Authors

Discussion

With this paper, I assess the impact of land reform on state-society relations in the Baltics across the profound historical ruptures of the 20th century. It zooms in on the interaction between state and society by reconstructing the changing dynamics between subjectivities of political leaders and expectations that ‘common people’ had of ‘their’ states. It lays out the different agendas behind agrarian reform, ranging from designs of national movements across the Stolypin reforms, German WW1-era colonisation plans, interwar land reform, Soviet expropriation and Nazi colonisation, post-1945 collectivisation, post-Cold War privatisation and the changes following EU accession. Using Joel Migdal’s ‘state-in-society’ approach, I will stress the importance of mediating actors and institutions, such as cooperatives, mid-tier officials, and grassroots movements. The chapter thus seeks to reveal what expectations towards land redistribution were articulated, how states responded to these, and how these responses fed back into societal expectations.