ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the development of the agricultural policies out of the crisis that shook Eastern Europe following the death of Stalin in 1953. It seeks to provide the dynamics behind the initiation and implementation of a collectivization policy in Poland and Hungary and analyzes the structure of forces in each nation that led to the creation of agricultural sectors unique to the region. From the standpoint of modernization theory, collectivization promotes economic growth by providing an organizational framework for the diffusion and adoption of new technologies. Agricultural collectivization can also be conceptualized as a means of breaking the cycle of dependency that had linked the economies of Eastern Europe to the core of the capitalist world economy before World War II. One place to begin an analysis of collectivization within a theoretical framework is to examine the arguments advanced to explain the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
