Kollektivizálás és agrártársadalom
"...despite appearences and loud behaviour, he opposed the social order of popular democracy...": Collectivisation and Creating the Enemy (Tyukod, 1951)
Similar to many Szabolcs-Szatmár County settlements at the time of the collectivisation campaign in the winter of 1951, co-op organisers managed to get most of the farmers in Tyukod join the collective. However, the local farmers, together with those from the neighbouring village of Porcsalmás, almost immediately revolted against the Establishment transforming the traditional modes of agriculture by force: by March the co-op groups, which had been set up by painstaking efforts earlier, began to disintegrate as a result of the local population's ferocious mass response. The Establishment was caught off guard by the ferocity of the opposition, and they could only repress the revolt by bringing in police force from outside. The investigators of the State Police (ÁVH), analysing the mass revolt against collectivisation, created a narrative in which the peasants of Tyukod were incited by the 'enemy' (i.e. kulaks, gendarmerie, former civil servants, priests, etc.) against the socialist transformation of agriculture. In the person of the secretary of the Tyukod Council this concept found an enemy figure integrated into the system, working from within. By analysing the charges against him in the course of the collectivisation campaigns of the 1950s, this study is an attempt to unearth the opportunities and decisions of this person at the bottom of the hiararchy of power.
'Condensed Mass Educator': Narratives of Collectivisation Experiences (1958–1959)
This political and socio-historical analysis demonstrates the factors of the dual communication of party nomenclature and the social responses to collectivisation campaigns (individual and collective forms of adaptive resistance). Collectivisation is interpreted as one of the fundamental narratives of the socio-economic and political conflicts in Soviet-type dictatorships, social historical events of short- and long-term consenquence. In this study, this question transgresses the narrow concepts of agrarian-, peasant-, and local histories. Collectivisation is both a rural and urban historical phenomenon by virtue of the modes and eff ects of its enforcement.
The author uses primarily contemporanous witnesses from different angles to prove that the mass annihilation of privately owned farms, and their merging into collective lands were only possible by coercion and means of administrative, psychological and physical terror. The mobilisation of the campaign is interpreted by the socialisation of political dictatorship, in which almost all individuals became active agents in the process. Although the sentiment of failure over 1956 was a determining factor in the process of collectivisation, on the basis of case studies the author argues that another focused campaign lasting until 1960 was necessary to make the majority of the farmers join the co-operatives. The term 'condensed mass educator' meant a police truncheon in informal language.
Models and Sequence of Colletivisation in Seklerland
This article presents the models and sequence of collectivization in Seklerland, a Transylvanian county in Romania. The main obstacles of research were changes in administration, biased communist rhetoric and ambiguous statistical data.
Collectivization was part of a bigger process: the transformation of rural society and agriculture. From 1948, when communists took over Romania, they tried to transform rural society: traditional wealthy peasants and the clerical elite were deprived of their leading roles in the rural state offices and economic organizations. They were replaced by the poor and landless who were loyal to the Communist Party.
Collectivization in Romania was implemented in three major stages between 1949 and 1962, and the process was influenced both by internal party feuds and international political pressure. There were three types of agrarian collective industrial units in this process of collectivization. The collectivization of Seklerland had the same model on a lower scale. Between 1949 and 1952 mostly collective factories were organized. Between 1952 and 1959 collective farm units were organized. The land and agricultural means of production remained personal property of peasants, but the land was cultivated collectively. From 1959 to 1962, the majority of collective farm units were organized into collective factories.
History of Agriculture and Agrarian Society in East Germany: Collectivisation at the Crossroads of Experience (Primärerfahrung), Memory and Historiography
Experiences of the people involved in East German collectivisation do not correspond to the dogmatic hermeneutics, that characterises much of the Agrarian History scholarship in the second German Republic. Many historians were witnesses as well as holding important historian positions at the same time. This means that role and identity conflicts were often inevitable. In East Germany this tension could be resolved or at least minimised only by the re-definition of the 'self explanatory terminology' and complex processes of reconciliation.
Undoubtedly, the idealism of starting afresh after 1945 attracted a large number of historians to the anti-fascist economic and social order, and social history. They filled positions in the Soviet Zone, and later in East Germany. It is notable that a fundamental transformation of personnel took place as well, although not directly after 1945. The 'antifascist-democratic transformation' was celebrated by these historians as the new hope of starting afresh. Due to this, scholarship concentrated mostly on the land reform that deprived the hated Junkers of their power. Collectivisation was perceived as a new chance in scholarship. Due to their idealistic and optimistic visions of the future, historians often shared the ideology of progress of those in power. The demands for partisanship shared willingly by many historians, although they did not always repress personal characteristics, had a significant impact on the legitimisation of the historiography in the SED-state. However, joining the political bandwagon was often confused with scholarly self-appreciation, which signals the scholars' limited autonomy and substantial inertia.
"Ex minimis faciunt maxima": Types of Attempts to Establish Ideal Peasant Communities in Works of Enlightened Evangelical Pastors
One of the greatest socio-political tasks of eighteenth-century Enlightenment was education in all walks of life. It played a special role in the conscious education and shaping of the dominant agrarian society, in order to implement the principle of the ideal society, organised along the ordo. The most important mediators of this catalogue of values and pedagogic mission were Protestant pastors, who were also often aware of one another's intellectual work. The achievements of Johann Friedrich Mayer, pastor of the Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst Estate in North Württemberg, were exemplary not only in Germany: the Hungarian Sámuel Tessedik worked on the practical implementation of Mayer's theories, which he strived to achieve in Szarvas. However, a pastor in Baranya County recorded in his congregational journal that Tessedik's dream was realised only in Mekényes, the parish of the aforesaid pastor, rather than in Szarvas.
Territorial Shortage and Oversupply in Hungarian Crop Production in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
In the absence of direct sources, the so-far unexplored domestic trade can be indirectly analysed by a comparison of the spatial distribution of production and local demography. The existence and significance of the local division of labour between the Great Plains (Alföld) and Northern Hungary (Felvidék) is widely acknowledged. It contributed to the speedy increase of crop production and market distribution in the flatlands of Hungarians, which was counterbalanced by goods and services offered by the Slovak population who used the natural advantages of their mountainous areas. Factual data, however, can only be culled from the basic units of territorial administration, which suggest that the majority of these were not self-sufficient in crop production. This generated a domestic trade between counties twice the amount of export.
Agrarian Crisis and Th ird-Way Solutions in the Movement of Folk Sociographers, Ferenc Erdei, Gyula Illyés and Zoltán Szabó
This study deals with the sociological views and third-way solutions for the agrarian crisis by three eminent figures of folk sociography, Ferenc Erdei, Gyula Illyés and Zoltán Szabó. The analysis points out that all these works reflect the ultimate secession of the peasantry from the rest of society, and thus the authors describe the position of peasantry in social hierarchy by a kind of sub-social position. Instead of his social vision based on the central social group of peasantry, Illyés approached the peasant question from the angle of their vulnerability, presenting the everyday life and desperate situation of this decaying social group, contrary to the romantic attitudes of the middle class. Zoltán Szabó, surveying the social situation of peasantry, reached the conclusion that the realistic assessment of the situation means that third-way politics, which considered peasantry as the hope of national rejuvenation, cannot be pursued any longer. The conclusion of this present study is that in the case of Szabó and Erdei, their different abilities to assess social realities lie in the background of their different approaches to the situation of peasantry. Erdei, experiencing the repressed state of peasantry in his own life, placed his 'peasant revolt at all costs' principle above his more differential sociological view and awareness of social realities.
Források és olvasatok
Könyvek