Property in East Central Europe notions, institutions, and practices of landownership in the twentieth century

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-311) and index.

Introduction: Property in East Central Europe : notions, institutions and practices of landownership in the twentieth century / Hannes Siegrist and Dietmar Müller -- Part I. Economic history -- The changing landscape of property : landownership and modernization in Poland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries / Jacek Kochanowicz -- Agriculture and landownership in the economic history of twentieth-century Romania / Bogdan Murgescu -- Part II. Property between law and politics -- Property in the East Central European legal culture / Herbert Küpper -- The Habsburg Cadastral registration system in the context of modernization / Kurt Scharr -- Property between delimitation and nationalization : the notion, institutions and practices of land proprietorship in Romania, Yugoslavia and Poland, 1918/1948 / Dietmar Müller -- Frontline soldiers into farmers : military colonization in Poland after World War I and World War II / Christhardt Henschel -- The country road to revolution : transforming individual peasant property into socialist property in Yugoslavia, 1945/1953 / Jovica Luković -- Part III. Practices and mentalities of landownership -- Homeland as property : symbolic ownership and the local heritage of the past in Lemkowyna and the Ukraine / Jacek Nowak -- Landownership in practice : the case of the local community of Naramice in central Poland / Pawel Klint -- Property and agricultural policy in twentieth-century Romania : intentions, technical means and social realities / Cornel Micu -- Owning land in central Serbia : contemporary notions and practices : the case of Mrčajevci / Srđan Milošević -- The practices of land ownership in Vojvodina : the case of Aradac / Jovana Diković.

"Property is a complex phenomenon comprising cultural, social, and legal rules. During the twentieth century, property rights in land suffered massive interference in Central and Eastern Europe. The promise of universal and formally equal rights of land ownership, ensuring predictability of social processes and individual autonomy, was largely not fulfilled. The national appropriation of property in the interwar period and the communist era represent an onerous legacy for the postcommunist (re)construction of a liberal-individualist property regime. However, as the scholars in this collection show, after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe property is again a major factor in shaping individual identity and in providing the political order and culture with a foundational institution. This volume analyzes both historical and contemporary forms of land ownership in Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia in a multidisciplinary framework including economic history, legal and political studies, and social anthropology"--Provided by publisher.