UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Friday 17 February 12:00 – 1:30: Panel E2: Economic and Political Development in Central and Eastern European Countries

 

Daniel Brett (UCL - SSEES): ‘From the peasant in the field to the peasant in parliament: agency and political mobilization: the peasant movements in Poland and Romania 1944-1947’

Using path dependency theories developed by Paul Pearson this paper intends to treat the period 1944-1947 as a moment of critical juncture in the political and social development of contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. Taking Poland and Romania as case studies this paper will argue that the nature of the challenge to the establishment of Communist hegemony led by the peasant movements between 1944-47 and the response of the respective Communist movements to that challenge framed the behavioural political, social and cultural mechanisms of the Communist incumbents for responding to future challenges to their hegemonic position until 1989.

Therefore it is crucial in developing this broader framework of how incumbent and challenging elites in Central and Eastern Europe behaved towards each other to establish the nature of the peasant party challenge and to examine the way in which the bid for power by the peasant movements was structured by the relationship between the peasant parties as political institutions and the peasantry as a social group. At the heart of this discussion is an assessment of the role of agency between the social group and political institution. This paper will compare and contrast the mechanisms used by the peasantry to act as agents and to inculcate their political will to the peasant movements in Poland and Romania. It will assess the effectiveness of peasant agency and the implications of it through programmatic responses which constituted an attempt by the peasant movements to oppose Communism by seeking to mobilise the peasantry against the Communists. To conclude this paper will assess the long-term impact of the peasant party challenge on the basis of the effectiveness of peasant agency and the implications that this had for the operationalising of Communist rule between 1947 and 1989.

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