Lumea rurală și comunismul în Europa de Est: problematici, interpretări și perspective de cercetare (II)
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
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.
