Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas:  jgo.e-reviews 7 (2017), 2 Rezensionen online / Im Auftrag des Leibniz-Instituts für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung in Regensburg herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz

Verfasst von: Mark Keck-Szajbel

 

Nigel Swain: Green Barons, Force-of-Circumstance Entrepreneurs, Impotent Mayors. Rural Change in the Early Years of Post-Socialist Capitalist Democracy. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2013. XIV, 398 S., 6 Ktn., 6 Tab. ISBN: 978-615-5225-70-3.

The transformations taking place in East Central Europe after 1989 went incredibly fast and spread to all aspects of society. While the process of transformation was considered a success by many (particularly those outside of the region), it was also experienced as a crisis to many. Despite a growing awareness of the crucial role of urban entrepreneurs and local office holders in privatization, little attention has been paid to rural communities in East Central Europe. Nigel Swain aims to change that in his work on Green barons, force-of-circumstance entrepreneurs and impotent mayors. It is a stunning collection of case studies which helps elucidate the lived experience of transition in rural areas in the early 1990s.

Swain structures his book in three parts which vary in degree from large-scale changes to minute, micro-economic transformations. The first two chapters deal with the larger picture: in chapter one he describes the techniques each of his six countries – Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria – used to privatize agriculture, to pay restitution and to create democracy in rural communities. Here, he highlights how Poland was unique in having an independent peasant mass movement immediately after the fall of the communist government, whereas Czechoslovakia (and its successor states) had none. The legacy of socialism also informed newly formed governments’ approaches to restitution and privatization: Czechoslovakia created a “people’s capitalism” which gave every citizen a voucher to bid on property despite the lack of knowledge concerning the property, while Bulgaria held off on privatization altogether.

Chapter two deals with general findings concerning rural change across the region. It is in this chapter that Swain describes the green baron, the force-of-circumstance entrepreneurs and the impotent mayors common in all the post-socialist countries he analyses. He highlights (as did Katherine Verdery in 2003) the “inverted pyramid” scheme where, in contrast to Western Europe, many people owned land, but few people knew how to manage it. The green baron was usually a former socialist manager who – in contrast to other sections of society – had human, social and cultural capital; a sense of business; and the influence to run large farms. Hence it is no wonder that in the case of post-socialist Poland (although the same could be said of most post-socialist countries) roughly 9 percent of the farms produced ca. 70 percent of the commercial output, while 70 percent of the farms produced only 5 percent of the commercial output. (p. 85) Millions of people across East Central Europe were force-of-circumstance entrepreneurs who, as Swain details, had high knowledge of the non-farm economy, engaging in the formal or informal economy and pursuing subsidence agriculture. Most of these people, with few exceptions, were “surviv[ors] but were neither significant winners or losers”. (p. 93) Impotent mayors were the inexperienced powerholders of local offices who were put in charge of limited resources and greater duties, had “embryonic” knowledge of business in local politics and had to learn the distinction between public and private interests. (p. 101)

The following six chapters get into detail concerning several dozen case studies that Swain – in conjunction with a team of assistants – researched over the course of nearly twenty years. His team impressively interviewed individuals from cooperatives, small farms and local leaders, although little attempt has been made to place the case studies in a larger narrative framework. Instead, Swain has divided all the case studies according to country, describing each in a mere two to four pages. The examples of co-operatives and villages are impressive, and reveal the multiple paths individuals and groups took to survive (or fail) the process of transformation. Hence, in the case of Bulgarian Slivka, a successful co-operative managed to save the livestock and build a cache of machinery despite the actions of the local liquidation committee. (pp. 123–124) In contrast, in Venets, Bulgarian farmers claimed that the liquidation committee gave preferential treatment to the co-operatives, virtually “plundering” the equipment of the socialist predecessor before other villagers had a chance to purchase it. (p. 128) Swain does a fine job of integrating different agents at the local level, incorporating wherever possible the voices of villagers, state actors, and fledging business people in each case story. It is also here where what would seem to be anecdotal stories are woven together to explore the various experiences of transformation. To give but one example, in the Czech town of Tvrz nad Řekou, a former co-operative farmer withdrew his land from the group to “punish” the co-operative’s chairman for his behavior towards a family seeking restitution. (pp. 159–160) The book also teases out larger themes such as the necessity of the second economy to entrepreneurism in some countries (particularly Hungary) or how hard it was for some locals to learn the mores associated with the market economy.

All the while, one gets the impression of decline and the inevitable tragedy for those who were old enough to live through four changes in the states’ understanding of private property. Swain is aware of the limitations of his work: since his study is so far-reaching – using not only the historian’s tools, but also those of anthropology, economics and political science – he is unable to make a larger argument about the nature of post-socialist transition on and around the farm. Chapter two of his book does a good job at describing the commonalities in agricultural, business and local policy between the six countries, but the remainder of the book offers a smorgasbord of case studies that – while informative and revealing of the situation in the early 1990s – cannot be considered as representative of the entire bloc. The reader should instead see this work as a descriptive snapshot of rural change (or, indeed, changes) after the fall of state socialism. That the number of case studies – over 50 in six countries – occasionally confuses the reader (given that each community was in their own way unique) does not demean the value of the book, which is an addition that many researchers will reference in understanding the dynamic changes between 1990 to 1996. And it is a story that continues: as the writer admits himself, “this book focuses on non-teleological change” and is, like the fate of his actors, “open ended” (p. 17).

Mark Keck-Szajbel, Frankfurt/Oder

Zitierweise: Mark Keck-Szajbel über: Nigel Swain: Green Barons, Force-of-Circumstance Entrepreneurs, Impotent Mayors. Rural Change in the Early Years of Post-Socialist Capitalist Democracy. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2013. XIV, 398 S., 6 Ktn., 6 Tab. ISBN: 978-615-5225-70-3, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/erev/Keck-Szajbel_Swain_Green_Barons.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)

© 2017 by Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien in Regensburg and Mark Keck-Szajbel. All rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact jahrbuecher@ios-regensburg.de

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