Entering their first workplace: women in socialist agriculture. Soviet and Hungarian collective farms compared

ABSTRACT This paper presents insights from research conducted on the transition from the traditional peasant lifestyle to that of the “modern cooperative”. Based on archival research and oral history interviews, the authors focus on the effects on peasant women’s lives of socialist collective farms as new compulsory workplaces. The investigated villages (Mezőkaszony and Mihálygerge) are populated by ethnic Hungarians but are situated in two countries: Hungary and the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the challenges that women faced with the creation of the collective farm system were similar. Using comparative micro-level analysis, the authors examine societal change and changes in family life from the point of view of women as collective farms were created and developed. In particular, they reveal the initial employment experiences of village women after the collective farms were formed and explore their changing life strategies as they adapted to the new agricultural system.