ABSTRACT
In the new Rákoczi collective the major problem of internal organization was that certain groups of members refused to work together. The great divide was between the Nagy and Nemes members. As the chairman remembers:
It was not possible to put members from Nagy and Nemes in the same work brigades. They each had separate brigades. It was no problem to put former landowner gazdas with former poorer members of the landless. The problem was the locality ...
And a member from Nagy Pécsely recounted with feeling:Those were a proud lot. They did not want to work with us; they even had their meals together in the fields when the brigades had to work side by side ...
This member here alludes to the assumed superiority of the gazda of Nemes, which reaches back to the pre-1848 names/ serf division, as well as to the greater landholding wealth of most of Nemes' inhabitants - as opposed to the poorer non-nemes inhabitants of Nagy Pécsely (chapter 1). This opposition ceased to have any practical significance after 1848, but it survived to some extent as a locality-based sense of distinct identity, and was extended to all inhabitants of each locality, regardless of wealth or nemes descent. This locality-based sense of identity and pride did not override other considerations of individual ranking, of course, where landownership was determinant, but when it was instead a question of the inhabitants of each village as a group, then rivalry, competition, and a strong sense of identity were expressed, and the inhabitants of Nemes were 100accused of haughtiness and pride.