From German Peasant to 'Exemplary Cooperative Member': A Microhistory of Rural Transformations in Eastern Slovakia after 1945

• In Event: Local Dynamics of Collectivization in Central and Southeastern Europe

Abstract

Land reform was one of the first steps taken by the Czechoslovak authorities after the end of World War II. In Slovakia, the law on the confiscation of agricultural property from Germans, Hungarians, and “traitors to the Slovak nation” was passed in February 1945, shortly after the Red Army entered the eastern territories of the state. For peasants in the linguistically mixed areas, this was the first in a series of postwar measures that targeted their property and altered local power relations. This process of restructuring the countryside culminated in collectivization, which was later enforced by the Communist authorities. This paper focuses on the life story of a single German-speaking peasant from a multilingual town on the Slovak periphery. It highlights his agency in both resisting and accommodating the restrictions on his property imposed from the center but carried out by his neighbors in the face-to-face community. This paper reconstructs his struggles during several waves of restrictions based on his mother tongue and social status. By providing a subjective and lifelong view of a peasant from a German-speaking community marginalized after World War II, the aim is to examine the changes in property, power, and social relations caused by land reform and collectivization efforts in a small town on the rural periphery. In doing so, this contribution seeks not only to provide a “thick description” of rural transformations but, more importantly, to highlight the agency of hitherto silenced historical actors in the profound societal changes in Central Europe after 1945.

Author

• Tereza Juhaszova, U of Regensburg (Germany)