Peasant land tenure of Eastern Galicia in the second half of 19th – early 20th centuries

Abstract

We consider the problems of development of small land tenure in Eastern Galicia in the second half of 19th – early of 20th century. We show the dynamics of the property stratification of peasant population, the reasons for the households fragmentation. We characterize the development of the rural bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat, the growth of the number of small-land and landless peasant households among the Rusyns-Ukrainian population is shown. We show the change in the peasants’ social and economic status, the dynamics of demonstrations related to the problems of land parcelling between landowners and peasants after the serfdom abolition. For the purpose of lands protection the peasants resorted to the demonstrations including, first of all, such forms of fight as disruption of works (performed in the withdrawn territory by woodcutters, shepherds, ploughmen, etc.). We conclude that in Galicia, the vast majority of peasant families could not feed themselves from their land, and therefore a huge number of poor low-income and landless peasants were forced to leave their native land, looking for work mainly in the New World counties and Prussia. We characterize an unequal taxation of the peasant and landowner households. The land cadastre was carried out so that quite identical lands of peasants and landowners were assigned to different categories, always considering peasant lands better than landowners’.