Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes, Propaganda – Problems, Interpretations and Perspectives
Generally, studies on communism in Eastern Europe have focused mainly on various political history topics – the establishment of the new totalitarian regimes, the elimination of democratic order, the repression, the anticommunist resistance – while disregarding the many aspects of social and cultural history in general and, in particular, the transformations in the rural world. Among the latter, the collectivization of agriculture holds a central position. The need for historiographical betterment in this sphere of knowledge is all the more urgent as many impressive theoretical and methodological surveys have been published in recent years, dedicated to social and cultural history, and, at the same time, the opening of important archive collections related to the early history of communism in the states of the former “cordon sanitaire” provides the documentary material required for applied research. This study plans to be an analysis of the main research directions of the countryside from the East European countries during the communist regime, presented in historiography and classified as following: Agrarian Reforms After WWII and Their Impact on the Rural World; Collectivization and Communization in the Rural World; The Stalinist Repression and the Resistance Against Communism in the Countryside; The Rural World and Local Elites in Communism. Also, the study focuses on some insufficiently researched themes or unapproached which can explain properly the impact of communism above the countryside and especially how the totalitarian regime had influenced the vilage and the people of the “Socialist Bloc”.
Keywords: “Socialist Bloc”, the peasant societies, communization, countryside, communist ideologie
1. Varianta în limba engleză a studiului urmează să fie publicată în Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeancă (editori), The Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes, Propaganda, LIT Verlag, Mainzer Beiträge zur Geschichte Osteuropas herausgegeben, Band 8, Wien, Zürich, Münster, 2016.
2. Vezi îndeosebi: 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 Kovách (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, Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 2014.
3. A se vedea, de exemplu: Thomas M. Bohn, MarieJanine Calic (Eds.), Urbanisierung und Stadtentwicklung in Südosteuropa vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. 47. Internationale Hochschulwoche der SüdosteuropaGesellschaft in Tutzing 6.-10.10.2008, München – Berlin: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2010.
4. Jeremy Brown, “Rural Life,” in Stephen A. Smith (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, 455. În original: „When we imagine what life was for rural people in communist societies, the first picture that might come to mind is that of stooped peasant, defeated and demoralized by collectivization. When the revolution came to his village, communist officials had raised his hopes by granting his family a plot of land and teaching him to write his name, but few years later he has 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 unripened grain in the fields. He lived in constant fear that a neighbour or 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.”
5. Eric R. Wolf, Peasants, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966; Wolf, dintr-o perspectivă antropologică este preocupat să înțeleagă țărănimea ca actor social, familia țărănească și relațiile socio-economice din cadrul societăților țărănești. Vezi și: 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 Troßbach, 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.
6. Werner Rösener, Țăranii în istoria Europei, Iași, Polirom, 2003, 7. Prima ediție: Werner Rösener, Die Bauern in der europäischen Geschichte, München, C.H. Beck, 1993.
7. Rösener, Țăranii în istoria Europei, 7-8.
8. Wolf, Peasants, viii. În original: “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.”
9. Excepția notorie în acest sens o constituie narodnicismul rus și curentele înrudite cu acesta din unele regiuni ale Europei de Est. În România acest curent a fost reprezentat cel mai puternic de Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea și, la începutul carierei politice, Constantin Stere. Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Neoiobăgia, București, 1910); Cathy A. Frierson, Peasant Icons: Representations of Rural People in Late 19th Century Russia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
10. Rösener, Țăranii în istoria Europei, 9.
11. Karl Marx, Friederich Engels, Manifestul Partidului Comunist, București: Editura Politică, 1962, 4, disponibil online la https://polifilosofie.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/ marx_engels_manifestul_partidului_comunist-fragmente. pdf, consultat în 11.02.2016.
12. Ibidem, 7.
13. Rösener, Țăranii în istoria Europei, 11.
14. Ibidem, 12.
15. 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 Townsed, Princeton, Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2010, 3-5; Igal Halfin, “Classes,” in Pons, Service, A Dictionary of 20th Century Communism, 114117; 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 Society, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1990.
16. Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 1927-39, Houdmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, London: Macmillan Press LTD, 1988, 6-7.
17. Vezi pe larg Bartlett, Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia, passim.
18. Printre altele, prin Constituția Republicii Sovietice Federative Socialiste Ruse din 1918, muncitorilor le-a fost asigurat un grad de reprezentativitate net superior țăranilor (G.I. Šmelev, Agrarnaja politika i agrarnye otnošenija v Rossii v XX veke, Moskva, Nauka, 2000, 96.
19. Apud N.I. Bukharin, Izbrannye proizvedenija. Put’ k socializmu, Novosibirsk, 1990, 1-100.
20. Šmelev, Agrarnaja politika i agrarnye otnošenija v Rossii v XX veke, 98, 100-101. O mare parte dintre prevederile programului agrarian al Cominternului au fost formulate ca răspuns la provocările partidelor țărănești/agrariene din Europa de Est. 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 David Mitrany, Marx Against the Peasant: A Study in Social Dogmatism, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951.
21. Irwin T. Sanders, “Introduction,” in Irwin T. Sanders (Ed.), Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1958, 1. În original: “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.”
22. Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 11 and next.
23. Din punct de vedere ideologic şi programatic, „fronturile populare” din Europa de Est de după cel de-al doilea război mondial îşi au originea în deciziile luate la Congresul VII al Cominternului, desfăşurat la Moscova între 25 iulie şi 21 august 1935. Eşuarea planului unei revoluţii mondiale proletare şi diminuarea constantă a influenţei comuniştilor în mediul mişcării muncitoreşti i-a pus pe liderii Cominternului în situaţia de a căuta soluţii pentru a atrage în câmpul de gravitaţie al Internaţionalei III cel puţin o parte din partidele, sau facţiunile şi sindicatele de stânga, ieşite de sub controlul „conducerilor reacţionare”. Această modificare de atitudine va fi pusă în legătură cu creşterea pericolului fascist. Una dintre priorităţile „frontului unic” urma să fie crearea în fiecare ţară a unui guvern comun al forţelor de stânga, ca etapă intermediară în instaurarea „unei dictaturi democratice a clasei muncitoare” [Aleksandr Vatlin, Komintern: idei, rešenija, sud’by, Moscow, 2009, 75; VII Kogress Kommunističeskogo Internacionala i bor’ba protiv fašizma i vojny (Sbornik dokumentov), Moscow, 1975, 364375].
24. T.V. Volokitina, G.P. Muraško and A.F. Noskova, Narodnaja demokratija: mif ili real’nost’? Obščestvennopolitičeskie processy v Vostočnoj Evrope, 1944-1948 gg., Moskva, Nauka, 1993, 109-110; Melissa K. Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists. Politics and Ideology in the Yugoslav Countryside, 1941-1953, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998, 1-27.
25. Bokovoy, Peasants and Communists, XIV. În original: „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 [Komunistička partija Jugosslavije] appears as a loyal member of the partisan struggle, undifferentiated, unwavering, and following the interests of the Yugolsav Communists ant their new state. Indeed, certain segments of Yugoslav pesantry 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 pesantry were not allied with the Yugoslav Communists.”
26. Wolf, Peasants, 109. În original: “…Communist party organization provides the staff off 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.”
27. Samuel Franklin, The European Peasantry: The Final Fase, London, Methuen, 1969, 141-144.
28. Peter Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets. The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 19441948, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 107.
29. Vezi Per Ronnås, Urbanization in Romania. A Geography of Social and Economic Change Since Independence, Stockholm, The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, 1984.
30. Per Ronnås, “Introduction,” in Alois Slepiča, Eva Hošková, Per Ronnås, Örjan Sjöberg (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 Statitics, 1750-1970, New York, Columbia University Press, 1978, 51-63.
31. Ronnås, “Introduction,” 2.
32. Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945, London, Pimlico, 2007, 77. Tony Judt, Epoca postbelică. O istorie a Europei de după 1945, Iași, Polirom, 2008, 84.
33. Reforma agrară din Ungaria a distrus relicvele feudale ale sistemului de proprietate agrară. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, 107.
34. Augustin Țârău, Noaptea moșierilor. Aplicarea Decretului 83/1949 în nord-vestul României, Oradea, Editura Arca, 2009, 37.
34. Augustin Țârău, Noaptea moșierilor. Aplicarea Decretului 83/1949 în nord-vestul României, Oradea, Editura Arca, 2009, 37.
35. Jean-François Soulet, Istoria comparată a statelor comuniste din 1945 până în zilele noastre, Iași, Polirom, 1998, 72.
36. Pentru o imagine generală asupra acestor stări de lucruri, vezi Judt, Postwar, 16-19.
37. Soulet, Istoria comparată a statelor comuniste, 72; Norman Davies, Istoria Poloniei. Terenul de joacă al lui Dumnezeu, vol. 2 (Din 1795 până în prezent), Iași, Polirom, 2014, 454; Jana Burešová, “The Collectivization of Agriculture in Czechoclovakia: The Imposition of the Soviet Communist Model on Czechoslovak Agriculture after the Second World War, 1945-1960,” in Eduard Kubů, Torsten Lorenz, Uwe Müller, Jiři Šouša (Eds.), Agrarismus und Agrareliten in Ostmitteleuropa, Berlin-Praha: Dokořán Verlag, BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2013, 624-625; Ivan T. Berend, György Ránki, The Hungarian Economy in Twentieth Century, London: Croom Helm, 1985, 183; Sándor Szakács, “From Land Reform to Collectivization (1945-1960),” in Péter Gunst (Ed.), Hungarian Agrarian Society from the Emancipation of Serfs (1848) to the Reprivatization of Land (1998), New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, 260-261.
38. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, 116. În original: “It is evident from the reports of the village agitators that the influence of the Communist Party remained weak in the villages. Communist ideology had little appeal to the peasants, the economic program of the party did not favor them, and the party had no reliable cadres in the countryside. Talking about a «proletarian revolution», as some of the Communists were want to do, obviously made a bad impression in the countryside. Imre Nagy in his report to Moscow admitted that the Catholic Church was a stronger presence in the countryside than the Communist Party. He also mentioned as an example of weakness that the local committees often included no peasant members but only people sent from the cities. The fundamental dilemma of Communist agricultural politics was that, on the one hand, the party aimed to modernize and improve efficiency, while on the other, it claimed to defend the interests of the peasants who had just received mostly small parcels that could not be efficiently cultivated.”
39. Judt, Epoca postbelică, 84-85.
40. Ibidem, 48-49.
41. Ibidem, 49.
42. Hannelore Baier (Ed.), Germanii din România, 19441956, Sibiu, Honterus, 2005, 11; Dumitru Șandru, Reforma agrară din 1945 și țărănimea germană din România, București, Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2009, 12-13.
43. Hannelore Baier (Ed.), Deportarea etnicilor germani din România în Uniunea Sovietică 1945, Sibiu, Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din România, 1994, passim.
44. Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România, Raport final, București, Polirom, 2007, 360; Cosmin Budeancă, “Efectele exproprierilor și naționalizărilor asupra etnicilor germani: integrarea în Cooperativele Agricole de Producție și migrația spre orașe, în percepția românilor,” în Hannelore Baier (Ed.), Rupturi și noi începuturi. Germanii din România după două războaie mondiale. Comunicările unui simpozion, Sibiu, Honterus, 2014, 71.
45. O ultimă analiză comparativă a procesului de colectivizare din Uniunea Sovietică și Europa de Est a fost publicată în 2014: The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements, Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkämper (Eds.), Budapest, New York, CEU Press, 2014. O interesantă recenzie a cărții a fost publicată de către Róbert Balogh, Hungarian Historical Review, 1 (2015), 240-247.
46. Pavel Câmpeanu, 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), 367376; Stephen Kotkin, The Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995.
47. Kligman, Verdery, Peasant under Siege, 445. “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.”
48. Kenneth Jowitt, The Leninist Response to National Dependency, Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978.
49. Gail Klingman, Katherine Verdery, Țăranii sub asediu. Colectivizarea agriculturii în România (1949-1962), trad. Justina Bandol, Iași, Polirom, 2015, p. 22.
50. Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, New York, 1986.
51. R.W. Davies, The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-1930, London, 1980.
52. Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization, New York, 1968.
53. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization, New York, 1994.
54. 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: Colectivization 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;
55. Kotkin, The Magnetic Mountain, passim.
56. Kligman, Verdery, Peasant under Siege, passim.
57. Ibidem, 6.
58. Ibidem, 41.
59. 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.
60. Klingman, Verdery, Țăranii sub asediu, 426.
61. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998.
62. Vezi nota 54.
63. Brown, “Rural Life,” 456.
64. Despre colectivizarea agriculturii în URSS și Europa de Est vezi (selectiv): 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 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 GrassRoots: 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, 141173; Jānis Labsvīrs, A Case Study in the Sovietization of the Baltic States: Collectivization of Latvian Agriculture 1944-1956, Bloomington, 1959; Romuald J. Misiunas, Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States. Years of Dependence, 1940-1980, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983; Zdenek Krystufek, The Soviet Regime in Czechoslovakia, Boulder and New York, Columbia University Press, 1981; Pawel Starosta, Imre Kovách and Krzysztof Gorlach, Rural Societies under Communism and Beyond. Hungarian and Polish Perspectives, Lódź Łódź University Press, 1999; Edward Taborsky, Communism in Czechoslovakia, 19481960, 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, Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2011; Dietmar Müller, 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 Bauerkämper (Eds.), The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements, Budapest, New York, CEU Press, 2014.
65. În acest sens cel mai cunoscut caz este cel al Uniunii Populare Țărănești din Bulgaria (Български Земеделски Народен Съюз), care, sub forma unei organizații agrare afiliate partidului comunist, a existat neîntrerupt până în 1989, fiind reprezentată în structurile puterii comuniste la toate nivelele. Un alt exemplu relevant este al propagandei organizate în lumea rurală românească de către Frontul Plugarilor (Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeancă, Flavius Solomon, “«The Comrades», Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe. The Ploughmen’s Front in Romania,” Historický časopis (Historical Journal), 63/1 (2015), 113-135;
66. Rösener, Țăranii în istoria Europei, 18-19.
67. Apud Soulet, Istoria comparată a statelor comuniste, 74.
68. Klingman, Verdery, Țăranii sub asediu, 22.
Peter D. Bell, Peasants in Socialist Transition. Life in a Collectivized Hungarian Village, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1984
Gerald Creed, Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998
Peter Gunst (Ed.), Hungarian Agrarian Society from the Emancipation of Serfs (1948) to the Re-privation of Land (1949), New York, Boulder, 1998
James Hughes, Stalinism in a Russian Province. A Study of Collectivization and Dekulakization in Siberia, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Houndmills, 1996
Constantin Iordachi and Dorin Dobrincu (Eds.), Transforming Peasants, Property and Power: The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania, 1949-1962, Budapest CEU Press, 2009
Constantin Iordachi, Arnd Bauerkämper (Eds.), The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements, Budapest, New York, CEU Press, 2014
Jerzy F. Karcz (Ed.), Soviet and East European Agriculture, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967 Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery, Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962, Princeton, Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2011
Zdenek Krystufek, The Soviet Regime in Czechoslovakia, Boulder and New York, Columbia University Press, 1981
Jānis Labsvīrs, A Case Study in the Sovietization of the Baltic States: Collectivization of Latvian Agriculture 1944-1956, Bloomington, 1959
Romuald J. Misiunas, Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States. Years of Dependence, 1940-1980, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983
Dietmar Müller, Angela Harre (Eds.), Transforming Rural Societies. Agrarian Property and Agrarianism in East Central Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Innsbruck, Wien: Bozen, 2010
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
Corey Ross, Constructing Socialism at the Grass-Roots: The Transformation of East Germany, 1945-1965, Harlow England, New York, Longman, 2000
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
Pawel Starosta, Imre Kovách and Krzysztof Gorlach, Rural Societies under Communism and Beyond. Hungarian and Polish Perspectives, Lódź Łódź University Press, 1999
Edward Taborsky, Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1960, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961
