Rural Livelihoods in Inter-war Hungary

The issue of land was central to livelihoods in the villages of the Horthy era. The majority of Hungary’s agricultural land is under the cultivation of large estates and manors, while the majority of the village population owns small, fragmented estates. Thus, they are dependent on large estates and the natural environment for their supplementary livelihoods, to varying degrees and in different forms. In this paper, after a national overview, I present examples from two settlements to illustrate the rural livelihoods of the period, along which options and strategies are outlined - without claiming completeness. My sources include local historical works, official statistics, periodical press publications, and studies on the social history of the era. The first settlement is Tiszaigar from Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, which is basically an agrarian proletarian settlement, most of its land is owned by large estates, the population is highly vulnerable to the surrounding large estates. The other settlement, Dudar’s location in Veszprém County offers several opportunities for additional livelihoods: the mountainous environment and the proximity of forests provide the population with the possibility of multiple livelihoods.