Principes antithétiques et adversaires communs: partis paysans et partis socialistes en Europe des années 1920 aux années 1960

Abstract

The rural parties and socialist parties are animated by contradictory ideologies: projects commune versus class struggle. However the observation of their relations between the years 1920 to 1960 shows a strong similarity. The two political currents criticize the liberal economy and the rural parties are often partisan of an agricultural reform to which the socialists aspire, even if the final result is different. Last but not least, the parties which group together between the two wars in an agriculture International belong in majority to the camp of political democracy. Many of them are to become victims, as well as those of the left wing parties, of the authoritarian regimes which took over at that time in Europe. These similarities facilitated the constitution of alliances between rural parties and left wing parties in Scandinavia (where they tempted to put an end to the 1930's crisis by conjugating a policy of protectionism and a rise in taxes) as well as in Czechoslovakia. With the exception of Scandinavia, the Nazi expansion put an end to these experiences. After the Second World War, the establishment of communism in central Europe either reduced the rural parties to the role of satellites or forced them into to exile. In Scandinavia, the alliances between the parties promoting agrarianism and the social democrats came to an end in the 1960's and the rural parties became the right wing (centre).