Abstract
The main research question of this article is as follows: What was the impact on the protest potential of peasants and farmers in the analyzed periods of the relations between the structure of political opportunity and the way these social groups were organized? In the author’s opinion, the impact was indirect, although it remodelled the organizational aspects of how the peasant and farmer movement functioned: from organizations in the form of political parties, through trade unions in the period of state socialism, up to producers’ organizations in contemporary Poland. It must be added, however, that the key factor responsible for these changes in the organizational background of the peasantry was changes within those social groups themselves: firstly, the empowerment of the peasantry in the inter-war period, the professionalization of farmers during state socialism, and the marketization of their activity after 1989.
Introduction
Until the first half of the twentieth century, analyses concerning peasant protest activity were mostly taken as part of more general discussions of social movements. This was basically the result of scholars adopting the view that peasants were not able to affect the broader course of events or even their own situation.
Currently, the theoretical framework used in analyses of farmer protests is much broader than the one proposed, for example, by Barrington Moore and other researchers in formulating theories to explain peasant protest activity. 1 The theories developed by these researchers can be regarded as classic today, but they are still somewhat limited in how they can be applied to farmers’ protest activities. It seems the reasons for this are twofold. First, farmers are currently (at least in developed countries) the owners of the land and their workplaces. Second, in developed countries, farmers now constitute a professional category and are usually associated with trade unions. The task of these institutions is to protect the interests of this social category.
I propose to invoke the political process model and in this frame the concept of political opportunity structure as the most suitable to analyze peasants’ and farmers’ protests in Poland over the last (approximately) one hundred years. 2 This demand is based on several premises related both the advantages and limitations of the above-mentioned approach, the latter of which especially I would like to emphasize in this article. First of all, within such a long period, we can see the dynamics of factors promoting the initiation or limitation of protest activities and the variability of the specific background for the activities. Such indicators are part of the above-mentioned theory. Second, peasants’ and farmers’ protests were indeed political activities: on the one hand, they were an example of non-institutional activity, and on the other, they can be regarded as an alternative expression of mobilization of civic society. Third, in the historical perspective outlined above, dating back to the inter-war period, we can identify three basic, different types of conditions or environments for the protest activities of these social categories in Poland: the inter-war period (1918–1939), the period of real socialism (1945–1989), and the period of the Third Republic of Poland, lasting from 1989 until now.
However, a closer look at the political systems in each of these periods reveals corrections made to the structure of political opportunities. This was the case in 1926, when parliamentary democracy in Poland gave way to authoritarian solutions. In 1956, the totalitarian system was abandoned and the socialist system gradually liberalized. Similarly, the year 2004 and Poland’s membership in the European Union, although it did not transform the system of liberal democracy in Poland (rather, it strengthened it), had a significant impact on the economic situation of farmers and their protest capabilities. These arguments indicate that it would be justified to distinguish not three, but six, periods of analysis. Being aware of the existence of the mentioned corrections within the structure of political opportunities in each of the political systems analyzed, I have decided, however, in order to maintain the clarity of my argument, to conduct considerations in relation to the three periods originally singled out, while taking into account the internal dynamics of each of the political regimes in power at the time.
Fourth, the involvement in the analysis of peasant and farmers protests of the concept of structure of political opportunities is also intended to show not only its possibilities but also its limitations. In this context, I pose the main question: What was the impact on the protest potential of peasants and farmers of the relations between the structure of political opportunity and the way these social groups were organized?
It seems that the impact of the structure of political opportunities on the organizational form of peasants and farmers was indirect, and it consisted in remodeling the organizational aspects of how the peasant and farmer movement functioned: from organizations in the form of political parties, through trade unions in the period of state socialism, up to producers’ organizations in contemporary Poland.
The key factor responsible for these transformations of the organizational background of the peasantry, and in later years, farmers and agricultural producers, was changes within those social groups themselves—first and foremost being the empowerment of peasantry in the interwar period, the professionalization of farmers in the time of state socialism, and the marketization of their activities after 1989. These changes were significant enough to allow the category of farmers to make their protest activity independent, to some extent, of the limiting influence of the political opportunity structure. This structure played an indirect role in the processes mentioned above, in the sense that it had an impact at the most general level, enabling the modernization of agriculture, and thus organizational changes within the peasants and farmers strata, which increased their mobilization opportunities. This was the role of the political opportunity structure in stimulating the protest activity of selected categories of the rural population. Its positive impulses consisted in releasing the potential of changes, which included transformations of the organizational forms of peasants and farmers. When it happened, the importance of the political opportunity structure was not as great as might be expected, especially in the period of state socialism.
Thus, on the basis of a general overview, it can be assumed that the dependent variable (the organizational background of the agricultural protests) can be explained by the variability of the structure of political opportunities indirectly. It seems that modernization processes taking place inside and outside the peasants and farmers strata played a more important role in explaining variables (direct). This shows the proper role of the concept of the structure of political opportunities in explaining the cases analyzed here, at least in the context of the influence this structure could have had on the way both groups were organized.
This article first presents the analytical pattern based on the concept of political opportunity structure. Then, the three periods of peasants’ and farmers’ protests in Poland will be analyzed, along with the changes taking place in each of them within the political opportunity structure.
Another issue discussed in the article will be the process of changes in the organizational background of peasants’ and farmers’ movements.
Political Opportunity Structure
One of the main characteristics of the concept of political opportunity structure is that it treats social movements and protests as political activities. This is partially the result of the assumption made by Charles Tilly that the development of social movements is closely connected with the development of nation states and, therefore, should be studied in close association with politics. 3 The original version of this concept was proposed by Tilly in the 1970s, 4 and then later emphasized by Doug McAdam, who provided a stimulus for further research and creative development of the concept. 5 This development has been going in two directions: one emphasizes the less tangible aspects of the opportunity structure, concerning changes in institutionalized politics (among others, the concept of protest cycles by Sidney Tarrow), and the other, based on the analyses of more stable aspects of political opportunity, involving comparative cross-country studies of social movements and protests. According to Marco Giugni, the first focused more on the “opportunities,” and the second focused on the “structure.” 6
The central term of the concept is obviously the “opportunity structure,” which Sidney Tarrow defined as “consistent—but not necessarily formal, permanent, or national—sets of clues that encourage people to engage in contentious politics.” 7 It refers to selected aspects of the political system that are important in mobilizing people to participate in joint protest activities. Basically, four aspects can be identified. The first one is the degree of openness of the institutionalized political system, that is, the way of organizing the system in accordance with more or less democratic or non-democratic rules, which affects the scope of civic liberties within the system. The second one is the stability of broadly understood elites that make up the political community, that is, the extent to which they are consolidated or fragmented. The third aspect is the presence or absence of alliances within the elites, and the fourth is the state’s relative inclination and ability to inflict punishments. 8 The understanding of the political opportunity structure developed by McAdam on the basis of works by other authors (Brockett, Rucht, Tarrow, Kriesi, and others) is the main theoretical pattern used in this article to analyze peasants’ and farmers’ protest activities in Poland.
Obviously, this concept is not free from more or less sophisticated critique. To present it in detail is beyond the scope of this article, yet its basic message can be summarized in the form of several arguments. First, the concept of political opportunity structure is vast and includes, in an unlimited way, all aspects of the functioning of social movements. 9 Second, the problem is which variables we should use in reference to specific aspects of the functioning of a social movement so as to avoid terminological ambiguities. 10 Third, the most radical critique of the core of political process theory was formulated by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper. In their view, the theory is erroneous and irrelevant to the study of social movements. “At best, PPT in its current form provides a helpful albeit limited set of ‘sensitizing concepts’ for social movement research.” 11
Opposition to political process theory, and particularly, the concept of political opportunity structure, has led to various modifications of the classic conceptual form. The concept has been modernized in four ways. 12 They emphasize different aspects of the opportunity structure that have not been taken into consideration thus far. These are (1) the cultural opportunities for mobilization; (2) the contextual character of mobilization relativized to the particular case under analysis; and (3) the awareness and perception of the opportunity structure without which objective opportunities can be overlooked or ignored by the protesters. The fourth kind of modernization, developed by Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow, and Doug McAdam, proposes a departure from objectively existing and static political opportunities in favor of processes and mechanisms initiating social mobilization. In other words, this approach proposes a departure from the previous classic, static attitude, to adopt a dynamic approach to the factors promoting mobilization.
An exemplification of the criticism of the concept of the political opportunity structure is, among others, the proposals of several selected authors presented here, which justify the hypothesis of a limited influence of the political opportunity structure on the protest activity of peasants and farmers in Poland.
A kind of critique of the absolute role of the political opportunity structure is presented by Christopher C. Rootes, when analyzing Kitschel’s research on West Germany. As he says, "but those instances of closure were essentially contingent upon the political strategies and tactics of other political actors rather than effects of structures. Moreover, the strategies and tactics of the governments and other political actors whom social movement actors opposed were themselves conjunctural rather than structurally determined." 13 In this perspective, the political opportunity structure is therefore something dynamic rather than static.
Francesca Polletta adds new elements to analyses using the concept of the political opportunity structure, and political process theory more broadly. She focuses on the role played by cultural factors in shaping the political opportunity structure. "Finally, all of these factors (traditions, principles, codes - G.F.) operate in the sphere of institutional politics. To take culture into account does not detract from the importance of, and a focus on, political structures and processes in generating opportunities. Rather, it recognizes the cultural dimensions of political structures.” 14
Jack M. Bloom’s reflections are an interesting attempt to show the mutual relations between the state, protesters and the political opportunity structure. This researcher, on the basis of his analysis of the relationship between the workers’ trade union Solidarity and the Polish socialist state in the 1980s, concludes that the political opportunity structure is not only determined by the actions of protesters, it is also determined by the contesters, as exemplified by the group of reformers in the Communist Party in the early 1980s, a manifestation of the breakdown of the monolithic Communist power elite. "So, whether it is called ’political opportunity structure’ or something else, what is crucial is that the collective actor must respond to conditions it does not control; each player affects the other. To take one example: differences among elites are said to be important in enabling the movement to achieve its goals. When elites are not divided, it is considerably more difficult to challenge them than when elements of the elite are potentially available to support the social movement.” 15 The division within the communist party emerged as a positive response to the emergence of Solidarity, weakened the state in its fight against Solidarity, and delayed the closure of the political opportunity structure through the imposition of martial law in 1981. "Had the party been monolithic, it would much sooner and more easily have been able to oppose and possibly cripple the movement that produced Solidarity." 16 In other words, the social movement gained influence over the structure of political possibilities. "In effect, for a time, Solidarity limited the political opportunity structure of the state, while the reverse was also true." 17
Important findings have also been made by researchers focusing on the relationship between the political opportunity structure and the organizational base of social movements. As McAdam writes, “In such cases, long-term socioeconomic changes serve simply to elevate the group in question to a position of increased political strength without necessarily undermining the structural basis of the entire political establishment.” 18 During the period of real socialism, however, the opposite occurred, that is, the gradual undermining not only of the establishment but also, in the long term, of the entire political system.
What we have been dealing with in each of the periods discussed here is also confirmed by the observations formulated by Oberschall on the basis of his version of resource mobilization theory. He states that the internal structure of a group of discontented people, in our case farmers, provides the organizational base through which collective action and, in the long run, the emergence of a social movement is possible. 19 As he writes, "mobilization does not occur through recruitment of large numbers of isolated and solitary individuals. It occurs as a result of recruiting blocs of people who are already highly organised and participants.” 20 In the inter-war years, the main organizational base was the class-based peasant party, during real socialism, especially in the second half of the 1970s, the agricultural trade unions, which then joined the mainstream protest and established the agricultural Solidarity, and after 1989 the organizational base was formed by agricultural trade unions and producers’ unions. All these organizational forms provided a solid foundation that allowed the peasant and agricultural movement not only to persist but also to have sufficient resources to challenge the political opportunity structure.
In general, however, researchers representing broader political process theory, and within it the concept of the political opportunity structure, have too often lost sight of the organizational background of protesters. They have nevertheless emphasized the role of organization in social movement activities and focused on organizations as components of movements, but "they generally do not investigate SMO features such as size or structure.” 21 It is also important to note that they have seen links between the size of the base of social movement organizations and their number and the variation in the political opportunity structure. As the research shows, it is possible, for example, for social movements to achieve their goals in the long term, even when the political opportunity structure is not conducive to this. These movements then sustain the strategy, but modify the tactics adopted to maintain their effectiveness. 22
Another way of overcoming the limitations of the “domestic” political opportunity structure, as it were, is to take advantage of new political opportunities arising from the chance to exist in a global environment. "In the early 1990s changes in the international realm provided activists new opportunities and frameworks that allowed them to overcome steep domestic organizational barriers and participate in new activities focused on global environmental issues.” 23 In our case, these kinds of circumstances can possibly be taken into account for the analysis of farmers’ protest activities in the twenty-first century, especially in the context of Poland’s European Union membership.
To sum up, the concept of political opportunity structure has mostly descriptive and explanatory value with reference to analyses covering relatively long historical periods. The same applies to using it in comparative analyses concerning political opportunity structures of different political systems. In the case of peasants’ and farmers’ protests in Poland, which are the object of discussion here, both situations apply. Despite the undoubted exploratory potential of the concept of the political opportunity structure, however, my main emphasis will be on adding new elements to the innovations addressed to the concept outlined above.
Political Opportunity Structure and Peasants’ and Farmers’ Protests in Poland
In order to characterize the political opportunity structure occurring in the political system in Poland in each of the periods analyzed, it is worth using the model proposed by McAdam. The main advantage of the model is that it is a kind of synthesis of proposals from several other scholars. The characterization will refer to the four above-mentioned aspects of the political system that were decisive for the political opportunity structure.
The inter-war period in Poland can be divided into two shorter periods with different political conditions. The first of them lasted until 1926, when the Polish state was restored after one hundred twenty-three years of annexation, and the second, in the years 1926–1939, after the so-called May Coup, 24 with the authoritarian system being gradually implemented, which led to the adoption of a new constitution in April 1935, sanctioning nondemocratic solutions. It replaced the so-called March constitution of 1921, inspired by the French one. The first of these periods was characterized by pluralism and the presence of numerous political parties representing all the mainstream political tendencies. After 1926, however, a relatively permanent division of the political scene occurred between two political forces: one encompassing the pro-democratic center and left-wing parties, and the other being the camp of Piłsudski’s supporters, 25 who aimed to maintain the dictatorship of Józef Piłsudski. Using language taken from the concept of the structure of political opportunities, it must be concluded that there was a shift from an open to a closed political system. The stability of political elites evolved from a relatively low status in the first half of the 1920s, when there were many political parties, some of them existing for only a short time, up to a relatively high status after the May Coup, when a lasting division was established between Piłsudski’s camp and its pro-democratic opposition. These facts also determined the presence or absence of alliances within political elites. In the first period, cooperation between parties was common and often involved parties with extremely different political programs, on the other hand, in the 1930s, it clearly reflected the division between the ruling camp and the democratic opposition. The respect for civil rights, guaranteed in the democratic constitution of 1921, ended in the 1930s. The authorities’ persecution of, and intense punishments inflicted on, their political opponents were a permanent element of political competition from the late 1920s until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Political opponents were punished in prison and forced to go into exile. Rural activists were also forced to emigrate. A symbol of this repression was a camp for political prisoners in Bereza Kartuska. It is worth adding that peasant parties were among the first political parties in Poland in the modern sense. They constituted a real political representation for this social category. It should be emphasized that they fought not only for the realization of the political and economic interests of peasants but also for the recognition of peasants as a permanent component of the Polish nation, of which they themselves became a confirming manifestation.
In the period of real socialism, that is, from the end of World War II, the political system gradually became more closed. Even before the war had ended, in 1944, the Communist authorities implemented a policy of punishments and eliminating political opponents in that part of Poland liberated by the Soviet army. The workers’ party gained the monopoly of exercising power on the basis of an extensive system of punishments. In that period, Poland was neither independent nor democratic. This was connected, for example, with a failure to respect civic rights, a lack of political pluralism or judicial independence, and the everyday surveillance of citizens. It can be said that by the end of the 1940s the foundations of the socialist system in Poland had been formed, and the pre-war political parties were still functioning. Afterward, the ruling political elite consolidated, which was reflected in the dominance of the PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party) 26 in the party system and two parties dependent on it, ZSL (People’s Alliance) 27 and SD (Democratic Party). 28 Despite the existence of the Peasant Party (ZSL), in fact it represented the interests of the social category only to the extent that they were in line with official doctrine, which aimed to unify the structures and mechanisms of agriculture with the rest of the economy. In practice, this meant collectivization and the creation of state agriculture. Bearing in mind that, despite the state’s pressure, 75 percent of cultivated land in Poland remained in the hands of private farmers during the socialist period, one can formulate a thesis that farmers were not represented in the form of a political party in the sense in which this took place in the inter-war period.
One breakthrough was the year 1956, which is the boundary year between the two aforementioned sub-periods under real socialism. The main difference was the gradual liberalization of the socialist system after 1956. At that time, there was a limited opening of the political system and the methods of repression against society and political opponents were relaxed. The socialist system was at work until 1989, strengthening the imposed alliance within the political elites. During that period, Poland was at first a totalitarian country, and after 1956 authoritarian, so the rulers’ inclination to inflict punishment on citizens, especially those who did not accept the existing social, political, and economic order, was very high. The system was counterbalanced by the free opposition, whose most mature representative was the social movement “Solidarność” [Solidarity] established in 1980.
In Poland, the Communist system collapsed in 1989. The ensuing modernization processes first occurred in the economic and political systems. They also resulted in the opening of the political system, the gradual restoration of all the democratic institutions, as well as an extension of (and first of all, respect for) civic rights. The 1990s was a decade of building the foundations of democracy, reflected in the adoption of a new, democratic constitution in 1997. Despite the high fragmentation of the party system in the 1990s, the parliamentary-cabinet system forced the establishment of various cross-party alliances. The broadly understood political elite could be regarded as stable, although it was divided into post-Communist and post-Solidarity parts. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, however, this division was no longer as important as in the 1990s. Unlike previous periods, the state did not display a strong inclination to inflict punishment on protesters. The right to protest was and is legally guaranteed, along with other civic rights. Although there are political parties representing the interests of the rural population, with the dominant position held by the Polish Peasant’s Party, they do not have a monopoly on representing farmers’ interests. Rural residents often support other political parties, and farmers themselves most often consider producer associations and trade unions to represent their interests. This state of affairs has become established, especially since Poland’s accession to the EU. Farmers, who gained significant financial support, used it to enlarge and modernize their farms. More importantly, they have transformed themselves from farmers into agricultural producers.
As a summary, it can be concluded that given the properties of the political opportunity structure, the best period for protest activity in Poland was the time after 1989 (Table 1). Then, protest activity became one of the ways of civic participation in the still poorly developed (at least from the classic point of view) civic community.
Political Opportunity Structure in Poland in Selected Historical Periods and Organizational Frames of Farmer’s Protest.
Source: Own study.
Peasants’ and Farmers’ Protest Activity in Poland
Discussion in this subchapter will be conducted in a chronological manner, taking into account three aspects related to the position and contestation activity of the social category analyzed here, that is, the position of peasants and farmers in the social structure, factors responsible for their mobilization in a given period, and contestation activities of these social categories.
In the inter-war period, the rural population constituted 73 percent of the total Polish population, and peasants 55 percent. The location of the latter was determined primarily by the fragmentation of farms and the unfavorable structure of their size. The farmers, who managed more than half of them, were not able to support their families. The average size of a farm in the inter-war period was about 5 ha. At the dawn of independence in November 1918, there was already a great wave of rural protests caused by the poor economic situation of the peasants. 29 The issue of agricultural reform was a constant political problem during the inter-war period in Poland. Despite the implementation of subsequent reforms in 1919, 1921, and 1925, it was not possible to fundamentally improve the structure of farm size, and even less so to eliminate the existing "hunger" for land. From the point of view of mobilization processes, the following factors also played an important role: first, overpopulation in rural areas, which could not be eliminated by the exceedingly low intensity of modernization processes and slowly developing industry; and second, regional differences resulting from historical conditions (diversity of the economies in the areas formerly ruled by the three partitioning powers). As a consequence, large farms and intensive farming dominated in the west, while in central Poland and in the south, Galicia, 30 there was a significant overpopulation of villages, combined with the domination of dwarf and fragmented farms. Third, peasants in the inter-war period were a layer that was only just gaining political subjectivity and becoming an equal component of the nation.
In the inter-war period, the peasant masses were undergoing intensive emancipation. The main part in that process was played by peasants’ organizations, especially political parties. Thanks to them, peasants had their own political representation in parliament, so they were fully-fledged participants in institutionalized politics. This had an influence on the level of their protest activity, which was moderate in the whole inter-war period. It seems that political representation at the level of state politics on the one hand limited the non-parliamentary forms of pressure and, on the other, at the moment of increase in mobilization, peasant political parties served as the organizational background for protesters, and often even organized the protests.
A significant change in the peasants’ protest activity was brought about by the 1930s. Two factors played an important role here. First was the restriction of democracy and the position of peasant political parties on the side of the opposition to power. This intensified the course of the state towards various protest activities of this part of society, among others. The second factor was the effect of the Great Depression of the late 1920s, which in Poland lasted until the mid-1930s. On the one hand, therefore, we had to deal with the closing of the structure of political opportunities and, on the other, with the overlap of negative economic circumstances. One consequence of this state of affairs was the involvement of the then largest peasant party (the People’s Party) in nonparliamentary activities in the form of organizing peasant strikes, primarily in Galicia. As we can see, the economic factor is clearly present in this period, as in subsequent ones. It plays the role of a kind of fuse for contestation activities.
The People’s Party increased its activities from 1933, when the unification congress of peasant organizations under the aegis of the party took place. From that time on, it sustained the peasantry’s mobilization abilities thanks to its extensive structures throughout the country. This encouraged peasants to gather at spontaneous rallies and on the occasion of state and popular holidays, which caused a radical reaction of the state apparatus and mass arrests of peasants. An important reason for the peasant uprisings in the first half of the thirties was the action of land consolidation and land reclamation. It was not that the peasants opposed them, but that they were unable to bear the costs of these measures. Between 1930 and 1935, sixty-five peasant protests were recorded against this background. 31
The symbol of peasant struggle in the inter-war years was the Great Peasant Strike, headed by the People’s Party. It lasted from 16 to 25 August 1937 and was joined by several million peasants in revolt. It was the largest peasant protest action in the history of Poland and one of the largest in the world at that time. The direct causes of the strike were connected with the tragic situation of the rural population, economic crisis, and political chaos. These actions were inspired by the decision of the leadership of the People’s Party, supported by an appeal from the peasant leader, former Prime Minister Wincenty Witos, who was at that time living in exile in Czechoslovakia. Ten of sixteen provinces were on strike, and in the largest Polish cities workers organized solidarity strikes.
The actions of the protesters mostly involved blocking roads, refusing food supplies to towns, and not buying any goods for ten days. One hundred eighty-eight assemblies were also noted. As a result of pacification measures by the state, forty-four peasants died, five thousand were arrested, and more than six hundred were convicted by the courts. The main demands concerned economic matters, especially completion of the agrarian reform, profitability of production, and prices of agricultural goods, but there were also significant political postulates: to restore the democratic constitution of 1921 and democratic parliamentary elections, or to make Piłsudski’s supporters resign from exercising power. It is clear that the protesters’ goals were far beyond their particular interests and referred to general social issues. This reflected the growing empowerment of peasants in Polish society. To some extent, it was an indicator of sorts of the peasantry’s political power as represented by peasant political parties.
Although the peasant strike was the greatest example of mobilization and its scale was beyond compare in the whole inter-war period, it was not fully representative of the peasant protests of that time. In order to reconstruct the real image of those protests, it must be added that the main mobilization factor for peasants at the time was economic issues, and the main area of protest activity was the territory of Galicia. The range of protest activities they used mostly imitated the respective activities of the working class and included rallies, strikes, demonstrations, and marches. The dominant role in organizing them was played by peasant political parties and the leaders of the people’s movement.
The role of the political opportunity structure manifested itself during this period in the following ways. First, it was subject to gradual closure, and thus limited the possibilities for initiating contestation activities. Second, and most importantly, it blocked structural changes within the peasantry and within agriculture (the lack of a satisfactory land reform), which generated not only peasant dissatisfaction, but above all worsened their economic position. As a consequence, especially in the 1930s, peasant protests periodically assumed a mass character, no matter how closed the political opportunity structure was. We see here, therefore, the primary role of economic factors in initiating protests rather than the political opportunity structure.
In the period of state socialism, peasants’ protests were somewhat different. The Polish rural areas entered a new political reality after World War II with problems inherited from the inter-war period, such as “hunger” for land and overpopulation. Another danger for the peasantry was the implementation of the basic economic assumptions of state socialism in rural areas and in agriculture. The Polish economy was expected to adopt the party/state model whose main characteristic was the socialization of the means of production. That was directly dangerous for private ownership in farming. This issue was an important source of conflict in the state–peasant relationship until 1956, when the state gave up on forced collectivization. Then, the mandatory supplies of produce (only abolished in 1972) remained the main problematic issue. It should be added that the share of peasants in the socio-occupational structure was declining, which was mainly due to the process of industrialization; in 1950 it amounted to 47.2 percent and in 1970 it was 29.8 percent. 32 Moreover, state policy toward agriculture led to a halt in the structural transformation of the peasant economy, which enabled stagnant forms of farming to survive, but above all, it slowed down the process of internal differentiation of the peasantry and rooted a sense of unity in it during socialism. The first cause of common peasant resistance was collectivization, pushed hard between 1948 and 1956. 33
The year 1956 was also a breakthrough year due to the political "thaw" and associated slight liberalization of the socialist political system. This does not mean that peasants gave up their protest activities. Before 1956, there were relatively numerous revolts in defense of private land ownership, against collectivization. In 1953 alone, 168 of them were recorded, but they were local and spontaneous in nature. The main method of opposition to the intentions of the socialist state was passive resistance. This consisted in ignoring orders to establish cooperatives; deliberate limiting of agricultural production; obscuring harvest yields, which was particularly annoying to the authorities in the shortage economy. In the period after 1956, up until the creation of Solidarity in 1980, manifestations of agricultural protest can be described by referring to James C. Scott 34 and his concept of a "hidden transcript.” Krzysztof Gorlach claims that the peasants’ resistance in the form of a hidden transcript was aimed at exerting unofficial pressure and various forms of corruption of local power and aimed at a specific taming of state socialism. 35 This type of resistance resulted primarily from the monocentric and oppressive nature of the socialist system in Poland. Gorlach perceives the mutual relations between the states and individual farmers—as they were known at that time because of their ownership of private land—as an example of "repressive tolerance.” 36 It meant, on the one hand, an attempt to subordinate agriculture to the centrally planned socialist economy while, on the other hand, the state tolerated the existence of private property in agriculture due to the food shortages faced by the citizenry under socialism. The unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the private sector in agriculture during the Stalinist period did not mean it enjoyed a smooth integration into the socialist economy, in which state ownership prevailed. Instead, the socialist economy was associated with state control over the size of private farms and subordination to local authorities. This limited their modernization and development, but allowed farmers to retain a sense of ownership.
The protest activities in that period directly concentrated on economic matters but in fact were political in nature, because they referred to one of the foundations of socialist economy: socialized ownership. As we can see, it was the principles of the new social, economic and political system that generated farmers’ protests, and the conflict was indeed systemic.
Agricultural mobilization changed significantly shortly before 1980. Passive resistance and the use of the hidden transcript strategy were complemented by measures of a more open nature. Increasingly negative social moods resulted in the establishment of agricultural opposition organizations. It is worth noting that these organizations represented the interests of various groups of farmers or, more broadly, people connected with agriculture. Internally diverse agricultural communities managed to unite and establish in March 1981 the most important oppositional farmers’ organization, the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union of Individual Farmers “Solidarność” 37 (estimated to have 0.8–1.2 million members), which was outlawed after martial law was imposed in December 1981. Many activists were imprisoned, but farmers did not suspend their activities. It is worth emphasizing here that a kind of unification of various groups of farmers under the banner of the agricultural Solidarity movement was an exemplification of a wider phenomenon characteristic of the socialist period. This was the feeling of constant threat from the state that accompanied farmers and consequently, as Gorlach says, the differences that emerged in the course of modernization within this social category were pushed aside. 38
The agricultural mobilization in the years 1980–1981 was oriented toward fighting the authorities for recognition and legalization of agricultural unions. During this period, three main types of protest activities by farmers dominated: 39 Occupation strikes, which were the most popular form of protest, modelled on workers’ activities; refusal to pay the land tax installment; takeover of land owned by the socialized sector. Comparatively less popular were underground activities, consisting of publishing the underground press, and meetings within the Farmers’ Pastoral Ministry.
The demands formulated by farmers at the time can be summarized as follows: (1) to ensure permanent and stable development of peasant economy by ensuring the means of production and the appropriate level of income from agriculture; (2) to equalize farmers with other social groups in terms of social benefits; (3) to treat peasant (individual) agriculture as a permanent and important component of the national economy; and (4) to ensure conditions for the functioning of self-governance at the level of local administrative and economic structures. 40 As can be seen, economic demands were again dominant, supplemented with a relatively less important political demand concerning self-governance. And again, there were both particular demands referring to farmers’ interests, and those concerning the entire society.
In contrast to the previous period, the political opportunity structure of real socialism was one of the factors enabling structural changes within the category of farmers. It allowed a significant proportion of peasants to transform themselves into farmers in the 1970s, and thus indirectly influenced the way they were organized. Although it remained largely closed, as manifested by the impossibility of an independent peasant party, on the other hand, by contributing to the transformation of this stratum, it caused its self-organization to take the form of trade unions. The peasants followed the path of the working class, which ultimately recognized trade unions as the appropriate organizational form for fighting for its own interests and against the authoritarian state.
Farmers’ contestation after 1989 took place in completely new economic and political conditions. Moreover, the participation of farmers in the professional structure had diminished to 12.2 percent by the turn of the twenty-first century. 41 The political opportunity structure was opened as a result of reforms that democratized the political system, culminating in the new democratic constitution adopted in April 1997. The changes were systemic in nature, and in the political sphere they meant the transition from a one-party system to liberal democracy and pluralism and, in the economic sphere, from a centrally planned to a free-market economy. The factors that were responsible for increased mobilization among farmers were predominantly economic. On the one hand, farmers were the precursors of the free market, and on the other, they were among its first casualties. Within about a dozen years of the transition, two waves of farmer protests occurred. The first one took place in the years 1989–1993 and the second from 1997 to 2001. During the first wave of protests, 112 protest events were recorded (single protests dominated—75 percent; the rest were series of protests and protest campaigns); during the second wave, 58 protest events were recorded (60 percent share of single protests was recorded, the rest were series of protests and protest campaigns). 42 In the first wave of protests, during the peak periods of the protest cycle (the beginning of 1990 and the turn of 1992–1993), there were from several dozen to as many as five hundred protest actions at one time, while in the peak cycle of July 1998, the number of simultaneous protests varied from a dozen to 230.
Both were dominated by economic demands, connected, for example, with farmers’ indebtedness, cheap loans, prices of procurement of agricultural products or import customs duties. But the two waves differed significantly in terms of their basic message. The first one involved strong competition between the farmers’ Solidarność and other farmers’ associations, that is, Samoobrona and KZRKiOR. 43 That is why the first cycle of that wave can be referred to as the “Solidarity” one, and the second as the “post-Solidarity” one. In the second wave of protests, there was cooperation among the main farmers’ organizations. Its cycles were mostly inspired by the objects of conflict, so they can be called “cereal,” “pork,” and “sugar” cycles. In other words, during the second wave of protests, a qualitative change occurred: the conflicts among farmer organizations were overcome and the economic issues came to the fore, which motivated farmers to work together.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, two factors influenced the agricultural contestation. The first was Poland’s accession to the European Union. Farmers became beneficiaries of subsidies for their agricultural activity, which had a positive impact not only on the level of their income, but most of all accelerated the process of farm modernization. Second, as a consequence of modernization changes, there was internal differentiation within this professional category, which in turn differentiated interests within this group. Since then, protests have been mostly sectorial and initiated by the groups of farmers and agricultural producers who were affected by specific problems at the time, for example, low prices for specific products, difficulties in export, or high domestic and foreign customs duties, reducing prices or access to markets. Such situations increased the level of mobilization of particular groups of producers and resulted in protests.
We may say the modernization and professionalization of Polish agriculture had a significant influence on the mobilization readiness of farmers and agricultural producers. Their relationships with the market and the economic situation were decisive in their readiness to protest. The intensifying relationships with the economic market also affected the way farmers got together to defend their interests. The dominant pattern of joint activity was neither peasant political parties nor trade unions, but producer groups.
The importance of the political opportunity structure in this period consisted not only in freeing up opportunities for contestation and freeing up entrepreneurship, but in creating conditions for market forces to shape the position and consequently the way in which individual socio-professional groups, including farmers, organized themselves. This process started at the beginning of the 1990s, but gained momentum after Poland’s accession to the EU and the acceleration of the agricultural modernization process.
Political Opportunity Structure and the Organizational Dimension of Peasants’ and Farmers’ Protests: Discussion
The examples of peasants’ and farmers’ protest activity presented in the previous section took into account the broader context of these activities in the form of the political opportunity structure. In the periods analyzed here, the organizational background to peasants’ and farmers’ movements evolved considerably. The basic question asked in the introduction was what was the impact on the protest potential of peasants and farmers of the relations between the structure of political opportunity and the way these social groups organized? It seems the character of peasants’ and farmers’ organizational background in particular periods was the product of the political opportunity structure in the sense that it reflected the model of collective activity prevailing in society. In the inter-war period, political parties provided the organizational background determining peasants’ mobilization opportunities. Actually, this social category was no exception in this regard. The stratified character of the society meant that workers, peasants, or landowners could count on the support of their own political organizations. Furthermore, while workers could also form trade unions, peasants did not have that opportunity because of the character of their work, which was a significant weakness that had a negative impact on the opportunities for universal mobilization. Political parties functioning on the general social level took care of this problem for farmers. The role of political parties as the organizational background of the peasant movement was also a kind of sign of the times. In saying this I mean the role played by peasant parties in Poland from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1920s in the social and political emancipation of the peasantry. According to Doug McAdam, “such situations of generalized political instability can be contrasted to instances in which broad social processes favorably affect the opportunities for insurgent action of particular challengers. In such cases, long-term socioeconomic changes serve simply to elevate the group in question to a position of increased political strength without necessarily undermining the structural basis of the entire political establishment.” 44 This situation was especially true at the turn of the second decade of the twentieth century in Poland. The regaining of independence in 1918 and the defense of the boundaries of the newly formed country, especially in the war with the Soviet Russia, mostly succeeded thanks to the engagement of the peasantry in military activities. The incentive for that was the inclusion of peasant parties in the institutionalized politics, even peasant leaders holding important political functions at the state level. This significantly reduced the distance between the protesters and the state, having a positive impact on the balance of power between the peasantry as a social class and the authorities.
It is worth pointing to the fact, also mentioned by McAdam 45 in the work quoted above, that without sufficient resources, the political opportunity structure will not contribute to mobilization. But it can be added that collective mobilization is possible without the appropriate political opportunity structure, with only the resources the group has. This was true for peasants and other social categories after 1926, when the processes of closing the structure were initiated, which in practice meant the transition from a democratic to an authoritarian political system. In other words, broader political processes had a positive influence on the peasantry’s mobilization success, not only in terms of protest activities but also in the fact that they obtained their social and national subjectivity. The latter process was the result not only of political, but also of economic, changes as well as political alliances, which were independent of protest activities and strengthened the peasantry as a collective subject. Thus, even in the conditions of a partially closed political opportunity structure and intensified punishments inflicted by the state in the 1930s, they could not only effectively pursue their rights but also formulate political and economic demands concerning society in general.
The above comments argue that the political opportunity structure can be a positive stimulator of protest mobilization but is not a necessary condition for it. More important here seems to be the organizational capacity of the protesters, which should be matched to the political opportunity structure, whether it is open or closed. They seem to have the decisive power here in terms of mobilization.
The conditions of farmer protest activity in the state socialist system were different. True, farmers (actually, rural residents in general) formally had party representation in the form of the United People’s Party. But that was a façade party, completely subject to the Worker’s Party (PZPR) which, in the state nomenclature, was regarded as the “leading force of the nation.” This situation was reflected in the protest activity of farmers in the first period of formation of the socialist state. As we remember, the conflict between farmers and the state mostly referred to forced collectivization and lasted until 1956, when the state withdrew from that idea. Farmers’ protests at the time were local, spontaneous, and thought to be ubiquitous. The activities carried out then were improvised series of protests, not protest campaigns with back offices controlled by any centre. The peasants were successful at that time mainly due to widespread mobilization, persistence, and often fatalities. However, it must be remembered that, in this case, the mass speeches of October 1956 helped them in their final game with the authorities. Among the demands of the society, the demand to abandon collectivization appeared alongside the release of political prisoners, the liberalization of culture, and the reduction of dependence on the USSR.
Referring to the concept by James C. Scott, 46 we may say that farmers’ passive resistance was a ”hidden transcript.” It took the form of informal pressure and corrupting local authorities with the goal of “taming” state socialism. Surely, this form of protest was simply the result of the lack of organizational resources, additionally aggravated by the closed political opportunity structure. Here again we can say that although the political opportunity structure limited the mobilization capacity, the main reason was the lack of a peasant organizational structure matched to these opportunities. Independent political parties were not allowed and independent agricultural trade unions had not yet formed as a result of the backward structure of agriculture and the peasantry. This occurred only in the 1970s, overcoming the limitations of the closed political opportunity structure.
In the late 1970s, the situation, hopeless from the farmers’ point of view, improved significantly under the influence of three factors. First, in the 1970s, a kind of further liberalization of the Polish political system took place. Short-term economic successes, opening to the Western countries, and reduced state punishments opened the political opportunity structure to some extent, which was beneficial not only for farmers but for the whole society. In the 1970s, the first opposition organizations were formed in Poland, including ones that represented farmers. Second, an important change also occurred within the farmers’ circle. The process of professionalization of that social category advanced, fostered by the state’s encouragement to establish specialist farms, which resulted in farmers’ increased professional awareness. The group of farm owners stratified into the decreasing class of traditional peasantry and the dominant category of farmers. 47 This was also associated with the progressing diversification of interests of the farm owners, which was reflected in the formation of many agricultural political organizations representing those varied interests. It provided the organizational basis for the establishment of the farmers’ Solidarity (NSZZ RI Solidarność) and was the main resource in the process of mobilization of protesting farmers in 1980. Third, the Catholic Church in Poland became the organizational resource supporting the protesting farmers, guarding civic rights but also the traditional values of the peasant ethos. It seems that behind the first two factors was the opening structure of political opportunities. It meant the aforementioned liberalization of the political system, which in turn triggered modernization in the farmers’ environment.
The formation of the farmer’s “Solidarity” aimed to cooperate in the fight for general social goals and for farmers’ and agricultural producers’ interests. So in the early 1980s, two phenomena important for farmer protest activity were at work. The first was connected with the professional emancipation of farmers and agricultural producers and the second, with the establishment of a trade union of farmers modelled on workers’ trade unions. Thus, an important change occurred in the organizational background of farmer protest activity. Political parties (from the inter-war period) were replaced by trade unions (in the time of state socialism). I think this is the reflection of the primary change that occurred in the political opportunity structure as well as economic changes underlying agriculture. In other words, it was impossible to act except in the form of trade unions (the mono-partisan political system). In addition, changes within the class of peasants and farmers (professionalization), strengthened by organizational models copied from the working class, were conducive to the development of this organizational form. That had significant implications for farmer protest activities after the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989.
So we see that there is again a certain tension between the political opportunity structure and the way farmers are organised. The political opportunity structure abrogates itself, and the transformed structure of the category of farmers results in the immediate formation of agricultural trade unions, which exemplify how farmers fit into the structure of opportunity and at the same time allow them to overcome the political constraints that still exist for social mobilization.
Opening the political opportunity structure after 1989, related to the process of democratization of the political system, strongly determined the mobilization of farmers for protest activities. In the early 1990s, organizational opportunities developed back in the 1980s also played a part. The first form of protest at the beginning of the first wave of protests was strikes, a consequence of the strategy learned in the 1980s, adopted from the working class’s trade unions. The trade union movement was the organizational background for farmer protests approximately until the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The situation changed after Poland joined the European Union in 2004. Under the influence of modernization processes, largely financed with EU resources, significant changes took place in the structure of the class of farmers. A relatively numerous group of owners of large, modernized farms, strongly related to the market, developed at the time. They are mostly responsible for the farmer protest activity in twenty-first-century Poland, the dynamics of which are mostly determined by the economic situation of the specific group of producers. It is the effect of diversification within the group of farmers and producers, even greater than in the 1980s, and hence, further differentiation of interests.
The organizational background of protesting farmers also changed quite dramatically. Nowadays, it is no longer political parties (even ones deriving from the peasant movement) or trade unions, let alone the Catholic Church. Currently, this role is played by producer groups, which are the main organizational resource responsible for farmers’ mobilization. As evidenced in a study by Gorlach, 48 between 1999 and 2007, the proportion of farmers believing that the most effective form of struggle for their own interests was forming associations, and producer groups grew from 35.2 to 48 percent. Even in the case of direct activities such as road blocking, destroying produce, or sit-ins, farmers also used the existing structures of producer organizations for mobilization purposes.
Another clear tendency in the protest activity of Polish farmers was a change in the scale of protests, especially after entry of Poland into the EU. The EU became one of the key entities that had the right to decide about the form of agricultural policy. Therefore, Polish farmers became inclined to participate in supra-national protest activities. Such activities took place in Brussels, and sometimes the producers of specific agricultural products from the whole of the EU participated. More often, however, the protests were organized by national groups of farmers, including Polish ones. This may confirm the conclusion made by Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow 49 that the vast majority of so-called European protests related to the EU actually have a national character. Isabelle Bedoyan, Peter Van Aelst, and Stefaan Walgrave point out that “the growing European integration may have created new political opportunities, but European civil society seems to have used them timidly so far.” 50 I would add to this that although European farmers’ protests take place in Brussels, they are not motivated by fear but rather by the diversification of interests, not only between the branches of production but also between farmers from different states of the European community.
To sum up, we can see here, for the third time in the whole period since the inter-war years, the mutual interaction of the political opportunity structure and the organizational background of the protesting farmers. If we consider Poland’s accession to the EU as a breakthrough event, accompanied by an even wider opening of the political opportunity structure, we will see that one of the consequences of this is the new organizational forms of the protesters, which use the new conditions in such a way as to effectively initiate mobilization and overcome the limitations, in this case diminishing ones, resulting from the political opportunity structure.
Conclusion
These examples of peasants’ and farmers’ protests in Poland over nearly a hundred years in various social, political, and economic systems can be used to formulate several general comments regarding the relationships between the organizational background of social movements and the political opportunity structure. We need to remember, however, that the conclusions formulated in this article are not universal, because the object of discussion here was only peasants’ and farmers’ protests, that is, protests organized by a social category that is important but just one of many, and only in one country.
It seems that mutual relationships between the dominant way of organizing the peasant and farmer movement and the political opportunity structure should be sought at the general level, in which the political opportunity structure serves as a kind of framework of activity. This was true in each of the analyzed periods. In the inter-war period, peasant political parties, being the organizational background of the protesting peasants, could only operate at the time to the extent possible in the political opportunity structure. It was similar in the time of state socialism, when political parties did not have freedom of action. Therefore, during the period of Stalin’s greatest terror, protests were devoid of any organizational background and were spontaneously initiated, and in later years, when the structure of political opportunities was slowly opening up, trade unions were the organizational background for the protesting farmers. Opportunities for protest only flourished at the turn of the 1990s. The lack of opportunities earlier was the result of the closed political opportunity structure, when Communists had inflicted particularly severe punishments on society in the initial phase of building the socialist state. Opening that structure in the second half of the 1970s provided mobilization and organizational opportunities the farmers used when building support for their activities in the form of trade unions, imitating workers. The full freedom of protest activity was only obtained after 1989, which contributed to relatively quick evolution of organizational forms behind farmer protests. Trade unions were replaced with professionalized groups and producer associations.
The above explanation is consistent with the general logic of the concept of political opportunity structure as we know it. But there is more to it. We must remember that in the background there were still economic and social transformations going on, and they were also indirectly determined by the political system. These were changes within the peasants’ and farmers’ class, involving, for example, a gradual transformation of peasants, first, into professional farmers and, then, into agricultural producers. This significantly diversified the internal structure of the group of farm owners, and first of all, diversified their interests, which had an impact on the organizational forms in which they functioned as protesters.
A closer look at the regularities described here allows us to draw more detailed conclusions, especially in relation to real socialism and the period after 1989. In the first case, the closed structure of political opportunities had a twofold effect: (1) It limited the transformation of the peasant layer and delayed its transformation into farmers; (2) as a consequence, the peasants were deprived of their own, state-independent organizational background in the form of trade unions, for which they were not structurally ready, and an independent political party was not an option. This lasted approximately until the mid-1970s. Only then did the effects of earlier liberalization and modernization, accelerated in the early seventies, become apparent. A large category of farmers and agricultural producers emerged, for whom trade unions became the appropriate organizational form. In the second case, in the context analyzed here, the opening of the structure of political opportunities after 1989 also had similar effects: (1) it subjected farms to the influence of the free market, which for some owners meant the collapse of the farm but for others’ the acceleration of the process of their professionalization, along with their transformation into agricultural producers; (2) one of the consequences of these processes was the change of the dominant organizational forms supporting the agricultural constellation from trade unions to producer groups and associations. Poland’s membership in the EU was a factor accelerating this process, similar to the liberalization after 1956.
This issue was slightly different in the inter-war years. As in the latter two periods, it was crucial to open the structure of political opportunities at the beginning, which included peasants in the nation and freed their political activity under the aegis of political parties, limited after 1926. However, the influence of the political opportunity structure on the structure of the peasantry, and consequently on the evolution of the forms of organization they used, was much weaker. Throughout the whole period they organized in political parties. This, I believe, was due to the political system blocking deep agricultural reform. The deeper and negative impact of the political opportunity structure is evident here. It is not just that being closed it prevented mobilization as such, but that it did not positively influence the latent areas related to the structural transformation of the peasantry. Consequently, it prevented it from using its dormant potential to overcome the limitations of the closed political opportunity structure.
This causes the question about mutual relationships between the political opportunity structure and the processes occurring in other spheres, for example in the economic sphere. Broadly speaking, this is the relationship between politics, economy, and society. Should these systems be regarded as equivalent and interacting with each other under such conditions, or does one of them have a dominant role? In the context outlined here, this is a question that implies further exploration. It seems, however, that the state (politics) creates the framework and rules of the game (law), so in this triad politics seems to be of paramount importance, which does not mean that it is not itself influenced by economic, social, or cultural factors. We may therefore risk saying that, in these spheres, the structure of political opportunities plays a similar role to that of protest activity. That is to say, it restricts or frees certain processes, but these processes also generate effects on the very structure of political opportunities.
On the other hand, it also seems justifiable to say that although generally, there are some relationships between the political opportunity structure and the quality of organizational resources of protesters, we should particularly focus on the direct factors determining the organizational background of protesters, such as economic, structural, and cultural factors.
From the point of view of political process theory, this confirms the utility of new approaches to the issue of social movements, which take into consideration more factors than just the classically, statically understood political opportunity structure. I mean the above-mentioned cultural aspects of mobilization or the contextual and individualized character of the process. In accordance with the postulates by Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam, 51 concerning the dynamic approach to protests, on the basis of protest activities occurring in different historical periods and political systems, I tried to find the causal mechanisms of not the protests themselves but the dynamics of changes in their organizational background. On this basis, we may say that this dynamic is the product of the influence of many factors, in which the political system plays an indirect but also superior role, being a specific framework of activity not only of protesters but also of direct factors, important in the development of the organizational form of farmer protest activity, that is, the economic system and the social structure.
On the basis of these considerations, then, it seems reasonable to argue that the role of the political opportunity structure does not lie in the fact that it facilitates/obstructs the process of social mobilization in itself, but that it stimulates more general structural conditions. It allows for changes in social structure or, as in our case, structural transformations within the peasant and farmer strata. Thanks to this, these categories were able to go beyond the limitations resulting from a more or less closed political opportunity structure. Subsequently, they were able to become independent of the influence of this structure, and even to gain influence over it themselves. This was particularly evident during the period of real socialism, when at some point farmers were not only able to defend their own interests but became co-responsible for the wide opening of the structure of political opportunities after 1989. We knew from previous theoretical considerations that the opening of the political opportunity structure would not have a positive impact on mobilization if protesters did not have adequate resources. This statement should be supplemented by the following observation: the political opportunity structure also has an indirect effect on the formation of these resources, and once these resources are sufficiently developed, its role in stimulating protest activity becomes marginal and protesters gain relative independence in their actions. Even if it is closed, contesters gain the chance to open it up and seize control of it.
