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. David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism. Repression
and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953, New
Haven, London, Yale University Press, 2009, 3. În original:
„the use of police violence and repression became a
fundamental part of the Stalinist regime, a fundamental
part of Stalin’s 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.”
3. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism, 2. În original: „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 attemted to impose public
order and reshape the Soviet social body.”
4. James Scott referindu-se la modul în care țărănimea și-a
apărat interesele introduce în discuție metoda “weapons
of the weak”. Rezistența simbolică sau ideologică (cum
ar fi bîrfa calomnia, respingerea etichetelor înjositoare,
lipsa de respect) sunt incluse în această definiție. Scott
argumentează că nu sunt dovezi că rezistența a luat forma
unei acțiuni colective. Aceasta poate avea un efect în formă
cumulată. James Scott, Weapons of the Week: Everyday
Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, Yalle University
Press, 1985, 290. Scott argumentează: “It occurred to me
that the emphasis on peasant rebellion was misplaced.
Instead, it seemead far more important tu understand what
we might call everyday forms of peasant resistance – the
prosaic but constant struggle between the peasantry and
those who seek to extract labor, 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.
5. Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Colectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996, 60-61.
6. Lynne Viola (Ed), Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (New York – Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2002), 1. În original: „Resistance was only one part of a wide continuum of societal responses to Stalinism that also included accommodation, adaptation, acquiescenece, aphaty, internal emigration, opportunism, and positive support.”
7. Gail Klingman, Katherine Verdery, Țăranii sub asediu. Colectivizarea agriculturii în România (1949-1962), trad. Justina Bandol (Iași: Polirom, 2015), 436.
8. Ibidem, 435; vezi și Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, New York, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
9. Norman Davies, Istoria Poloniei. Terenul de joacă al lui Dumnezeu, vol. 2 (Din 1795 până în prezent), Iași, Polirom, 2014, 495.
10. Davies, Istoria Poloniei, 498.
11. Kevin McDermott, Mattew Stibbe, “Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: An Overview,” in Kevin McDermott, Mattew Stibbe (Eds.), Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule, Oxford, New York, Berg, 2006, 1, 2.
12. Timothy Jonhson, Being Soviet. Identity, Rumor, and Everyday Life under Stalin, 1939-1953, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, xxi. În original: “As a consequence it does not distinguish between active and passive resistance, nor does it recognize the difference between resistence directed against factory managers, particular government policies, or the Bolshevik state.”
13. Johnston, Being Soviet, xxii. În original: “Equally importantly, this broad definition of resistance does not recognize a distinction between behavior 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 of 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.”
14. Johnston, Being Soviet, xxv-xxvi. În original: „Being Soviet mattered in the last years of Stalin’s life. The experience of war, invasion, victory and a threat of nuclear conflict made international affairs, and Official Soviet Identity, a matter of vital interest to everyday resident 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 Ukranian, or a citizen of the URSS. This 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.”
15. Johnston, Being Soviet, 209.
16. McDermott, Stibbe, “Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: An Overview,” 3.
17. Juan Linz: “Niciun regim nu e legitim 100%, nici în ceea ce privește guvernanții, nici în ceea ce privește timpul, tot așa cum e puțin probabil ca un regim să fie cu totul ilegitim și întemeiat exclusiv pe coerciție.” Juan Linz, “Legitimacy of Democracy and the Socio-economic System,” in Mattei Dogan (Ed.), Comparing Pluralist Democracies, Boulder, Westview Press, 1988, 66.
18. 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, Mac Millan Press, 1997, 115-138.
19. Liubov Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, Edited and translated by Irina Mukhina, London, New York, Routledge, 2010, 4.
20. Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, 11.
21. Nigel Swain, Collective Farms Which Work?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985; Nigel Swain, “Co-operative Elites in Hungary after 1945,” in Eduard Kubů, Torsten Lorenz, Uwe Müller, Jiři Šouša (Eds.), Agrarismus und Agrareliten in Ostmitteleuropa, Berlin-Praha, Dokořán Verlag, BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2013, 589-619. O contribuție importantă referitoare la problematica elitelor de partid locale, pentru lumea rurală interbelică din Uniunea Sovietică, i se datorează lui Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 1927-39, Houdmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, London, Macmillan Press LTD, 1988 și lui James W. Heinzen, Inventing a sovietic Countryside. State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.
22. Swain, “Co-operative Elites in Hungary after 1945,” 598.
23. Ibidem, 590; Nigel Swain, “A Framework for Comparing
Social Change in the Post-socialist Countryside,” Eastern
European Countryside 4 (1998), 5-19.
24. Neil J. Melvin, Soviet Power and the Countryside: Policy
Innovation and Institutional Decay, Basingstoke Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003.
25. Vezi interesanta recenzie făcută cărții lui Melvin de
către Stephen K. Wegren și publicată în European History
Quarterly 35 (2005), 595-596.
26. Kubů, Lorenz, Müller, Šouša (Eds.), Agrarismus und
Agrareliten in Ostmitteleuropa, passim.
27. Este important clarificarea terminologică adusă de
Adam B. Ulam referitoare la distincția dintre propagandă
și agitație: formulată inițial de Plehanov și susținută de
Lenin: propagandiștii explică idei multe și complicate unui
grup restrâns de persoane, în timp ce agitatorul încearcă să
inculce idei puține unui grup cât mai numeros. Adam B.
Ulam, The Bolsheviks. The Intelectual and Political History of
the Triumph of Communism in Russia, The Second Edition,
Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1998, 120-
121 (nota 15), 181.
28. Sorin Radu, “«Tovarăși de drum»: Frontul Plugarilor
și Partidul Comunist în anii 1944-1947,” Revista istorică,
XXIII / 1-2 (2012), 107-38; Sorin Radu, “The Political
Organisation of the Peasantry in Communist
Romania: the Ploughmen’s Front (1945-1953),”
Bulgarian Historical Review, 1-2 (2013), 79-101; Radu,
Budeancă, 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.
29. István Papp, “The Unrealiable Fellow – Traveller –
Péter Veres, Chairman of the National Peasant Party
and the Hungarian Political Police,” in Peter Jašek (Ed.),
Protikomunistický odboj v strednej a východnej Európe /
Anti-Communist Resistance in Central and Eastern Europe,
Bratislava, Ústav Pamäti Národa, 2012, 292-293.
30. Jeremy Brown, “Rural Life,” in Stephen A. Smith (Ed.),
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2014, 455-456. În original: „For
villagers in communist societies, «being rural» (living in
the countryside, devodet 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 afected,
but not necesarily 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, be
electricity, pedticides, chemical fertilizers, and tractors.”
31. Richard Madsen cercetând comunismul în lumea
rurală din China, conchidea: „Most changes that must
have seemed good to many peasants were intertwined with
changes that must have seemed bad.” Richard Madsen,
“The Countryside under Communism,” in Roderick
MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank (eds.), The Cambridge
History of China, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1991, 675-676.
32. Brown, “Rural Life,” 456.
33. Vladimir Pasti, Noul capitalism românesc, Iași, Polirom,
2006, 82-89.
34. Un interesant studiu de caz despre maniera în care
modelele sociale, atitudinea față de muncă s-a schimbat
sub impactul colectivizării într-un sat din Ungaria, vezi
la Martha Lampland, The Object of Labor. Comodification
in Socialist Hungary, Chicago, London, The University
of Chicago Press, 1995. Vezi o perspectivă sociologică
comparată asupra relației țărani – pământ – proprietate în
Ungaria și Polonia: Paweł Starosta, Imre Kovách, Krzysztof
Gorlach (Eds.), Rural Societies under Communism and
Beyond. Hungarian and Polish Perspectives, Łódź, Łódź
University Press, 1999.
35. Pentru o perspectivă generală asupra normelor culturale
și valorilor staliniste care guvernau societatea, vezi David
L. Hoffmann, Stalinist Values. The Cultural Norms of
Soviet Mnodernity, 1917-1941, Ithaca, London, Cornell
University Press, 2003.
36. Lucrarea de pionerat care conduce în domeniu este
cea semnată de Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism:
Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the
1930s, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.
37. Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-
Soviet Russia, passim.
38. Susan Bridger, Women in the Soviet Countryside.
Women’s Roles in rural development in the Soviet Union,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
39. Denisova, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-
Soviet Russia, 9-10.
40. Vezi în acest sens, Peter D. Bell, Peasants in Socialist
Transition. Life in a Collectivized Hungarian Village,
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California,
1984.
41. Bogdan Murgescu, România și Europa. Acumularea
decalajelor economice (1500-2010), Iași, Polirom, 327-328.
42. O contribuție mai nouă și importantă în această direcție
o aduc Hannes Siegrist și Dietmar Müller care analizează
proprietatea în Europa Centrală și de Est din perspectiva
terminologiei, a instituțiilor și practicilor cu privire la
proprietatea funciară. Hannes Siegrist, Dietmar Müller
(Eds.), Property in East Central Europe. Notions, Institutions
and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century,
New York, Oxford, Berghahn, 2015.
43. 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.
Bell, Peter D., Peasants in Socialist Transition. Life in a Collectivized Hungarian Village, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California, 1984.
Bokovoy, Melissa K., “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, Mac Millan Press, 1997, 115-138.
Bridger, Susan, Women in the Soviet Countryside. Women’s Roles in rural development in the Soviet Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Brown, Jeremy, “Rural Life,” in Stephen A. Smith (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Clout, Hugh D., “The Countryside: Towards a Theme Park?,” in Dan Stone (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Davies, Norman, Istoria Poloniei. Terenul de joacă al lui Dumnezeu, vol. 2 (Din 1795 până în prezent), Iași, Polirom, 2014.
Denisova, Liubov, Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, Edited and translated by Irina Mukhina, London, New York, Routledge, 2010.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Heinzen, James W., Inventing a sovietic Countryside. State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.
Hoffmann, David L., Stalinist Values. The Cultural Norms of Soviet Mnodernity, 1917-1941, Ithaca, London, Cornell University Press, 2003.
Jonhson, Timothy, Being Soviet. Identity, Rumor, and Everyday Life under Stalin, 1939-1953, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Klingman, Gail, Verdery, Katherine, Peasant under Siege. The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962, Princeton, Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2011; ediția în limba română: Țăranii sub asediu. Colectivizarea agriculturii în România (1949-1962), trad. Justina Bandol, Iași, Polirom, 2015.
Lampland, Martha, The Object of Labor. Comodification in Socialist Hungary, Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Linz, Juan, “Legitimacy of Democracy and the Socio-economic System,” in Mattei Dogan (Ed.), Comparing Pluralist Democracies, Boulder, Westview Press, 1988.
Madsen, Richard, “The Countryside under Communism,” in Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
McDermott, Kevin, Stibbe, Mattew (Eds.), Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule, Oxford, New York, Berg, 2006.
Melvin, Neil J., Soviet Power and the Countryside: Policy Innovation and Institutional Decay, Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Murgescu, Bogdan, România și Europa. Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500-2010) [Romania and Europe. The Accumulation of Economic Gaps (1500-2010)], Iași, Polirom, 2010.
Nigel Swain, “A Framework for Comparing Social Change in the Post-socialist Countryside,” Eastern European Countryside 4 (1998), 5-19.
Idem, Collective Farms Which Work?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Idem, “Co-operative Elites in Hungary after 1945,” in Eduard Kubů, Torsten Lorenz, Uwe Müller, Jiři Šouša (Eds.), Agrarismus und Agrareliten in Ostmitteleuropa, Berlin-Praha, Dokořán Verlag, BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2013.
Papp, István, “The Unrealiable Fellow – Traveller – Péter Veres, Chairman of the National Peasant Party and the Hungarian Political Police,” in Peter Jašek (Ed.), Protikomunistický odboj v strednej a východnej Európe / Anti-Communist Resistance in Central and Eastern Europe, Bratislava, Ústav Pamäti Národa, 2012.
Radu, Sorin, “«Tovarăși de drum»: Frontul Plugarilor și Partidul Comunist în anii 1944-1947,” Revista istorică, XXIII / 1-2 (2012), 107-38;
Idem, “The Political Organisation of the Peasantry in Communist Romania: the Ploughmen’s Front (1945-1953),” Bulgarian Historical Review, 1-2 (2013), 79-101;
Scott, James, Weapons of the Week: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, Yalle University Press, 1985.
Siegrist, Hannes, Müller, Dietmar (Eds.), Property in East Central Europe. Notions, Institutions and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century, New York, Oxford, Berghahn, 2015.
Shearer, David R., Policing Stalin’s Socialism. Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953, New Haven, London, Yale University Press, 2009.
Thorniley, Daniel, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 1927-39, Houdmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, London, Macmillan Press LTD, 1988.
Viola Lynne, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Colectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996, 60-61.
Viola, Lynne (Ed), Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s, New York – Ithaca, London, Cornell University Press, 2002.
