The cooperative marketing chains of the agricultural production in Hungary and in Transylvania before 1945

Hunyadi, Attila Gábor

Keywords: advocacy organizations, socio-economic modernization, rural and regional development, cooperative networking, community management

The Western-European cooperative models were adopted uniquely in the East-Central –European countries and were adapted to their specific social and economic contexts by different cooperative types and in various forms, thus in Hungary and Transylvania, the latter region becoming part of Romania since 1918.
Our study presents along some specific research-questions and methodological hy-potheses the development of the country-wide cooperative institutions and their role in socail and economic modernization, emphasizing also those regional organizations, which were constituted on the impetus of the central cooperative organs or on the ini-tiative of the ministries and state-administration. These all aimed the modernization of the economically underdeveloped regions, e.g. the ministerial action (program) for the development of the Transylvanian (Szekler) region between 1902-1918.
We propose that the economic history should take an interdisciplinary approach when it presents the importance of the cooperative movement with its economically rich and geographically well extended, socially very dense network of cooperatives, that unfortunately were nationalized after 1945. The reassessment of this great coopera-tivemovement heritage gives us, in present, valuable examples of good practice, espe-cially concerning the present CAP inside the European Union and the micro-regional development in Hungary, in Romania and in Transylvania. Primarily, it is worth noting that regarding the economic force of the cooperative movement, the country-wide agri-cultural marketing cooperative networks and chains were competitive, were activ in exports and generated added value and extra incomes for the membership. Secondly, concerning the social and market function of cooperatives: they raised even the budget incomes, while they also created common goods, services, and workplaces, thus the civil cooperative movement that functioned between 1885 and 1945 had fufilled these social functions, becoming an important pillar of the agricultural and regional devel-opment and of the social policy, as well.

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