Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.47325/zj.5.13

Analysis of the socioeconomic works of Rudolf Bićanić from the perspective of global history

Isao Koshimura ; Tokyo Zokei University of Art and Design

Abstract

Rudolf Bićanić was a narodnjak or populist who has long studied people’s daily lives. In addition to knowing how people live, he sought to discover trends and patterns in their living economy. He wanted to analyze economic history, the people’s economy, and give guidelines for its improvement. It turns out that this kind of populism is very different from today’s populism. Specifically, Bićanić has consistently analyzed the static nature of people’s lives over a long period to suggest measures for future changes. I wrote a treatise about Rudolf Bićanić’s life and work in the late 1980 s. Since then, and especially recently, various biographical aspects of his life have been discussed. Based on all this, especially recent research, I would like to revisit the content and importance of his work. This article focuses on the first half of Bićanić’s life and is the first part of Bićanić’s research. Before World War II, he organized economic activities, and during the war he was a high-ranking official of the Yugoslav government in exile, trying to become a spokesman for the Eastern European peasant movement. In the early 1930 s, Bićanić emphasized the cultural homogeneity of the peasants, while observing the current situation in which the peasants left their homes in search of employment for agricultural workers after the collapse of the extended family. At this point, Bićanić sought to manage agriculture and the peasant economy through economic planning by the political power from rural to government. However, shortly before becoming a high-ranking government official, he advocated the importance of coordinating agriculture with the non-agricultural sector and advocated economic policies that were not easily dependent
on the Nazi Germany economic zone. During World War II, he also collaborated with the British Socialists in the fight against fascism, and gradually called for peasants’ cooperation with workers and others to free his country from fascism. The direct
impetus for the final decision was that their home peasants supported the Communistled partisan movement. At this point, he convinced the Croatian Peasant Party leaders that the only true political combination that could bring a better future to the Croatian Peasant Party is a lasting alliance of peasants and workers. According to Ionescu theory of populism in Russia and Eastern Europe, populism becomes peasantism, and then it becomes neo-populism. However, unlike Romanian peasantist Virgil Madgearu, Bićanić does not rely on modern co-operatives and seeks to exert political power from the region to the government. His political power was to be used to eradicate peasant poverty and at the same time protect the peasant or „Peasant Europe” culture. In this respect, unlike Erdei Ferenc in Hungary, even with the same neo-populism, Bićanić seems to have given his commitment to the long-term trends of peasant culture. In the second part of this study, I would like to discuss how Bićanić, under the Communist rule, analyzed the long-term values and culture of peasants based on family management and rural communities, or what remarks Bićanić took about relations in the multinational state in order not to repeat the failure during the interwar period in Yugoslavia.

Keywords

Rudolf Bićanić; economy; peasantry; Croatian Peasant Party (HSS)

Hrčak ID:

281359

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/281359

Publication date:

17.8.2022.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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