POST-PEASANT POPULISM OF EASTERN EUROPE

Abstract

This paper conceptualises an East European type of populism that I call post-peasant. It originated in state-socialist modernisation and mobilises people who are not peasants, but who nevertheless value the countryside as morally superior to a life in large cities. My major contention is that post-peasant populism emerges under specific cultural-economic conditions, among which the institution I call the ‘post-peasant house’ is paramount. This institution, in its economic and cultural dimensions, connects the recent agrarian past, socialist modernism, and the post-socialist present, both as a habitual practice and a representation of the people.