ABSTRACT
Throughout the interwar years the new and reconstituted states of Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria) faced a constant struggle for survival, politically as well as economically. Weak states, barely fit for nationhood, internally rent by nationality conflicts and divided one against the other, they became pawns in the renewed struggle among the major powers for the hegemony of Europe (Momtchiloff, 1944, p. 84; Newman, 1968, pp. 11-13, 27, 201; Ranki, 1983, pp. 33-4). Apart from Czechoslovakia, which inherited an economic structure more closely resembling that of the West having gained the lion’s share of the industrial capacity of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire ( The Economist, 1938a, pp. 544-5), all the states in the region remained heavily dependent on agriculture for a living. Between one-half and three-quarters of the occupied population was engaged in agriculture (even higher in Albania) which generated one-half or more of national income (Dovring, 1965; Hocevar, 1987, p. 565; Polonsky, 1975, p. 164; Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1940, p. 86). More to the point, despite varying degrees of land reform in the postwar period, agriculture remained extremely backward by any standard, with yields a fraction of those of western countries (Moore, 1945, pp. 35, 51; Warriner, 1939, p. 9). The result was low incomes, limited domestic purchasing power, and very limited agrarian accumulation, all of which inhibited structural diversification towards industry (Teichova, 1989, pp. 903-4). Rapid population growth exacerbated pressure on the land leading to widespread underemployment and surplus labour (Moore, 1945, pp. 63, 71).
