Constantin Iordachi / Arnd Bauerkämper (Hg.): The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements. Budapest / New York: Central European University Press, 2014. IX, 557 S., 3 Ktn., 5 Tab. = ISBN: 978-615-5225-63-5

Constantin Iordachi / Arnd Bauerkämper (Hg.): The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe. Comparison and Entanglements. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2014. IX, 557 S., 3 Ktn., 5 Tab. = ISBN: 978-615-5225-63-5.

Table of contents:

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The publication of The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe by two main editors, Constantin Iordachi and Arnd Bauerkämper, is the result of a highly ambitious project with clearly defined goals and methodology. While the collectivization of agriculture is a subject that has been under research in many Central and Eastern European countries, existing studies are written mostly just from the perspective of individual states and nations and most authors just aim at presenting a critical assessment of these countries’ communist past. Methodological problems such as the social or environmental impact of collectivisation thus tend to remain overshadowed by political history. Constantin Iordachi and Arnd Bauerkämper try to escape this stereotypical view of collectivisation in Central and Eastern Europe and successfully. Yet even so, the volume has a number of critical shortcomings and struggles with various problematic issues.

In their introduction, the two editors analyse shared features and possibilities of a transnational approach to collectivisation (p. 3–46). Their approach is well chosen: they not only summarise the most important contemporary historiography of particular cases but also analyse the key concepts without which a comparative work would be impossible. In their particular context, it is especially the notion of “Sovietisation” which had since the 1990s undergone a profound but yet insufficiently studied development. Instead of taking the term to mean a monolithic adoption of a Soviet model ‘from above’, historians nowadays tend to see Sovietisation as a “multi-facetted, open-ended and even multi-directional” process which was far more dynamic than the one implied by the static model used in the 1990s. This shift enables a far greater flexibility of interpretation, which is highly desirable.

Despite this explicit invitation to approach the subject of collectivisation from a different, a comparative point of view, it seems that some authors were somewhat taken aback by this challenge. Most illustrative of this point is the text on collectivisation in Poland (p. 113–146). Its author, Dariusz Jarosz, for example, in his explanation of Polish ‘deviation’ from the Soviet model uses the term “tolerance”. If, however, we take into account the introductory text, we should ask whether this really was an issue of tolerance or rather an inherent part of the internal dynamics of the process. Jarosz’s use of this term implies a clearly defined, static framework of “Sovietisation” which allowed no divergence. Unfortunately, this is not the only text which fails to take into account the new interpretative framework defined by the two editors. Other texts, too, work with the static model (e.g., Jan Rychlík and his analysis of Czechoslovak collectivisation, p. 181–210).

The book offers many different interpretations of and perspectives on the phenomenon of collectivisation. For example, the introduction is followed by an excellent contribution by Lynne Viola, which in many ways methodologically follows the direction set by the introductory essay and develops it further to suit the model applied in the USSR. Viola uses the notion of collectivisation as an expression of a modern state-building process in the USSR in a well-considered and conceptually well-balanced manner. Unfortunately for East European authors, this opens a sad subject: if we accept this model, we also have to admit that its implementation in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe – which after 1945 in various aspects of agricultural development and sciences were closer to the West than to the Soviet Union – was a step back in their otherwise promising development. This working hypothesis again confirms the need for a closer examination of the notion of “Sovietisation”. Lynne Viola’s text clearly demonstrates her vast experience, careful consideration paid to the subject, and ability to outline new hypotheses and visions. Her text focuses mainly on collectivisation in the inter-war period, leaving post-war developments and post-war argumentation somewhat aside. Even that, however, can be very interesting since in the post-war era, collectivisation was fundamentally ‘modernised’. In contemporary texts and arguments, often also adopted in the states of Central and Eastern Europe, we repeatedly find the notion of neo-Malthusianism which became a sort of updated version of the original, autarkist, non-Western and anti-capitalist argumentation (p. 61). It thus seems that approach to collectivisation did not remain static for long. Faced with new challenges, it proved to be fascinatingly dynamic both in its rhetoric and in the character of its argumentation.

Interesting and noteworthy is also the interpretative approach which views collectivisation not as an economic necessity (struggle for grain) but mainly as an expression of “struggle with the enemies of socialism”. Collectivisation is then rather reminiscent of a disciplinary exercise (M. Foucault) in a new environment of high modernism (J. C. Scott). In a broader context, this is reflected in the inclusion of texts which deal with the subject of post-war population transfers. Pleasantly surprising are also observations on the role of women in the collectivisation process (Dariusz Jarosz, p. 133–134) and other unjustly overlooked phenomena and notes from the individual countries where collectivisation took place. In the area of environmental history, on the other hand, this publication sadly neglects some issues of crucial importance for the period covered, in particular the 1950s, such as attempts at manipulating the climate, the role of collectivisation in the creation of forest belts, great construction projects of socialism, and other phenomena brought about by Soviet power and science.

The main problem of the publication is, however, that despite the main editors’ tremendous effort and despite the most erudite and interesting introductory studies, the inclusion of some authors feels rather forced and detracts from the overall quality of the result. In particular, the publication includes some historians who had never properly dealt with collectivisation, history of agriculture, or environmental history. Their texts offer little more than a chronological overview of the relevant laws and legal acts supplemented by statistical overviews of the progress of collectivisation and traditional conclusions which seem rooted in the 1990s rather than after 2010. The issue is not so much one of individual shortcomings but rather a systemic drawback which is a result of the absence of a network of researchers in Central Europe. Such networks did exist before 1989 and were often created quite artificially on the initiative individual academic institutes or universities, but academic exchanges managed to promote networking very well. After 1989 there came a general preference for Western contacts with the result that while Central Europe has a shared history, we are incapable of professionally sharing or analysing it. Motivation is the main thing that is lacking and that also led to the disappearance of a shared and joint networking space. We could only wish that this publication would be a harbinger of long-term efforts of its authors and not just a one-off project.

In practice, the absence of mutual links leads to a degree of isolation of the individual national approaches, whereby each then has a tendency to claim that development in their country was absolutely specific. We witness this tendency even in this publication. What is absent is a capability of comparison. Instead of finding shared features – something that should characterise multilateral projects – many studies included in this book highlight unique aspects of the development in their country. And as Nigel Swain rather characteristically claims in the book’s conclusion, similar claims may have been acceptable perhaps in the 1990s but nowadays they have to be viewed as symptoms of “intellectual laziness” (p. 498).

In such a short space, one cannot write about each contribution individually. In my view, however, an overall perspective reveals that this publication in a way summarises and concludes one essential chapter of research, i. e. as the subject of collectivisation was hitherto approached. Although it brings a detailed analysis as well as a chronology of collectivisation policies in Central and Eastern Europe, the above-mentioned problems are the reason why this volume as a whole does not achieve – for example in describing the social impact of collectivisation – the quality exhibited in publications such as Lynne Viola’s Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), who, as mentioned above, actually contributed to this volume the first chapter, on collectivisation in the USSR. All the more so, therefore, it will be impossible in the near future to write a significant work on a related subject without using this publication as a foundation, a starting point for every researcher in this area.

Doubravka Olšáková, Prag