Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Berend Derailed Ch5 181-235 Sochist
Berend Derailed Ch5 181-235 Sochist
Berend Derailed Ch5 181-235 Sochist
SOCIAL CHANGES
“ D u a l” and “ Incomplete” Societies
181
(82 SOCI AL C H A N G E S
tion process, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the propensity
for social change and predicted the emergence o f a polarized class soci
ety with an ever smaller and richer bourgeoisie accumulating the wealth.
At the other pole, they placed the growing number o f exploited indus
trial proletarians lacking all “means o f production'1 and accumulating
nothing but poverty (Marx and Engels [1848] 1988).
In reality, however, nineteenth-century Western class society—in the
sense that thephilosophes, Marx, and M ax Weber used this term —changed
remarkably after 1870. A striking new phenomenon appeared: the rise o f
a modern middle class. An army o f white-collar service workers and bu
reaucrats emerged, including a new professional layer o f teachers, lawyers,
medical doctors, journalists, and entertainers. Although it would be
nearly a century before thev became a majority in the advanced societies
o f the West, this growing middle class was the most rapidly expanding
social group around 1900.
Two layers became visibly different within a new entrepreneurial elite:
a financially and socially higher-ranked upper middle class, and a steadily
expanding modern lower middle class, including bureaucratic and pro
fessional groups. This bourgeois middle class and the working masses
characterized nineteenth-century Western society The former nobility had
to adjust to the new situation. The landowning aristocracy went through
a gradual process o f embourgcoiscment. The former middle class, most o f
all the lower nobility, the gentry, with smaller landed estates, and the priv
ileged urban patrician class became declasse and virtually disappeared into
the various layers o f the new society.
This new, “ ideal typical” social pattern, using a Weberian category, did
not, however, break through entirely in the West before World War I. Arno
Maver clcarlv recognized the “ importance o f the modern forces that un
dermined and challenged the old order.” He rightly argued “ that until
1914 the forces o f inertia and resistance contained and curbed this dynamic
and expansive new society within the ancicns regimes that dominated E u
rope’s historical landscape1' (Mayer 1981, A). The nobles retained much o f
their wealth and status and dominated strategic economic stations, while
compensating for their loss by moving into kev positions in the new armies
and state bureaucracies. They learned to adapt and renew themselves, pre
serving their interests by a gradual cinboiirgcoisemcnt. T hc grands bour
geois, the “ aristocratizing barons o f industry” in Britain, France, and Ger
many, imitated the wavs o f the nobility, built mansions on their country
estates, and assumed aristocratic poses and lifestyles. The old elite, in
Joseph Schumpeter's words, remained a classc dingentc in “ active svm-
SOCI AL C H A N G E S 185
in the West, a new society started to replace the old, in Central and East
ern Europe, old and new lived in parallel, but the new was unquestion
ably subordinated to the old.
Between 1848 and the 1860s, the serfs were liberated, noble privileges were
abolished, and feudal institutions were mostly eliminated. Nonetheless,
C. A. Macartney exaggerates the decline o f the old elite when he charac
terizes the aristocracy o f Cis-Leithania, the Austrian-Bohemian region o f
Austria-Hungary (i.e., on the Austrian side o f the river Leitha), as no more
than a decadent relic o f the past:
Bv 1890 the direct power ot the aristocracy was a shadow of what it had been in
1848. . . . They formed a tight little clique in which everyone knew everyone
else . . . and spent their rime in gambling, horse-racing, exchanging scandal and
seducing other people’s wives and daughters . . . [others] shut themselves up on
their country estates, which the)' formed into . . . a dream-world which had been
reality in the eighteenth [century]. (Macartney 1968, 620)
cratic manners. Their houses had porches and, if possible, a piano inside.
Women wore gloves and short mantles lined with white fur and carried
parasols. “ In dress and manners, the landowners’ patterns were obliga
tory for the petty nobility” (Chamerska 1996, 78).
Wladyslaw Reymont’s Nobel prize-winning The Peasants, an encyclo
pedic novel about Polish peasant life, describes the “ nobilitv o f Rzepki,”
the people o f a noble-peasant village, as very poor but pretentious people,
who had “ only a bag and a bundle, one cow for five and one cap for three.”
When these noble peasants arrived at a district peasant meeting, “they
came all in one band, taciturn, looking down and askance at everyone they
met. Their womenfolk, dressed like manor-people, very much pranced
out, walked in their midst, and were treated bv them with die utmost cour-
tesv” (Reymont 1925, 2: 89-90).
In Central Europe, the elite o f the noble establishment thus hung onto
their permanently weakened positions. The gentry remained the foun
dation o f the “ historic middle class” and influenced the manners, attitude,
and national self-consciousness o f virtually the entire society. Their habits
were considered “ national characteristics.” The newly ennobled bureau
cratic-military elite, and even part o f the intellectual elite, totally assimi
lated into the gentry and enthusiastically adopted their lifestyle and man
ners. Old and new nobility thus amalgamated.
The preservation o f the old noble elite was only partly the consequence
o f the semisuccessful modernization o f the economy and society. The
old elite imposed themselves on the society by clinging to their landed
estates and military-bureaucratic positions. Their role was legitimized for
the society by the process of failed, incomplete nation-building. The lack
o f independent statehood, combined with conflicting claims by mixed
nationalities within and without state borders, led to a strong, aggressive,
and traditional representation o f national identity. Military virtue and ex
perienced leadership acquired special significance. People wanted a lead
ing elite that represented national continuity, an asset when statehood and
nationhood were lacking and required verification.
The uncertain future o f independent nationhood and the troubled
relations among all the neighboring nations and minorities created “ po
litical hysteria” in the region (Bibo 1986). In this environment, where his
torical and ethnic-linguistic borders did not meet, the old elite could rein
carnate and reestablish their legitimate power as the national leadership.
In Istvan Bibo’s assessment, the noble elite were totally out o f step with
realities. Thev were accustomed to making unreasonable demands and to
formulating policy based on what thev wanted, rather than on what could
192 SOCIAL CHANGES
Let yeomen till land, grow wheat for the daily bread
Ixt women count profit from spinning a fine thread
Let merchants have gold, let the Jew count his treasure
You stick til [a] soldier’s prize, vour onlv measure.
All this influenced the entire society, including die peasantry, and led
to the emergence o f an anticapitalist national character (Pach 1994,150-51,
155-56). Gvula Szekfii, a leading Hungarian historian o f the first half o f the
twentieth century, hailed the “ anti-commercial and anti-capitalist talents
o f the Hungarian race” ; according to him, history proved that “ the prin
ciple o f trading and production for profit disagreed with the Hungarian
nature. . . . [BJourgeois characteristics were quite far from die mental habit
o f Hungarians, nobilitv and peasantry alike. . . . Undoubtedly, the H un
garians may be listed among those peoples that have the least inclination
to develop in a capitalist direction” (Szekfii 1920, 291; 1922, 81-82).
The same “ anti-capitalist character” was “ diagnosed” for the Rom a
nians by the mid-nineteenth-century Romanian economist-statistician
D. P. Martian, who criticized his countrymen for lacking the entrepre
neurial spirit needed for economic modernization (Michelson 1987,30).
“ [EJducated Romanians have shown a tendency to avoid following a
commercial career, leaving this field o f activity to alien elem ents. . . the
countrv . . . is thus deprived o f the opportunity o f building up an inde
pendent middle class,” the English author G. C. Logio noted a century
later. This attitude also had a toxic impact on business morale. Logio de
scribes the Romanian view that “ elusion o f obligations is a mundane af
faire and a fashionable art which should be cultivated assiduously” (L o
gio 1932, 115, 118).
The aristocratic establishment thus survived, not only by virtue of the
preservation o f the old noble elite, the principal role o f the big estate, and
the determinant position o f the gentry as the backbone of the “ historic”
or “ gentleman middle class” (történelmi or úri középosztály), but also be
cause o f the elite’s conservative “ feudal anticapitalist” values and attitudes,
which penetrated the society and figured as Polish and Hungarian “ na
tional characteristics.”
The most visible feature o f the gentry’s attitude was a “ gentlemanly”
lifestyle, maintaining the pretense of old noble wealth by spending much
more than the never-enough income earned at an often-mediocre office
job. “All, if I could onlv afford to live the way I live” was a typical H un
garian remark, reported bv John Lukacs’s mother (Lukacs 1988, 91). This
irresponsible lifestyle led to heav y indebtedness and invited corruption as
a means to fill the huge gaps in family budgets. Connections to relatives
o f the upper nobilitv; the advantage o f having a “ historic” name, and offices
196 SOCI AL C H A N G E S
middle class still remained politically w eak compared to the old elite and
did not even seek to gain direct political power. The Austrian and B o
hemian societies, although nearest to their Western counterparts, still ex
hibited the characteristics o f the dual society.
The eastern half o f the empire did not see a similar rise o f a modern
middle class. Bv 1869, in Hungary, shortly after the Ausgleich, indepen
dent entrepreneurs in banking, industry, trade, and transportation, in
cluding the so-called petit bourgeois shopkeepers and artisans, wiiite-
collar w'orkers, and intellectuals, numbered roughly 600,000 people. In
other W'ords, the emerging upper and lower middle class represented only
about 8-9 percent o f the country’s workforce. Bv 1910, their number had
almost doubled, to nearly 1,10 0 ,00 0 , which embodied nearly 15 percent
o f the workforce.
The wealth and importance o f these newly emerging social layers, how-
ever, surpassed their number. Although Hungary’s Gross Domestic Prod
uct increased more than threefold during the half century before World
War I, the contribution o f agriculture declined from nearly 80 percent to
just over 60 percent. Modern industrial and service branches produced
nearly 40 percent o f domestic product before the war (Bercnd and Ránki
1979, 65, 77). The top 150-200 bourgeois families, who owned and ran
much o f Hungarian banking, industry, transportation, and trade, accu
mulated vast w ealth, comparable to that o f the landowning aristocracy.
The leading financial groups centered around the Pesti Magyar Kere
skedelmi Bank (Commercial Bank) and the Magvar Általános Hitelbank
(Credit Bank). Leó Lánczy, Fiilöp Weiss, Ferenc Chorin, A d olf Ullmann,
and the Kornfeld, Manfred Weiss Herzog, and Deutsch families w'ere fa
miliar names among the “ about fifty people at the top of Hungarian bank
ing and industry,” Jenő Varga observed; they “ controlled about 20 per
cent o f the capital and nearly half o f the net income” of these sectors (Varga
1912,10). Bv providing mortgage credits for landowners, a highly indebted
class, they also acquired their share o f the income from the landed estates.
Moreover, the financial-merchant elite bought up one-fifth o f the landed
estates over 200 cadastre yokes (114 hectares).
The growing number o f medical doctors, teachers, journalists, enter
tainers, and corporate clerks made up only a small fraction o f the soci
ety. They became very important in the rising cities, most of all in the
capital citv, however, where they formed a large and influential urban mid
dle class. The largest segment o f the business middle class consisted ol
hundreds o f thousands o f shopkeepers, a great man)’ of w hom ran vil
lage general stores and pubs, fens o f thousands w ere tailors (20 percent
1 98 SOCI AL C H AN G ES
One o f the most important factors leading to exclusion, aside from the
persistence o f the aristocratic establishment and its values, was the non-
indigenous origin o f the new business and middle-class elite. In the rigid
framework o f noble society, social mobility was extremely slow or nonexi
stent. The déclassé gentry could preserve their role in the sociopolitical
elite bv holding bureaucratic positions in the state and county apparatus
and in the arm\'. Even if they became intellectuals, a transformation that
began in the first half o f the nineteenth century, the landless gentry oc
cupied state-related positions. Lawyers, the majority o f gentry intellec-
uials, did not engage in private practice or business law' but became judges
and prosecutors, part o f the bureaucracy. Downward mobility hardly ex
isted. The same was true o f upward mobility, since the newly liberated
serfs, although free peasants, were still excluded from the body o f the na
tion. Uneducated and alien to the urban environment, the vast majority
o f them could not merge into the rank and file o f the middle class.
As a consequence, a gap characterized the middle lavers o f the former
noble societies. This gap was filled by nonindigenous elements: Greeks,
Germans, and, most o f all, in the second half o f the nineteenth century,
Jew's. They were strongly urban and traditionally business- and education-
oriented. When the need arose and possibilities opened up for business
and intellectual positions, thev appeared without competition, yearning
to occupy these fields.
Greeks plaved an important role in Romania, w'herc the century o f Pha-
nariot rule up to 1821 had established their pivotal power. By represent
ing the Ottoman Porte, the “ closed caste” o f the Phanariots, as the histo
rian Nicolae Iorga (1933) characterizes them, formed the leading group
o f the political and business elite, although their significance declined
steeply after Romania gained independence. The Greeks’ role was also im
portant in Hungary, especially in the early stage o f capitalist transforma-
200 SOCI AL C H A N G E S
INCOMPLETE SOCIETIES
reaucracies and armies. “ The new political class which carried out the rev
olution in Serbia was made up o f manv bajduks, o f some intellectuals, and
o f the "better people, who were able to feed and arm two, ten, or twentv
serving companions’ . . . the-.jjazdas,” Traian Stoianovich says (Stoianovich
1963, 311). The hajduks, bold popular fighters and outlaw heroes, now
became important elements o f the new “governing class.” The extremely
small educated class also gained important ground in the mostly illiterate
countries. In countries o f mass illiteracy (70-80 percent), the few educated
men w'cre badlv needed in state administration and business.
The formerly subordinated native elite and the new military, adminis
trative, and educated leaders followed the Ottoman tradition o f exploit
ing bureaucratic offices to get rich in a few years. The leading writers o f
die age in Bulgaria targeted this phenomenon. Ivan Vazov, in his Tojemlad,
zdrav, intelijjenten (He Is Young, Healthy, Cultured), satirized the rush
for bureaucratic sinecures. His antihero, a young man with every advan
tage, refuses to consider any employment outside the bureaucracy. An
ton Strasimirovs drama Kasta (1908) bitterly attacked the corruption o f
government officials (Moser 1972, 103, r i ) . The new national elite cen
tered on the city. Their number was limited. Including all the settlements
with more than 2,000 inhabitants, that is, cities and large villages together,
only 9 percent o f Montenegro’s, 10 percent o f Serbia’s, 13 percent o f Bosnia-
Herzegovina’s, and roughly 20 percent o f Bulgaria’s population lived in
towns. Serbian figures for 1910 illustrate the overwhelming predominance
o f the peasantry in these countries. At that time, 5 percent o f the popu
lation was employed in public offices and professions and 4 percent in
trade. Some 7 percent o f the country’s inhabitants worked in industry,
mostly in handicrafts. Even in Bosnia-Hcrzegovina, which reached a
higher degree o f industrial dev elopment than Serbia and Bulgaria to
gether, more than 25,000 out o f 29,000 industrial establishments “ used
only the labour o f their proprietors” (Palairet 1997, 229). In the Balkan
countries overall, only 1 percent o f the active population was employed
in large-scale industry.
During the last two or three decades before World War I, an impor
tant new social group emerged as part o f the new national elite, the well-
to-do peasantry. These decades were characterized by an increased frag
mentation o f peasant landed estates. Big estates did not exist in most of
these countries, and at the turn o f the century, 97 percent o f Serbian peas
ants had only small properties, insufficient for marketing produce. Nearly
60 percent o f the peasants owned few er than five hectares o f land, and
less than 4 percent owned more than twentv hectares (Tomasevich 1955,
206 SOCIAL C H A N G E S
206). This thin layer o f successful rich peasants became v illage merchants
and moneylenders. They sent their children to school and became an in
tegral part o f the new elite. In his social drama Panntc (1 9 0 7 ), Petko
Todorov bitterly attacked this village elite who wielded economic and po
litical power. In a symbolic gesture o f social justice and unification, Milka,
the daughter o f the rich corbadzi o f the village, leaves her family to join
Dimitar, the teacher and leader o f popular forces (Moser 19 7 2 , 1 7 7 ).
The Balkan societies, which had lacked their own elites and been “ in
complete” during Ottoman times, thus began establishing native bu-
reaucratic-militarv-merchant elites.
The duality o f traditional and modern characterized both the upper and
lower lavers o f the Central European dual societies. N ot onlv did the po
sition and status o f the old elite remain in place, but the overwhelming
majority o f the peasantry also endured. Their “ disappearance” distin
guished the West, although onlv in Britain did this actually occur. In con
tinental Western Europe, the peasantry remained a significant minority,
and its upper lavers merged into the ranks o f an ever-growing middle class.
In Central and Eastern Europe, the reduction o f the peasantry in the
active population had hardly begun. Well-industrialized Austria-Bohemia
was an exception. Peasants constituted onlv 34-35 percent o f the popula
tion o f Upper and Lower Austria and Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia in 1910.
Although illiteracy had not disappeared, it was no longer perpetuated: as
early as 1880, 95-99 percent o f school-age children attended schools. The
western provinces o f Austria-Hungarv approached the Western European
standard.
The peasantry, however, constituted between two-thirds and three-
quarters o f the population in the other countries o f Central and Eastern
Europe, including the eastern part o f Austria-Hungarv. In Poland and
Hungary, where the percentage o f peasants in the population decreased
from 70-80 percent to 62-64 percent between the 1860s and 1910s, mod
ern social transformation had at least begun. In Galicia and Bukovina, -3
percent o f the active population still worked in agriculture in 1910; in Dal
matia, 83 percent; and in Croatia, -9 percent. In Romania, this propor
tion was 81 percent in i860 and 75 pcrccnr in 1910. These figures were typ
ical of the Balkans in general: the peasantry constituted 82 and “ 5 percent
SOCI AL C H A N G E S 207
the time period under discussion left their homes and gradually adjusted
to the new workers’ lifestyle. Some o f them moved to cities and became
unskilled industrial workers. This kind o f mobility was also characteristic
in the western provinces o f Austria-Hungary In 1900, 30 percent o f the
peasant population o f Austria and 36 percent o f that o f Bohemia became
agricultural wageworkers.
Altogether only about one-third o f the peasants had enough property
to remain independent farmers. In Hungary, only 10 percent o f the peas
ants became well-to-do and acquired quasi-middle-class status. Their num
ber was less than 3 percent in Romania, where 36,000 peasant families
owned farms o f 10 to 50 hectares, altogether nearly 700,000 hectares, or
18 percent o f all peasant lands.
The native peasantry, in many cases, was confronted with landowners
and employers of different ethnic groups. In Poland and Hungary, peas
ants often worked for Jewish entrepreneurs. Various minority groups,
such as Ukrainians in Russian Poland and Galicia, worked on Polish big
estates. Slovak peasants in northern Hungary and Romanian peasants in
Transylvania worked for Hungarian landlords. Romanian peasants in the
Romanian kingdom had to make contracts with the mostly Jewish aren-
da$i. The role o f the nonindigenous bourgeoisie and middle class gener
ated class-based ethnic conflicts in most o f the countries in Central and
Eastern Europe. The social conflicts and sharp polarization o f nineteenth-
centurv societies that in the West led to the formation o f Marxist work
ers’ parties, mass trade unions, and class confrontation surfaced as eth
nic-religious confrontation and hostility in Central and Eastern Europe.
The most dramatic embodiments o f this social conflict were a mid-
nineteenth-ccnturv jacquerie in Galicia and an early twentieth-century one
in Romania. In western Galicia, in 1846, peasants slaughtered "28 land
lords and destroyed 4^4 manors (Himka 1988, 24). The Romanian peasant
uprising was a consequence o f the exploitative agricultural system, a special
mixture o f serfdom and capitalism, unique in modern Europe. As David
Mitranv puts it, the landlords and renters enjoyed all the advantages, while
the peasants suffered all the disadvantages o f both systems (Mitranv 1930,
80). The Romanian peasants, who had long tolerated subhuman living
conditions, erupted in a bloody revolt in March 190". Thousands o f peas
ants turned against their bovar landlords, but most o f the absentee estate
owners were invisible to them. Their real anger and brutal hostility were
directed against the well-known middlemen, the Jewish renters, and often
against Jewish shopkeepers and moneylenders. The uprising developed
into an anti-Jewish pogrom, beginning in Botosani and expanding to in-
SOCIAL C H A N G E S 213
income from agriculture'’ (Hitchins ¡99+, 163). The same was true all over
Central and Eastern Europe.
Illiteracy among workers, male and female alike, was high: 54 percent
and 56 percent o f male and female workers, respectively, were illiterate in
Poland around the turn o f the century. The proportion o f illiterates among
unskilled workers and day laborers reached percent among men and
80 percent among women (Zarnowska 1996, 139).
Roughly half o f the industrial workforce o f Central and Eastern E u
rope worked in small-scale industries before World War I. These workers —
half members o f the family, half servants —more closely resembled work
ers prior to the Industrial Revolution than modern factory workers, who
hardlv existed at all in these incomplete societies, which preserved their
peasant character. Of the ~ to 10 percent o f the industrial population o f
the Balkan countries, only 1 percent worked in modern big factories, while
the others were traditional artisans. This extremely small group o f w ork
ers was essentially all male. Women were scarcely permitted to leave the
household.
Like the upper layers, the traditional and modern lower strata o f soci
ety in Central and Eastern Europe differed ethnically. The traditional layer
o f the upper stratum was indigenous, but the modern layer was strongly
recruited from nonindigenous members o f the society. Here, too, the lack
o f mobility and proto-industrialization in the previous period caused a
shortage of trained, skilled urban workers. As documented earlier, a great
part o f the skilled workers were German, Bohemian, and Jewish. In 1910,
43 percent o f the foremen and 44 percent o f the workers in Hungarian
industry did not speak Hungarian. Roughly 30 to 35 percent o f the Jew
ish population o f Poland and Hungary became workers around the turn
o f the century. “ Nearly half o f the organized masses o f the workers who
moved to industrial centers were recruited from non-Hungarian ethnic
ities,” the early twentieth-century Hungarian historian Gvula Szckfii ob
serves (Szckfii 1920, 324).
The distinction between indigenous and nonindigenous was both
feeble and overpoliticized. The so-called nativ e or national groups were
in realitv mixtures o f various ethnicities themselves. Thev had moved to
and settled in these countries during the previous centuries, assimilating
into the dominant ethnic groups. Slav's and Germans, for example, min
gled with Hungarians and Romanians all over the Austro-Hungarian em
pire. Various kinds o f Slavic peoples —Poles and Ukrainians, Serbs and
Croats —also intermixed. Irrespective o f whether thev had lived in the
country lor several generations or were relatively freshly settled new 1111-
SOCI AL C H A N GE S 215
1 9 1 0 as %
1800 1850 1880 1910 of 1800
women’s modal age at marriage was eighteen, and that o f men was twentv-
rhree (Andorka 1994, 318). In Serbia, from the 1880s up to the mid twen
tieth century, the overwhelming majority o f men and women married be
tween the ages o f sixteen and twenty-seven (Halpern and Halpcrn
1972, 26).
Birthrates and death rates exhibited major dissimilarities as well. The
most visible difference was the almost unchanged birthrate in Eastern Eu
rope. While birthrates sharply declined from 36-38 to 25-30 per 1,000 in
Western Europe, in Eastern Europe, they at most decreased only from
35-40 to 36-37 per 1,000 inhabitants, and they remained at the previous
level in the Balkans throughout the nineteenth century. In Hungary, the
birthrate declined slightly, to 36 per 1,000 inhabitants. In Romania, the
figure was 43; in Bulgaria, 4 1; in Serbia, 38; and in Russia, 46 (Armen-
gaud 1973,56). This situation can be interpreted as a consequence o f the
preserved rural-agricultural society and lower level o f education.
Imported improvements in health care, especially v accination and the
progressive elimination o f medieval diseases such as smallpox, plague, and
cholera, were the real reason for the population explosion in the hardlv
changed economic environment o f Central and Eastern Europe. Wide
spread water regulations also halted malaria.
In the Habsburg empire, Maria Theresa followed the modern West
ern European model bv introducing her Normatimm Sanitntis, the ba
sics o f a modern health system. The Hungarian Public Health Act of i8~6
followed the Western European pattern o f registration o f deaths and in
vestigation o f cause of'dcath. Sanitary norms were established for lions-
21 8 social changes
ing, schools, shops, and institutions. Prevention became the duty o f pub
lic authorities. Medical practice was regulated, and childbirth became
much safer. Cities and settlements with more than 6,000 inhabitants were
required to employ medical doctors; small villages jointly employed a
kororvos (district physician) w ho treated the poor free o f charge. State
food inspection, first aid, and ambulances were also introduced (Matle-
kovits 1898).
Some form o f public health regulation was established all over the re
gion. Health services reached from one-quarter to one-half die Western
level in terms o f number o f medical doctors and hospital beds by the end
o f the nineteenth century. There were 34 and 39 medical doctors per
100.000 inhabitants in Germany and France, respectively. The Austrian-
Bohemian level matched this standard (35 doctors), while the Hungarian
level remained somewhat below it (23 doctors). The number o f hospital
beds in Hungary stood at half the Austrian-Bohemian level. Transylvania
had 15 doctors per 100,000 people; Bukovina and Galicia, 12; and Croa
tia and Russia, 9 (Katus 1979, 1129)-
The results o f the imported agricultural revolution were equally im
portant. Better food supply, improved nutrition, and a halt to famine had
a significant impact on population growth. In Kiskunhalas, Hungary, de
mographic crises in 1679, 1709, and 1739 reversed the entire population
increase every thirty years (Melegh 2000, 278). Famines and epidemics
also caused a dramatic increase o f death rates in Bohemia—from 30 to
nearly 40 per 1,000 —during the last two decades o f the eighteenth cen
tury. Calculations based on the 1777 census show' death rates above 40
per 1,000 in Hungary, which climbed to 49 per 1,000 in 1784 (Gyula
Benda 2000,131). The famines o f 1788-89 and 1816-17 in Hungary caused
100.000 deaths, and cholera killed a quarter o f a million people in 1831
and 1873. In Romania, severe drought and famine in the countryside in
1873-74 and smallpox and cholera epidemics in urban areas in the same
decade were probably the last “ medieval” scourges. In Poland, great epi
demics dissipated from the late eighteenth century onward.
As a result, death rates began to decline, although they remained at
higher levels than in Western Europe: the death rate decreased to about
25 per 1,000 inhabitants in Hungary, 26 in Romania, and 30 in Russia, as
compared to 14-18 deaths per 1,000 in Western Europe. This more mod
erate decline, and an even more moderate decline in the birthrate, was
enough to generate high population growth.
Declining death rates led to higher life expectancy. During the last
decade o f the eighteenth century in Kcszthelv, Hungary, 62 percent o f
SOCI AL C H A N G E S 2ig
the population died bv the age o f 19, while 20 percent lived at least to the
age o f 50. In the mid nineteenth century, these percentages changed: 55
percent and 25 percent, respectively, died before the age o f 19 and lived
after 50. Those who reached adulthood could expect to live at least until
the age o f 40 to 50 (G. Benda 2000,133,143). A more impressive improve
ment followed. Although the average lifespan remained 10 to 20 years
shorter than the Western European average o f 50, it increased substan
tially: at the beginning o f the twentieth century, the average lifespan o f
Hungarians was 39 years; that o f Russians, 31; and that in the region as a
whole, 30 to 40. These figures represented a 10- to-20-vear increase com
pared to the beginning o f the century. In the early nineteenth century,
life expectancy in the north Hungarian township o f Eger was 20.7 years,
and in Csongrad County, only 16.6 years, mostly because o f the extremely
high rate o f infant mortality. Between the mid eighteenth and mid nine
teenth centuries, every fourth or fifth newborn died before the age o f one
(A. B. Lukács 1977; G. Benda 2000). Average life expectancy hardly sur
passed 20 years am'where in early nineteenth-century Central and East
ern Europe.
The demographic revolution not only preceded economic modern
ization in the region but served as a major stimulus to it. Instead o f 25-30
million inhabitants at the beginning o f the nineteenth century, the region
had to feed 70-75 million people in the early twentieth century, with
proportionate!}' more adults than before. The traditional economy was
unable to accomplish this task. Higher productivity in both agriculture
and industrv was badly needed. The “ imported” demographic rev olution
forced economic modernization.
The situation resulted in the emigration o f a part o f the increased pop
ulation to the New World. During the century after 1820, about fifty m il
lion Europeans emigrated, three-fifths o f them to the United States (H at
ton and Williamson 1998, 533). First o f all, there were those who were
landless and could not find employment elsewhere. M ore than two-thirds
o f the emigrants from Austria-Hungary were peasants. When the great
wave o f European emigration began, from the first decades o f the nine
teenth century to 1850, more than three-quarters o f European emigrants
to the United States were from Britain, and another 17 percent from G er
many. Between 1850 and 1880, 82 percent o f the emigrants were still British
and German. By then, however, emigration had started from Central and
Eastern Europe, and 2.5 percent o f the European emigrants were from
Austria-Hungary From 1880 on, the peripheral regions o f the continent
became the main source o f European emigration: in 1880, 45 percent o f
220 SOCI AL C H A N G E S
lies, even the archaic “judicial” function o f the family, the duty o f blood
revenge, survived. As a consequence, the hierarchical structure o f the fam
ily was not strongly challenged either. The head o f a large rural family was
its unchallenged master, and his wife, children, and even married sons and
their wives and children, as well as the unmarried members o f the fam
ily, worked together. A marriage did not mean the establishment o f a new
household. The division o f labor within the family was strict and tradi
tional. The “ manager,” in many cases, the “ dictator,” o f the household
was the patriarch, who ordered and controlled all the activities and work.
The male adults worked in the fields, repaired and sometimes even made
the tools, did construction work, and transported goods. The female folk
did all the household work, including spinning, weaving, and making
clothing, especially in the winter. They also had a major role in tending
and milking the animals and assisting in the fields. Small children also had
a role and had to work in the family household. The traditional patriar
chal family remained nearly unchanged in rural areas.
The first signs o f transformation appeared during the second half o f
the nineteenth century: birth control led to a decline in the number o f
children born to a family to four or five. In some areas, a “ one-child sys
tem” was practiced, mostly to keep the small parcel o f family land intact
(Vasary 1989). “ We do not make beggars,” peasants in Ormánság said in
justification o f early birth control, explaining: “ One parcel, one child” (A11-
dorka 1978, 94-95). Families thus began to shrink.
An even more important factor was the beginning o f urbanization and
the emergence o f an urban lifestyle and family characteristics more sim
ilar to the Western European pattern. These new' phenomena remained
marginal and influenced the lives o f only 10 to 25 percent o f the popula
tion in the various countries o f the region. Moreover, the industrial work
ing class, like the traditional peasantry, remained a male-dominated so
ciety. The foremen and the vast majority o f skilled workers were male, as
were the unskilled workers who did most o f the jobs requiring physical
strength. A good worker did not allow his wife to take a job. The life o f
a miner’s wife was, in fact, extremely similar to a peasant woman’s life in
the household, including keeping some animals in the backyard.
However, the partial success o f industrialization in some Central Eu
ropean countries produced the first modern female workforce. In Poland,
24 percent o f die industrial workers were female. Up to 33 percent o f un
skilled workers and day laborers, and 78 percent o f service workers, were
women. As many as +6 percent o f all textile workers were female, and
three-quarters o f all women industrial workers worked in textiles before
SOCI AL C H A N G E S
read and write (Ronnas 1984, 227-32). In Poland around the turn o f the
centurv, illiteracy remained very high even among female industrial work
ers: 56 percent o f them could not read or write. Illiteracy reached 80 per
cent among female unskilled workers. Am ong scrvice workers, only one-
third o f the male workforce was illiterate, but nearly 70 percent of female
service workers could not read or write (Zarnowska 1996,139)- The situ
ation was not altered bv the admittance o f the first few women to uni
versities in 1900 (Homola-Skapska 1992, 82).
Toward 1900, however, a vanguard group o f women, especially w rit
ers and other intellectuals, raised their v oices for women’s education and
equality, and Polish women in particular expressed ambitious educational
aspirations' (Szwarc 1993). Early feminist voices were also heard in the
Czech lands. A series o f female realist writers illustrates this new trend.
Bozena Nemcova demanded “ public acknowledgement o f a woman’s
right o f self-determination” as early as in the mid nineteenth century. Her
follower Karolina Svetla, the daughter o f a Prague merchant and wife o f
a professor, “ insisted on the right o f education, the free choice o f occu
pation, and the social usefulness o f women” (Novak 19-6, 164, 183). Fe
male writers denounced the lack o f equal education and rights for women
(Rudinskv 1991). In the backward Slovakian part o f Hungary, Elena
Marothv Soltesova’s Potreba vzdclanostiprc zenn (The Need for Women’s
Education) took aim at middle-class men:
Milan Erie, the male feminist quoted above, demanded “ giving women
rights equal to men’s in everv respect, and emancipating women’s moral
ity from slav ery to men's passion” (Fric [ 190") 1991, r>9). Feminist revolt
went beyond the demand for education and even equal rights. Under a
characteristic title, Vzponra (Rebellion, 1901), Bozena Vikova-Kuncticka,
later the first female member o f Czechoslovakia’s parliament, expressed
aggressive feminism, attacked monogamy, and launched a “ dark and noisy
revolt. . . not onlv against rigid social conventions, blit also against em o
228 SOCIAL C H A N G E S
The separation o f the traditional and the modern, and the beginning o f
real social change, occurred first in the newlv emerging, rapidly growing
cities. Citv and countryside w ere two different worlds all over nineteenth-
centurv Europe. The antagonism o f these two worlds, however, was in
comparably sharper and more hostile 111 Central and Eastern Europe than
in Western Europe, where the majority o f the population became urban
at the beginning o f the twentieth century. Rising modern metropolises
increased in population: London, for example, went from 1.1 million in
habitants in 1800 to 2.7 million by 1850, and then to 7.2 million by 1910.
Paris had 0.5, 1.1, and 2.9 million inhabitants in 1800, 1850, and 1910, re
spectively. This miraculous growth o f the capitals was accompanied bv
the development o f several other large cities: Manchester, Glasgow, and
Liverpool increased in population roughly tenfold between 1800 and 1910,
and each had more than o .- million inhabitants at the beginning o f the
twentieth century. Besides Paris, Marseille and Lvon grew fivefold and
each had roughly 0.5 million inhabitants in 1910. Besides Berlin, with its
more than 2 million inhabitants in 1910, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, and
Munich also became large cities, with from 0.5 to 1.0 million inhabitants.
Central and Eastern Europe could not follow the breathtaking pace o f
Western Europe’s urbanization. The growth o f some towns and cities
there was nevertheless quite rapid. In Hungary, 1.1 million people lived
in towns with more than 20,000 inhabitants in i8~o. Their number in
creased bv nearly three times during the four decades ending in 1910, when
it reached 3.1 million. The total population in Serbian towns with more
than 2,000 inhabitants was 28,000 in 1834 and 310,000 in iyio. L’ nlikc
Western Europe, where the absolute majority o f the population already
liv ed in cities before World War I, Central and Eastern Europe remained
highly rural. The ( 'zeeh lands were the only exception: 16 percent of their
population lived in towns with more than 2,000 inhabitants in 1843, but
SOCI AL C H A N G E S 229
this increased to 43 percent bv 1900, and became more than half o f the
entire population before World War I.
The share o f the real urban population (in cities with more than 20,000
inhabitants) in Hungarv increased from - percent to i~ percent between
18-0 and 1910. Counting the entire population o f settlements with more
than 2,000 inhabitants, Poland had an urban population o f 15 percent at
the end o f the eighteenth century, which increased to 33 percent bv 1910.
Serbia’s “ urban” population was 4 percent in 1834 and 11 percent in 1910.
Romania, Bulgaria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina had urban populations o f
17,18, and 13 percent, respectively, in the early 1910s. Thus, a small segment
o f the population in the region —one or two people out o f ten —lived in
towns even before the war.
The typical industrial city was rather rare in the region. Lodz, the “ Pol
ish Manchester,” and Plzen, Brno, and Moravskd-Ostrava in the Czech
lands were exceptions. Ostrava, the coal and iron center o f northern
Moravia, grew nearly sevenfold, to 150,000 inhabitants, during the last
three decades before the w ar. The population o f Plzen jumped fourfold,
to 100,000, bv World War I. Brno grew to 180,000 inhabitants.
The capital cities, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, and in some respects,
Bucharest, became both modern industrial centers and the administra
tive, transportation, and cultural nuclei o f their countries. Prague had only
150,000 inhabitants in 1851, but the number had increased to 225,000 bv
1910. Around the old city, however, new, modern suburbs sprang up. Kar
lin, Smichov, Zizkov, and Vinohradv concentrated more people than in
Prague proper. Altogether, when Greater Prague was administratively con
stituted after the war, the citv had nearly 6—,000 inhabitants (Saver 1998,
85, 1—). Warsaw had 100,000 inhabitants both in 1800 and in 1850, but
the stagnant citv flourished during the second half o f the century: its pop
ulation increased to 252,000 bv 1880, and to 856,000 bv 1910, when it be
came the eighth-largest citv in Europe.
Budapest's development was exceptional, comparable only to the
American miracle: in 1800, three small cities, Buda, Pest, and Óbuda, on
both sides o f the Danube Ris er, had altogether 54,000 inhabitants. Bv
1850, the three cities had 140,000 inhabitants. Population took o ff after
the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich o f 186" and the administrative unification
o f the three cities in 18—3: Budapest's population doubled, then doubled
again during the next two decades. Bv 1880, Budapest had 3-0,000 in
habitants, and bv 1910, 880,000. From iS~o 011, a .series ofindusrria! sub
urbs began to encircle the capital citv: Újpest, Pesterzsébet, Kispest, Pest-
s/.entlőrinc, Csepel, and other small adjacent settlements grew from
2,0 SOCIAL C H AN G ES
strassen, and the erossing main boulevards, the Sugár út (later Andrássv
út), ending in the monumental Hősök tere, and Rákóczv út, created a
new citv structure. N ew public buildings, most o f all, the enormous
neogothic parliament building on the bank of the Danube, the Opera
House, and the headquarters o f the Customs Office, the spectacular new
Danube bridges, the Margit hid, Ferenc József hid, and Erzsébet hid, dec
orated a real European capital. At the millennium celebration in 1896 of
the arriv al o f the Hungarian tribes in the Danube valley, Budapest inau
gurated the Continent’s first subway line, two kilometers long, and a net
work o f electric streetcar lines. The citv became a railroad center, with or
nate railway stations: Gustave Eiffel built the West station. Large parks,
the Városliget, Népliget, and Margitsziget, and the Dunakorzó, created
elegant, popular public spaces in the rapidly grow ing citv. The Hungar
ian capital became one o f Europe’s most beautiful and representative
metropolises.
In the proud, impressive cities, full of the symbols o f national revival
and grandeur, a strongly Western European, cosmopolitan lifestyle de
veloped. Like Paris and Vienna, Budapest in 1900, with its 600 coffee
houses, some o f them open twenty-four hours a dav, also became a cap
ital o f coffeehouse culture. In 189+, Alajos Hauszman, the architect who
rebuilt the royal castle, built one o f the most elegant coffeehouses, whose
cosmopolitan name, New' York, was symbolic. Writers and journalists had
their favorite coffee shops and Stammtisch (the same table reserved for the
same group o f people), where they read the newspapers. The coffeehouse
became their study and its tables their desks. Some o f them even received
their guests there (Lukacs 1988, 148-51).
The capital cities had vivid cultural lives. When the British statesman
Richard Cobden visited Vienna in the mid nineteenth century, his pro
gram self-evidentiv included visits with Prince Metternich, Count Moritz
Esterházy, and Baron Rothschild, as well as to the opera for a perfor
mance ofR ossin i’s Guillaume Tell (Cobden 1994, 152—55). L’pper-middle-
class families kept boxes at the opera in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest.
The inhabitants o f Warsaw in 1830 already had their choice of seven news
papers. During the second half o f the century, a “ theater mania” flooded
the citv. To see even-single performance became chic (Wapinski 1994,154)-
The emerging big cities differed not only from the traditional peasant
countryside but from sleepy, second-rate little towns o f the kind condemned
by late nineteenth-century realist Czech w riters for narrow-mindedness
and prejudice, whose very air, said Svatopluk Cech, w as “ poisoned with
hate, envv and jcalousv-gossip . . . lured assassins o f old women wait
SOCIAL C HAN GE S
behind every corner” (quoted in Novak 1976, 241). Some towns, how
ever, preserved their traditional agricultural life. In 1910, Debrecen, on
the Hungarian plain, with its 90,000 inhabitants, was, for example, still
bv and large just a “ big village.”
The Balkan towns, including the capital cities, although home to most
o f the thin modern social strata, consisting o f the new bureaucratic and
merchant elite o f these countries, also remained tvpical quiet small towns.
Before World War I, the largest o f them, Sofia, had a population o f
100,000; Belgrade had 90,000 inhabitants; Sarajevo, 52,000. In the
i8~os, in the most “ urbanized” Balkan country, Bulgaria, onlv seven towns
had more than 15,000 inhabitants. The Balkan cities, which had a long
tradition dating from antiquity, had been incorporated into the Ottoman
system and subordinated to the state. Guilds were restricted, but state
sanctions and protection offered certain advantages for the producers.
Cities, however, never gained an autonomous role in the Ottoman em
pire (Todorova 199", i'7^). Unlike the modern Central European me
tropolises, the Balkan cities preserved their oriental townscapes. Raina
Gavrilova presents a brilliant description o f this world. The narrow, mostly
unpaved, interwoven streets do not serve for lively traffic but “ discour
age the entrance o f outsiders” and “ control the access to different [reli
gious] zones with[in ] the town.” The quiet, green residential areas with
gardens and orchards were totally separated from the modest town cen
ter. The card, the main street, a continuation o f the intercity road, served
as a business street, in some cases enlarged to a district by a few neigh
boring streets or blocks, mostly roofed. All the merchants and artisans
had their shops here, the owner sitting in front. The barbershop, tavern,
coffeehouses, the “ clubs o f the Orient,” and the public buildings —inns or
caravansaries (Imulav), public baths, and courthouses —were all located on
the gar§i. Taverns and coffee shops (kahvehanelar), patronized onlv bv well-
to-do adult men, were the center o f an otherwise nonexistent social life,
where all the important problems were discussed and decided. In the small
township o f Strumitsa, Bulgaria, with 10,000 inhabitants, there were
thirtv-one coffeehouses. When postal service was introduced, the mail was
also delivered to the coffeehouse. At the end o f the century, a new insti
tution, the cbitalisbtn (reading rooms) were added to these central insti
tutions. Women and girls gathered at the sbndravan, the large public foun
tain in the middle o f the citv, to chat, gossip, and meet bovs.
The small, slow Balkan cities preserved their oriental characteristics for
most o f the nineteenth century. Onlv the capital cities and bigger towns
around the turn o f the century became somewhat “ European.” That was
234 SO CIAL CHANGES
the time when European suits and hats, alafranga (d la française), began
replacing folk costumes and Turkish dress. H igh tables and chairs also
started to supplant the sofra, or low, round table, surrounded by cushions
on the floor. The first courageous men and women started walking side
by side on the street. The “ Europeanization” o f the previously Ottoman
Balkans gradually changed the costumes, attitudes, and lifestyles in the
slowly growing cities (Gavrilova 1999)-
Sofia, Belgrade, and some o f the smaller, “ second-ranked” cities grad
ually became middle-sized, still slow and quiet, but visibly European cities.
Unlike the Central European capitals, however, they did not become home
to modern workers. In Belgrade, only 3,800 industrial workers were em
ployed in 1908 (Halpern and Halpern 1972, 48). As a rather visible and
symbolic factor o f Europeanization, all the Continent’s main architectural
trends appeared. In Belgrade, the classic architecture o f the 1830s and 1840s
was followed, especially between 1850 and 1880, by neoromanesque,
neogothic, and neorenaissance structures, and around the turn o f the cen
tury, by an eclecticism drawing on local color—Serbian traditions—and
Serbian-Byzantine architecture. A series o f major public buildings were
erected in these styles: the neorenaissance National Theater and the Old
Court by Emiljan Joksimovic; the monumental neorenaissance National
Bank by Konstantin Jovanovic; and the Belgrade Cooperative and the Ser
bian Academy o f Arts and Sciences building by Andra Stefanovic (with
Nestorovic, then with Djordjevic). All o f the leading Serbian architects
studied in Budapest, Vienna, or Munich. In addition, more than fifty
Western architects worked in the city during the second half o f the nine
teenth century. The most characteristic public buildings and the entire city
landscape imitated the style o f the world’s capitals (Mladenovic 1995,
2 2 2 - 2 3 , 233). The Balkan capitals and several other smaller cities lost their
oriental character and became more European.
Budapest, Warsaw and Prague, and, to a lesser extent, Bucharest, together
with their industrial suburbs, became modern working- and middle-class
cities with highly literate populations. Ethnically, socially, and culturally,
these big cities portrayed a transformed, modern, cosmopolitan world.
They signaled the future. The present, however, was the traditional coun
tryside, with its overwhelming peasant society. Central and Eastern E u
rope might have begun social modernization but, even at the end o f the
period under discussion, on the eve o f World War I, they stood at the be
ginning o f a long, rough historical road toward Western European
modernity.
II
FIGURE 68. Preziosi Amedeo, Bucharest Fish Market (1869). Watercolors and
pencil on paper. Courtesy Muzeul National de Arta al Romaniei, Bucharest.