This political and socio-historical analysis demonstrates the factors of the dual communication of party nomenclature and the social responses to collectivization campaigns (individual and collective forms of adaptive resistance). Collectivisation is interpreted as one of the fundamental narratives of the socio-economic and political conflicts in Soviet-type dictatorships, social historical events of short- and long-term consenquence. In this study, this question transgresses the narrow concepts of agrarian-, peasant-, and local histories. Collectivisation is both a rural and urban historical phenomenon by virtue of the modes and effects of its enforcement. The author uses primarily contemporanous witnesses from different angles to prove that the mass annihilation of privately owned farms, and their merging into collective lands were only possible by coercion and means of administrative, psychological and physical terror. The mobilisation of the campaign is interpreted by the socialisation of political dictatorship, in which almost all individuals became active agents in the process. Although the sentiment of failure over 1956 was a determining factor in the process of collectivisation, on the basis of case studies the author argues that another focused campaign lasting until 1960 was necessary to make the majority of the farmers join the co-operatives. The term ‘condensed mass educator’ meant a police truncheon in informal language.

Nincs absztrakt.

The author first presents the most extensive works on GDR history by selecting from the body of works in social and political history then informs on some results of the research of rural society. His most important questions are the following: How and among which framework did the elaboration of GDR history start? What kind of theoretical knowledge, methods and sources were chosen to approach East German past? The former GDR system can generally be understood as a modern provident dictatorship in which political power faced social limits. These limits are clearly distiguishable in rural life worlds. All research approaches emphasise the prominence of the results of Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life). According to the author’s opinion, high-standard historical works in Germany successfully present contemporary history as history. The fact that the number of analyses that secure room for philosophising and theoretical discussions, or more accurately: for possibilities of interpretation has become impossible to survey points to a continuous demand on differentiation. Beyond methodological and theoretical concerns, the author regards the fact that it was exactly in writing of contemporary history that political and social history were connected, as most instructive, even if this sometimes resulted in traditional approaches that heavily relied on structural and economic history or concentrated on demographic change were pushed into the background. Although the importance of these researches cannot the questioned, a way of seeing and describing “from the inside” or “from below” might better serve new challenges of history writing.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.