Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

currency reform. This was an effective device for destroying the cash savings of peasants and businessmen alike, an updating of older exactions like the forced capital levy. In Romania it was undertaken twice, in August 1947 (when it had the legitimate objective of ending hyperinflation) and in January 1952, when peasants who had built up savings over the previous four years (there was little for them to spend their money on) saw them wiped out. As in the Soviet Union, so in Soviet-run eastern Europe, the peasantry were doomed. The initial post-war reforms in the countryside had distributed small parcels of land to large numbers of farmers. But however politically popular, these reforms simply exacerbated the longstanding agrarian crisis of the region: too little investment in machinery and fertilizer, too many underemployed laborers and five decades of steadily falling prices for farm produce. Until they were firmly ensconced in power, the Communist parties of eastern Europe actively encouraged inefficient land redistribution. But from 1949 they moved, with increasing urgency and aggression, to destroy the ‘nepmen’ and ‘kulaks’.