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Zsfassung in engl. Sprache u.d.T.: Forced collectivisation of agriculture in Hungary, 1948 - 1961

In the authors' contention the category of (landed) property includes values, social-cultural meanings and social and political power relationships. Privately owned farms were eliminated in Soviet type regimes by the means of state intervention and terror since they obstructed a program of forced industrialisation and exercising power. Collectivisation became a staggering, collective event of social history that transformed structures. The practice of eliminating private forms resulted in many respects in a particular dynamics and an independent process with its own internal logic. Subsequently, this laid the foundations for the Hungarian model of agriculture where the insistence on land was replaced by concerns for earning in cash. These conditions determined the atmosphere of decollectivisation, as well. Those persons compensated who after 1992 obtained actual landed property, were unable or unwilling to work in agriculture since they were uncertain of their skills or the profitability of production in the conditions of the new market economy.

"In this book the experiential history of the Soviet-style social transformation projects between 1945 and 1980 is discussed through the example of rural Hungary. The book interprets state socialism as a (modernization) project. Existing socialism was a form of dictatorship in which authorities sought to transform the mentalities of their subjects from the individual level to the global scale. This project depended on socio-economic homogenization; one important method of asserting state power was the transformation of property rights (land redistribution, collectivization). Communist modernization discriminated against the inhabitants of rural areas, who were the primary victims of collectivization and the discriminatory effects of the rules implemented by policymakers. The resulting radical changes in peasant lifestyles would become a source of social pathologies. However, not the authorities but contemporary scholars considered the social costs of these actions. The book aims at Weberian disenchantment and contributes to the deconstruction of the common image of Hungarian socialism, "the happiest barrack". The intended audience includes readers at the graduate level in the fields of history, political science, and anthropology, general readers interested in the history of communism. It is hoped that the research questions inspire new research for exploring convergent and divergent elements in social transformation in former communist countries"--

This book explores the interrelated campaigns of agricultural collectivization in the USSR and in the communist dictatorships established in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. Despite the profound, long-term societal impact of collectivization, the subject has remained relatively underresearched. The volume combines detailed studies of collectivization in individual Eastern European states with issueoriented comparative perspectives at regional level. Based on novel primarysources, it proposes a reappraisal of the theoretical underpinnings and research agenda of studies on collectivization in Eastern Europe.The contributions provide up-to-date overviews of recent research in the field and promote new approaches to the topic, combining historical comparisons with studies of transnational transfers and entanglements