Agrarianism

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Agriculturalism (from the Latin ager, the field ) is an ideology of agricultural policy in which agriculture is the decisive sphere of production and the village community is the cell of the social and state structure. It originated in Germany in the second half of the 19th century, but prospered particularly in the agricultural societies of eastern Central Europe and Southeastern Europe , where it shaped the economic culture and political currents of the region. In Germany it was the ideological basis of the agrarians ; here and there the term also referred to the "rule of the agrarian class" in the sense of the "totality of large landowners".

Definition

The term has its origins in the countries of the Bohemian Crown and referred to the “total complex of ideas that underlie the agrarian movement”. Here it is described as the doctrine according to which soil and agriculture form an important basis for the functioning of the economy and of society as a whole, and derives from this the claim to leadership of the peasant class. Urban life, alienated from nature and natural life, is losing physical health and mental and moral balance. Agriculture is seen as a source of material and spiritual progress. The life of the farmer is orderly in fixed discipline, in modesty, with moral equilibrium and is home to "gentle spirits".

Agriculturalism developed at the end of the 19th century from the delayed modernization processes in agriculture. The disputes over access to the market shaped agrarianism where capitalist conditions were already developed, especially in eastern and south-eastern Central Europe. In the hardly industrialized societies of this greater region, the movements were more oriented towards the preservation of the far-off peasant family economy and the traditional village communities.

Farmers at harvest time in Romania, 1920

Agriculturalism permeated the intellectual and cultural life of the region's farming communities and was shown as part of their national identity . In the first half of the 20th century, he offered agrarian societies, which had hardly any bourgeoisie , an alternative ideology to capitalism and communism . Cooperatives and self-government shaped agrarianism, but there were often theoretical and political peculiarities that were dependent on the regional balance of power, the land management systems and local traditions.

The ideology reached the height of its development during the interwar period , after various peasant parties had found their way into governments and parliaments. These organized themselves internationally, initially with a pan-Slavic orientation. Ultimately, however, between 1920 and 1926 16 of these parties from Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Serbia and Hungary came together to form the International Agricultural Bureau , the Green International based in Prague, thus making a transnational one possible Transfer of ideas. Czechoslovakia took a leading role in the structure. Krestintern , the international communist counter-movement, tried from 1923 to gain influence over the peasants of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in order to develop revolutionary potential. Many leaders of the East Central European peasant parties such as Stjepan Radić , Antonín Švehla , Aleksandar Stambolijski , Ion Mihalache or Wincenty Witos came from the peasant milieu, but artists and intellectuals also worked on the peasant myth, for example representatives of Poporanism and Seedorism in Romania.

The achievement of universal suffrage in connection with political mobilization for land reforms favored the integration of the rural population into the nation states and led to a surge in democratization. However, agrarianism by no means had a democratic orientation per se, because its own nationalism and anti-capitalism favored anti-Semitism , nationality struggles and the formation of authoritarian regimes such as the Bulgarian “peasant dictatorship over the urban bourgeoisie” under Aleksandar Stambolijski . The decline of ideology began, as many farmers after the Great Depression zuwendeten quite authoritarian tendencies. The peasant parties in Eastern and Southeastern Europe were finally disempowered with the socialist transformation and the introduction of Stalinist industrialization , which brought about the collectivization of agriculture there.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tadeusz Janiki: Trends in Polish Agrarianism in the Years 1931-1939. In: Michael G. Müller, Kai Struve: Fragmented Republic ?: The political legacy of the time of division in Poland 1918–1939. Volume 2 of Phantom Boundaries in Eastern Europe , Wallstein Verlag, 2017, ISBN 3-83532-857-3 , p.  160 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Helga Schultz , Uwe Müller, András Vári: Agrarianism in East Central Europe 1880–1950. Frankfurt (Oder) May 1, 2007 to April 30, 2010. In: H-Soz-Kult from May 21, 2007.
  3. ^ A b contributions G. peasant movement, 1928, p. 53. In: Hans Schulz, Otto Basler, Gerhard Strauss: German foreign dictionary: a-prefix-antike. Walter de Gruyter, 1995, ISBN 3-11012-622-2 , pp.  229 , 230 .
  4. ↑ agrarianism. In: Sociologická encyklopedie, Sociological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic . Based on Jaroslav Cesar, Bohumil Černý: O ideologii československého agrarismu. Český časopis historický . Volume VII, Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague 1959, pp. 263–285; Otokar Frankenberger: Agrarianism . Narodni hospodarstvi se stanoviska venkovskeho lidu (Rural Opinion Publishing House), Prague 1923.
  5. ↑ Angela Harre: Paths to Modernity. Development strategies of Romanian economists in the 19th and 20th centuries. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009, ISBN 3-44706-003-4 , pp.  105-152 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e Helga Schultz, Angela Harre: Final report on the project “Agriculturalism in East Central Europe 1880-1960”. European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) 2011, p.  6 .
  7. ↑ Steffi Marung, Katja Naumann (Ed.): Forgotten variety. Territoriality and internationalization in East Central Europe since the middle of the 19th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-525-30166-1 , p.  25 .
  8. ^ Heinz Gollwitzer : European peasant parties in the 20th century. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2016, ISBN 3-11050-928-8 , p.  50 .
  9. ↑ Roumen Daskalov, Diana Mishkova: Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Volume 2, Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions. Balkan Studies Library, Brill, 2013 ISBN 9-00426-191-5 , p.  352 .
  10. ^ Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., Marc Edelman, Cristóbal Kay: Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization. John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 1-44430-720-7 , p.  355 .
  11. ↑ Helga Schultz, Angela Harre: Final report on the project "Agriculturalism in East Central Europe 1880-1960". European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) 2011, p.  36 .
  12. ↑ Herbert Lüthy , Franz Ebner, Frits Kool: Documents of the World Revolution, Volume 3 . Walter-Verlag, 1970, p. 143.