The Peasantry of Eastern Europe, Volume II: 20th Century Developments reviews research findings concerning rural life and rural transformation in Eastern Europe during the 20th century. The economic and political problems of states where collectivization has been successful are examined, including Hungary and Romania. The social and societal aspects of rural transformation are also discussed. Case studies of peasants in Russia are presented, with emphasis on their response to the attraction of urban life and the imposed autocracy and tyranny of Soviet rule. Comprised of 12 chapters, this volume begins with an analysis of the conditions and the minds of Russia's peasants during the period 1900-1917, followed by a detailed account of the peasantry under Soviet rule. The discussion then turns to private farming and the status of peasants in Poland since World War II; land reform in Yugoslavia; and agro mass production in Hungary. Subsequent chapters explore rural transformation in Romania; rural education in Bulgaria; the transformation of the Hungarian peasantry in the 20th century; peasantry in China; and the role of women in the transformation of rural life in post-revolution Yugoslavia. The book also considers the Third World experience with rural transformation before concluding with an assessment of the peasantry of Eastern Europe under communism. This monograph is intended for students, academic specialists, economists, and agriculturists.

Historian Iván Berend turns his attention to Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th century, a turbulent period. Extending up to World War I, the period contained the seeds of developments and crises that continue to haunt the region today.

'A magnum opus, an accessible and genuinely global history ... This is a book for today and tomorrow' Financial Times Capitalist enterprise has existed in some form since ancient times, but the globalization and dominance of capitalism as a system began in the 1860s when, in different forms and supported by different political forces, states all over the world developed their modern political frameworks: the unifications of Italy and Germany, the establishment of a republic in France, the elimination of slavery in the American south, the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the emancipation of the serfs in Tsarist Russia. This book magnificently explores how, after the upheavals of industrialisation, a truly global capitalism followed. For the first time in the history of humanity, there was a social system able to provide a high level of consumption for the majority of those who lived within its bounds. Today, capitalism dominates the world. With wide-ranging scholarship, Donald Sassoon analyses the impact of capitalism on the histories of many different states, and how it creates winners and losers by constantly innovating. This chronic instability, he writes, 'is the foundation of its advance, not a fault in the system or an incidental by-product'. And it is this instability, this constant churn, which produces the anxious triumph of his title. To control or alleviate such anxieties it was necessary to create a national community, if necessary with colonial adventures, to develop a welfare state, to intervene in the market economy, and to protect it from foreign competition. Capitalists needed a state to discipline them, to nurture them, and to sacrifice a few to save the rest: a state overseeing the war of all against all. Vigorous, argumentative, surprising and constantly stimulating, The Anxious Triumph gives a fresh perspective on all these questions and on its era. It is a masterpiece by one of Britain's most engaging and wide-ranging historians.

A history of the largely forgotten peasant revolution that swept central and eastern Europe after World War I—and how it changed the course of interwar politics and World War II As the First World War ended, villages across central and eastern Europe rose in revolt. Led in many places by a shadowy movement of army deserters, peasants attacked those whom they blamed for wartime abuses and long years of exploitation—large estate owners, officials, and merchants, who were often Jewish. At the same time, peasants tried to realize their rural visions of a reborn society, establishing local self-government or attempting to influence the new states that were being built atop the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. In The Last Peasant War, Jakub Beneš presents the first comprehensive history of this dramatic and largely forgotten revolution and traces its impact on interwar politics and the course of the Second World War. Sweeping large portions of the countryside between the Alps and the Urals from 1917 to 1921, this peasant revolution had momentous aftereffects, especially among Slavic peoples in the former lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It enabled an unprecedented expansion of agrarian politics in the interwar period and provided a script for rural resistance that was later revived to resist Nazi occupation and to challenge Communist rule in east central Europe. By shifting historical focus from well-studied cities to the often-neglected countryside, The Last Peasant War reveals how the movements and ambitions of peasant villagers profoundly shaped Europe’s most calamitous decades.

Aleksandur Stamboliiski was one of the most original politicians of the 20th century. His tragedy was that he came to power at the end of the First World War in which Bulgaria had been defeated. It fell to him, therefore, to accept and apply the peace settlement. This created tensions between him and traditional Bulgarian nationalism, tensions which ended with his murder in 1923. The book will examine the origins of this traditional nationalism from the foundation of the Bulgarian state in 1878, and of the agrarian movement which came to represent the social aspirations of the majority of the peasant population. It will also illustrate Stamboliiski's rise to power and examine his ideology. Emphasis will be placed on how this ideology clashed with the monarchy, the military, and the nationalists. Stamboliiski's policies in the Balkan wars and the First World War will be described before the details of the 1919 peace settlement are examined. The implementation of those terms will then be discussed as will the coup of 1923. The legacy of the peace treaty in the inter-war period and of Stamboliiski's image in the years after his downfall will form the final section of the book.