ABSTRACT
Theoretical work on the process of agricultural collectivization is still in a formative stage. The three models described in this work were derived from frequent explanations advanced by historians to account for events in the Russian countryside in the decades following the Bolshevik Revolution. The strength of this approach is that it allows the substantive conclusions reached by scholars in the field after detailed study of a single case to be subject to the corrective lens of a comparative perspective. While the three models are not mutually exclusive and there is no single hypothesis that differentiates them, they focused our attention on different facets of the state-building process and enabled us to make a judgement about the priorities involved in the implementation of the agricultural policy in Poland and Hungary.
