Land reform and ethnic conflict in Central and Eastern Europe

Giordano, Christian

doi:10.4000/etudesrurales.77

Cited by 22 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…They did not profit equally from the land reform, however. For instance, Ukrainian farmers received only 6 percent of the land redistributed in East Galicia (Giordano 2001). This is a strikingly low proportion concerning the fact that after all in Eastern lands the general figures for land parcellation were the highest (Horak 1979, 138–143).…”

Section: The Ethnicized Impact Of the Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landed Nation: Land Reform and Ethnic Diversity in the Interwar Polish Parliament

Marzec

2022

Nationalities Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article investigates the ethnic entanglements of the land reform debate in the first Polish Diet (1919–1922). Against the backdrop of global comparative studies, interwar Poland, haunted by land hunger, rural poverty, and high concentration of land ownership, is an odd case. Despite conditions conducive to far-reaching land reforms, that is, a high level of inter-elite conflict and semiautocratic order, the Polish reform was very moderate, if not disappointing. Unpacking the series of moves in the debate and the sequence of hairbreadth voting on its shape, I ask why, despite broad acceptance of the reform across the political spectrum, it could not attract enough support to be swiftly executed. The ethnic composition of the country triggered controversies concerning German farmers and peasants of the ethnically diversified eastern borderlands. Major political parties shared tacit Polish nationalism, but the history of political alignments made the nationalist politicians susceptible to the lobbying of the landed elite and estranged them from peasant parties. The land holdings of nobles were considered a bulwark of the nation, which effectively blocked the alternative idea of integrating the ethnic minorities via land ownership.

show abstract

Section: The Ethnicized Impact Of the Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landed Nation: Land Reform and Ethnic Diversity in the Interwar Polish Parliament

Marzec

2022

Nationalities Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The formation of new nation‐states in the inter‐war years did indeed coincide with the emergence of new elites, and the disempowerment of the ‘foreign’ big landowners was a common phenomenon in these cases. The displacement of these foreign elites was an aspect of nation‐building in the new states that took place together with the modernisation of society and devolution of political power (Giordano 2001, 2002).…”

Section: New Nation States and The Heritage Of Multinational Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Last stop expulsion’– The minority question and forced migration in East‐Central Europe: 1918–49 To Hans Lemberg, in memory

Cattaruzza

2009

Nations and Nationalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article deals with the European minorities in the period between the two world wars and with their final expulsion from nation-states at the end of World War II. First, the tensions which arose between the organised minorities and the successor states of the Habsburg Monarchy are accounted for primarily by the argument that the various minorities located within the successor states had already undergone a comprehensive processes of nationalisation within the Habsburg Empire. Therefore they were able to resist assimilation by the political elites of the new titular nations (Czechs, Poles, Rumanians, Serbs). A second topic is that of the use made of the minorities issue by Adolf Hitler to help achieve his expansionist aims. The minorities issue was central to the international destabilisation of interwar Europe. Finally, the mass expulsion of minorities (above all, Germans) after the end of the war is explained by strategic considerations on the part of the Allied powers as well as involving the nation-state regimes. It is argued, against a commonly held view, that German atrocities during the period of occupation had little to do with the decision to expel most ethnic Germans from their territories of settlement in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The article shows that it is necessary to treat national minorities in the first half of the twentieth century as a single phenomenon which shares similar features across the various nation-states of East-Central Europe.The breakup of Yugoslavia was simply the last act of a long play. But the plot of that play -the disaggregation of peoples and the Triumph of ethnonationalism in modern Europe -is rarely recognised, and so a story whose significance is comparable to the spread of democracy or capitalism remains largely unknown and unappreciated (Jerry Z. Muller 2008).Many factors led to the European continent becoming for the site of a series of mass expulsions affecting millions of people in the course of the twentieth century. Hundreds of thousands of the expellees, many of them women and children, died as a result, especially because of the brutality and the haste with which the expulsions were carried out. This reached its peak in 1945 and the

show abstract

Why Democracy Failed

Simpson

Carmona

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Land reform and ethnic conflict in Central and Eastern Europe

Cited by 22 publications

References 6 publications

Landed Nation: Land Reform and Ethnic Diversity in the Interwar Polish Parliament

Landed Nation: Land Reform and Ethnic Diversity in the Interwar Polish Parliament

‘Last stop expulsion’– The minority question and forced migration in East‐Central Europe: 1918–49 To Hans Lemberg, in memory

Why Democracy Failed

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About