ТКЗС „Девети септември“ – с. Белцов: диалог между държава и собственици (1950–1958)
The “Deveti septemvri” labor cooperative farm in the village of Beltsov: a dialogue between state and landowners (1950–1958)

Summary/Abstract: Through the process of historical development and especially during a change of public formations, the issue of private property causes a different type of relations, conditionally called dialogue between the state and society, represented by the owners of land. A number of internal social conflicts result from this dialogue, caused during the imposing of the state economic norm. The aim of this article is to present a local model of this dialogue, described not only with the official processes of the creation of the type of structure, called Labor Cooperative Farm, but also with narratives of contemporary men that refl ect specific and controversial public adjustments. The chronological borders at the title correspond to the period from the establishment of the independent “Deveti Septemvri” Labor Cooperative Farm at the village of Beltsov in 1950 up to its influx into the united “Yantra” Labor Cooperative Farm – Tsenovo in the very beginning of 1959. The research is based on interviews, conducted during the ethnological fi eld work at the village of Beltsov, District of Rousse in June 2011 by a team of the Rousse Regional Museum of History, as well as on statistical and documental data from the Rousse State Archive. The new cooperative is a part of the nation-wide campaign of the state for the collectivization of agriculture, which began in 1950. The issue of the establishment of the Labor Cooperative Farm in Beltsov contains also the problem for the dialogue between the state and the peasants who did not want to become part of the new farm. The narratives of the interviewed confirm what the official historiography from the period of socialism calls „mistakes and perversions of the Party politics” with different examples and degrees. On the other side of the imaginary barricade within the context of the dialogue between state and peasants, are standing the people who sincerely believed in the advantages of the cooperative farm and were doing a great deal of effort for its stabilization and development. Collectivization as a process establishes a new type of „dialogical” form of relations between the peasants and the state, based on the conversation between two parties, but not between equals. If the dialogue aims not only to restructure property and its management, but also the change in adjustments of the people, only the first part has been fulfilled. The statistically representative character of the “Deveti Septemvri” Labor Cooperative Farm, as well as the memories of the people who stood on both sides of the barricade gives us the reason to think that the low-voiced indignation against the process of consolidation of Labor Cooperative Farms in 1958 is typical for most of the farms of this type, and the thesis of the official historiography of the period for the transformation of the “private-owner mentality” into “a socialist one” is unreasonable.

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