Attic Sweeping – Collectivisation or how our great-grandparents became kulaks

This is the first part of a four-part series examining the practice of attic sweeping. In the following instalments, I will analyse the forced reorganisation of families’ lives, the redistribution carried out through compensation vouchers and the disappointments associated with it, and finally the opportunities that may still be found in the present. For now, we look back at how the foundations of family livelihoods were once taken away.

This series of articles seeks to help a reader understand contemporary Hungarian political reality, particularly the repeated two-thirds electoral victories of Orbán Viktor. The author argues that these outcomes cannot be explained solely through day-to-day political developments. Instead, the series examines the historical and mental background of Hungarian society, focusing on the collective experiences shaped during the decades of socialism and further transformed after the democratic transition. It also points out that other societies in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Poland, responded in several respects differently to the same historical challenges. The aim is to illuminate the deeper social attitudes, historical experiences, and collective memory that lie behind today’s patterns of political support.

Author: Olga Nádra

The beginning 

The compulsory delivery system was an integral part of communist economic policy. In the spirit of post-war nationalisation and collectivisation, the aim was to dismantle private peasant farming. Food supply was placed under centralised state control, and compulsory deliveries were introduced in the late 1940s, later intensified by the persecution of kulaks (the term “kulak” comes from the Russian кулак, meaning “fist”; in Soviet and later Hungarian communist political language, it referred to wealthier peasants, or more broadly to farmers designated by the regime as class enemies) and the practice of attic sweeping. The system served a dual purpose: on the one hand, it sought to force the peasantry into collective farms, and on the other, it was designed to secure grain and food supplies for the state. 

Its peak came in the early 1950s, when the dictatorial regime sought to establish full control over agriculture. One of the key legal foundations of this process was Decree No. 16/1959 (30 May) of the Ministry of Agriculture, which regulated the legal status of agricultural producer cooperatives. The regulation defined the functioning of collective farms, the obligations of their members, and the framework for placing land under collective management. In essence, the state gave legal form to the dismantling of private farming and the confinement of agricultural production within cooperative structures. This decree became one of the key documents of the collectivisation wave of 1959. 

How did it unfold in reality?

When the stories come to life 

The stories recalled here do not come from archival documents, but from personal recollections: accounts given by people who lived through this period themselves. These memories are often fragmentary and frequently painful, yet they remain an important part of the collective memory without which the period is difficult to understand in its full reality. I did not first encounter the history of collectivisation in textbooks, but through my grandparents’ memories, in family conversations when members of the older generation spoke about the past. As a child, and later when I was already working in the social field and dealing with elderly people, these stories resurfaced again and again. They were not the dry sentences of history lessons, but personal memories of families falling apart, of land being lost, and of the feeling of no longer being able to dispose of what generations of work had built up. Older people often began with the same sentence: “They did not just sweep out the attic.” According to these recollections, attic sweeping was only one of the tools in a process that ultimately led to the abolition of private peasant property. By their account, it began with compulsory deliveries. Farmers were required to hand over a fixed quantity of grain, meat, eggs, or other produce to the state. These quotas were often so high that barely anything remained for the family’s own needs. Many recalled that during the years of compulsory deliveries, inspections regularly arrived in the villages. Officials climbed into attics, looked inside barns, and whatever they found was often simply taken away. This is where the term “attic sweeping” comes from. It referred not merely to an administrative measure, but to an experience that left a deep mark on the memory of rural communities. According to these accounts, however, the story did not end there. Compulsory deliveries were followed by the process we now know as collectivisation. Farmers were pressured to join collective farms and hand over their land to the common enterprise. Officially, this was described as a “voluntary offering,” but the recollections paint a very different picture. Older people recalled that party functionaries and representatives of local authority appeared in the villages. Some tried to persuade farmers through long conversations, but in other cases pressure was plainly visible. Those who refused to join the cooperative could easily be branded as kulaks, a label that meant not only social stigmatisation but also economic marginalisation. In some cases, such families found it harder to obtain seed, machinery, or other forms of support. Many stories also tell of families trying to hide whatever was important to them. Not only produce, but valuables as well: jewellery, family heirlooms, objects passed down through generations. These were often buried in the garden, hidden behind walls, or entrusted to relatives. This was not about wealth, but about preserving the family’s past. In many cases, however, the transfer of land became unavoidable. This is how ever larger areas came under the control of the collective farms, and how the economic and social structure of the Hungarian countryside was transformed by the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. 

What came after 1960 without land and property?

Once the land was absorbed into the collective farms, most families lost overnight the very foundation on which their livelihoods had rested. Land meant not only income, but also security and a future. It embodied generations of labour. The vineyards that had been planted, the plots that had been cultivated, the stables and farm buildings were all part of a long family story. According to these recollections, many farmers were eventually forced to join the collective farm. But there they no longer worked their own land; they worked as members of the common enterprise. In many cases, a former owner became little more than an agricultural labourer. People continued to cultivate the same land they had once considered their own, but the decisions were no longer theirs. There were also those who could not, or would not, adapt to the new system. Some families left the village and tried to begin new lives in the towns. Others sought industrial work or found employment in various state farms. The structure of rural communities gradually changed. Some of the former farming families disappeared from agriculture altogether, and communities fell apart. Meanwhile, everyday life in the villages slowly adjusted to the new order. Collective farms became the centres of agricultural production, and the functioning of the common enterprise came to determine work routines, incomes, and in many cases community life itself. Yet the families who lived through this period often spoke of it, even decades later, as one of the greatest ruptures of their lives. The loss of land was not merely an economic event, but a historical turning point that fundamentally altered the social structure of the Hungarian countryside. In these recollections, what appears is not only economic loss, but also the psychological burden of the period. Many felt they had lost not only their land, but also their independence. The awareness that they could no longer farm according to their own decisions remained, for many, an experience that was difficult to process. 

Cover photo credit: Fortepan / Magyar Rendőr, 1951

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