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ABSTRACT
Due to the moral stakes involved, current scholarship on modern expropriation tends to separate nineteenth-century takings, such as emancipation, from twentieth-century ones, such as Aryanization. This article reconnects Central European expropriations across the fin de siècle by demonstrating how emancipation in Hungary served as a model for later takings. The main subject of this analysis is a press debate in upper Hungary (today’s Slovakia) in 1896, roughly fifty years after the Hungarian emancipation and fifty years before the Holocaust and the building of the Soviet Bloc. I show how Christian Socials, Political Antisemites, and Social Democrats in 1896 repurposed emancipation to further their own desired expropriations. This was a critical inner logic of the practice: because the case for emancipation had been persuasive, it now served to legitimate new expropriations. I then demonstrate how emancipatory discourse over the next half century helped to fuel a series of new takings in the area, including land reform, Aryanization, and socialist nationalization. Thus, socially-beneficial takings contributed to later, often criminal ones. Considering that one result of this dynamic was genocide, it behooves scholars to take seriously these linkages.
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Notes
1 Michal Falťan, Cesta slovenského roľníctva k socializmu (Bratislava, 1954), 22, 26, 63, 156.
2 Jan Kuklík, Znárodněné Československo: Od znárodnění k privatizaci – státní zásahy do vlastnických a dalších majetkových práv v Československu a jinde v Evropě (Prague, 2010), 8, 207, 422–3, 426.
3 I define expropriation as an ideal type framed by the target and method of taking. Through expropriation, states aim at one of three overlapping targets: the owned, owners, or what connects the two, ownership. The method of taking, meanwhile, ranges from a regularized element of property regimes to a radical break with them. The following graph illustrates how these two spectrums align with my understanding of expropriation:
On the right side of the graph lie seizures that are mainly interested in the utility of the owned, regardless of who owns it. These takings also seek to defend the legitimacy of the property regime by following established rules on when and how the state can despoil – for example, land seized to build a railroad, an action that follows due process and compensates the dispossessed. I think of this kind of seizure as eminent domain. On the left side of the graph, in contrast, is taking that targets owners, despoiling their property regardless of its utility, and doing so by disrupting the property regime. The purpose often is to disempower the owners or to cleanse them from the body politic. For instance, Aryanization despoiled even impoverished Jews whose property was often a liability for the state. Instead of seeking to safeguard the legitimacy of the status quo for property relations, the aim was to create a new status quo in which Jews were excluded from ownership. I do not consider the issue of compensation as relevant for including or excluding takings from the category of expropriation, viewing compensation instead as a legitimation tactic.
4 David Brandenberger and Mikhail Zelenov, eds., Stalin’s Master Narrative: A Critical Edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (New Haven, 2019), 99, 385, 417, 548, 619.
5 Holly Case, The Age of Questions (Princeton, 2018), 78. See also Ian Kershaw, Hitler: A Biography (New York, 2008), 37, 181–2.
6 Kuklík, Znárodněné Československo, 17–32.
7 See, for instance, Sean McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks (New Haven, 2009); Martin Dean, Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (Cambridge, 2008). Few works among the massive legal literature on confiscation concern themselves with its general history. For exceptions, see Jean-Louis Harouel, Histoire de l’expropriation (Paris, 2000); Jean Bodin Society, L’expropriation, 2e partie, Moyen Âge et temps modernes (Brussels, 2000); Richard A. Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge, 1985). Susan Reynolds’s useful Before Eminent Domain: Towards a History of Expropriation of Land for the Common Good (Chapel Hill, 2010) finishes before 1789. Such works favour what I have defined as eminent domain rather than expropriation. One finds a similar lack of interest in expropriation in comparative work on revolution or genocide, such as Charles Tilly’s European Revolutions, 1492–1992 (Oxford, 1993). Richard Pipes’s Property and Freedom (New York, 2000) is a general history of property in Russia that is interested in expropriation, but the work is undermined by a conservative agenda and disinterest in nineteenth-century confiscations.
8 Gábor Kádár and Zoltán Vági, Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train, the Becher Case and the Wealth of Hungarian Jews (Budapest, 2001); Gail Kligman, Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962 (Princeton, 2011); Constantin Iordachi and Arnd Bauerkämper, eds., The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparison and Entanglements (Budapest, 2014); Hannes Siegrist and Dietmar Müller, eds., Property in East Central Europe: Notions, Institutions and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2015); Dietmar Müller and Angela Harre, eds., Transforming Rural Societies: Agrarian Property and Agrarianism in East Central Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Innsbruck, 2011). There are also valuable overviews on nineteenth-century takings, although it is rarely framed as expropriation. See especially Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 2003); Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton, 1978).
9 See also Jan Kulík et al., Konfiskace, pozemkové reformy a vyvlastnění v československých dějinách 20. Století (Prague, 2011). Although this collection covers confiscations during the Thirty Years War, the analysis then skips to the twentieth century.
10 A recent history of the Sudetenland, for instance, typically traces the history of confiscation only to the First World War. Otherwise, ‘plunder and expropriation were common features of warfare stretching back centuries.’ David W. Gerlach, The Economy of Ethnic Cleansing: The Transformation of the German-Czech Borderlands after World War II (Cambridge, 2017), 105. An exception to this disconnect between nineteenth- and twentieth-century expropriations is Ekaterina Pravilova, A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia (Princeton, 2014), which links a liberal project to build a public domain in Russia with the Bolshevik experiment. This critical connection, however, is but an epilogue to her story. Pravilova also focuses mainly on what I have termed eminent domain. A few works on other subjects than expropriation tangentially take the longer view that I seek. See, for instance, Joseph Held, ed., The Modernization of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hungary, 1848–1975 (Boulder, 1980). Holly Case’s The Age of Questions brilliantly links emancipation to a twentieth-century desire, born of frustration, for final solutions. The ‘dark side of emancipation’ that she presents, however, includes ‘military invasion, occupation, expulsion, … forced annexation’, and genocide, but not expropriation. Case, Age of Questions, 101, 130.
11 Ibid., 101.
12 I am inspired here by Lynn Hunt, who has argued that the tendency of human rights to expand was due to an inner logic: if you grant them to one group, another can claim them. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights (New York, 2008), 146–75, especially 150.
13 Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna (New York, 1981).
14 Rolf Fischer, Entwicklungsstufen des Antisemitismus in Ungarn 1867–1939: Die Zerstörung der magyarisch-jüdischen Symbiose (München, 1988), 64.
15 Ibid., 59, 77; Paul A. Hanebrink, In Defence of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (Ithaca, 2006), 31; Michal Potemra, Bibliografia inorečových novín a časopisov na Slovensku do roku 1918 (Martin, 1963), 85.
16 Thomas Lorman, The Making of the Slovak People’s Party: Religion, Nationalism and the Culture War in Early 20th-Century Europe (London, 2019), 58–64.
17 S. Vincze Edit, ‘A Népszava történetéhez (1889–1896)’, Magyar könyvszemle 77 (1961): 164–5.
18 Kresťan, 26 April 1896, 2. See also Pressburger Tagblatt, 7 May 1896, 1.
19 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 14 March 1896, 1.
20 Cf. Petra Rybářová, Antisemitizmus v Uhorsku v 80. rokoch 19. Storočia (Bratislava, 2010), 54, and Pressburger Tagblatt, 17 April 1896, 1–2.
21 Pressburger Zeitung, 17 October 1896, 1.
22 Gábor Pajkossy, ‘Kossuth and the Emancipation of the Serfs’, in Lajos Kossuth Sent Word …: Papers Delivered on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of Kossuth’s Birth, ed. László Péter, Martyn Rady, and Peter Sherwood (London, 2003), 71–2, 79–80.
23 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 9 July 1896, 1.
24 Ibid., 13 August 1896, 1; 18 August 1896, 2.
25 Kresťan, 19 April 1896, 2. Italics in original.
26 Pressburger Tagblatt, 19 December 1896, 2.
27 Kresťan, 5 April 1896, 5.
28 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 13 September 1896, 1–2.
29 Ibid., 12 May 1896, 1.
30 Pressburger Tagblatt, 9 November 1896, 1.
31 Kresťan, 19 April 1896, 3; 8 November 1896, 1.
32 Pressburger Tagblatt, 23 October 1896, 1.
33 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 27 February 1896, 1.
34 The antisemitic conflation of Jews with nobility was made easier by the unusual success of the Jewish capitalist elite in Hungary at gaining noble titles. Intermarriage between these families and the nobility was also common. At the same time, according to William O. McCagg Jr., ‘if any nationality group won a disproportionate number of new nobilities [during the Dualistic Era], it was the Germans … .’ William O. McCagg Jr., Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (Boulder, 1972), 36–7, 130.
35 Kresťan, 12 April 1896, 6–7; 23 August 1896, 2.
36 Pressburger Tagblatt, 9 November 1896, 2; Kresťan, 13 September 1896, 8; 22 March 1896, 8. See also András Gerő, Modern Hungarian Society in the Making: The Unfinished Experience (Budapest, 1993), 118.
37 Pressburger Tagblatt, 19 July 1896, 1; Pressburger Zeitung, 23 July 1896, 3.
38 Pressburger Tagblatt, 11 October 1896, 1–2.
39 See note 27 above.
40 Jewish usury in Hungary was a result of insufficient capital and Jews being channelled into finance and commerce by limitations on other employment. Even then, ‘usury’ is a problematic term, as interest rates in general were high for a variety of reasons. Antal Voros, ‘The Age of Preparation: Hungarian Agrarian Conditions between 1848–1914’, in The Modernization of Agriculture, ed. Joseph Held, 46–49, 58–9.
41 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 11 January 1896, 2; 12 January 1896, 1; 15 January 1896, 1.
42 Ibid., 10 January 1896, 1. See also Jacob Katz, ‘A State within a State: The History of an Antisemitic Slogan’, in Zur Assimilation und Emanzipation der Juden, ed. Jacob Katz (Darmstadt, 1982), 124–53.
43 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 15 January 1896, 2. See also ibid., 12 January 1896, 1; 15 January 1896, 1; 11 March 1896, 1.
44 Kresťan, 29 March 1896, 6; 5 April 1896, 4; 19 April 1896, 7.
45 Ibid., 22 March 1896, 5; W. R. Jones, ‘Palladism and the Papacy: An Episode of French Anticlericalism in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Church and State 12 (1970): 453–73.
46 Kresťan, 5 April 1896, 4.
47 Ibid., 19 January 1896, 4; 24 May 1896, 3; Westungarischer Grenzbote, 19 June 1896, 1–2; 4 December 1896, 1; Pressburger Tagblatt, 10 May 1896, 2; 26 July 1896, 2. See also Lorman, Making of the Slovak People’s Party, 35–7, 46–9.
48 James F. Harris, The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria (Ann Arbor, 1994), 142.
49 Kresťan, 13 September 1896, 8.
50 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 10 January 1896, 1; 2 February 1896, 1.
51 Kresťan, 6 September 1896, 2. See also Robert W. Gray, ‘Bringing the Law Back In: Land, Law and the Hungarian Peasantry before 1848’, Slavonic and East European Review 91 (2013): 516.
52 Andrew C. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton, 1982), 120.
53 ‘A Magyar Szent Korona Országainak 1910. evi népszámlálása, negyedik rész’, Magyar statisztikai közlemények, új sorozat, 56. (1915): 453.
54 Ferenc Fodor, ‘A magyarországi országgyűlési képviselőválasztási kerületek térképei 1861–1915-ig’, mpgy.ogyk.hu/mpgy/valasztasiterkep/;Westungarischer Grenzbote, 2 February 1896, 1.
55 Harris, The People Speak, 57.
56 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 8 July 1896, 1–2; 10 July 1896, 1; 21 July 1896, 2. The 8 July (and perhaps 10 July) article was by an anonymous guest columnist who, according to an editorial note, ‘with the exception of the Agrarian Program, stood closer to Néppárt than to the Grenzbote.’ For foreclosure as ‘expropriation’, see ibid., 23 May 1896, 1.
57 Ibid., 5 May 1896, 1. Students of Marx, of course, will recognize here an echo of his claim that the shift from capitalism to socialism was just a matter of ‘the expropriators [being] expropriated.’ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 35, Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London, 1996), 750.
58 Pressburger Tagblatt, 4 June 1896, 1; 6 June 1896, 1.
59 Westungarischer Grenzbote, 10 January 1896, 1; 2 February 1896, 1.
60 Ibid., 21 July 1896, 2.
61 Kresťan, 19 January 1896, 4; 17 May 1896, 4; 13 September 1896, 9.
62 Pressburger Tagblatt, 27 June 1896, 2; Kresťan, 26 April 1896, 2; Westungarischer Grenzbote, 5 May 1896, 1.
63 Westungarische Volks-Zeitung, 5 April 1896, 1; 12 April 1896, 1; 3 May 1896, 1; 14 June 1896, 1; 21 June 1896, 1.
64 Népszava, 4 January 1896, 1; 24 October 1896, 1; Volksstimme (Népszava supplement), 9 August 1896, 1; 14 December 1896, 1.
65 Pressburger Zeitung, 29 March 1896, 2.
66 Westungarische Volks-Zeitung, 7 June 1896, 1–2; Népszava, 24 October 1896, 1–2.
67 Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York, 1971), 132.
68 Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (London, 2015), 16, 23, 28, 46, 49, 79, 117, 141.
69 Hans-Joachim Lieber, ed., Karl Marx: Werk, Schriften (Darmstadt, 2013), 2:833–4, 841.
70 The following discussion is drawn from two chapters of my larger research project that cover expropriations in 1918–20 in Komárno, Slovakia/Komárom, Hungary, and in 1938–48 in Nitra, Slovakia.
71 Společná česko-slovenská digitální parlamentní knihovna, 1918–20 Národní shromáždění, stenoprotokoly, schůze 46 (16 April 1919), 5, 11. Access at www.psp.cz/eknih/index.htm.
72 John Bátki, ed., Krúdy’s Chronicles: Turn-of-the-Century Hungary in Gyula Krúdy’s Journalism (Budapest, 2000), 232. See also Mihály Károlyi, Memoirs of Michael Karolyi: Faith without Illusion (New York, 1957), 13.
73 Henrik Vass and György Borsányi, eds., Szocialista forradalom Magyarországon (Budapest, 1979), 21–2.
74 James Mace Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia (Ithaca, 2013), 43.
75 Nitrianska stráž, 26 May 1940, 1; 21 July 1940, 2; 11 August 1940, 1; 22 September 1940, 1; 22 December 1940, 1.
76 Martina Fiamová, ‘Slovenská zem patrí do slovenských rúk’: Arizácia pozemkového vlastníctva židovského obyvateľstva na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1945 (Bratislava, 2015), 150.
77 Pravda, 13 May 1945, 1. Glassheim rightly connects the radicalization of Czechoslovak land reform to ‘familiar and popular’ anti-noble rhetoric but does not extend the link to emancipation. Glassheim, Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy (Cambridge MA., 2005), 212.
78 Pozemková reforma na Slovensku (Bratislava, 1947), 3.
79 See, for instance, Čas, 27 July 1945, 3; Pravda, 9 August 1945, 1.
80 Marta Vartíková, ed., Komunistická strana Slovenska: Dokumenty z konferencií a plén, 1944–1948 (Bratislava, 1971), 369, 404.
81 Ibid., 706, 709.
82 UN General Assembly, ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/eng.pdf.
83 Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (London, 1892), 79–80.
84 Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology (Cambridge, 2020), 1035. We see the persistence of emancipatory discourse also in American discussions on cancelling student debt (again, not my definition of modern expropriation and not a policy that I seek here to support or oppose). See, for instance, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (Harvard, 2021), 2–3. Astra Taylor, meanwhile, in The New York Times recently argued for cancelling not just student debt but also medical and rent debt by presenting these as institutional heirs of slavery, sharecropping, and tenant farming. She linked her proposal, in turn, to W.E.B. Du Bois’s ‘abolition democracy’ and (echoing the Grenzbote) to the Jubilee: ‘The Old Testament law commanding the end of slavery, redistribution of land and forgiveness of debts.’ See Astra Taylor, ‘Make American’s Crushing Debt Disappear’, The New York Times, 2 July 2021.