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Main article: List of agrarian parties Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands, and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties, because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity. Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I, but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while in the 1920s and 1930s there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right, and never launched any significant activities. Bulgaria In Bulgaria, Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduces many economic, social, and legal reforms. However conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923). BZNS was made into a Communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party. Czechoslovakia In Czechoslovakia the Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader Antonin Svehla (1873–1933) was prime minister several times. The party was banned after the Second World War because of collaboration with fascicst ideas. Romania In Romania, in 1919 older parties from Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia merged to become the National Peasants' Party. Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) was prime minister with an agrarian cabinet from 1928 to 1930, but the Great Depression made proposed reforms impossible. The Communists dissolved the party in 1947, but it reformed in 1989 after Communism collapsed. Serbia In Serbia Nikola Pašić (1845–1926) and his Radical Party dominated Serbian politics after 1903; they also monopolized power in Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1929; during the dictatorship of the 1930s, it furnished the prime minister. Australia In Australia, the Country Party from the 1920s to the 1970s, promulgated its version of agrarianism, which it called "Countrymindedness". The goal was to enhance the status of the graziers (operators of big sheep ranches) and small farmers, and justified subsidies for them.[36] New Zealand The New Zealand Liberal Party aggressively promoted agrarianism in its heyday, 1891–1912. The landed gentry and aristocracy ruled Britain at this time. New Zealand never had an aristocracy but it did have wealthy landowners who largely controlled politics before 1891. The Liberal Party set out to change that by a policy it called "populism." Richard Seddon had proclaimed the goal as early as 1884: "It is the rich and the poor; it is the wealthy and the landowners against the middle and labouring classes. That, Sir, shows the real political position of New Zealand."[37] The Liberal strategy was to create a large class of small land-owning farmers who supported Liberal ideals. The Liberal government also established the basis of the later welfare state, with old age pensions, developed a system for settling industrial disputes, which was accepted by both employers and trade unions. In 1893 it extended voting rights to women, making New Zealand the first country in the world to enact universal female suffrage. To obtain land for farmers the Liberal government from 1891 to 1911 purchased 3,100,000 acres (1,300,000 ha) of Maori land. The government also purchased 1,300,000 acres (530,000 ha) from large estate holders for subdivision and closer settlement by small farmers. The Advances to Settlers Act (1894) provided low-interest motgages, while the Agriculture Department disseminated information on the best farming methods. The Liberals proclaimed success in forging an egalitarian, antimonopoly land policy. The policy built up support for the Liberal party in rural North Island electorates. By 1903 the Liberals were so dominant that there was no longer an organized opposition in Parliament.[38][39] |
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