Land Reforms in East Central Europe After World War One

East Central Europe after WWI provides a number of land reform cases to which various interpretations can be applied. This is due to the region's characteristics: economic, demographic, ethnic, and political differentiation. Analyzing the interwar experience of European agriculture, the League of Nations experts divided Europe of that time into three spheres: 1) "the land settlement zone" (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), 2) "the agrarian reform zone" (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece), and 3) "the zone of agrarian collectivism" (Soviet Russia). At the same time, land reforms undertaken in East Central Europe after 1918 focused on the major problems of the region. The manner in which these reforms were carried out explains a great deal about the problems of nationality, political struggle, socio-cultural patterns, and economic viability of individual countries. Therefore a study of these reforms is an interesting cross-section of the region's problems during the time between the two world wars. Earlier literature on the subject is both extensive and fragmentary. There are myriads of volumes dealing with the agricultural economics, including many works on the role of the primary sector for a market take-off. It is almost beyond the power of any singular scholar to cope with this abundance of literature. There are a multitude of works concerning interwar East Central European economics, and agriculture in particular. Nevertheless, only few authors have tried to treat this fascinating question of land reforms in a comparative and more comprehensive way. This volume is such an attempt.