Sorin Radu, Lumea rurală și comunismul în Europa de Est: problematici, interpretări și perspective de cercetare (Partea I)
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
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