THE LIQUIDATION OF TRADITIONAL PEASANT SOCIETY IN HUNGARY 1948–1961
THE LIQUIDATION OF TRADITIONAL PEASANT SOCIETY IN HUNGARY 1948–1961
Author(s): József Ö. KovácsSubject(s): Agriculture, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism
Published by: Akadémiai Kiadó
Keywords: Hungary; peasant society; Sovietisation; political dictatorship; agriculture; collectivisation; violence; resistance;
Summary/Abstract: One of the most comprehensive social operations in the process of Sovietisation was the liquidation of traditional peasant society. The individual peasant farms, the organisations and church communities of rural society represented a political counter-base in the path of the communist programme. The land and the people could only be collectivised through the use of terror. The “collective farms” created in the fi rst wave of collectivisation were a failure for the programme of Sovietisation. Contrary to the results of many other historical researchers, in his extensive research in all county archives the author found that the sweeping campaign for full collectivisation carried out between 1958 and 1961 used mass violence. The effects of the traumatisation that occurred in those days, the emptying of rural social spaces are still felt today.
Journal: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
- Issue Year: 58/2013
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 3-19
- Page Count: 17
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF