to sleep on, but most children had to sleep on a layer of hay on the
floor. Luckily, they were required to bring blankets that helped keep them
from the cold in late fall. Catering was on par with internment camps: only a small portion of children received hot meals and most of them were
only given bread to eat. Lunch was delivered to the fields and amounted
to no more than a ladleful per child. They had no cleaning facilities or
even fresh water to drink, which one farm attempted to solve by offering
one hundred liters of wine, leading to the intoxication of the majority of
d. Egyetemi s fiskolai prtbizottsg 1951. oktber 25-i lse [October 25
session of the university and college party committee in 1951].
46
Youth organization of the Hungarian Workers Party.
47
It was established in 1950 to train industrial workers for the forced industrialization of Hungary. The act excluded the employment of school-age children as
industrial trainees, but it was not uncommon that 7 and 8 graders (13-14 year
olds) were recruited to meet designated requirements, meaning that these children could not even acquire their elementary school diplomas.
48
Kirtkel jelents a gyapotszedsi munkrl, [Assessment report on Cotton
Picking] 31 October 1951, MNL OL 276, f. 93/261, . e.
children. By the third day, most problems were more or less taken care of
and provisions improved, but these working children received very little
money, with outrageously high amounts deducted for their alimentation.
However, the most shocking fact was that they were working a mere 50
meters away from a mine field by the southern border and none of them
were warned about the danger.
In 1952, social resistance to cotton production was growing, but so did
the size of cotton plantations, prompting Comrade Skoblykov to write a
letter to Ott Sndi, voicing his discontent that farms planted other crops
instead of cotton despite their signed contracts.49 Hungarian peasantry
was quite resourceful as illustrated by the story of Sndor Bozs, a farmer
in Ktelek who had decided to establish a producers cooperative in his
village in order to save his father-in-law from the disadvantages of being
labeled a kulak. The first task of the cooperative was to plant 17 hectares
of cotton, but few of them considered it a reasonable task: Are they out
of their minds? This isnt the homeland of cotton and who would tend to
it? Do I have to hire workers? But it was no good going to the district so I
just traded the cotton with the cooperative at Tiszafldvr for 9 hectares
worth of lettuce seeds. The women said this was better because it wont
sprout but at least the ducks are able to eat the lettuce.50 However, resourcefulness did not end there; the lettuce was insured and then planted
right next to the flooding Tisza River causing the flood to ruin the crops
and the insurance company to compensate them. In the words of the head
of the Ktelek producers cooperative, You have to get on by sashaying
around all these stupid regulations.51
The case described above was an isolated one; most of the nation did adhere to the designated figures of the five-year-plan. Cotton had already
claimed most of the fertile land from much more valuable crops, causing
severe shortages in agricultural production; however, in 1952, irrigated
cotton production was introduced as well, meaning that the majority of
irrigated fields (and there werent many in Hungary to begin with) had to
49
Hivatalos feljegyzs Sndi Ott elvtrsnak, [Official Note to Comrade Ott

Sndi] 6 March 1952, MNL OL 276, f. 93/411, . e., 88-89.
50
rpd Pnksti, Kivlasztottak [The Chosen Ones] (Budapest: Szpirodalmi
Knyvkiad, 1988), 20-21.
51
Pnksti, Kivlasztottak, 21.
be planted with cotton.52 In some parts of the country, cotton had become
the most widespread crop in 1952, occupying 5.2 % of all farmland in the
Mohcs district and 7 % of the Villny wine lands.53 It is important to add
that the amount of cultivated land continued to decrease during the
Rkosi era while the amount of land used for industrial crops had quintupled by 1953. As a result, the amount of land used for wheat, which was
indispensable in sustaining the population, had decreased by 21 % compared to the pre-war period.54
A turning point in the history of cotton came in 1953; the seeds had been
planted, but due to the cold spring weather, 70 % of these fields had to be
ploughed out55 and the rationalization of agricultural production eventually shifted the focus away from cotton production. The new government
did not force harvests on the remaining cotton fields, and although farms
involved in production requested more workers, the Minister of Education did not allow them to transfer students to the cotton fields.56
Rice Production in the 1950s
One of the most prominent agricultural investments under the first fiveyear plan was the construction of waterworks necessary for irrigation.
The forced development of rice production was key to these endeavors
due to the fact that the majority of irrigated land was used for rice, decreasing the efficiency of irrigation. Earlier experiences with rice did
show that it also thrives in poor quality soil, leading to the idea that land
unsuitable for the cultivation of more delicate crops could be used for rice
production instead.57 This decision led to parts of the Alfld, especially
52
Utasts az ntztt gyapot termesztsre az 1952. vben, [Instructions for

Irrigated Cotton Production in the Year 1952] undated, MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee
85. d.
53
Grg, Magyarorszg mezgazdasgi fldrajza, 99.
54
Ignc Romsics, Magyarorszg trtnete a XX. szzadban [20th Century Hungarian History] (Budapest, Osiris Kiad, 1999), 350.
55
Jelents a gyapot betakartsrl, [Report on the Cotton Harvest] 28 October
1953, MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 116. d.
56
Krelem Nagy Imre elvtrshoz a gyapot betakartshoz szksges kls
munkaer biztostsra, [Request for Comrade Imre Nagy to Provide the Labor Force Necessary to Harvest Cotton] 10 October 1953, MNL OL XIX-K-1ee 116. d.
57
Obermayer, A rizs s a gyapot meghonostsa, 216.
the saline fields of Hortobgy to be used for rice, significantly changing

the natural landscape.
In 1950, the Ministry of Agriculture prescribed the production of 3.3 kilograms of rice per person (based on Hungarys population figures) on
14,375 hectares of land.58 To ensure the implementation of the production
plan, rice committees were organized to contract state farms, producers cooperatives and private farmers.59 However, despite all propaganda,
they could only fulfill a meager part of the plan, and one of the main reasons was the loss incurred from rice production in 1949. The Crop Production Company alone incurred over 10,000,000 HUF of bad debt from
producers, while the National Water Management Office incurred 6.6 million HUF of due water fees for the irrigation of rice fields,60 leading the
National Planning Office to suggest that farmers should only to be cleared
of their debts if they were willing to offer their lands to a state farm.
However, it was not just farmers unwilling to contract due to their experiences in 1949; at that time, the National Water Management Office itself
was simply unable to increase the size of flood irrigated rice land.61 The
party expected it to introduce new rice production sites in the valley of
the Krs valley; however, due to the relative lack of precipitation, the
rivers discharges were unable to supply even the already existing production sites that had been established in the previous year. Furthermore,
some of the farmland near the Danube was planted with other crops and
were thus excluded from rice production. Nevertheless, political pressure
proved enough to result in 14,375 hectares of farmland used for rice production in 1950.
58
Elterjeszts a Npgazdasgi Tancshoz az 1949/50. vi nvnytermelsi terv

trgyban, [Memorandum to the National Economic Council Regarding Plant
Production Plans for the Years 1949/1950] undated, MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 2.
d. 8202-7/1949.
59
A termelszvetkezetek lemaradsa a rizstermels megszervezse vonaln,
[Producers cooperatives are falling back in the organization of rice production] 25 February 1950, MNL OL 276, f. 93/252, . e., 288.
60
Jegyzknyv a rizstermelsbl ered tartozsokrl, [Records of Debts Arising from Rice Production] 16 January 1950, MNL OL XIX-K-1-ee 2. d.
61
Feljegyzs Adamk Jnos elvtrs rszre az 1950. vi rizstermesztssel
kapcsolatban, [Memorandum for Comrade Jnos Adamk Regarding Rice
Production in 1950] 30 March 1950, MNL OL 276, f. 93/220, . e., 146.
Although official policies emphasized that rice was easy to cultivate due
to the fact that it even thrives in saline soil, in reality, it required a lot of
maintenance, especially in the Hungarian climate. In fact, a large labor
force was required not just for crop cultivation but also to prepare the soil
and maintain the irrigation system. The local peasantry found themselves
overwhelmed with work and much like in the case of cotton and the construction of the dam at Tiszalk, rice production also required seasonal
workers. However, without modern machinery, devising the irrigation
system, building floodgates and leveling the plantations required an extensive labor force. Since the communist dictatorship had no moral objections, persons and families that were either deemed enemies of the state
or politically untrustworthy were deported to provide the required labor
force and so, simultaneously with the demarcation of borderlines on the
southern and western borders of Hungary, the deportation of class enemies began in the summer of 1950 and entire families were taken from
their homes and transported in railway carriages to the desolate lands of
the Tiszntl and especially to the uninhabited Hortobgy where they
had to work on the rice and cotton plantations.62 The party decision to
employ the deportees living in forced housing was issued on 23 May
1951, providing an official framework for the exploitation of these already abject deportees. First, kulaks should be gradually removed from
the villages, and in order to ensure the institutional use of their labor,
forced housing may be designated for them and their family members.
Three to five villages must be built on the barren saline fields of the Tiszntl where the kulaks [] may work [] with their family members.63 Rice fields provided work all year round: the irrigation system
had to be prepared in the winter, rice needed to be weeded in the summer,
and harvest and thrashing was done in the fall in appalling circumstances,
without proper equipment or work clothes for wages barely enough for
62
Istvn Orgovnyi, A dli hatrsv 1948 s 1956 kztt, [The Southern Border between 1948 and 1956] in Bcs-Kiskun megye mltjbl. vknyv 17,
[The Past of Bcs-Kiskun County. Yearbook 17] ed. gnes Tth (Kecskemt:
Bcs-Kiskun Megyei nkormnyzat Levltra, 2001), 264.
63
Elterjeszts a letartztatottak, rendrhatsgi rizet alatt llk, munkahelyre
bocstandk foglalkoztatsra s knyszerlakhelyek ltestsre, [Memorandum on the Establishment of Forced Housing and the Employment of Arrested
Persons, Persons under Police Surveillance and Persons Eligible for Labor] 23
May 1951, MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 54/145, . e., 267.
survival. De-weeding rice on the fields gave plenty of work to the women. However, morning temperature was around 10-15 C, and they had to
work barefoot in the cold, shallow water of the fields. Standing in the
cold water caused many illnesses in these women such as articular diseases, rheumatism and gynecological diseases.64
The change of production plans in 1953 politics did not affect the introduction and production of rice on account of the fact that unlike other
newly introduced non-native crops, rice production turned out to be successful; therefore, the amount of farmland used for rice was increased in
1954. Based on the amount of irrigation required and the fulfillment of
other necessary conditions for rice production in 1953, the amount of
farmland used for rice production is to be increased by 49 % in 1954 and
by 80 % within the next three years.65 These plans were then promptly
implemented; while there were less than 28,000 hectares worth of rice
fields in 1953, by 1954, rice was produced on approximately 43,000 hectares of farmland.66 However, while the chosen species of rice was suitable for production on Hungarian soil, the requirements for rice production
were still missing: there were no expects, rice fields expanded quickly
without any attempt at improvement and monocultural production became the norm, leading to the rapid decline of average crop yields.
Weeds, pests and plant diseases spread quickly as well and by 1955, the
average crop yield of rice was lower than ever before, even with 50,000
hectares of land used for rice alone.67
64
Bla Jolsvai, Munkavgzs, [Labor], ed. Z. Hant, Kitasztottak III [Outcasts

III] (Budapest: Magyar Hz Kiad, 2007), 152.
65
A Magyar Dolgozk Prtja Kzponti Vezetsgnek s a Magyar
Npkztrsasg Minisztertancsnak hatrozata a mezgazdasgi termels
fejlesztsrl, [Decision of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers
Party and the Council of Ministries of the Peoples Republic of Hungary on the
Development of Agricultural Production] 19 December 1953, MNL OL M-KS
276, f. 52/26, . e., 10.
66
Feljegyzs a rizstermels helyzetrl, [Notes on the State of Rice Production] 2 June 1954, MNL OL 276, f. 93/491, . e.
67
A rizstermeszts kutats s nemests trtnete haznkban [The History of
Rice Production, Research and Improvement in Hungary], Source: Website of
the Research Institute for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Irrigation.
http://www.haki.hu/index.cgi?rx=&nyelv=hu&item=&searchwords2=&menup
aram4=38&menuparam_4=47&type_=4 (Date of Access: 3 February 2013)
From our point of view, the history of rice in the 1950 is especially telling
since it was an experiment that could have been successful. Unlike the
idealistic and completely irrational production of Hungarian cotton, Hungarian rice was actually possible to produce in fact, after the initial
struggles, Hungary still produces and exports rice today. However, communist party policies did not aim for economical and efficient production;
they sought to prove that socialism was all-powerful and they could not
only triumph over nature but also bend it to their will. This faith was
what ploughed the formerly uncultivated lands of the Hortobgy and prepared them for flood irrigation and as a result, agricultural production
could not grow simultaneously with the development of the irrigation
system as expected because the irrigation system mainly catered to rice
that was produced with unsuitable agricultural technology. By the end of
the 1950s, they realized that the saline soil of the Hortobgy was unfavorable for the economical production of the undemanding crop, leading to the gradual eradication of these rice fields; however, the few years
that passed had left a gaping wound on the Hungarian landscape that is
still being remediated today.
Construction of the Tiszalk dam and Irrigation System
At the beginning of the 1950s, Eastern Europe was still convinced that
nature was not invincible, leading them to believe that the Davidov plan
devised to change the course of Siberian rivers was realistic and achievable. It was in this spirit that Hungary had begun to transform the environment of the Eastern territories, including the water management and
soil quality of areas by the Tisza River.
According to one of Mtys Rkosis propaganda speeches at the beginning of the 1950s, the Soviet Union is now able to begin realizing such
colossal projects as establishing water power plants by the Volga, Dnieper and Amu Darya rivers to change the arid climate of entire countries
and transform barren wastelands into fertile farmland.68 Hungarian
newsreels were constantly talking about the gigantic construction that
produced one of the largest water reservoirs of the world and plans for the
68
Emil Mosonyi, A kujbisevi s sztlingrdi vzlpcsk jelentsge a Szovjetuni

termszettalaktsi tervben [The Importance of the Dams at Kujbishev and
Stalingrad in the Soviet Plan to Transform Nature], (Excerpt from) Magyar
Technika 2 (1951), 39.
utilization of the Volga Rivers water power. Hungarian party leaders

swayed by the construction of the dams at Kuibyshev and Stalingrad had
announced plans for the construction of a dam at Tiszalk and the corresponding irrigation system. The Tiszntl the Eastern part of the Alfld
plains became the site where they attempted to transform barren
wastelands into fertile farmland; therefore, this also became the site
where they sought to introduce the complex production improvement
method of Russian scholars Dokuchaev and Viljams.
Improving the fertility of the Eastern regions of the Alfld plains had
been an issue long before the plan to transform nature. The soil is suitable
for agricultural cultivation and receives plenty of sunshine, but the
amount of precipitation greatly varies and a significant portion of the territory had alkalized due to the regulation of the Tisza River and the draining of ancient marshlands. In fact, in droughty seasons, large stretches of
farmland had fallen out of production. Demands for the establishment of
a Tisza-based irrigation system had surfaced as early as the 19th century;
however, the region had to wait until the 1930s for the first steps of this
project, one of which was the irrigation act that established the Hungarian
Royal Irrigation Office in 1937.69 The new organization was charged with
the establishment of a dam on the Tisza and Krs rivers as well as their
corresponding irrigation systems. At that time, Tiszalk70 was chosen as
the site of the future dam, and Emil Mosonyi71 began preparatory research for its construction in 1941.72 The famous engineer was also
69
Article XX of 1937: Az ntzgazdlkods elmozdtshoz szksges intzkedsekrl [Required Measures for the Promotion of Irrigation]. Source:
http://www.1000ev.hu/index.php?a=3&param=8047 (Date of Access: 14 January 2013).
70
Tiszalk is located near the bank of the Tisza River in Szabolcs-Szatmr country, 30 kilometers from Nyregyhza, the administrative center of the county.
71
Dr. Emil Mosonyi (1910-2009) was an internationally renowned water engineer whose expertise had been applied on every continent to plan and implement water management investments. He proved indispensable for the
communist party and had designed several water management structures for
Hungary including the dam at Tiszalk. He was dismissed for his participation
in the revolution of 1956 and soon left Hungary. He could only return in 1990.
72
Emil Mosonyi, Imre Pados, Pl tvs, A vzlpcs s erm tervezsi, ptsi
s zemels, kolgiai s trsadalmi elnyei, tapasztalatai 50 v tkrben [The
Planning, Construction, Operational, Ecological and Social Advantages and
Experiences of the Dam and Powerplant in the Last 50 Years] Source:
charged with designing a dam after the war and amended his plans to include a smaller water power plant in 1946. In accordance with the decision of the National Economic Council, the construction of the Tiszalk
water management facilities had to begin on 1 January 1950 and were to
be finished within the period of the five-year plan.73 Plans included the
construction of more than one dam and the establishment of another water power plant had been included in the second five-year plan; however,
that one was build much later.74 The National Economic Council charged
the successor of the Hungarian Royal Irrigation Office the National
Water Management Office as it was called from the summer of 1948 to
execute deep construction work; the actual facility was to be constructed
by the Ministry of Transportation and the Post-Office Department, while
all work involving machinery and iron structures was supervised by the
Ministry of Heavy Industry.75 The organization of these measures was
likely made more difficult by the issue of establishing the authority of the
various ministries. Based on certain documents, it is assumed that whenever a problem surfaced especially regarding finances these ministries
kept deferring responsibility among themselves.76
http://www.hidrologia.hu/vandorgyules/26/7szekcio/Mosonyi_EmilOK.htm
(Date of Access: 14 January 2013).
73
Hatrozati elterjeszts a Npgazdasgi Tancshoz a tiszalki vzlpcs
ltestse trgyban, [Decision Memorandum to the National Economic
Council on the Establishment of the Tiszalk Dam] 24 August 1949, MNL OL
XIX-A-16-a 8754/83/1949.
74
The Kiskre power plant was finished in 1974 and is the most efficient water
power plant in Hungary today.
75
Hatrozati elterjeszts a Npgazdasgi Tancshoz a tiszalki vzlpcs
ltestse trgyban, [Decision Memorandum to the National Economic
Council on the Establishment of the Tiszalk Dam] 24 August 1949, MNL OL
XIX-A-16-a 8754/83/1949.
76
A good example would be the letter of Minister of Agriculture Ferenc Erdei to
Comrade Ott Sndi on 9 January 1953 (Ott Sndi was the political referent
of the Agricultural and Cooperative Department of the Central Committee of
the Hungarian Workers Party and deputy head of department from 1954).
With the approach of the opening deadline, Erdei expressed his concern over
how slowly construction was going compared to the original plans. The Ministry of Agriculture had been granted 43 million HUF but would have needed an
extra 47 million HUF as well as a significant amount of building material and
[] that the Ministry of Transportation build the structures of the halfsectioned canal whether it is included in their plans or not. It is also necessary
Planning and construction work on the dam were based on the National
Water Management Framework Plan and carried out near Tiszalk, some
five kilometers to the west of the settlement. Construction was supervised
by the Tiszalk Water Construction Company; however, this major investment required a massive labor force that the settlement of 4,500 inhabitants and its surrounding area simply did not have. Therefore, when
major ground work began in early fall of 1950, most of the workers were
prisoners who had either been labelled kulaks or had been sentenced because they could not comply with agricultural produce-surrender requirements, and while work was led by civilian experts, these prisoners
were supervised by prison guards.77 The prisoners were also forced to
construct the forced work camp that provided the majority of the labor
force for the Tiszalk construction projects between February 1951 and
late fall of 1953. From 1951 the majority of inhabitants of this forced labor
camp in Tiszalk were prisoners of war that had been released by the Soviet authorities in December 1950 and at the beginning of 1951, but Hungarian examination committees decided to keep them under surveillance.
The dam was placed at the 2.4 kilometer-wide transection of the (Rzompuszta) bend by the border of Tiszalk, and was completed by 1954; in
other words, the Tiszalk dam was one of the few investments of the
five-year plan that was actually completed on schedule. However, the
power plant had only begun to produce electricity in 1959.
The establishment of the Tiszalk dam went hand-in-hand with the construction of the irrigation system since the excavation of the riverbed of the
Eastern Main Canal began simultaneously with the construction of the
dam, and this artificial river was to supply the Eastern regions of the Alfld
plains with water. Construction was right on schedule, but as we shall see
later, the opportunities inherent within were not immediately put to good
use. However, before we discuss the details of the plans to transform the
that the Ministry of Transportation provide the appropriate machinery and sufficient labor force for construction. This is currently the most problematic issue
and the National Planning Office insists that the Ministry of Agriculture should
finance this additional investment from its approved budget, which is absolutely impossible. MNL OL 276. f. 93/411. . e., 31.
77
Barbara Bank, Gyrgy Gyarmati, Mria Palasik, llami titok. Internl- s
knyszermunkatborok Magyarorszgon, 1945-1953 [State Secret. Internment and Forced Labor Camps in Hungary, 1945-1953] (Budapest: llambiztonsgi Szolglatok Trtneti Levltra LHarmattan Kiad, 2012), 43.
Tiszntl region, it is important to discuss the beginning of experimentation with irrigation.

Measures to expand irrigation in agriculture had begun even before the
announcement of the nature transformation program; however, due to financial difficulties, most of these had to be abandoned. For example, one
of the tasks of the National Water Management Office was to build the
Danube - Tisza Canal that would have also served as an important transportation route; however, they only managed to construct the section included in the three-year plan.78 The Office had also prepared a five-year
plan for irrigation and the Agricultural Science Center established experimental sites to carry out necessary research and development, with six
sites established in 1949 and two more in the following year.79 Institutionalized experiments with irrigation led to a rapid increase in the
amount of irrigated farmland. While there were only 11,610 hectares of
irrigated farmland in 1947, this number rose to 50,069 hectares of farmland in 1951.80 Eighty percent of all irrigated farmland was on the Alfld
plains, mostly by the bank of the Tisza River. It is important to note that
the extensive development of irrigation was closely related to the forced
development of rice production discussed in the previous section which
had a great impact on the choice of irrigation methods since surface irrigation in particular was the most favorable method for rice production.
Plans for the nature transformation of the Tiszntl region were developed in 1952, and the first related document we found was dated 10 April
1951. On the Secretariat session of the Hungarian Workers Party, the
Agricultural and Cooperative Department suggested the necessity of a
plan that would determine and ensure the soil improvement of farmland
located by the Tisza River, the future main canal, the territories by the
Krs and Beretty rivers and the farmlands on the right bank of the Tisza
78
The necessity of constructing a Danube - Tisza Canal is still discussed by experts today since establishing an irrigation system on the Western region of the
Alfld plains would significantly improve agricultural production.
79
sszefoglal jelents a ksrleti ntzsi telepekrl, [Assessment Report on
the Expermental Irrigation Sites] 26 June 1950, MNL OL 276, f. 93/167, . e.,
373.
80
A magyarorszgi ntzsi kultra kialakulsa [The Establishment of Hungarian Irrigation Culture] Website of the Szarvas Research Institute for Fishery and
Irrigation. Source: http://www.haki.hu/index.cgi?menuparam4=38& menuparam_4=44&nyelv (Date of Access: 18 January 2012).
River between Mezcst and Szolnok.81 Plans revolved around approximately 740,000 hectares of land, and the comprehensive nature transformation plans were clearly developed in order to imitate the Soviet model
and adhere to the requirements of the Big Brother. Choosing the experimental site seemed evident since a dam and corresponding irrigation system were being constructed at Tiszalk. In the preceding years, these
farmlands had been irrigated the most in some shape or form, and in
terms of climate, the South-Eastern regions of Hungary where the most
suitable for the introduction of crops that were native to warmer climates,
not to mention that, from the perspective of political decision-makers, it
was favorable that this region had succumbed very quickly to forced collectivization.
The ideas for nature transformation were approved by the Secretariat, and
it instructed the Agricultural and Cooperative Department to develop a
detailed proposal within three weeks, and two weeks later, on 25 April
1951, the submitted, detailed proposal was once again discussed by the
Secretariat.82 The proposal listed six main policies for nature transformation including the need to improve saline soils, the importance of
building the Eastern Main Canal, and connecting lakes and water reservoirs, thereby expanding the amount of irrigated farmland. To ensure the
widespread use of grass-crop rotation system (which had been scarcely
applied thus far), it highlighted the necessity of land plotting, road management and the organization of state farms focusing on grass seed production, as well as the significance of establishing protection forests.
However, all of these tasks required a massive labor force, which raised
the issue of mass vocational training as well as the absolute necessity of
mechanization. Last but not least, the proposal suggested the establishment of a committee consisting strictly of experts and the directors of involved research institutes to develop a detailed technical plan. The
Secretariat did approve the majority of these proposals; however, it decided to replace the experts of the committee with party cadres and the
difference between the initial proposal for members of the committee and
81
Hatrozati javaslat a titkrsg szmra, [Decision Proposal for the Secretariat] 10 April 1951, MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 54/138, . e.
82
Javaslat a titkrsg szmra az szak-tiszntli termszettalakt terv kidolgozsra, [Proposal for the Secretariat on the Development of Nature Transformation Plans for the Northern-Tiszntl Region] 24 April 1951, MNL OL
M-KS 276, f. 54/140, . e., 259-261.
the final team is striking and telling. For example, the proposal suggested renowned soil chemist Kroly Pter, director of the Agrochemical
Institute to be the head of the committee; instead, the Secretariat appointed
Zoltn Vas, faithful communist, member of the Political Committee of the
Hungarian Workers Party and director of the National Planning Office.
Other members included Minister of State Farms and Forestries Andrs
Hegeds, Minister of Agriculture Ferenc Erdei and a few of his subordinate officials, and Andrs Somos, secretary of the agricultural science
department of the reorganized Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the
end, the involved scientific fields were represented by five people in the
twelve-member committee: Kroly Pter, Melanie Frank, Emil Mosonyi,
forester Imre Babos and agriculturalist Ern Obermayer.83 The significantly modified proposal was approved by the Secretariat on 6 February
1952, which not only diluted the scientific committee but also distorted
the original plans. Basically, the previously established objectives had
become a reduced hodgepodge of necessary prerequisites to a much more
comprehensive vision: All plans to transform nature must be based on
long term production tasks dictated by the characteristics of designated
areas and the development interests of the national economy. The development of crop production is necessary, especially that of wheat, rice and
cotton Hungary must become the most important source of these crops
to supply its own necessities. In other words, all greater agricultural innovations were directed to serve the geographically and biologically voluntaristic demagogy of party policies. The propaganda used to influence
Hungarian society will be discussed later, but the following half-sentence
lurking in the modified plans is worth considering: [the plan] must be
announced to the public at an appropriate time after the completion
[] followed by detailed instructions by the Secretariat on how this
news should be fed to the working nation.
On 18 April 1952, the Council of Ministries issued a decision on the establishment of the Tiszntl Nature Transformation Planning Committee,84 followed by the establishment of work committees and their scopes
83
Hatrozati javaslat a titkrsg szmra a Tiszntl egy rsze termszettalakt tervnek kidolgozsra, [Decision Proposal for the Secretariat on the Development of Nature Transformation Plans for One Portion of the Tiszntl
Region] 28 January 1952, MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 54/179, . e.
84
Decision 2037/1952 of the Council of Ministries.
of activity.85 Based on the designated deadlines, these teams of experts

would have had to devise precise plans by 30 April 1953. However, the
death of Stalin had brought changes to Hungarian politics and after the
formation of the Imre Nagy government on 5 July 1953, these agricultural plans were significantly reassessed, which meant that the planning
committee had probably done little work of any significance, which may
be one of the reasons why the examined documents contain no files from
the committee itself.
The size of irrigated agricultural farmlands steadily increased in the examined period, but data were particularly high for the year 1953 when
Hungary attempted to improve production by introducing irrigation to
94,093 hectares of farmland.86 At first glance, one would expect significant results behind the data, but it is actually difficult to explain it. By the
end of 1952, the five-year plan had been half over and not surprisingly
Hungarian leaders were faced with several fallbacks compared to the
often irrational ideas and expectations in the announced plans, which
meant that the experts of the various involved scientific fields had to act
fast to comply with their respective tasks. The construction of the Tiszalk dam and the Eastern Main Canal mentioned in the previous section
had proceeded according to plan. However, the amount of irrigated farmland did not increase accordingly, mostly due to the fact that the construction of irrigation equipment and the necessary canal system had not been
built yet in other words, there was water but it was not put to any use
and the agricultural department of the party reprimanded the Ministry of
Agriculture for not using the existing opportunity when political propaganda was desperate to show society what little they actually did
85
A Tiszntli Termszettalakt Tervbizottsg feladatkre, szervezete s

gyrendje, [Scope of Activities, Organization and Agenda of the Tiszntl
Nature Transformation Planning Committee] 16 May 1952, MNL OL 276, f.
93/411, . e., 12-19.
86
A magyarorszgi ntzsi kultra kialakulsa. [The Establishment of Hungarian Irrigation Culture] Website of the Szarvas Research Institute for Fishery
and Irrigation. Source: http://www.haki.hu/index.cgi?menuparam4=38&
menuparam_4=44&nyelv (Date of Access: 18 January 2012). Data for the year
1953 is especially high compared to the years before and after. In 1952, the
size of irrigated farmland was a mere 56,508 hectares, while in the second half
of the 1950s, it rose to some 70-80,000 hectares.
achieve.87 The dam and corresponding canal were outright called a

peace monument and farmers were recruited on masse to build the irrigation system in the spirit of peace is yours, you build it for yourself
since labor force was still scarce to execute an investment of this magnitude. The work schedule for the next year instructed all state farms to use
every source of water suitable for irrigation (from smaller brooks to highyielding wells) on their farmlands and to carry out maintenance on all
older irrigation systems. However, the Ministry only offered professional
assistance; the financial background and labor force would have had to be
provided by the state farms and producers cooperatives. These required
measures had significant results, even if they only lasted a year, and in
1953, a huge amount of farmland had been irrigated on command.
Despite the increasing amount of irrigated farmland, opportunities remained unexplored and unused. We have already discussed that the canal
had been built but there was no simultaneous development of the water
system, but above all, irrigation was primarily introduced on the lowest
quality farmlands, further reducing its efficiency. In short, the actual
amount of irrigated farmland did not even reach 50 % of the farmland
suitable for irrigation.88
After the turning point of 1953, the distorted agricultural development of
the previous years was reevaluated and the construction of the next dam
on the Tisza River, originally scheduled for the second five-year plan,
was delayed in favor of the utilization of existing opportunities, supporting the expansion of irrigation with smaller investments. From 1954,
government was planning the construction of floodgates and compression
pumps for producers cooperatives and sought to enable private farmers
to purchase irrigation pumps as well.89
The Eastern Main Canal was presented in its entirety in 1956. The artificial river between Tiszalk and the settlement of Bakonszeg on the bank
87
Hatrozati javaslat az ntzses termels fejlesztsre az 1953-54. vekben,

[Decision Proposal on the Development of Irrigation in the years 1953-1954]
22 December 1952, MNL OL 276, f. 93/411, . e., 27.
88
Ivn T. Berend, A szocialista gazdasg fejldse Magyarorszgon 1945-1968
[Socialist Economic Development in Hungary Between 1945-1968] (Budapest:
Kossuth Knyvkiad Kzgazdasgi s Jogi Knyvkiad, 1974), 148.
89
Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg lsrl, [Minutes of the Meeting of the
Political Committee] 22 July 1953, MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 53/127, . e., 30.
of the Beretty River cuts across 98 kilometers of land in the region of

the Tiszntl, and it still provides water for the surrounding farmlands
along with its various side canals. It is also a significant drinking water
supply for the surrounding area, and its high quality water provides for an
abundance of wild life as well. We may therefore say that despite its
mostly irrational ideas, nature transformation did have some positive results for Hungary, especially when we consider that in that era, forced industrialization was a priority but nature transformation enabled the
development of agriculture as well and to the national economy of a
country lacking in industrial resources, agriculture is definitely one of the
key means of survival.
The Transformation of Thinking
Besides widespread terror, the dictatorship of the Rkosi era also sought a
gentler way of regulating peoples lives and ideas, which entailed the
top-down regulation and uniformization of the private sphere to the
smallest detail using every possible method of propaganda available.90
The popularization of party politics was, of course, a top priority in manipulating everyday life and was presented as the only road to happiness
and peace. It was not surprising then that all reports of the three and fiveyear plans and the exaggeration of achieved results was frequent in the
media as well as the press and contemporary film, and national education documentaries on the transformation of nature were also included.
The hardest task for propaganda was to bring the voice of the party to
the villages; therefore, nature transformation went hand in hand with the
distribution of the popular radio a simple device that only operated on
medium wave frequencies, ensuring that only two Hungarian stations
were available and there was no access to Western broadcasts or any foreign propaganda that could have gone against the interests of the party.91
90
For details, see Gyrgy Gyarmati, Nk, jtkfilmek, hatalom, [Women, Feature Films and Power] in Az tvenes vek Magyarorszga jtkfilmeken
[1950s Hungary in Feature Films], eds. Gyrgy Gyarmati, Mria Schadt,
Jzsef Vony (Pcs, Aska Bt., 2004), 41-67.
91
Zoltn lmosi, A nprdi s a vezetkes rdi az tvenes vekben, [Popular Radio and Wire Radio in the 1950s] Archvnet 6 (2007) Source:
http://www.archivnet.hu/politika/a_nepradio_es_a_vezetekes_radio_az_otvenes_
evekben.html (Date of Access: 20 February 2013).
At that time, there were approximately 525,000 foreign-tuned devices

in Hungary, which meant that the distribution of simplified radio devices was an ill-fated party decision, not to mention that people were
cunning enough to modify these popular radios to be able to broadcast the
prime enemy stations such as Radio Free Europe or Voice of America
on short wave frequencies.
Another form of public information was the installment of speaker systems on the streets of various settlements; however, in villages that had
no speaker systems installed at the beginning of the 1950s, all official
regulations and local public service announcements were publicized in
the traditional way by drumming. Until the introduction of the council
system in 1950, it was the village judge and then an employee of the local
council apparatus, usually an office clerk, who would use drums to announce news in various parts of the village.92 Councils should do more
than drumming and fliers: members of the council need to take the lead in
persuasion and organization, reads the column of Szabad Np (the daily
newspaper of the Hungarian Workers Party).93 To this end, reideologized documentary lectures were organized in local culture houses. These lectures had to be factual, scientifically sound and militant,94
and they were not unsuccessful: the event series Szabad Fld Tli Estk
[Free Land Winter Evenings] was so successful that they held 50,000 lectures in 1950 and 123,000 lectures in 1953.95 The party seized every opportunity to reach the ears of the Hungarian population; for instance, they
instructed the Hungarian Society of Natural Sciences [Magyar
Termszettudomnyi Trsulat] to organize scientific exhibitions in the
entrance hall of several cinemas and in the waiting rooms of railway
92
Eszter Galn Barcs, Dobolsok a propaganda szolglatban az 1950-es

vekben [Drumming in the Service of Propaganda in the 1950s], Presentation
at the conference of the Pest County Archives on 25 November 2010. Source:
http://www.pestmlev.hu/data/files/202705480.pdf (Date of Access: 20 February 2013).
93
Szabad Np, 13 June 1951.
94
Csilla Halsz, A diafilm mint a kultragitci eszkze a Rkosi-korszakban,
[Film Strips as Instruments of Cultural Agitation in the Rkosi Era] Archvnet 1
(2008). Source: http://www.archivnet.hu/hetkoznapok/a_diafilm_mint_a_ kulturagitacio_eszkoze_a_rakosikorszakban.html (Date of Access: 20 February
2013)
95
Romsics, Magyarorszg trtnete a XX. szzadban, 372.
stations.96 By 1952, several counties had begun screening films and slidestrips97 in the waiting rooms of railway stations, helping propaganda to
reach new sites.98 During these screenings, speakers kept repeating the
clichs and inspiring work chants of communism. Slide-strips were considered relatively simple and inexpensive instruments of propaganda;
therefore, they were used extensively in every area of political agitation,
but especially in relation to agricultural issues since persuading the Hungarian peasantry was a key point of communist policies. Stalins plan for
the transformation of nature made its appearance in slide-strips soon
enough: we have knowledge of nearly 20 slide-strips produced between
1949 and 1953, all of them popularizing various agricultural innovations.99 This number is confirmed in a decision by the council of Ministries from 1953 in which they dedicated a separate chapter to methods of
agricultural propaganda.100 The document contains instructions for the
production of at least 20 strips of film on agricultural topics by 1954 and
the documentaries on the agricultural technologies of the most important
industrial crops were also to be finished by the same year.
Besides documentaries, weekly newsreels also served to broadcast the
success of Soviet agricultural technologies. The first news relevant to
our current topic appeared at the end of the 1940s, accompanied by current Hungarian political events. In January 1949, the former estate of
duke Pl Eszterhzy was filmed to showcase experiments with non-native
new industrial crops in the spirit of Lysenko and Michurins teachings.101
96
A Magyar Termszettudomnyi Trsulat zsebknyve [Pocket-book of the Hungarian Society of Natural Sciences] (Budapest, Mvelt Np Knyvkiad,
1952), 40.
97
Slide-strips: a roll of photos where the pictures are visible in positive film and
they can be projected with slide projector.
98
C. Halsz, A diafilm mint a kultragitci eszkze a Rkosi-korszakban
99
We would like to thank Ferenc Br, founder and owner of the Hungarian Museum of Slide-strips for introducing us to and allowing us to use the referenced
slide-strips.
100
Tervezet. A Magyar Npkztrsasg Minisztertancsnak hatrozata a
nvnytermels fejlesztsrl, [Draft. Decision of the Council of Ministries
of the Peoples Republic of Hungary on the Development of Plant Production] 8 June 1953, MNL OL 276, f. 93/455, . e.
101
Hungarian Newsreel 45, January 1949. Source: http://www.filmintezet.hu/uj/
hirado/heti/index.php?y=hir&id=1597&eid=9933#go (Date of Access: 16
February 2013).
However, the scientific aspect of the report was largely abandoned in favor of denigrating the duke and the aristocracy in general as well as the
recently incarcerated cardinal Jzsef Mindszenty. It is also apparent that
newsreels gradually began to focus on results and consequently, on glorifying the communist party.
Daily newspapers and journals were supplied with information by the
Hungarian News Agency (Magyar Tvirati Iroda, MTI), which also determined what topics were currently relevant and required to be published. On 2 September 1948, the News Agency informed the public that
cotton is thriving in Borsod.102 This was one of the first instances of
news broadcasts on the transformation of nature, which is especially
shocking since it pinpoints the most northern region of Hungary as the
production site of tropical cotton. We found no evidence in contemporary
documents that Borsod had produced cotton in 1948, so we may assume
that this was a prime example of the conscious distortion of reality: if cotton is said to grow even in the mountainous climate of a northern county,
then plans for the plantation of cotton on farmland next year will seem
completely justified. By 2 July 1949, news informed that the quality of
last years crops are on par with cotton from India and there was an uplifting report on former textile worker and current Minister Anna Ratk
arranging chunks of cotton the white gold on an assembly line.103
The event was, of course, filmed and photographed and footage was distributed all over the country.
The political importance of cotton production is evident in the frequency
of reports that followed production every year from planting the seeds until harvesting crops. The current state of cotton production was almost
constantly featured in the weekly newspaper Szabad Fld, and during
1951 and 1952, the country population was informed weekly on the state
of cotton production. Political agitation soon appeared in the titles of articles as well: Produce more cotton this year than you have last year!104
was followed by words of wisdom on how these expectations should be accomplished: Successful cotton production depends on hard work, not the
weather. The topics discussed in the tabloids did not differ significantly
from the obligatory schemas of political papers, though the approach and
102
Hungarian Telegraph Office (Magyar Tvirati Iroda, MTI), 2 September

1948.
103
MTI, 2 July 1949.
104
Szabad Fld, 24 February 1952.
presentation of the topics was perhaps a little fresher. For example, the
weekly paper, Nk Lapja, sought to persuade its female readers by saying
More Cotton, More Clothes.105 However, it is striking that cotton production was mostly favored by the written press; it would have obviously
been harder to mask the sad truth on film. Nevertheless, they did shoot a
propaganda film on cotton, and in May 1953, spectators of the cinema
newsreel were greeted on the silver screen by cotton-picking expert Katalin
Pvkovits.106 The 22 year-old woman had become a national success story when she was the first to master the Soviet method of picking cotton
with both hands on both sides, thereby quadrupling her previous record in
picking cotton.
Besides cotton, the introduction of other non-native industrial crops was
also featured in Hungarian news. The newspaper Szabad Fld welcomed
the introduction of the sweet lupins that were not only considered one of
the best stock-feeds, but also as one of the pioneers of soil improvement.107 There were also reports on the agricultural science council on
15-16 December 1950, where Aladr Porpczi, leading researcher of
the Fertd Experimental Farm stated that thanks to the application of Soviet agricultural technologies and methods, lemon saplings that otherwise
take 8-10 years to bear fruit had blossomed and grew fruit within six
months.108 This miracle was also achieved in the Ukraine, Soviet
member state and Hungarys North-Eastern neighbor, where they established tea plantations and produced citruses, figs and pomegranates as
well at least according to the official newspaper of the party.109 When
we see reports of how farmers were producing juicy watermelons near
Leningrd (as it was called in that period),110 one cannot help but think of
the tall tales of Baron Munchhausen, but the answer is quite simply,
Man is in charge, not the weather!111
105
Nk Lapja, 1 May 1952.

Hungarian Newsreel, 19 (1953) Source: http://www.filmintezet.hu/uj/hirado/heti/
index.php?y=hir&id=1292&eid=7937 (Date of Access: 28 February 2013)
107
Szabad Fld, 13 January 1952.
108
Szabad Np, 17 December 1950.
109
Szabad Np, 5 September 1952. We would like to thank Rbert Takcs for
calling our attention to this article.
110
Ahol megvltoztatjk a termszet arculatt, [Where Nature is Changed]
Kincses Kalendrium (1949), 92.
111
Nem az id: az ember a gazda! jfajta agrotechnikai mdszerekkel a magasabb termsrt, [Man Is in Charge, Not the Weather: New Agricultural
106
In 1951, a picture album titled Magyarorszg j arca [The New Face of

Hungary] was published in honour of the second congress of the Hungarian Workers Party.112 The volume served to show the changes of the past
few years by praising the party and painting a much more favorable image of reality than was warranted. The section on agriculture features a
two-meter tall specimen of Uzbeghistanian cotton, but two pages later,
we see Hungarian peasant women bending low as they struggle to pick
the Hungarian cotton. Did the striking difference elude the editors of the
volume? Nonetheless, this period produced the chant called Gyapot neke
[The Song of Cotton] that sounds more satirical in light of the pictures
than it had been intended:
I am rather small,
But I will grow tall,
If I manage to learn Soviet
Agricultural modes.113
Everything from changing the course of rivers to the production of exotic
industrial crops in extreme conditions, experiments that would make even
science fiction authors uncomfortable, were presented in the contemporary press as Stalins great monument to peace and a devastating strike
against imperialist states. We will keep striking down on imperialist war
adventurers and their cronies, the blood-thirsty Tito-gang. Participating in
this fight is the greatest honor and foremost duty of every worker, reads
the article of a country paper on the significance of picking cotton.114
Upon the eruption of the Korean War, the transformation of nature became associated with peace even more as it presented a great opportunity
Technologies and Methods for Better Crop Yield] Kincses Kalendrium
(1953), 153.
112
Zoltn lmosi, Az tvenes vek propaganda kpei, [Propaganda Images of
the 1950s] Archvnet 3 (2006). Source: http://www.archivnet.hu/politika/
az_otvenes_evek_propaganda_kepei.html (Date of Access: 20 February
2013).
113
Ludas Matyi, 4 October 1951. Literal translation by va Misits. The original
text is: Kicsi vagyok n/Majd megnvk n/Ha a szovjet agrrmdszert/Eltanulom n.
114
Mria Braunn Szendi, Biztonsgi fehr arannyal az imperializmus ellen,
[White Gold Insurance Against Imperialism] Archvnet 2 (2004). Source:
http://www.archivnet.hu/hetkoznapok/biztonsagi_feher_arannyal_az_imperial
izmus_ellen.html (Date of Access: 22 January 2013).
to compare the war and destruction of the USA with the Soviet Unions
struggles for the future. The satirical weekly paper Ludas Matyi created
to entertain or rather, to dumb down the working nation through entertainment reflected on contemporary events with the following joke,
killing two birds with one stone: Soviet Scientists: [pointing at the deserts of Siberia the authors] This land is a desert and we are working on
making it thrive in five years! American scientists: [pointing at the Korean peninsula the authors] This land is thriving and we are working on
turning it into a desert within five minutes!115 Behold two different
ways of transforming nature, two different policies. On the one hand, new
power plants and gigantic river regulations, and on the other, a ruthless
and insane arms race, plans for genocide, the preparation of a new world
war.116
In the 1950s, the heroic plan of building dams on the River Volga received a lot of media attention alongside the popularization of water
management investments along the Tisza River. The Volga is the course
of communism,117 reads the conclusion of a Soviet novel, and the constant parroting of the omnipotence of Stalin, god of communism or paradise on Earth is borderline blasphemous in the following lines: If you
say, let there be roads, then roads shall be built in the mountains; if you
say let there be no mountains, the mountains shall be gone. Rivers will be
born if you say, let there be rivers, and we shall block their path if you
say, stop!118 The simplistic approach of news writers often shows in how
they attempted to show the significance of constructions with incredibly
high numbers, such as the amount of earth that had to be extracted to lay
down foundations for the dam or the construction of the canals, or how
much concrete, cement, bricks and who knows what else would be used.
The results, of course, would speak for themselves. Teacher: Show us
the river Don, boy! Student: Which one, todays or yesterdays?119 Tell
me, father, why are we building these irrigation canals? For two reasons:
one, to irrigate Soviet lands, and two, to cool down American war
115
Ludas Matyi, 22 September 1950.

Szabad Np, 30 August 1950, 4.
117
Vasily Galaktionov, Anatoly Agranovsky, Egy nagy ptkezs hajnala [The
Dawn of a Great Construction Project] (Budapest, j Magyar Knyvkiad,
1952), 194.
118
Szabad Np, 13 April 1952.
119
Ludas Matyi, 4 October 1951.
116
aggressors.120 Another telling joke was the wisecrack of a stork that

met Old Lady Drought on the endless plains of the Alfld and said, You
hear me, Drought? Youll be going under water soon!121
The above excerpts and quotes are merely a handful of examples of the
flood of political propaganda aiming to rule and transform Hungarian
thinking. It also shows how the communist thinking not only ignored the
idea of protecting nature and pursuing sustainable development, but was
outright proud of forcefully interfering with its environment and transforming living nature to its own image.
After 1953, the above-discussed topics still appeared in the news, but did
so less and less and were significantly toned down. News concentrated
first and foremost on irrigation and rice fields, d then began paying greater attention to the afforestation of the Alfld plains and the establishment
of protection forests in the second half of the 1950s. The concept of nature transformation was still used, but was now used within reasonable
boundaries as man and nature arrived at a compromise.
Life after the Plan
With the death of Stalin, the Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature
was mostly abandoned in Hungary, although changes had only become
tangible upon the government change in July 1953. On the 19 March
1953 session of the Political Committee of the Central Committee of the
Hungarian Workers Party, criticism regarding industrial crop production
was concerned by how changing the ratio of farmland and decreasing the
farmland used for grains had a negative impact on national industrial crop
production and how low crop yields also decreased the average crop yield
as well. However, besides the droughts, the low quality of manure and
fertilizer and inefficient irrigation, their reasons included neglecting the
use of Soviet scientific achievements and superior production knowledge.122
Nevertheless, the things left out of these documents is also telling: from
that time, party decisions no longer contained the encouragement of
120
Ludas Matyi, 29 September 1950.

Ludas Matyi, 13 February 1952.
122
Javaslat a Politikai Bizottsg szmra, [Proposal for the Political Committee] 18 March 1953, MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 53/117, . e., 2-3.
121
experimentation with the new industrial crops that they had previously
attempted to introduce and produce.123
On 6 April 1953, Minister of State Farms and Forestries Andrs Hegeds
prepared a report for the Secretariat of the Hungarian Workers Party, informing them of the state of Hungarian agricultural scientific work.
Among his negative observations, Hegeds listed that there is still no
sign of an ideological struggle in favor of materialistic biology and a portion of agricultural researchers are working with Morganist theories.124
His suggestions included that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and
the Ministry of Agriculture hold a public debate on the most significant
practical issues of Michurinist biology as well as the Lysenkos new theory of species formation. However, he did not mention anything about the
future of non-native industrial crop experiments, either.
The Political Committee had only touched upon agriculture on 22 July,
after the establishment of the Imre Nagy government, and regarding our
topic, the title of their agenda speaks volumes: Javaslat a mezgazdasg
tern elkvetett hibk kijavtsra [Proposal for the Correction of Mistakes Committed in Agriculture]. The document contains only minimal
hints at the mistakes of nature transformation policies; however, we do
find the intention to revise the production structures of agriculture by
reading between the lines: for example, they intended to significantly increase the farmland used for wheat and corn while deciding to reduce the
farmland used for cotton by 40,250 hectares.125
On the 19 December 1953 session of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers Party, the decision of the Central Committee and the
Council of Ministries on the development of agricultural production was
approved. This decision was obviously critical of the agricultural strategies of previous years, stating that We need to stop the planning and implementation of agricultural schemes disregarding local environmental
characteristics and must support the production and breeding of crops and
123
MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 53/117, . e., 2.

Jelents a Titkrsg szmra, [Report for the Secretariat] 6 April 1953),
MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 54/239, . e., 2-3.
125
Jegyzknyv a Politikai Bizottsg 1953. jlius 22-i lsrl, [Minutes of
the July 22, 1953 Session of the Political Committee] MNL OL M-KS 276, f.
53/127, . e., 2.
124
livestock that are compatible with local environmental conditions.126

Criticism eventually turned into self-criticism as well: The forced production of industrial crops in regions unsuitable for their production and
with no regard to the natural environmental conditions of Hungary is
faulty practice and must be stopped.127 Judging by these quotes, we
could assume that this decision was the end of cotton production in Hungary, but we would be wrong: of all non-native crops, cotton was the only
one that was still prescribed in agricultural agendas, and while the
amount of farmland used for cotton was reduced, an increased crop yield
was requested. The reasons behind this decision are hard to determine.
One factor may have been that in 1950, the Soviet Union made cotton
production obligatory in all Comecon member states128 and this decision
was not withdrawn even after the death of Stalin. Another reason could
have been that cotton supplied not only the textile industry but also the
military industry and Cold War politics relied on the production of explosive cotton.
The decision of 19 December 1953 on the development of agricultural
scientific work no longer mentioned Michurin or Lysenko. Due to this
decision, pressure on Hungarian scholars to study and apply Michurinist
and Lysenkoist biology gradually decreased, largely due to the fact that
the miraculous production results promised by Lysenko had been proven
false and the Soviet Union was forced to keep relying on food import.
However, Hungarian scholars could only truly return to ideologically independent research after the Revolution of 1956. Eventually, the concept
of chromosomes was reintroduced into Hungarian scientific discussion
along with the determining role of genes and mutation in inheritance, and
the rules of Mendel. Lysenko was brought under criticism in the Soviet
126
A Magyar Dolgozk Prtja Kzponti Vezetsgnek s a Magyar

Npkztrsasg Minisztertancsnak hatrozata a mezgazdasgi termels
fejlesztsrl, [Decision of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers Party and the Council of Ministries of the Peoples Republic of Hungary
on the Development of Agricultural Production] 19 December 1953, MNL
OL M-KS 276, f. 52/26, . e., 2.
127
MNL OL M-KS 276, f. 52/26, . e., 14.
128
Elterjeszts a Titkrsg rszre. A KGST legkzelebbi lsszakn napirendre kerl krdsek, [Memorandum for the Secretariat. Issues on the
Agenda of the Next Session of the Comecon] 19 April 1950, MNL OL M-KS
276, f. 54/95, . e., 129.
Union as well and thus the slow rehabilitation of scientific genetics began. The process only stopped temporarily around 1957 when it was discovered that Khrushchev, head secretary of the Soviet Communist Party,
endeavored to restore the reputation of his comrade.129
Lysenko had only travelled abroad once when he visited Hungary in January 1960 to attend a two-day long national corn production meeting. He
also visited several universities and research institutes during his stay, but
the highlight of his visit was holding a lecture titled A micsurini biolgia
idszer krdsei [Relevant Issues of Michurinist Biology] at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on 23 January 1960. The lecture was attended
by party and government leaders, and the assembly room and adjacent
rooms of the Academy were completely full.130 His audience anxiously
awaited the lecture; however, Lysenko failed to address the over 200
questions previously addressed to him, leaving his audience stunned. Had
there been any faithful disciples of Lysenko in Hungary left by that time,
he had definitely lost their support now.
It is difficult for historians to assess the amount of damage and for that
matter, if there were any benefits arising from direct interference with
nature in the first half of the 1950s. We have no means of assessing how
much damage was incurred by taking farmland away from traditional industrial crop production to plant cotton, especially at the beginning of the
1950s. Rice, on the other hand, was considered a more successful investment since it is still produced in Hungary now with appropriate production technologies, reasonable costs and new methods of production.131
However, erasing the traces of former rice production experiments is still
an ongoing process in the Hortobgy National Park, where a gene bank
has been established in order to reintroduce once native greenery and essentially revert the land to its former state.132 Nevertheless, the dams on
129

Mller, Liszenko emlkezetes eladsa a Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmin
1960-ban, 1355-1356.
131
In the 1960s and 1970s, rice was produced on 27-30,000 hectares of farmland
in Hungary. Rice was still being produced on some 27,000 hectares of land in
the 1980s primarily in large-scale agricultural farms, but after the system
change, the amount of farmland used for rice decreased significantly. By
2012, rice production was reduced to a mere 2,800 hectares of farmland.
132
Ilona jszszi, Visszavadtjk a tjat A szikeseds rgebbi, mint a folyszablyozs [Reverting the Land: It Had Been Saline Long Before River
130
the Tisza River and the finished main canals have proven to be valuable
endeavors. The real problem is that these have not been developed since,
the issue of drainage has not yet been resolved, there are not enough water reservoirs to store floodwater for droughty seasons and the irrigation
system is still insufficient.
Regulation], Source: http://www.u-szeged.hu/egyetemrol/tudomany-innovacio/

visszavaditjak-tajat (Date of Access: 1 March 2013)
About contributors
Robert ANDRZEJCZYK - PhD candidate, Department of Rural Development and Consulting, University of Agriculture in Cracow, Poland; MA in
sociology (2002), Pedagogical University of Cracow; 2006-present, Ministry
of Finance of the Republic of Poland, Counsellor of the Minister; 2008-2012,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, First Secretary/Counsellor (secondment). Latest publications: Polish State policy towards foreign claims that arose out of post-WWII nationalization. Example
of bilateral indemnisation agreements, in Politics and Society, Rzeszow
2015; Western European countries and the United States of America claims
against the Polish People's Republic for pre-WWII and WWII debts as well
as for nationalization after WWII (status of 19th March 1954) in the light of
historical source materials, in Cracow Little Poland Studies, Cracow, 2014.
E-mail: randrzejczyk@gmail.com
Rbert BALOGH - junior researcher at the Institute of History of the Centre
for Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between 2011 and
2013 he conducted research in India under the title Frontiers of Nature,
Work and Gender: Jamshedpur 1900-1950 (financed by the Indian Council
for Cultural Relations). Currently, he is involved in three projects. His PhD
dissertation aims at finding a way to bring cultural and environmental history
together in assessing modernization during the 20th century. His other academic project is concerned with the history of forestry in Hungary. He also
contributes to the project Eye to Eye with the History of Szombathely's
Jewish Community, a photography based exhibition that celebrates human
life and reflects its fragility. Latest publication: Nightmares of the Little
Mermaid. Indoctrination and Representation of the Trianon Treaty in Hungarian History Textbooks 1920-1988, in Die Pariser Vororte-Vertrage im
Spiegel der ffentlichkeit, Harald Grller, Harald Heppner (Hg.), LIT Verlag, 2013.
E-mail: rbalogh215@gmail.com
Zsuzsanna BORVENDG - PhD student and researcher at the Historical
Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest, Hungary. Graduated
Faculty in Humanities Pzmny Pter Catholic University (1999), Faculty
of Law and Political Sciences (2001). Her fields of research: contemporary
782 ______________________________________________ About contributors
Hungarian history, especially the operation of the intelligence services during

the Kdr regime. Latest publications: jsgrsnak lczva. A Nemzetkzi
jsgr Szervezet Magyarorszgon (The International Organization of
Journalists in Hungary) (NEB Knyvtr, Budapest, 2015); Vadhajtsok - A
sztlini termszettalaktsi terv tltetse Magyarorszgon 1948-1956 (Untamed Seedlings. Hungary and the Stalins Plan for the Transformation of
Nature), (Napvilg Kiad, Budapest, 2015, co-author Mria Palasik).
Email: borvendeg.zsuzsa@gmail.com
Cosmin BUDEANC - expert at The Institute for the Investigation of
Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, Bucharest, Romania. Fields of research are Romanian communism, oral history. Postdoctoral studies, The Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babe-Bolyai
University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2013); PhD in oral history contemporary history at The Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babe-Bolyai University (2008). As a director, he led contracts and research grants (such as the
grant Survival and Socio-professional Integration Strategies in the Families
of Former Political Prisoners in the First Two Decades of the Communist
Regime, 2015-2017). Latest publications: Social, Cultural, Ethnic and Religious Identities in Communism, Iai, Polirom, 2015, (coordinator, with Florentin Olteanu); Stalinization and De-Stalinization. The Institutional
Evolution and Social Impact, Iai, Polirom Publishing, 2014 (coordinator,
with Florentin Olteanu); The Individual and Collective Destinies in Communism, Iai, Polirom Printing House, Romania, 2013 (coordinator, with
Florentin Olteanu); Prison Experiences in Communist Romania, vol. I-VI,
Iai, Polirom Printing House, Romania, 2007-2012 (coordinator), and a
number of scientific studies in prestigious publications from Romania and
from abroad: Historicky asopis (Bratislava), Spiegelungen (Mnchen),
Levltari Kzlemnyek (Budapest).
E-mail: cosmin.budeanca@iiccmer.ro
va CSESZKA - expert on economic history and adult education, and also
teacher of the King Sigismund College (Hungary). PhD in economic history
at Pzmny Pter Catholic University (2004) and a habilitation at Etvs
Lrnd University (2014). Her fields of research contain conceptual trials
during the communist regime, the 1956 revolution in Hungary, the economic
history after World War II in Hungary. She participates in several research
projects at higher education institutions. She is the author of books and stud-
About contributors ______________________________________________ 783
ies: Economic type trials with special respect to the trial against the Ministry of Agriculture (1945-53), Gondolat Kiad, Budapest, 2012; Esztergom
1956. National tendencies local characteristics during the revolution in
Hungary, Komrom-Esztergom Megyei nkormnyzat Levltra, Esztergom, 2011; Ruined Dreams and Awakening. American Foreign Policy and
the Hungarian 1956, VDM Verlag Dr. Mller, Saarbrcken, 2009; Economic type trials in the Rkosi regime in Hungary (1947-1953), in Arhivele
Totalitarismului, INST, Academia Romn, 3-4/2012; Paulinermnche in
der Zeit des Rkosi-Regimes (1948-1956). Die Pauliner im Grsz-Prozess
in Der Paulinerorden Geschichte-Geist-Kultur. Herausgegeben von Gbor
Sarbak, Szent Istvn Trsulat, Budapest 2010;
E-mail: cseszkaeva@gmail.com
Mihaiela GRANCEA - Professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Science, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu; senior editor of the Brukenthalia
journal, Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei 2010-2015, and member of
editorial board of Studia Historia Cibiniensis. Series Historica (20082012). Starting in 2015, collaborator of journals Historia and Dacia Literara, member and scientific secretary of Sibiu branch of Asociaia Istoricilor
din Romnia. She is specialized in History of Collective Mentalities, Historiography, Cultural History, Recent and Oral History. She is also a member
of several international grants and benefited from several research contracts.
She is the author of numerous articles, studies and reviews: Introducere n
istoria mentalitilor colective i a imaginarului social. Antologie, Alma Mater, Sibiu, 2003; Reprezentri ale morii n Romnia epocii comuniste. Trei
studii de antropologie funerar, Casa Crii de tiin, Cluj-Napoca, 2007;
Reprezentri ale morii n Transilvania secolelor XVI-XX, Casa Crii de tiin, Cluj-Napoca, 2005 (editor); Discursuri despre moarte n Transilvania
secolelor XVI-XX, Casa Crii de tiin, Cluj-Napoca, 2006 (editor with Ana
Dumitran); Death and Society. Transdisciplinary Studies, Casa Crii de tiin, Cluj-Napoca, 2008 (editor); Interferene culturale n Sibiul secolelor
XVIII-XX, Astra Museum, Sibiu, 2014 (editor with Ioan Popa); Trecutul de
astzi. Tradiie i inovaie n cultura romn, Casa Crii de tiin, ClujNapoca, 2009.
E-mail: mihaela_grancea2004@yahoo.com
Olga GRDINARU - PhD candidate at Comparative Literature Department

Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, with the thesis The Representation
of World War II in the Soviet Literature and Cinematography. Graduated the
Master Program in Journalism, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
(2006) and in Comparative Literature, Babe-Bolyai University (2007).
Editor of Brukenthalia, Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei, Sibiu. During 2008-2015 attended various national and international conferences and
published articles in English and Romanian: Myth and Rationality in Russian Popular Fairy Tales in Caietele Echinox, vol. 17 Mythos vs. Logos,
Cluj-Napoca, 2009; The Profile of the Traitor in L. V. Ginzburgs The
Abyss, in Bulletin of the Transilvania, University of Brasov, Series IV: Philology and the Cultural Studies, vol. 4 (53) no. 1-2011; The Russian Idea
Binder between the National Ideology and Mentality in Interstitio Journal,
Chiinu, 2011; The Soviet Hero-Making Process. Aspects of the Soviet
Heroism in Brukenthalia 3, Sibiu, 2013; Death Representation in the Soviet Novel of World War II in Romanian Journal of Literary Studies no.
4/2014; The Hypostasis of the Witchdoctor in Post-Soviet Russia in The
Proceedings of the Conference 2014, Novi Sad, Serbia (in printing).
E-mail: olgagradinaru@gmail.com
gota Ldia ISPN - research fellow at Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences; PhD in Historical Science (Social and Economic History) at Etvs Lornd University
(2015). The title of her PhD dissertation is The Countryside of the Town.
Lifestyle change of the rural society after 1945 under the influence of urbanization. Fields of research: lifestyle changes after 1945, the socialist city
(Leninvros), history of everyday life, oral history. Important publications:
Ha nem segtenek Kdrnak runk! A Npi Ellenrzsi Bizottsghoz rt
kzrdek bejelentsek s panaszlevelek (If you dont help, well write to
Jnos Kdr Public interest reports and letters of complaint addressed to the
Peoples Control Committee in the Socialist era), in Ethno-Lore. A Magyar
Tudomnyos Akadmia Nprajzi Kutatintzetnek vknyve, XXXI, 2014;
Faluvillamosts Magyarorszgon 1945 utn (Rural Electrification in Hungary after 1945), Mltunk, 2012. no. 2.; Vrosi tr s vrosimzs Leninvrosban (Usage of Space and Urban Image in Leninvros), in Urbs. Magyar
Vrostrtneti vknyv, IV, 2009; Arisztokrata csaldok letmdja, letstratgija 1945 utn (The Lifestyles and Life Strategies of Aristocratic Families
after 1945), in Aetas, 2007. no. 2.
E-mail: ispan18@yahoo.com
Bogdan IVACU - curator, researcher at Complexul Muzeal Arad. PhD

graduated in History at Babe Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (2006).
Fellowships, research trips: fellowship at Institut fr Deutsche Kultur und
Geschichte (IKGS), Mnchen, Germany (June-July 2013); research trip at
the Voegelin Archives, Geschwister Scholl Institute, Ludwig-Maximilians
Universitt, Mnchen (September-December 2011); post-doctoral fellow,
New Europe College (Institute for Advance Study) Bucharest, Romania
(March 2011 - February 2012). Is author of books and studies: The birth of a
new elite Transylvania (1945-1953), Guttenberg University, Arad, 2008;
Order and History. Eric Voegelin and the diagnosis of modernity, introduction to Eric Voegelin, The political religions, translated from English by
Bogdan Ivacu, Bucharest, Humanitas Publishing House, 2010; Uno strumento del processo del sovietizzazione della Romania: la nazionalizzazione
del 11 giugno 1948, in Comunismo e comunismi. Il modelo rumeno, Atti
del Convegno di Messina, 3-4 Maggio a cura di Gheorghe Mndrescu &
Giordano Altarozzi, Accent, Cluj-Napoca, 2005; Experiences of Order and
Reason and Their Modern Ideological Destruction in Voegelins Work, in
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, issue (86-4), Fall 2012; Confronting Communism with Christian Ethics: the Ethico-Religious motivation
of Eastern European Dissidence, in Politics, Religion &Ideology, Volume
12, Issue 1, 2011.
E-mail: bogdanv.ivascu@gmail.com
Stanisaw JANKOWIAK - Prof. Dr. habil. at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Posnan (Poland). His research concerns the recent Polish history,
with particular emphasis on political history (the struggle for power in Poland after World War II, Pozna June, Stalinism, student strikes, Solidarno
Solidarity, 1989s political transformation, functioning of the secret services in Polish Peoples Republic), the question of nationality (especially the
situation of the Germans after World War II), the relations between state and
church, etc. as well as the history memory. The most important publications:
Wielkopolska w okresie stalinizmu (Greater Poland during the Stalinist period), Pozna 1995; Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludnoci niemieckiej w polityce
wadz polskich w latach 1945-1970 (The displacement and emigration of the
German population in the policy of the Polish authorities in the years 19451970), Warszawa 2005; Pozna i Wielkopolska w marcu 1968 r. (Poznan
and Wielkopolska in March 1968), Pozna 2008; Wyjazdy Niemcw z Polski
w latach 1950-1959 (Departures of Germans from Polish in the years 1950-
1959. Selection of documents), Pozna 2010; Poznaski Czerwiec 1956

(Pozna June 1956. Selection of documents), co-editor, with R. Kociaski,
E. Makowski, R. Reczek, Pozna 2012.
E-mail: jans@amu.edu.pl
Dariusz JAROSZ - Professor of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
He is specializing in the social history of Poland after 1945 including relationships with Western countries. Selected works: Through a Distorting Mirror. The Image of Polish Communistic Authorities in the Light of Common
Knowledge, Wydawnictwo Karta, Warszawa, 1995; The Communist Power
in Poland and Peasants 1948-1956, Wydawnictwo GAJT, Warszawa, 1998;
Poles and Stalinism 1948-1956, Instytut Historii PAN, Warszawa, 2000; The
Meat Affair: facts and contexts, Wydawnictwo Marszaek, Toru, 2004;
Apartment to be... Study of social practices in Polish People's Republic,
Wydawnictwo ASPRA-JR, Warszawa, 2010; The Organisation of Leisure in
Poland 1945-1956, Wydawnictwo Instytutu Historii PAN i Akademii
witokrzyskiej, Warszawa-Kielce, 2003; Polish Peasants versus Stalinism, in Stalinism in Poland, 1944-1956, Selected Papers from the Fifth
World Congress of Central and East European Studies, A. Kemp-Welch ed.,
Macmillan Press, London, 1999; The Collectivization of Agriculture in
Poland: Causes of Defeat, in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements, Constantin
Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkmper, eds., Central European University Press, Budapest - New York, 2014; Polish-French Relations, 1944-1989, translated
by Alex Shannon, Peter Lang Edition, Frankfurt am Main, 2015 (with Maria Pasztor).
E-mail: darjarosz@wp.pl
Natalia JARSKA - PhD (2014), Institute of History of the Polish Academy
of Sciences in Warsaw and Institute of National Remembrance (Warsaw).
Her publications include: books Idealne kobiety. Sekcja Kobieca Falangi
1934-1950 [Ideal women. The womens Section of the Spanish Phalanx
1934-1950] (Lublin: Werset, 2011), Kobiety z marmuru. Robotnice w Polsce
w latach 1945-1960 [Women of marble. Female blue-collar workers in Poland in years 1945-1960] (Warsaw: IPN 2015), Pe buntu. Kobiety w oporze
spoecznym i opozycji w Polsce w latach 1944-1989 na tle porwnawczym
[The gender of revolt. Women in popular resistance and political opposition
in Poland 1944-1989: a comparative perspective], eds. Natalia Jarska and Jan
Olaszek, (Warsaw: IPN, 2014), and articles: Rural Women, Gender Ideologies, and Industrialization in State Socialism. The Case of a Polish Factory in
the 1950s, Aspasia. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and
Southeastern European Women's and Gender History 2015, vol. 8, and
Frauen in den kommunistischen Parteien PPR/PZPR die Paradoxe der
Frauenpolitik 1945-1960, Jahrbuch fr Historische Kommunismusforschung, 2015.
E-mail: n.luczynska@gmail.com
Miroslaw KUSEK - Associate Professor, University of Agriculture in
Cracow. Economic historian whose research interests are oscillating around
issues relating to banking in the twentieth century, socio-economic transformation in Europe in the twentieth century; operation of large landownership
in the twentieth century as well as political culture and contemporary socioeconomic systems. Author of numerous scientific articles and monographs
on banking history, financial systems and landownership published in Poland
and other European countries. Deputy Chief Editor of Krakowskie Studia
Maopolskie (Cracow Lesser Poland Studies). He applies his expert
knowledge working as a head of research teams for Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Royal Museum in Wilanw as well as for international banks.
E-mail: mirekklusek@op.pl
Csaba KOVCS - archivist at Hungarian Central Statistical Office Library,
Manuscripts Archives. Fields of research are history of Hungarians in Voivodina, history of the Hungarian agriculture after 1945, history of statistics.
Final certificate, ELTE Faculty of Humanities Doctoral School of History,
Programme of Economic and Social History (2010). Important publications:
Panaszok a kollektivizls befejez hullmnak idszakbl: az egyni s a
szvetkezeti gazdlkods problminak sajtossgai (Complaints from the
Final Period of Collectivisation: the Idiosyncratic Problems of Individual and
Co-operative Farming), in Mltunk 58, 2013. no. 3; Portrk a magyar statisztika s npessgtudomny trtnetbl: letrajzi lexikon a XVI. szzadtl
napjainkig (Portraits from the History of Hungarian Statistics and Demography: Biographical Lexikon from the 16th Century to the Present), coeditor, with Dvid Rzsa, Zoltn Ndudvari, Erzsbet Nemes, Angelika
Psztor, (KSH Knyvtr, Budapest, 2014); Fordulat utn: a jugoszlviai
fldkrds a sajtban s visszaemlkezsek tkrben (After the Turn: the
Land Question in Yugoslavia in the Press and in the Light of Reminiscences), in Fld, parasztsg, agrrium. Tanulmnyok a XX. szzadi fldkrdsrl a Krpt-medencben (Land, Peasantry, Agriculture. Studies on the
Land Question in the Carpathian Basin in the 20th Century), eds. Zsuzsanna
Varga, Lszl Pallai (Hajdnns nkormnyzat, Hajdnns, 2015); A
Dlvidk s a Vajdasg 1941-1948 kztt a sajt s az emlkezet tkrben (The Southern Region and Voivodina between 1941-1948 in the
Light of Reminiscences), in Magyarok s szerbek a vltoz hatr kt oldaln, 1941-1948. Trtnelem s emlkezet (Hungarians and Serbs on two the
sides of the changing border, 1941-1948. History and remembrance), eds.
rpd Hornyk, Lszl Br (MTA Blcsszettudomnyi Kutatkzpont
Trtnettudomnyi Intzet, Budapest, 2016).
E-mail: csabakov@gmail.com
Marcin KRUSZYSKI - historian, employee of the Institute of the National Remembrance, branch in Lublin, Poland. In his earlier works he brought to
the fore the issues concerning the Polish- Soviet relation during the interwar
period. At present, in examinations after 1944, he is dealing with the history
of the Lublin world of science and with attitudes of the Polish intelligentsia
in Poland Folk and the Polish People's Republic, in addition to describing the
everyday life. Author of two monographs: Embassy the Republic of Poland
in Moscow in years 1921-1939, Warsaw 2010; Maria Curie University
for Skodowska in years 1944-1989. Outline of the history of the college in
PRL conditions, Lublin 2015, and of over fifty scientific papers. Co-editor
of the book Sketches for PRL everyday lives, Lublin 2016 (in printing).
E-mail: marcin.kruszynski@ipn.gov.pl
arko LAZAREVI - scientific councillor, Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana and professor at the Department of History, University of
Nova Gorica. PhD in the subject of debt-based financing of the modernisation of Slovene agriculture from the mid-19th century to WW II, at University of Ljubljana (1992). His fields of research contain development in
agriculture, the industrialisation process, cooperative societies, entrepreneurism, and the role of nationalism in economy, representation and perceptions
of national interest, consumerism and advertising to the development of financial sector in Slovenia within the European context in the period of late
19th and 20th centuries, the influence of economic processes to social structure and especially on long-term structural changes in the economic-social
image of Slovenia within comparative extensions of the 19th- and 20thcentury European economic environment. Latest publications: Chapters from
the economic history of Slovenia in the first half of the 20th Century,
Ljubljana 2009; Contributions to financial history of Southeastern Europe,
Megatrend univerzitet, Beograd, 2011; School history and textbooks: a comparative analysis of history textbooks in Japan and Slovenia, Intitut za
novejo zgodovino, Ljubljana, 2013, editor with Nobuhiro Shiba, Ale
Gabri, Kenta Suzuki.
E-mail: zarko.lazarevic@guest.arnes.si
Klra LZOK - obtained a diploma in history at Babe-Bolyai University
in Cluj (2003) and graduated from there with a degree in International Relations and European Studies (2007). Since 2004 she has pursued doctoral
studies in the Department of History at Etvs Lrnd University in Budapest. She works presently as the chief librarian of the Teleki-Bolyai Library from Targu-Mures, Romania. Her areas of research include censorship
and minority intellectual strategies in the 1950s and 1960s. Her major publications include the following: Cartea tiprit i cenzura n Romnia anilor
1950-1960 (The book printed and censorship in Romania during 19501960) in Minoritatea maghiar n perioada comunist (The Hungarian Minority in the Communist Era), Olti goston, Gid Attila eds., Editura Institutului pentru Studierea Problemelor Minoritatilor Nationale - Kriterion,
Cluj-Napoca, 2009; Book Publishing and Censorship in the Romania of the
1950s in State and Minority in Transilvania, 1918-1989. Studies on the History of the Hungarian Community, Attila Gbor Hunyadi ed., Columbia
University Press, New York, 2012, and several publications in the field of
librarianship in different periodicals.
E-mail: lazokklar@gmail.com
Olev LIIVIK - researcher at Estonian History Museum. PhD in history at
University of Tartu, with thesis Soviet administration in Soviet Estonia during 1940s and at the beginning of 1950s (2014). In 2011, he was appointed
research fellow in the Institute of History and Archaeology at the Tartu University. He is involved in research projects that study the communist party
nomenclature system in the Soviet Estonia and the Baltic States at the end of
the Cold War era. He is the principal investigator of the research project
dealing with resettlement of Germans from Soviet Estonia to German Reich
on the eve of the German and Soviet war in 1941. Latest publications: The
ESSR Council of Ministers: An Ethnicity-Based Organ of Power for the Union Republics International Administration?, in Behind the Iron Curtain:
Soviet Estonia in the Era of the Cold War, Tannberg, Tnu (ed.), Peter Lang
Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2015; Nomenklatuurissteemi funktsioneerimisest aastatel 1944-1953 Eesti NSV valitsusliikmete nitel (The functioning of the nomenklatura system in 1944-1953: the example of the
members of the Estonian SSR government), in Ajalooline Ajakiri (The Estonian Historical Journal), no 4, 2015.
E-mail: olev.liivik@ajaloomuuseum.ee
Magorzata MACHAEK - Dr. habil., Associate Professor at the University Centre for Education of the University of Szczecin (Poland). For many
years she has been involved in both education of history and research on history of 20th-century Poland, especially in regards to political history, history
of social and economic transformation of Polish rural areas (she has studied
the development of State Agricultural Farms, Stalinism, local history particularly of the West Pomerania district). She is also interested in the issues
of presenting history in museums. The most important publications: Szczecin
1945-1990. Moje miasto. Materiay pomocnicze do nauczania historii regionalnej (Szczecin 1945-1990. My city. Ancillary materials for the teaching
of local history), Szczecin 2010; Edukacja obywatelsk w szkole. Teoria i
praktyka (Civic education in school. Theory and practice) (co-editor J.
Korzeniowski), Warszawa 2011; Przemiany wsi zachodniopomorskiej w
latach 1945-1956 (Transformation of the village of West Pomeranian, 19451956), Szczecin, 2012; Przemiany polskiej wsi w latach 1918-1989 (The
transformation of the Polish countryside in the years 1918-1989); Klio.
Czasopismo powicone dziejom Polski i powszechnym (Clio. Magazine
dedicated to the Polish and universal history) no 3, 2013; Muzea narracyjne i wirtualne (Museums and virtual narrative), Wiadomoci Historyczne (Messages History) no 4, 2014.
E-mail: malgorzata.machalek@univ.szczecin.pl
Manuela MARIN - member of a research team The Cultural Heritage and
Identity Dynamics in the Turkish-Tatar Communist in Dobrudja at West
University of Timioara (2013-2016). PhD in history at Babe-Bolyai
University of Cluj-Napoca (2008), postdoctoral researcher at Babe-Bolyai
University of Cluj-Napoca (2010-2012). Her research interests concern the
history of the Romanian communist regime during Nicolae Ceauescus re-
gime, Nicolae Ceauescus cult of personality, communist propaganda, everyday life during communism, and Muslim religion during communism. She
published books and studies: The origin and evolution of the cult of personality of Nicolae Ceauescu 1965-1989, Altip, Alba Iulia, 2008; Between past
and present: the cult of personality of Nicolae Ceausescu and Romanian
public opinion, Mega, Cluj-Napoca, 2014; Ascribing a New Political Identity: Women during the 1950s. A Case Study on Steanca Magazine, in
Press, Propaganda and Politics: Cultural Periodicals in Francoist Spain
and Communist Romania, Andrada Ftu-Tutoveanu, Rubn Jarazo lvarez
(coord.), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013; The Muslim community in
Dobrogea during communism (1948-1965), in Cosmin Budeanc, Florentin
Olteanu (coord.), Stalinization and de-Stalinization. Social evolution and social impact, Polirom, Iai, 2014 (with Adriana Cupcea).
E-mail: marinmanuela2004@gmail.com
Tomasz OSISKI - historian, PhD in humanities, employee of the Bureau
of the Public Education of the Institute of the National Remembrance, branch
in Lublin, Poland. Research interests: social-economic history of Poland in
the 19th and the 20th centuries with particular reference to history of the
landed gentry. Editor of the volume of studies Rewolucja spoeczna czy
dzika przebudowa? Spoeczne skutki przeksztace wasnociowych w
Polsce (1944-1956) [Social Revolution or Restructuring Wild? Social effects of ownership changes in Poland (1944-1956)], Lublin 2016 (in printing). Published: Klika obszarnicza. Ziemianie w polityce personalnej
Pastwowych Nieruchomoci Ziemskich (1946-1949) [Clique of Landowners. Gentry in the personnel policies of State Land Properties (1946-1949)],
Pami i Sprawiedliwo [The Memory and the Justice], 2(20)/2012; Powojenne migracje polskich ziemian jako element inynierii spoecznej wadz
komunistycznych. Rekonesans badawczy (Post-war migration of Polish
landowners as a result of the Communist social engineering. A scholarly reconnaissance) in Wysiedlenia jako narzdzie polityki ludnociowej w Europie (Displacing as the tool of the population policy in Europe), Jacek
Wooszyn editor, Lublin 2015.
E-mail: tomasz.osinski@ipn.gov.pl
Mria PALASIK - PhD, Dr. habil. She is a historian, head of Department of
Research at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security. She has
been a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics
for over twenty years and has been Jean Monnet Professor for European
Studies since 2004. She has been contributing scientific articles since the
middle of the 1980s. Her field of research is Hungarian History after the
World War II. She has published more than 90 articles so far. Author, coauthor of several books, presenter at scientific conferences and coordinator of
scientific projects. Her book Chess-Game for Democracy: Hungary between
East and West in 1944-1947 (Montreal Kingston, McGill-Queens University Press, 2011) is about the dramatic struggle for power in Hungary after
the Second World War.
E-mail: palasik@abtl.hu
Cristina PETRESCU - Associate Professor of Modern European History
at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest. She authored
From Robin Hood to Don Quixote: Resistance and Dissent in Communist
Romania (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedic, 2013), contributed to the Final
Report of Presidential Commission for Analyze of Communist Dictatorship
in Romania (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007), and co-edited Nation-Building
and Conflicting Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies (Budapest: Regio Books, 2001). She published in international volumes and peerreviewed journals in the United States, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Poland and Hungary numerous studies on communism and the memory of this
recent past in East-Central Europe. She was the coordinator (in collaboration) of the Romanian research team in the project Remembering Communism, financed by Volkswagen Stiftung, hosted by Universitt Leipzig,
and internationally coordinated by Maria Todorova and Stefan Troebst.
E-mail: cristina.petrescu@fspub.unibuc.ro
Drago PETRESCU - Professor of Comparative Politics and Recent European History at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest,
and Chairman of the Board of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS). He has authored Entangled Revolutions: The
Breakdown of the Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe (Bucharest:
Editura Enciclopedic, 2014) and Explaining the Romanian Revolution of
1989: Culture, Structure, and Contingency (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedic, 2010). He has contributed to Final Report of Presidential Commission
for Analyze of Communist Dictatorship in Romania (Bucharest: Humanitas,
2007) and has co-edited the volume Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian Case Studies (Budapest: Regio Books, 2001).
He is also the author of numerous studies on the communist regimes in EastCentral Europe and on the process of coming to terms with the dictatorial
past in the region, published in peer-reviewed journals or collective volumes
in the United States, Germany, Spain, Poland, Croatia and Hungary. He coordinated (in collaboration) the Romanian research team in the project Remembering Communism, financed by the Volkswagen Stiftung, hosted by
the University of Leipzig and internationally coordinated by Maria Todorova
and Stefan Troebst.
E-mail: dragos.petrescu@fspub.unibuc.ro
Eli PILVE - research fellow at the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.
Her fields of research contain forced Soviet ideology and propaganda at
school lessons, repressing family members of the so-called class enemies in
Soviet Union as well Estonians opting for citizenship and returning to the
homeland after the signing of the Tartu peace treaty between Russia and Estonia in 1920. Since 2012 she is working on her PhD studies on the topic
Land reform conceptions and their ideological background of Estonian political parties before and during the parliamentary debates on the Agrarian
Law of 1919, which is a continuation to her master studies.
E-mail: eli.pilve@mnemosyne.ee
Sorin RADU - Professor habil. at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
(Romania), dean of the Faculty of Social and Human Science and head of the
Research Centre of Patrimony and Socio-Cultural History. His fields of research contain Romanian history in the 19th and 20th centuries, history of
the political parties, political culture and modernisation in modern and contemporary Romania. He is a convenor for Romania at the International
Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions
and member of European Rural History Organisation. As a director, he led
contracts and research grants (such as the grant Communism in Romanian
Countryside. Case Study: Ploughmens Front Propaganda (1944-1953),
2013-2016). He is the chief editor of the journal Studia Universitatis
Cibiniensis. Series Historica. Latest publications: Parliamentarism and
political structures in East-central and Southeastern Europe in the Interwar
Period (in collaboration with Hans-Christian Maner), 2012; nvmntul de
partid i colile de cadre n Romnia comunist [Political Education and
Schools of Cadres in Communist Romania], Iai, 2014, and a number of scientific studies in prestigious publications from abroad: Slovansk pehled
(Prague), Bulgarian Historical Review (Sofia), Historicky asopis (Bratislava), Kwartalnik Historyczny (Warsaw), The Historical Review/La
Revue Historique (Athens).
E-mail: sorin.radu@ulbsibiu.ro
Andrs SCHLETT - expert on social and economic history, an associate
professor at Pzmny Pter Catholic University (Hungary). His fields of research contain economic history of Modern Age and our times, problems of
modern agrarian surroundings that concentrate on the history of Hungarian
agriculture. Latest publications: Reform in Agricultural Production in Hungary, in Is Hungary really different?, Katalin Botos ed., Budapest, 2009;
Success and Failure of the Hungarian Agrarian Model, in Arhivele Totalitarismului, INST, Academia Rmn, no. 74-75. 1-2/2012; Agriculture and
Employment. Hungarian Agriculture before and after the Transition in
Visnyk Kyivskoho Natsionalnoho Universytetu Tekhnolohii Ta Dyzanu
(Herald of Kyiv National University of Technology and Design), no. 1 (75),
2014 (with Beke Judit); Agricultures strategic role. The economic, social
and environmental dimensions of sustainable agriculture in Hungary in Agricultura Familiar. Reflexiones desde cinco continentes. En el Ao Internacional de la Agricultura Familiar, Leticia A. Bourges, Esther Muiz Espada
(Eds.), Ministerio dAgricultura, Alimentacin y Medio Ambiente, Madrid,
2014 (with Judit Beke Lisnyi, Istvn Fehr); Foreign Direct Investments in
Food Industry in Hungary in International Journal of Business and Management Studies, vol. 3, no. 3, 2014.
E-mail: schlett.andras@jak.ppke.hu
Stanisaw STPKA - PhD habil., professor of the Warsaw University of
Life Sciences (Poland), deputy dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. His
fields of research contain Polish history in the 20th-century, history of peasants and the peasant movement, the social and political transformations in
Poland during the latter half of the 20th century. He is a member of the Program Board of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences Press. Latest publications: Chopi wobec wydarze politycznych w Polsce (1956-1959) [Peasants
in the Face of Political Events in Poland (1956-1959)], Warsaw, 1999;
Mniejszo ukraiska - problem powrotu do rodzinnych stron (1947-1959)
[Ukrainian minority - the issue of the return to the fatherland (19471959)], Przegld Humanistyczny 2006, no 1 (Warsaw); Midzynarodowa
Unia Chopska 1947-1956 (The International Peasant Union 1947-1956).
Selected and compiled by B. Kcka-Rutkowska and S. Stpka, vol. 1, Warsaw, 2007; Midzynarodowa Unia Chopska 1957-1968 (The International
Peasant Union 1957-1968). Selected and compiled by B. Kcka-Rutkowska
and S. Stpka, vol. 2, Warsaw, 2011; Attitude of the International Peasant
Union to Communism (1947-1989), in Agrarismus ve stedn vchodn
Evrop 19. a 20. Stolet, Jan Rychlk, Luk Hole, Michal Pehr (eds.),
Praha, 2015.
E-mail: stanislaw.stepka@wp.pl
Piotr SWACHA - Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Warsaw University of Life Sciences. PhD at the Department of Political Sciences, Pultusk Academy of Humanities (2009). His fields of research: peasants
and agricultural organisations in Poland and Europe, the political propaganda
in the post-war period in Poland as well as the forms of political communication. Director of two research projects at Warsaw University of Life Sciences
and participated in a project carried out at University of Warsaw. Latest publications: The information policy of the Polish Peasant Party 1945-1947,
Oficyna Wydawnictwa ASPRA-JR, Warszawa, 2010; Department of Press
and Propaganda of the Polish Peasant Party in the years 1945-1947, in
Rocznik Nauk Politycznych, no. 12, 2010; Polish Peasant Party in Wielkopolska (1945-1947), in Spoeczestwo i Polityka, no. 4, 2011; The Image
of the countries of the Soviet bloc and the capitalist world in the pages of
"Sport Review (1948-1953), in Studia Medioznawcze, no. 1, 2014; Censorship issues to thaw of 1956 in Gazeta Pozna, in Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, no. 1, 2014; The use of social network analysis in the study of
parliamentary elites (for example, Polish MEPs), in Przegld Europejski,
no. 2, 2014.
E-mail: piotr_swacha@sggw.pl
Marius TR - Researcher, Contemporary History Section, Institute of
History from Chiinu. PhD in History at Babe-Bolyai University from
Cluj-Napoca (2009). His fields of research contain: Culture in the Moldavian
SSR 1944-1964, social-economic realities of the Bessarabia in the Polish
diplomatic documents of the interwar period. Director of the project for the
young researchers Partys and Soviets institutions and staff in Moldavian
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (1924-1956) financed by the Academy of Science of Moldova for
2015-2016. Latest publications: The deportations from the neighbouring
Chernivtsy region (Ukraine) in 1944-1953 and from the Bricheny, Oknitsa
and Edinets regions (Moldova) in 1949-1951, Chisinau, 2013. Aspects of

Union of Soviet Writers SSR from Moldavian SSR. 1944-1948, in In honorem Alexandru Moanu. Studies of Medieval, Modern and Contemporary
History of Romanians, Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Presa Universitar Clujean, Cluj-Napoca, 2012; Ideology and literature in Moldavian SSR. 19451948, in Arhivele Totalitarismului, INST, Academia Romn, 2012, nr. 3-4;
The problem of the Cosmopolitanism in Moldavian Soviet Socialist Literature (1949), in Brukenthalia. Romanian Cultural History Review, no. 2,
2012; Aspects of Moldavian Soviet writers in the years 1944-1944, in Tyragetia, VIII, nr. 2, 2014.
E-mail: marius@nichita.org
Judit TTH - archivist at National Archives of Hungary. She obtained her
PhD (History) at the University of Debrecen in 2011. She carries out research on Hungarian agricultural history, especially in the 1950s. Her main
topics of research are: persecution of kulaks in Hungary and anti-kulak propaganda and its forms. Her book on agricultural regions around the Hungarian
capital (Pest County) in 1950s: The Age of Sweeping the Attics Compulsory
Delivery in Pest County (Padlssprsek kora A beszolgltats Pest
megyben). Pest Megye Monogrfia Kzalaptvny, Budapest, 2011. Her
peer reviewed papers: Agricultural Competitions in the First Half of the 50s
in Pest County (Mezgazdasgi versenyek az 50-es vek els felben Pest
megyben). In: Agrrtrtneti Szemle, 2010/1-4., 141-166. pp.; From Rationing to Rationing. Public Supplies based on Class in the Beginning of the
1950s in Hungary. (Jegyrendszertl jegyrendszerig. Osztlyszempontokon
alapul kzellts az 1950-es vek elejnek Magyarorszgn. In: Lszl Pallai (Ed.): Countryside and Towns: Clashes and Interferences in Twentieth
Century Hungary (Vidk s vros: Ellenttek s klcsnhatsok a 20. szzadi Magyarorszgon). Hajdnns, 2013. 120-140. pp.; I report it furthermore Fate of Kulaks at the Time of the Consolidation of Land Holdings
in the year of 1950 in the Reports of Morale of VH (State Security Authority) in Pest County. (Jelentem tovbb Kulksors az 1950. vi tagosts
idejn a Pest megyei VH-s hangulatjelentsek tkrben. In: Betekint,
2015/3.); Peasants Burden in Pest County in 1945-46. (Paraszti terhek Pest
megyben 1945-1946-ban), under publishing.
E-mail: tothjudit321@gmail.com
Ji URBAN - Ph.D., researcher at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague, Czech Republic. He has graduated the master pro-
gramme of Contemporary History at the University of Pardubice and completed postgraduate doctoral studies at the same place. Since 2005 he deals
with the regional research of collectivisation of Czech rural areas. He is the
author of book Venkov pod kolektivizan knutou: okolnosti exemplrnho
kulackho procesu (The Countryside under the Collectivisation Knout:
the Circumstances of an Exemplary Kulak Trial, 2010) , as well as
forthcoming Kolektivizace venkova v hornm Polab: od fenomn k aktrm a jejich motivacm (Collectivization of the Countryside in the Upper
Elbe region: from Phenomenon to Actors and Their Motivation, 2016) and
co-author of three other books aimed at the communist and the agrarian
history of the Czechoslovakia. He is the author of numerous studies focusing on various topics related to the communist totalitarian era, mostly on
the resistance against the forced collectivisation, communist justice, and
demonstrations leading to the fall of the regime in 1989. He currently lectures at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Pardubice,
giving a course called Dealing with the Communist Past.
E-mail: jiri.urban@ustrcr.cz
Zsuzsanna VARGA - Professor at Department of Modern Hungarian History of the Lornd Etvs University, Budapest. PhD in Economic History
(Agrarian History) in 1998. Her research interests and publications are focused on the history of agriculture in socialist Hungary, Central-Eastern European comparative analyses. She has been visiting researcher at the Institut
fr Agrarentwicklung in Mittel- und Osteuropa, Halle (1998, 2000), the
Max-Planck Institute fr Ethnologische Forschung, Halle (2006, 2014). She
is secretary of the Committee of Agrarian History and Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; member of Management Committee of the European Rural History Organisation (EURHO). She is the editor of the
academic journals Agrrtrtneti Szemle (Agrarian History Review) and
Trtnelmi Szemle (Historical Review). Latest publications: Politika,
paraszti rdekrvnyests s szvetkezetek Magyarorszgon, 1956-1967
(Politics, the Assertion of Agrarian Interests and Cooperatives in Hungary,
1956-1967), Budapest, 2001; The Hungarian Agriculture and Rural Society:
changes, problems and possibilities, 1945-2004, Budapest, 2009; Az agrrlobbi tndklse s buksa az llamszocializmus idszakban (The Rise
and Fall of the Agrarian Lobby in Hungary during the State Socialism),
Budapest, 2013. For her latest book she was awarded by the Jnos Bolyai
Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
E-mail: varga.zsuzsanna@btk.elte.hu
Valentin VASILE - counsellor in the Research Department of The National

Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS). PhD in History at
University of Bucharest (2011) with a thesis about The everyday life of Romanians between years 1941-1965. His fields of research contain: the socioeconomic history in Romania post-war, Romanian sports movement during
the totalitarian regime, the history of Securitate (the intelligence service in
Romania since 1948 until 1989). Latest publications: The everyday life of the
Romanians between 1941-1965, Cetatea de Scaun Publishing House, Trgovite, 2014; The Evangelist affair. Billy Graham visits in Romania
(1985), Argonaut Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2010 (co-editor, with
Denisa Bodeanu). Published studies and articles focused on ethnical minorities, sports, economic changes, people's states of mind, and religious movements in 1970s-1980s.
E-mail: vslvalentin@yahoo.com
Marna ZAVACK - PhD, researcher at the Institute of History, Slovak
Academy of Sciences. She graduated from history and philosophy at Comenius University Bratislava (1996) and from Modern history at the CEU
Budapest (1995). Her main field of study is social history of the 20th century, especially the history of propaganda and of building regime loyalties.
Latest publications: Vo vrstvch pamti. K eskoslovenskej stope sovietskeho diplomata Alexandra Jakovlevia Aroseva, [In the Layers of
Memory. On the Czechoslovak Traces of Soviet Diplomat Aleksandr Jakovlevich Arosev], in Forum historiae, 2015, n. 2; Sluhi, spletni, panicheskie izvestija: neoficial'naja informacija v gody vtoroj mirovoj i holodnoj
vojin, [Rumors, Gossip and the Spread of Panic: Unofficial Information
during WWII and the Cold War], in Social'nye posledstvija vojn i konfliktov
XX veka: istoricheskaja pamjat', ed. E. P. Serapionova, Sankt-Peterburg
2014; ...And All Delegates Understood him. To the Post-War Return of
Hungarian Language to the Public Space, in Historisation of Central Europe, Opava, 2014; Identity and conflict. Communist activist in local environment (1945-1956), in Adam Hudek et al. Overcoming the old Borders:
beyond the Paradigm of Slovak National History, Bratislava, 2013; Crossing sisters: patterns of protest in the journal of the Catholic Union of Slovak
Women during the Second World War, in Social History, 2012, n. 4.
E-mail: marina.zavacka@savba.sk

Radu - Bundeanca - Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe

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Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeanca (Eds.

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe

Countryside and Communism

Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeanca

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

LIT VERLAG GmbH & Co. KG Wien,

Organization and political practices within

Agrarian reforms and collectivization

Political instruments of the communist regimes

Social change and rural mentality

Communist propaganda and representations

Mihaela GRANCEA, Olga GRDINARU

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe:

See in particular: Andrew Flynn, Philip Lowe, The Contested Countryside

16 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

that a neighbour or a cadre would denounce him as a rich peasant who

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 17

the opposite of the modern. Anthropologist Eric R. Wolf notes that

Wolf, Peasants, viii.

18 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

Rsener, ranii n istoria Europei, 11.

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 19

owners, are willing to go, against their own fundamental interests,

Apud N.I. Bukharin, Izbrannye proizvedenija. Put k socializmu (Novosibirsk,

20 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

time of a seemingly political pluralism, including the creation of some

Ideologically and programmatically, the popular fronts from Eastern Europe

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 21

party organization provides the staff of professional revolutionaries

Wolf, Peasants, 109.

22 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 23

to the communist parties, went to put an end to the influence of the

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 23

to the communist parties, went to put an end to the influence of the

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 25

Judt, Postwar, 78.

26 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

Comisia Prezidenial pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din Romnia, Raport

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 27

topic is explained by the fact that the process of collectivization included

Pavel Cmpeanu, The Origins of Stalinism. From Leninist Revolution to Stalinist

28 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

R.W. Davies, The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture,

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 29

David A. Kideckel, The Socialist Transformation of Agriculture in a Romanian

30 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 31

Solomon, The Comrades, Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture

32 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

2.3. The Stalinist Repression and the Resistance Against Communism

David R. Shearer, Policing Stalins Socialism. Repression and Social Order in

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 33

spreading catastrophic rumours, comparing the soviet regime with the

Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin, 60-61.

34 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

practitioners. Under the threat of dismissal, the workers were asked to

Davies, Istoria Poloniei, 495.

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 35

36 ___________________________________________________ Sorin RADU

Johnston, Being Soviet, 209.

Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes,... __ 37

In a more recent piece of work, Liubov Denisova85 appreciates that, at