W wydanej przez Narodowy Instytut Kultury i Dziedzictwa Wsi publikacji Chłopi polscy na przestrzeni wieków, pod redakcją prof. Jolanty Załęczny i prof. Mateusza Wyżgi, autorzy podjęli się opracowania wielu istotnych kwestii związanych z historią i tożsamością polskiej wsi. W artykule Oblicze społeczne wsi polskiej w latach 1945–1956 na przykładzie północnego Mazowsza Wojciech Łukaszewski poruszył temat dotyczący sytuacji na wsi polskiej w pierwszej powojennej dekadzie.
The losses suffered by the countryside during World War II had an impact on the poor condition of Polish society. Northern Mazovia was an area particularly affected by the war. The devastation affected people's low standard of living. The negative effects of warfare engulfed a large area of northern Mazovia. The operations were carried out as part of the winter offensive in January 1945. The scale of destruction was enormous. In northern Mazovia, 71.6% of destroyed homesteads were recorded in Makow County. Visits by the Committee for Aid to Destroyed Counties shortly after the war also noted widespread epidemics and the problem of malnutrition among the population. Mazovian peasants found themselves in a difficult situation, and most of the residents of the northern villages benefited from assistance from the international aid organization UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration).
Soon the situation of peasants in northern Mazovia was to be changed by land reform. A decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation[1] affected the structure of village property and resulted in the liquidation of the landed gentry. As a result of the political transformation, the number of farms and land changed. The landed gentry as a social stratum was disappearing from the territory of Poland. The Polish Workers' Party introduced the system transformation. Modification of the agricultural system was the main task of the party, which intended to bring about property transformation through agrarian reform. The changes envisaged the completion of farms, as well as the creation of independent farms for the landless, laborers and agricultural workers. Among other things, the agrarian reform also introduced the seizure of state-owned land.
For the purposes of land reform, from September 1944 to January 1949, more than 1,700 sites with an area of more than 441,000 hectares were taken over in the Warsaw province. More than 13,500 hectares of land were transferred as land for State Farms and other public utilities. Thanks to the reform, more than 60 thousand new farms were created. As a result of the changes, the number of small farms, which usually did not exceed more than 5 hectares, increased. The average area of horticultural and vegetable farms was more than 2 hectares. The farms of fishermen and forestry and fishery workers had an average area of about 3 hectares, and rural craftsmen had farms with an average area of 2 hectares. Workers' plots could not be larger than one hectare.
Collectivization of agriculture
In 1948-1956, collectivization of agriculture was carried out. Peasants were united in agricultural cooperatives. It was intended to lead to the reconstruction of the state's agricultural system and to the breakdown of the traditional community structure of the rural population. It was believed that:
There is no other road to socialism than the road indicated by the Soviet Union, through the socialist revolution, the struggle against intervention, the reconstruction of the agricultural system of the USSR (...). This road shows us that we are to build socialism not only through the rationalization of industry, but also through the reconstruction of the agricultural system in the countryside.
These are the words of Stefan Matuszewski, First Secretary of the Warsaw Provincial Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, spoken at a plenary meeting on March 16, 1949[2].
It was intended that the collectivization of agriculture would involve liquidating private farms and transforming them into production cooperatives. This was modeled on the USSR, where the idea took off well. Peasants of low economic status joined the cooperatives. Mainly those who received land as a result of parcelling after the agrarian reform. The adaptation of farms into production cooperatives was destroying individual farming in Poland. In the 1950s, PGRs owned land with a total agricultural area of about 2.2 million hectares. Through collectivization and the parceling out of agricultural estates, many so-called "dwarf" farms were created, which had great difficulty making a living.
As it soon turned out, the nationalization of farms brought fewer benefits than expected. Collectivization was supported by far fewer farmers than initially expected. In villages where cooperatives were established, the percentage of farms joining the form of collectivization was only about 25%. As for yields, there was no reason for optimism here either. PGRs in Mazovia recorded results below expectations. As it soon turned out, yields of potatoes and sugar beets were higher on individual farms than on cooperatives. While the number of the smallest farms, which were economically weak, declined, rural fragmentation persisted.
There began to be a perception that funds invested in this type of farming were simply squandered. There were more and more voices saying that individual farming should no longer be discriminated against, since it was this type of farming that showed better results. Nevertheless, peasants were joining cooperatives. This was largely influenced more by fear of repression than by a genuine desire to form a collective, state-owned, agricultural group. Often joining cooperative collectives was simply a necessity, if only because especially small farms lacked livestock and agricultural machinery, making farm management ineffective.
The collectivization of agriculture in Poland in the first post-war decade proved to be a failure, even though the state provided various forms of assistance and subsidies to production cooperatives. North Mazovian peasants suffered huge losses as a result of the German occupation during World War II. The subsequent agrarian reform unsettled the agricultural structures that had formulated in the earlier period. Peasant communities were also adversely affected by the land tax system, which did not distinguish between farms in economic terms.
Thus, the situation of Polish peasants during the communist era was worrisome. Agricultural policy favored a cooperative system of farm management, and the privileging of the State Farms did not have a positive effect on agriculture. Peasants at that time were uncertain of their future and dissatisfied with the systemic changes in which they themselves had to participate.
You can learn about the full kaleidoscope of events in the Polish countryside in the first post-war decade from Wojciech Lukaszewski's article entitled The Social Face of the Polish Countryside in 1945-1956 on the Example of Northern Mazovia included in the NIKiDW publication Polish Peasants Through the Ages. The state of research and research perspectives.
The book is available at the publisher's online store.
Elaborated. Arkadiusz Olszewski on the basis of.
artykułu Wojciecha Łukaszewskiego: Oblicze społeczne wsi polskiej w latach 1945–1956 na przykładzie północnego Mazowsza, w: Chłopi polscy na przestrzeni wieków. Stan badań i perspektywy badawcze, red. M. Wyżga i J. Załęczny, Narodowy Instytut Kultury i Dziedzictwa Wsi, Wyd. Akademii Humanistycznej, Warszawa 2023, s. 173–189.
Photo:
1) Construction of a house in the village of Czerwonka, Maków County, after the end of hostilities in 1945. , source: Archives of New Records in Warsaw (AAN), Ministry of Provisions in Warsaw, Memoriał w sprawie pomocy zniszczonym północnych powiatom woj. Warszawskiego, sygn. 168, k. 9b
[1] Decree of the Polish Committee for National Liberation of September 6, 1944, on carrying out land reform, Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland, 1944, No. 4, item 17.
[2] State Archives in Warsaw-Exposition in Milanówek, Warsaw Provincial Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, Plenary Meetings of the PZPR WKW, Minutes of Plenary Meetings of the WKW, 1948-1949, sign. 27, k. 39.
