The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparison and Entanglements

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Despite its profound, long-term socio-political implications, the collectivization of agriculture in Eastern Europe after the Second World War has remained a relatively under-researched field. In order to understand the post-communist transformation of Eastern European societies, scholars need to pay attention to the status and evolution of the peasantry and to employ a historical perspective, by exploring the communist agricultural policies and their enduring economic and social implications. To contribute to this analytical effort, the volume explores the inter-related campaigns of collectivization of the agriculture in USSR in the interwar and post-war periods and in the communist dictatorships established in the Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe after World War II. Although the contributors to this volume focus on various case studies, they address a unitary set of analytical issues, relating to: 1) the Soviet model and its emulation in Eastern Europe; 2) spatial differences in the collectivization campaigns, particularly with regard to the relationship between centre and peripheral regions; 3) the dynamics of collectivization in rural societies; and 4) types of collectivization and socialist agricultural systems.