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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2021
The article describes the conduct of land reform by the communist regime of People’s Poland. The land reform fitted into the wave of analogous reforms carried out in the other communist countries of Eastern Europe. It was based on the Decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) of 6th September 1944, which provided for subdividing landowners’ estates exceeding fifty hectares among peasants, such as small farmers, landless people and fornals. The article discusses problems faced by the founders of the reform and institutional measures applied in order to execute the Decree. Despite numerous obstacles, the reform was carried out quite efficiently and its effects were marked (6,070,100 hectares of landowners’ property was subdivided among 1,068,400 farms). However, those results were to a great extent possible due to the application of regime measures towards landowners (expropriation without compensation, arrests, and even capital punishment). Regarded as a crime and an atrocity by the landowners, for peasants the land reform was a blessing, which can be concluded from the recollections of both groups concerned, which are cited in the article. Despite its efficiency, the land reform did not manage to improve the agrarian structure in Poland, for it caused land dispersion and an increase of the number and the landed share of small farms.
1 Although farm collectivisation (establishing cooperatives) was not a direct consequence of land reform implementation effected by the PKWN Decree of 1944, it was a subsequent stage of rural areas’ transformation, which was assumed by the architects of socialism. Collectivisation of farms failed in Poland (as compared to, for example, Czechoslovakia in quantitative as well as qualitative terms). In the period 1949–56, 10,510 production cooperatives were established in Poland with the application of very expensive economic incentives (various exemptions for cooperatives), as well as physical coercion. In an attempt to achieve quantitative objectives many small cooperatives were founded, which were economically unviable. In 1955, global production of those cooperatives accounted merely for 9.5 per cent of the achievements of individual farms. Rocznik Statystyczny 1957 [Statistics Yearbook] (Warsaw, 1958), p. 123. Moreover, the regime failed to attract a sufficient number of smallholders, and cooperatives were dominated by medium-sized farms (usually forced by economic pressure) and there was also a relatively big number of ‘kulaks’ farms. Ineffectiveness of collectivisation in Poland and the resistance of Polish peasants discouraged the regime from forced collectivisation and authorised the possibility to dissolve ineffective cooperatives, so that in 1957 only 1,803 of them were left, which accounted for a 82.8 per cent decline in comparison to the previous year. Statystyka Rolnictwa 1946–1957 [Agricultural Statistics] (Warsaw, 1961), pp. 155, 158 and Rolniczy Rocznik Statystyczny [Agricultural Yearbook of Statistics] 1945–1965 (Warsaw, 1966), pp. 156–7. Elimination of political coercion and criminal repressions towards peasants were enough for the cooperative movement to collapse.
2 The Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza [PPR]), a communist party in Poland was established upon Stalin’s initiative on 5th January 1942 and based on the so-called ‘initiative group’. It involved three activists of the Comintern (Communist International founded by Vladimir Lenin): Marceli Nowotko, Paweł Finder and Bolesław Mołojec (note that they were parachuted down to Poland from a Russian plane).
3 Concerning only Polish citizens in 1939, excluding Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians living in the area attached to the USSR – see Figure 1.
4 Krystyna Kersten, Między wyzwoleniem a zniewoleniem: Polska 1944–1956 [Between Liberation and Enslavement] (London, 1993), p. 6.
5 Ibid., p. 9.
6 Andrzej Karbonski, Politics of Socialist Agriculture in Poland: 1945–1960 (New York and London 1965), p. 67.
7 The Polish government headed by Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk was established in London on 14th July 1943 following the death of general Władysław Sikorski, as the accomplishment of the mission assigned by the President of Poland in exile, Władysław Raczkiewicz, who was appointed to this office after the lost September Campaign (since 30th September 1939).
8 Krystyna Kersten, Narodziny systemu władzy: Polska 1943–1948 [The Birth of the System Power: Poland 1943–1948] (Paris, 1986), p. 56; Anita Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 1942–1948 (New York 2004), p. 98.
9 Wojciech Roszkowski, Historia Polski [History of Poland] 1914–2015 (Warszawa, 2017), p. 151.
10 On the history of early postwar Poland, see Anita Prażmowska, Poland: A Modern History (London and New York, 2010), pp. 158–93.
11 For the land reform in Poland before Second World War, see M. Błąd, ‘Land reform in the Second Polish Republic’, Rural History, 31:1 (2020), 97–110.
12 Karbonski, Politics, p. 66.
13 Land Reform Implementation Decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation of 6th September 1944, Dziennik Ustaw [Journal of Laws], No. 4, item 17, 1944.
14 A ‘fornal’ was a farmworker who worked on the grounds of a landed estate, handled horses and took them to the field to do fieldwork. The closest English equivalent is a horseman; however, in interwar Poland, sometimes all the workers who worked on a farm, and not only those who handled horses, were called fornals.
15 Gábor Szabó, ‘Certain Questions Related to Land Economics in Hungary’s Agriculture’, in I. Benet and J. Gyenis, eds, Economic Studies on Hungary’s Agriculture (Budapest, 1977), p. 47. In the original documents the measure was provided in holds (in Hungary 1 hold = 0.57 hectares); Władysław Góra, Reformy agrarne w socjalistycznych państwach Europy 1944–1948 [Agrarian Reforms in the Socialist Countries of Europe] (Wrocław, 1987), p. 12. As a result of reform in Hungary, 620,000 individuals were granted land, to an extent that accounted for 33.3 per cent of the total utilised agricultural area in Hungary. Bolesław Strużek, Rolnictwo europejskich krajów socjalistycznych [Agriculture of the European Socialist Countries] (Warsaw 1963), pp. 14–15.
16 Hieronim Laurentowski, Społeczno-ekonomiczny rozwój rolnictwa w Niemieckiej Republice Demokratycznej w latach 1945–1977 [Socio-Economic Development of Agriculture in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1977] (Warsaw, 1980), p. 53. Junkers’ estates in GDR, which exceeded one hundred hectares accounted for 28.3 per cent of the utilised agricultural land (Mieczysław Zaleski, Rolnictwo NRD [Agriculture in GDR] (Warsaw, 1968), p. 31. As a result of land reforms 374,000 individuals were granted land, which accounted for 30.1 per cent of the utilised agricultural area in the German Democratic Republic. Bolesław Strużek, Rolnictwo europejskich krajów socjalistycznych [Agriculture of the European Socialist Countries] (Warsaw, 1963), pp. 13, 15.
17 Góra, Reformy agrarne [Agrarian Reforms], p. 12. In Czechoslovakia 27.5 per cent of the total usable agricultural land was subject to reform (2,135,000 hectares), and land was given to 400,000 peasants and farmworkers (Bolesław Strużek, Rolnictwo [Agriculture], pp. 13, 15.
18 Góra, Reformy agrarne [Agrarian Reforms], p. 13. The scope of land reform in Bulgaria was quite narrow, due to the former elimination of huge landowners’ estates (that is, following liberation from the Turkish rule): a mere 4.1 per cent – this was the amount of utilised agricultural land subject to the reform. Strużek, Rolnictwo [Agriculture], pp. 14–15.
19 Article 1 of the Agrarian Reform Law in China promulgated in 1950 declared that the land ownership system of feudal exploitation by the landowners’ class should be abolished. A landowner, according The Government Administration Council, should be a person ‘who owns land, but does not engage in labour or only engages in supplementary labour, and who depends on exploitation for his means of livehood’. Keong Chen-hung, ‘Land Reform in China (1911–1953)’ (Masterʼs thesis, University of Tennessee, 1967), pp. 69, 71 <https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/3225>.
20 Seven hundred thousand Chinese mu (mu – a Chinese unit of land measurement; 5 mu = approx. 0.33 hectares): see also James Kai-sing Kung, Xiaogang Wu and Yuxiao Wu, ‘Inequality of land tenure and revolutionary outcome: an economic analysis of Chinaʼs land reform of 1946–1952’, Explorations in Economic History, 49:4 (2012), 482–97.
21 Ludmiła Aleksandrowna Wołkowa, Przemiany społeczno-ekonomiczne na wsi chińskiej [Socio-Economic Changes in Chinese Rural Areas] (Warsaw, 1976), p. 14; Władysław Kański, Chińska Republika Ludowa, Zarys rozwoju gospodarczego 1949–1969 [People’s Republic of China: A Summary of Economic Development] (Warsaw, 1971), p. 40; Yi Pan, Rural Welfare in China (New York, 2017), p. 78.
22 Pan, Rural Welfare, p. 78.
23 Mao Zedong topi Chiny we krwi [Rozmowa Adama Leszczyńskiego z prof. Frankiem Dikötterem] [Mao Zedong Drowns China in Blood: An Interview of Adam Leszczyński with Professor Frank Dikötter], in Gazeta Wyborcza, 14th November 2016.
24 The estates of Chinese landowners were usually much smaller than in European countries. In practice the communist regime selected the ‘huge estate holders’ (even a peasant who owned less than one hectare could be selected) and forced some peasants to kill others (this was a distinctive feature of the Chinese regime as compared to the European one, in which the governing apparatus applied terror via political police). Mao Zedong topi Chiny we krwi [Mao Drowns China in Blood], p. 2. A similar situation happened in Vietnam, which applied the Chinese methods of handling landowners: a vast majority of individuals who qualified as ‘huge estate owners’ owned relatively small farms: when talking to the delegation from the People’s Republic of Poland in 1959, Ho Chi Minh said that according to the Vietnamese definition, huge landowners are peasants who own two to three hectares of land. Jarema Słowiak, ‘Dwa państwa, dwie wsie: Porównanie równoległego rozwoju obszarów wiejskich w Republice Wietnamu i Demokratycznej Republice Wietnamu po 1945 [Two states, two rural systems: comparison of simultaneous development of rural areas in the Republic of Vietnam and in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam after 1945]’, Nauki Społeczne [Social Sciences], 9 (2014), 246.
25 W. Góra, R. Halaba and N. Kołomejczyk, eds, Odezwy PPR: Rezolucje, odezwy, instrukcje i okólniki Komitetu Centralnego VIII. 1944–XII.1945 [PPR’s Proclamations: Resolution, Proclamations, Instructions, Memos of the Central Committee] (Warsaw, 1959), p. 250.
26 Polish Committee for National Liberation Decree of 6th September 1944 concerning land reform implementation, Dziennik Ustaw [Journal of Laws], No. 4, item 17, 1944.
27 Recovered Territories is the name of the western and northern territories (Silesia, a portion of Western Pomerania and Brandenburg east to the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse and southern part of Eastern Prussia), assigned to Poland during the Potsdam Conference (2nd August 1945), which formerly belonged to Germany (although in the Middle Ages they belonged to Poland – hence the term ‘Recovered’ coined by the communists). See Figure 1.
28 Góra et al., eds, Odezwy PPR [PPR’s Proclamations], pp. 65–9.
29 Ibid., p. 71.
30 Henryk Słabek, Dzieje polskiej reformy rolnej [History of Polish Land Reform] 1944–1948 (Warsaw, 1972).
31 Władysław Góra, Reforma PKWN [PKWN Reform] (Warsaw, 1969), p. 136.
32 Słabek, Dzieje [History], pp. 82, 124.
33 Ibid., p. 64.
34 See n. 14.
35 Słabek, Dzieje [History], p. 130.
36 Ibid., p. 70.
37 Ibid., pp. 113, 119.
38 Ibid., p. 80.
39 ‘Wskazówki dla brygad robotniczych pracujących przy parcelacji majątków [Guidelines for Workers’ Brigades Handing the Subdivision of Landlords’ Estates]’, Wiadomości Ziemiańskie [Landowners’ News] No. 5, 30th March 2001, p. 3.
40 Słabek, Dzieje [History], p. 91.
41 Former Territories is a name, no longer used, for the part of the Polish state territories, which after the Second World War spread between the border with the USSR as defined in July 1944 and the western and southern border of Poland according to the situation as at 31st August 1939 (see Figure 1).
42 See n. 27.
43 Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland, Rocznik Statystyczny 1947 [Statistical Yearbook] (Warsaw, 1948), p. 40.
44 Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland, Rocznik Statystyczny 1949 [Statistical Yearbook] (Warsaw, 1950), p. 54.
45 Góra, Reforma [Reform], pp. 150–1.
46 Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland, Rocznik Statystyczny 1949 [Statistical Yearbook] (Warsaw, 1950), p. 54.
47 Ibid., p. 58.
48 Ibid., p. 55.
49 Ibid., p. 57.
50 Ibid., pp. 58–9.
51 See also Błąd, Land Reform, pp. 97–110.
52 The total area subdivided as a result of the land reform is slightly larger than it seems from the above-mentioned numbers quoted on 1st January 1949. The aggregate data is final as it originates from 1966, that is, twenty years after the reform.
53 Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland, Statystyka Rolnicza [Agricultural Statistics] 1946–1957 (Warsaw, 1961), p. 121; Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland, Rolniczy Rocznik Statystyczny [Statistical Yearbook of Agriculture] 1945–1965 (Warsaw, 1966), p. 115; Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland, Historia Polski w liczbach [History of Poland in Numbers] (Warsaw, 1991), p. 193.
54 Anna Szemberg, Reforma rolna PKWN [Land Reform of PKWN] (Warsaw, 1953), p. 32.
55 Communist terror in Poland was spread in the name of law, namely under the State Security Decree of 30th October 1944, Dziennik Ustaw [Journal of Laws], No. 10, item 50, 1944. The Decree listed eleven ‘crimes’ carrying a prison sentence or a capital punishment. They related to attempts at overthrowing the state regime or obstructing the operations of the state authorities. One of the crimes described in the Decree related to maintenance, sale or purchase of a radio, and another one, which is important from the point of view of this article, was described as hindering the implementation of land reform.
56 For more about Władysław Gomułka, see Anita Prażmowska, Władysław Gomułka: A Biography (London and New York, 2016).
57 Władysław Gomułka, Pamiętniki [Memoires],Volume II (Warsaw, 1994), p. 471.
58 That is, gave him a tongue-lashing.
59 Since 1944 Bolesław Bierut held a function of the President of the State National Council (usurpatory parliament), and from 1947 he was the President of Poland.
60 Gomułka, Pamiętniki [Memoires], p. 308.
61 Ibid., pp. 308–09.
62 Ibid., p. 309.
63 Ibid., p. 471.
64 Ibid., p. 473.
65 KRN – State National Council, see also n. 59.
66 Gomułka, Pamiętniki [Memoires], p. 475.
67 Ibid., p. 477.
68 Stanisława Jarecka-Kimlowska, ed., Ta ziemia jest nasza [This Land Belongs To Us] (Warsaw, 1969). Subsequent textual pagination is to this.
69 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) is an international organisation established in 1943 with the aim to provide aid to people living in countries destroyed as a result of the Second World War.
70 Barbara Perepeczko, ‘Obraz reformy rolnej na współczesnej wsi [A Picture of Land Reform in Contemporary Rural Areas]’, Zeszyty Wiejskie, zeszyt XI [Rural Notebooks, Notebook 11] pp. 194–204. It included 127 retrospective interviews conducted in the period 1996–8 with grandfathers, grandmothers or acquaintances of students who were participants in or observers of the land reform.
71 The abbreviation for Home Army (Armia Krajowa [AK]), a conspiring military organisation fighting for independence, a part of Polish Military Forces. It operated during the Second World War in occupied Poland, and it answered to the Chief Military Leader and the government of the Republic of Poland in exile in London.
72 The abbreviation for Security Office (Political Police [UB]), a commonly used in Poland for political police operating in the period 1944–56.
73 NKVD, the Russian abbreviation used in Poland for the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR, which handled matters related to home administration.
74 Krzysztof Jasiewicz, ‘Koniec ziemiańskiego świata [The End of the Landowners’ World]’, in Maria Walewska, W cieniu ustawy o reformie rolnej: Wspomnienia 1944–1945 [In the Shadow of the Land Reform Act: Memories 1944–1945] (Warsaw, 2007), p. 29.
75 Stanisław Lem, Rasa drapieżców: Teksty ostatnie [The Race of Predators: The Last Texts] (Kraków, 2006), pp. 266–7.
76 Franciszek Starowieyski and Krystyna Uniechowska, Franciszka Starowieyskiego opowieść o końcu świata, czyli reforma rolna [Franciszek Starowieyski’s Tale of the End of the World, or the Land Reform] (Warsaw, 1994), p. 27.
77 Ibid., p. 107.
78 Reforma rolna 1944–1945 czy komunistyczna zbrodnia? Dokumenty i materiały. Świadectwa. Wnioski [Land Reform 1944–5 or a Communist Atrocity? Documents and Materials. Accounts. Conclusions] (Warsaw, 2009), p. 16.
79 Ibid., pp. 17–18.
80 Ibid., p. 16.
81 Ibid., p. 24.
82 Longina Jakubowska, ‘Między ideologią i praktyką reformy rolnej: pamięć ziemiaństwa: Polska 1944/1945–1989 [Between ideology and practice of land reform: the memory of landowners, Poland 1944/1945–1989]’, Studia i materiały [Studies and Materials], IV (1999), 16–17.
83 Ibid., p. 27.
84 Ibid., p. 29
85 See n. 73.
86 See n. 77.
87 Jakubowska, ‘Między ideologią i praktyką [Between ideology and practice]’, p. 26.
88 Walewska, W cieniu ustawy o reformie rolnej: Wspomnienia 1944–1945 [In the Shadow of the Land Reform Act: Memories 1944–1945], pp. 116–18.
89 The monthly remuneration equivalent to Category 6 civil servant, which was assigned to the expropriated landowners by virtue of the PKWN Decree (so-called ‘landowner’s benefit’) was in practice quickly limited to those who were unable to work, and then it was turned into a ‘disabled benefit’ of the lowest amount): Agnieszka Łuczak, ‘Ziemiaństwo wielkopolskie w czasie reformy rolnej [Landowners of Greater Poland during the Land Reform]’, Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Bulletin of the Institute of National Remembrance], 1:12 (2002), 38–42.
90 Anna Matałowska, Z tym nazwiskiem [With that Very Name] (Warsaw, 1998), p. 119.
91 Ibid., p. 115.
92 Lubianka is a common name for the KGB and NKVD seat in Moscow, which also housed an investigation arrest facility underground. During Stalin time, Lubianka was notorious for murders of political prisoners, including Poles.
93 Here I would like to mention landowners’ lives lost at that time. ‘Lista strat ziemiaństwa polskiego 1939–1956 [A List of Losses of Polish Landowners, 1939–1956]’ by Krzysztof Jasiewicz (Warsaw, 1995) provides us with interesting results. The author gathered and prepared short biographies of 3,737 landowners who became casualties of war and postwar time. The majority of Polish landowners were killed by the Soviets, especially by the NKVD. The main murder sites turned to be Katyń/Kozielsk and Charkov/Starobielsk (USSR territory). The very fact of belonging to the landowner class was penalised by Soviet law. Such people were treated as elements who threatened the USSR’s interest and they were categorised as ‘socially dangerous elements’, so-called SOEs (socjalno-opasnyj element).
94 Matałowska, Z tym nazwiskiem [With that Very Name], p. 115.
95 Ibid., p. 118.
96 See n. 72.
97 A detention facility situated in Mokotów District of Warsaw, where political prisoners were detained, tortured and killed during the period of Stalin’s terror. The total of 350 death sentences were executed here in the period 1945–6, and many more prisoners died as a result of torturous interrogation.
98 Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki are two Polish poets of Romanticism, called National Bards.
99 Matałowska, Z tym nazwiskiem [With that Very Name], p. 61.
100 Ibid., p. 62.
101 Ibid., p. 69.
102 See, for example, Szemberg, Reforma rolna [Land Reform] or Władysław Góra, Reforma rolna PKWN [PKWN Land reform].
103 Jasiewicz, Lista strat [List of Losses].
104 See also Mieczysław Mieszczankowski, Struktura agrarna Polski międzywojennej [Agrarian Structure of Interwar Poland] (Warsaw, 1960), p. 67.
105 Ewa Polak-Pałkiewicz, Rycerze wielkiej sprawy: Szkice ziemiańskie [Riders for the Grand Cause: Rural Sketches] (Łomianki, 2015), p. 229.
106 Jerzy Wilkin, ‘Ewolucja wsi i rolnictwa w Polsce w okresie stulecia 1918–2018 [Evolution of Rural Areas and Agriculture in Poland within a Century of 1918–2018]’, in Polska Wieś 2018: Raport o stanie wsi [Polish Rural Areas 2018: Report on the Condition of Rural Areas] (Warsaw, 2018), p. 218.
107 See also William P. Browne, Jerry R. Skees, Louis E. Swanson, Paul B. Thompson and R. Boschwitz, Sacred Cows and Hot Potatoes: Agrarian Myths and Agricultural Policy (New York and Oxford, 2019).
108 In recent Polish history, certain features of land reform can be assigned to a reprivatisation of huge state farms (PGRs), which were established in People’s Poland (there were 1,495 such farms, which covered an area of 3,130,000 hectares – Włodzimierz Dzun, Państwowe gospodarstwa rolne w procesie przemian systemowych [State Farms in the Process of Regime Change] (Warsaw, 2005), p. 203. Reprivatisation started in 1991 as a result of political transformation, which brought about the Third Republic of Poland.
