Sozialismus als bäuerliche Zukunft

Ideologische Grundlagen des linken Agrarismus in Jugoslawien in der Zwischenkriegszeit

Abstract

The article focuses on the Serbian Union of Agriculturists and adds an additional dimension to the available typology of Agrarianism. The Union’s doctrine represented a distinct agrarian-socialist outlook which was particularly strong in South Eastern Europe. The incorporation of the ‘Group for social and cultural work’ around Dragoljub Jovanović decisively shaped the Union’s ideological profile. He brought in both the results of the social-democratic agrarian debate from the 1890s and the concept of the Russian social agronomist and neo-populist Alexander Chaianov. The intellectual contribution of Jovanović and his group was to draw attention to the social, economic and cultural conditions of the Yugoslav peasantry. In their treatises they avoided traditional tropes such as agro-romanticism and ethno-nationalism, as well as the customary socialist repertoire. Dragoljub Jovanović’s analysis and policy recommendations for the peasantry’s exit from their miserable condition makes him – along with the Romanian Virgil Madgearu – to an archetypical exponent of a south-east European Third Way between Capitalism and Communism.