This volume of essays should attract more attention than the typical scholarly collection. Over the last three decades, historians have done much research on the modern transformation of society, economy, political action, and government in east central Europe. Few have examined closely the emergence of civil society and modern political action in rural areas compared to the substantial work on national politics and urban centers. By the early twentieth century, peasant parties had developed as important factors in much of the region; and national leaders had to pay increasing attention to rural populations. This volume offers new insights on the development of civil society, political action, and popular loyalties in the countrysides of Poland, Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary, and Romania. The introduction by Milan Řepa and the chapters by Pavel Kladiwa and Andrea Pokludová originated in a research project on the rural areas of Moravia and Austrian Silesia between 1861 and 1914. Scholars interested in other regions joined in at a workshop in Prague in September 2018, leading to the current volume. The book presents their work in serviceable English, a number of faulty locutions notwithstanding. Each chapter includes notes and a bibliography.
Řepa's introductory essay sets the stage for the volume. He points to the paradigmatic earlier work on the politicization of the countryside in modern France as he assesses the state of research for east central Europe and outlines how each of the following chapters addresses salient issues in the experience of the east-central European peasantry. Following the introductory chapter, Kai Struve contributes further to articulating the conceptual issues for the volume. In pithy terms he treats the analytic issues raised by recent writings on how modern civil society evolved in the Habsburg Monarchy and how national loyalties developed among segments of the population while national indifference, ambivalence, or mutability persisted among others. Struve then examines the general development of civil society and modern political life among the peasantry of Austrian Galicia between the 1860s and 1914, neatly summarizing findings from his important earlier research as well as that of other scholars, such as Andriy Zayarnyuk, John-Paul Himka, Harald Binder, Keely Stauter-Halsted, and Jan Molenda. The question of agency in the development of national loyalties looms large here and in other chapters of this book, and Struve carefully sorts out the roles of clergy, teachers, journalists, and other intellectuals in propagating national allegiances in the rural areas.
Among the other chapters, those by Torsten Lorenz, Yuko Kiryu, Pavel Kladiwa, and Andrea Pokludová offer the freshest findings about how civil society, political activity, and political loyalties developed among the rural population in various locales. They remind us of the important roles played by savings and loan cooperatives, agricultural improvement associations, and other voluntary organizations. Lorenz finds that in Prussian-ruled Posen such organizations served the concrete purposes of economic development and local sociability but also advanced the division of public life on national lines and the spread of national loyalties and ideology. Among the Polish-speaking population, Catholic clergy often served as leaders; but secular national activists also participated. Kiryu focuses on agricultural associations in Bohemia during the crucial transitional period after 1848 as the rural population adapted to abolition of the corvée (robot) and, after the early 1860s, the opening of public life and representative bodies. Kiryu also emphasizes that such voluntary organizations were central to developing civic engagement and propagating liberal and national ideas in the countryside.
The chapters devoted to local studies in various parts of Moravia by Kladiwa and Pokludová offer particularly interesting insights into the issue of agency in the processes of politicization and the spread of political ideas and national ideology among peasants. Kladiwa points to the interplay between governmental and popular initiatives for social change and modernization in the particularly poor, underdeveloped region of Wallachia (Valašsko). Clergy and schoolteachers often provided leadership, cooperating with each other in some places while at odds elsewhere. Pokludová also affirms the role of government in furthering social and economic change. She focuses on clergy and schoolteachers as change agents in northeastern Moravia and finds much cooperation between them as well as many instances of friction. Pokludová points out that Catholic clergy often played notably progressive roles in furthering the development of agriculture and credit institutions even while opposing much in liberal ideology.
The various chapters here repeatedly note the primacy of practical concerns among the peasantry and their keen sense of difference from urban elements. Frequently, educated elements, whether teachers, clergy, lawyers, or journalists, played a critical role in putting a national cast on the peasants’ sense of community. One must regret that this volume offers only two chapters on the lands of the Kingdom of Hungary and southeastern Europe, since less has been published in English, French, or German on the development of civil society and rural political action in those territories during the late nineteenth century than for Poland, Bohemia, and Moravia. John Swanson's chapter treats the relationship between locally and internationally based efforts to defend German culture and loyalties among Hungary's German-speaking peasant population, touching on some issues he addressed in his 2017 monograph and earlier publications. The sole chapter on Romania, authored by Sorin Radu, addresses the primary concerns of this book only marginally. He summarizes debates among Romanian national party leaders and political thinkers about popular voting rights and the representation of peasant interests between 1866 and 1918 without examining the development of civil society and political action among the peasantry. It is to be expected, of course, that the contributions in such a collection will vary in their originality and value. Here readers will find much, though, that casts new light on the development of civil society and modern political life in the countryside of east central Europe during the nineteenth century that will invigorate further historical research on the region.
