Agrarianism
농민주의
Agrarianism here is the ideology and movement that treats agriculture as the decisive sphere of production and the family farm and village community as the basis of society and the state, and puts peasant interests at the centre of politics. It took shape in late-19th-century Germany among large landowners but flourished in the first half of the 20th century as a movement of smallholders' parties in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe. Agrarians defended private landholding, promoted cooperatives and self-government, opposed collectivisation and claimed a 'third way' between capitalism and communism. High points were Stamboliyski's Bulgarian government of 1919–1923 and the Green International founded in Prague in 1921. It is distinct from the Russian narodniks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who derived a socialism from the peasant commune.
In depth
Definition and basic ideas
German reference works define Agrarismus as an agrarian-political ideology in which agriculture is the decisive sphere of production and the village community the cell of social and state structure. The term arose in the lands of the Bohemian Crown for 'the whole complex of ideas underlying the agrarian movement', deriving from land and farming a claim to leadership by the peasantry. Polish surveys list shared themes: respect for the land and its cultivators, protection of private landholding, support for cooperatives but opposition to collectivisation, democracy as the system natural to those who till the soil, and suspicion of centralisation, though the dominant Polish current also favoured partial planning. English-language surveys trace roots to Chinese Agriculturalism and Quesnay's physiocracy.
From Germany to the peasant parties of the East
The doctrine arose in late-19th-century Germany; Albert Schäffle is credited with the term. At first it was a movement of large landowners hit by cheap American produce, represented by the Farmers' League of 1893; later, in East-Central Europe, it became a peasant movement of smallholders. Romanian țărănism grew as a response to the exploitation of peasants by leaseholders and landlords, notably in the great revolt of 1907, held that peasant farming was inherently non-capitalist, and was systematised by Virgil Madgearu in 1936.
Power and the Green International
The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, organised in 1899, came to power in 1919 under Aleksandar Stamboliyski, limited landholdings and introduced compulsory labour; a coup in June 1923 overthrew it and killed him. Antonín Švehla's Czechoslovak agrarians repeatedly led coalitions; Romania's National Peasants' Party (1926) put Iuliu Maniu in office in 1928–1930; Finland's Agrarian League was founded in 1906. In 1921 the agrarian parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia founded the International Agrarian Bureau in Prague, which Stamboliyski conceived as protection against both the royalist 'White International' and the Bolshevik 'Red International'; by 1926 sixteen parties had joined. German scholarship notes that agrarianism furthered democratisation through suffrage and land reform but could also feed antisemitism and authoritarian rule.
Relations with the communist movement
From 1923 the Comintern's Krestintern sought influence among East European peasants, and the Green International competed with it, drawing the Croatian Peasant Party away in 1929–1934. After 1945 Hungary's Smallholders carried out land redistribution in coalition before being outlawed in 1949; Romania's National Peasants' Party was dissolved in 1947; the Bulgarian union became an allied party until 1989. Exiled leaders formed the International Peasant Union in 1947, chaired by Stanisław Mikołajczyk and Ferenc Nagy.
Narodniks, Socialist Revolutionaries, Maoism
Agrarianism is distinct from Russian narodnichestvo and from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the largest neo-narodnik organisation and a non-Marxist socialist member of the Second International. Central European agrarians defended private landholding and claimed a path between capitalism and communism, though Romanian țărănism is compared to poporanism, itself shaped by the narodniks. English-language surveys classify agrarian socialism, including Maoism with its focus on the peasantry, as a separate form.