ABSTRACT
The social structure of Eastern Europe more closely resembled that of Russia, or even of Asiatic countries, than that of France, Britain or Germany. The social and economic problems of the peasantry differed in the two types of society—the reformed and the unreformed—and deserve brief separate consideration. In Poland, in the pre-1918 Kingdom of Hungary, and in Rumania, big landowners were both politically and economically powerful. In Hungary their political independence was more restricted, but their economic position was, as also in Yugoslavia and Rumania, extremely favourable. In 1918 it was acquired by Rumania, and it was the turn of the Hungarians to be underdogs. For twenty years Transylvania was a bone of contention between Hungary and Rumania, whose relations with each other were continuously bad. The Jews were a most convenient scapegoat in Poland, Rumania and Hungary. The purpose of its foundation was to win over the people of the Rumanian and Russian borderlands to Rome.
