Countryside Communism?

Stjepan Radic

"Comintern and Peasant in East Europe 1919-1930" is a study of how the Communist parties in East Europe attempted to win the support of the local peasantry.

Unfortunately, the book isn't very well written, and the source material is also somewhat problematic. The author uses secondary sources in English, French and Russian (!) to describe the situation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. He is (of course) hostile to Communism, but also to the agrarian parties with which the Communists competed. The author dislikes the Bulgarian agrarian leader Stamboliiski in particular, perhaps because he was so successful?

Since the Communists were largely based in the cities and called for the abolition of private property, the task of winning over the peasantry wasn't an easy one. To a large extent it failed. Jackson describes the failure of the Red Peasant International (Krestintern) to win mass support. The Krestintern did recruit the Croatian "peasant" leader Radic to its ranks, but Radic's party wasn't particularly radical, and seems to have joined the Krestintern mostly as a tactic. Soon enough, Radic joined a "bourgeois" Yugoslav government, putting an end to the rather unnatural alliance with the Communists.

Still, there were exceptions to the rule. In the eastern parts of Poland and in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia (controlled by Czechoslovakia), the Communists did manage to command the support of the local peasants. In the "backward" and "primitive" Ruthenia, the Communists actually became the single largest party! In Poland, the Communists formed a parliamentary faction together with a number of peasant parties (although some of these may have been Communist fronts). Jackson believes that the main reason for the success was the national question. Many peasants in the eastern parts of interwar Poland were Ukrainians and Byelorussians. In similar manner, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was inhabited by Ukrainians and Hungarians, who resented Czech control of the area. The Communists simply exploited the hostility of the national minorities against the central governments. It's also interesting to note that Radic represented a virtual minority nationality within Yugoslavia (the Croats).

"Comintern and Peasant" also gives a brief overview of the agrarian parties in East Europe. Of these, the Bulgarian Agrarian Union of Stamboliiski was the strongest, most successful and most authentically agrarian. The Croatian Peasant's Party of Radic was less agrarian in practice, being dominated by urban intellectuals and acting more like a regular political party of Croatian nationalism. The Romanian "agrarians" seem to have been a market liberal, right-wing party bent on industrialization! The Czechoslovak Republican Party was the strongest agrarian party in East Europe and hosted the Green International, an international organization of agrarian parties. However, the Republicans were strictly constitutionalist and oriented to compromise and coalition-building with other parties, both right-wing and reform socialist. They eventually became a party of the wealthy middle class and rich farmers.

The book cuts off the story in 1930, probably because the "ultra-left" turn of the Comintern in 1928-29 made it less interested in winning over the peasantry in the European nations. Curiously, the moribund Krestintern wasn't dissolved until 1937. (In fact, even the Soviet sources are unclear on when the Red Peasant International was actually dissolved. One Soviet source suggests 1939! It's not clear why the Krestintern wasn't resurrected during the popular frontist phase of Communism.)

I didn't really like Jackson's book, but since there are few sources on this subject matter in English, I give it three stars.