The study examines the condition of agricultural wage workers, the agrarian proletariat, during the First World War. The reasons for their pauperization were diverse: natural disasters, disadvantageous regional conditions for farming, overpopulation, and unemployment were among the many factors that negatively affected them even before the war. After 1914, however, the military mobilization of family breadwinners, the appropriation of draft animals, increasing prices, requisitions, and looting deepened their impoverishment.The increasing uncertainty of self-reliance called for state intervention, the governmental-political and local practice of which both demonstrate the macro- and microlevels of the poverty policy. Traditional poverty relief such as providing subsidised corn and seed was complemented by centralised food distribution and rationing. Flour rations were higher for agrarian workers than for urban consumers (maximum 400 grams/day in 1916) which was set at this level to preserve labour capacity and was based on the tenacious official categorization, which – based on consumption habits and demand – maintained that bread was the most important, even exclusive, type of food consumed by agrarian workers. State support granted to the families of enlisted soldiers was also used as a tool for labor coercion and discipline.The last part of the study presents collective protests (food riots) brought about by destitution, which can be used to grasp contemporary mentalities associated with the poor as a subculture. The perceived or real corruption of the authorities, feelings of social injustice (favoritism of the rich), and the increasingly assertive voice of military wives all played an important role both in the outrage caused by inflation, black market prices, and food shortages, and in violent actions such as looting shops or public unrest. Together, these constituted a collective experience and subsequent actions through communication, and a discourse unfolding in the streets, squares, and marketplaces of the city.

The study examines the history of civic societies in Kassa (present-day Košice, Slovakia), which were important elements of the urbanisation process of the town, and attest to the diversity of local communities. In terms of the sociological interpretation of behaviour, the town’s self-organised societies reflect the segregation of Estates across urban communities: the Nagy Kaszinó (Great Casino), founded in the Hungarian Reform-Era of the 1830s, quickly became the exclusive club of middle class elites, the Polgári Társaskör (Civil Social Club) followed the social patterns of the lives of merchants and tradesmen, while the Kassai Kaszinó attracted its membership primarily from county administrators and landed gentry. The Jewish-founded Kassai Társaskör (Kassa Social Club), as well as the Jewish participation in the Nagy Kaszinó, suggest that religious affiliation and strategies of social integration co-existed in society memberships. In terms of history of ideas, Kosice’s cultural associations represent various contexts of culture, education and self-education. For example, choirs provided fora to express liberal, democratic or patriotic ideas alike, and Nemzeti Kör (National Club) was founded with a programme of radicalizing Hungarianisation as early as the 1880s. While members of self-education societies were able to acquire education within the framework of autonomous social life, Catholic associations, such as the Legényegylet (Young Men’s Association) and the association of village teachers, were striving to realise neo-Conservative ideas of sociability. Mutual societies, such as the funeral aid and self-help organisations which retained the traditions of trade guilds, illustrate how the corporative nature of the town’s erstwhile urban life remained a strong force in self-organisation as late as the Age of Dualism in the second half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, however, company health funds, whose operation was based on shared necessity, became the precursors of state-funded social security for workers.

Nincs absztrakt.