Origins The concept of a "Green International" in the service of peasant interests dates back to the 1900s: in 1905, an
Italian Socialist Party newspaper voiced hopes that such a movement would be formed around the
International Institute of Agriculture. In 1907, an International Confederation of Agricultural Associations was formed in the
German Empire, but it failed to survive World War I. It was later partly revived as a
Pan-German Peasants' Association, which received memberships from the
Low Countries and
Scandinavia. The notion of a "Green International" was again explored during the early interwar period, being embraced by
Georg Heim of the
Bavarian People's Party (BVP). From late 1918, at a height of a
revolutionary upheaval in Europe in 1918, Heim worked on the unification of "peasant and conservative forces from all countries." His effort only touched the former
Central Powers and countries that had been neutral in World War I: a conference at
Berlin in mid 1919 had delegates from
Weimar Germany,
German Austria,
Hungary, and the Netherlands; Swiss and Belgian politicians sent messages of support, although the Dutch delegation itself remained skeptical about the possibility of Heim's movement being successful. In November 1920, Heim was in
Budapest, advocating for a parallel rapprochement between the
Hungarian Kingdom, the
Austrian Republic, and
Bavaria. He also channeled support for the Green International, described by one of his Hungarian disciples as an effective way to combat Comintern influence—since "the so-called 'bourgeois' classes proved incapable of toppling
Bolshevism on their own." According to the same source, the International was supposed to diffuse the "ideas of order" among the peasant class, while endorsing the
cooperative movement and regulating the market for the benefit of all classes, "not just peasant producers". held its second meeting in
Paris in November 1920. During its sessions,
Angelo Mauri of the
Italian People's Party proposed a merger with Heim's group, which Heim himself welcomed. In mid 1921, Hungarian agrarianist
János Mayer made an effort to mediate between the French- and German-centered peasant Internationals, but the former adamantly refused.
Creation 's leadership of the peasants. From a 1935 album by his son Other early efforts to organize peasant representatives into an international lobby were carried by the
Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS), whose leader,
Aleksandar Stamboliyski, was the then-
Prime Minister of Bulgaria. In May 1920, he declared his intention to establish a form of "agrarian representation" alongside the
Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants (RSZML) in Czechoslovakia. He believed that RSZML would also ensure reconciliation between Bulgarians and Yugoslavs, after the nations had been separated by World War I. These attempts achieved public notoriety in February 1921. In that context, Stamboliyski openly described his project as resistance to the
red peril, a "peasant dictatorship to oppose the
dictatorship of the proletariat". French journalist P. de Docelles also noted that Stamboliyski had "transposed all of
Lenin's formulas": "he will oppose the Green International to the Red International; and private property to communism". While visiting Czechoslovakia earlier that year, Stamboliyski had approached the RSZML directly, announcing that they would form an "International Peasant Union" as a League of Nations subsidiary. The new peasant caucus is described by scholar Saturnino M. Borras Jr and colleagues as a continuation of Heim's movement. However, it found itself criticized by Austrian conservative
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who described the Green International as a front for
agrarian socialism, the "peasant-boot dictatorship". On such grounds, Stamboliyski's initiative was well-received by Europe's anti-communist left. Anarchist
Augustin Hamon saw it as the peasant's coming of age, noting that agrarian countries had all gone through a land reform. This meant that "capitalists" controlled the "agrarian revolution", but only for a brief moment; Hamon identified an ideological incompatibility between BVP conservatives and Stamboliyski's radicals. According to Hamon, industrial and agricultural workers were natural allies, since "one cannot be strong without the other", meaning that the Green International would find itself "pushed" into an alliance with the Comintern. Hamon's sympathetic vision was criticized by Adolphe Hodee, an agricultural trade unionist, who suggested that the "Green International" was fundamentally
reactionary, a corollary of
Luigi Sturzo's "
White International". As Hodee put it: "Stronger and more dangerous than ever, peasant individualism opposes social progress under the communist banner, under the white banner, under the green banner." Both assessments are dismissed by more modern scholars, who note that Stamboliyski wished to found "an international agricultural league that would serve as protection against both the reactionary 'White International' of the royalists and landlords and the 'Red International' of the Bolsheviks". Historian Bianca Valota Cavallotti believes that the Greens could have been natural allies of the
Second International, but also notes that they developed their movement in poorly industrialized countries, where
social democracy had no pull. At the BZNS' 1921 reunion in
Sofia, banners read: "Long live the International that will consecrate the fraternity of European peoples and will suppress minority rule!"; and "To the gallows with those responsible for the disaster [of World War I] and with the militarists!" From July of that year, members of earlier initiatives, including Mauri and the BZNS'
Nikola Petkov, also joined Adrien Toussaint's International Confederation of Agricultural Syndicates. This hope was contrasted by reality, with Valota Cavallotti defining Stamboliyski's network as "surely one of the least important ones to have emerged on the Continent in the 19th and 20th centuries", a "series of attempts" rather than a coherent movement. The BZNS was able to obtain representation from the RSZML, the ZS, and the
Piast Party of
Poland.
1923 hiatus The project was disrupted by the BSNS' fall from power in the
Bulgarian coup of 1923, during which Stamboliyski was murdered. As noted by journalist
Paul Gentizon, these events were intimately related to Stamboliyski's vision of peasant internationalism, since this implied containing old rivalries between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, while overshadowing the agenda of
Macedonian Bulgarians. Agrarian cooperation was also enhanced after the
September Uprising, when Mihalache's PȚ organized a relief campaign in support of Bulgarian refugees to Romania. In late 1923, the Comintern's competing agrarian body emerged in
Moscow as the
Krestintern. Its profile suggested that the new
Soviet Union had entered a "uniquely pro-peasant period". The new group was nevertheless hastily created, as "there were practically no peasant organizations on which it could be based", and as such had to recruit among mainstream agrarian groups.
Viktor Chernov, the Russian anti-communist, noted in 1924 that Krestintern agents were active "in the same countries as the Green International, an organization which, as a matter of fact, has failed." By 1924, groups situated on the BZNS' left had formed a tactical alliance with the Krestintern, preparing another ill-fated insurgency against Bulgarian dictator
Aleksandar Tsankov; in May 1926, they adhered to the Moscow International, but kept the matter secret, so that the party would not be split apart. By contrast, BZNS right-wingers only looked to the IAB. Red Peasants and
Bulgarian Communists made overtures toward the Bulgarian agrarianist exiles in Prague, but the talks were inconclusive. Tsankov then used the Krestintern's documented activities as a pretext to allege that the Green International had always been a Comintern plot, in conjunction with the local Comintern chapters; Tsankov noted that some of Stamboliyski's former ministers had since been co-opted by Moscow. In Yugoslavia, the
Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), led at the time by
Stjepan Radić, embraced separatism and agreed to join the Krestintern as a means to advance it. Radić explained at the time that his agrarianism was
spectral-syncretic, combining elements of the "revolutionary east" and the "conservative west". His decision upset
Yugoslavist intellectuals, with the
Obzor group suggesting that the HSS had better join the mainstream Greens. During late 1924, PȚ activists Madgearu and
Nicolae L. Lupu visited Radić and discussed with him new forms of agrarian rapprochement; Madgearu also visited the Bureau in Prague, discussing his projects with Švehla, who was serving as
Czechoslovak Premier. Such contacts were observed by the Krestintern, which reportedly sent friendly letters to be read at the PȚ's National Congress in 1924. Romanian Peasantists refrained from answering, since Romania had not yet established diplomatic contacts with the Soviets. Comintern sources describe the letters as
black propaganda by anti-communist exiles. Radić was eventually arrested in 1925; his confiscated papers included notes by
Grigory Zinoviev, in which the Green International was referred to as a tool for "the rich landowners and the bourgeoisie". Days later, Radić signed a truce with the Yugoslav establishment, and left the Krestintern. The latter was forced to attempt recruitment in other parts of Yugoslavia, and was joined by a numerically smaller Agrarian Democratic Party, while also seeking to infiltrate and influence the HSS' left-wing. From Romania, the PȚ observed and condemned the clampdown in Yugoslavia, before rejoicing at news that the HSS had reconciled with the establishment. Nevertheless, the agrarian movement was again inhibited by the
Polish Coup of May 1926, upon which the Piast Party was outlawed. Forced into exile, Piast leader
Wincenty Witos moved to Prague as a guest of the IAB. In the wake of the Bulgarian and Polish coups, agrarianist leaders in Central Europe were absorbed into projects for regional economic cooperation. During this period,
Iuliu Maniu, who became
Prime Minister of Romania, proceeded to champion a
Danubian Federation, and put effort into creating the rudiments of a Central European
single market. His "Maniu Plan" for a "Little Europe", circulated in 1930, proposed the confederation of 8 Central European states. Attempting to reconcile small democracies with
Italian fascism, Maniu also argued in favor of including
Italy as a ninth member of "Little Europe". Dissatisfied with the
World Economic Conference of 1927, which appeared to favor industrialized nations, Poland opened up to such offers; it led regional partners in creating the Bloc of Agrarian Countries, formed at a conference in
Warsaw in August 1930. The Bloc also won over Romania's agrarian ideologues, in particular Madgearu.
1927 revival Unofficially overseen by Švehla, and in practice directed by
Karel Mečíř, the Bureau put out a trilingual (Czech–French–German)
Bulletin. Its first issue, appearing in 1923, included critical analyses of the
Russian Revolution, expressing hopes that the
New Economic Policy would enshrine peasant property in the Soviet Union, and that "passive peasant resistance to communism" would follow from this. As noted the following year by reviewer André Pierre, the agrarian movement in Europe appeared to have stalled; peasants, he argued, "have very specific national problems to tackle". Pierre proposed instead that the Second International open up an Agrarian Section, to mirror and compete with the Krestintern. Cooperatist doctrinaire
G. D. H. Cole similarly argues that Stamboliyski's removal "was the end of the Green International as a serious factor in European affairs and therewith of the peasant revolutionism which, in its Russian manifestation, the Bolsheviks had already subdued to their centralising, industrialist control. This peasant revolutionism never had, I think, much chance of constructive success; but if it had any chance, [Stamboliyski] was the man to lead it." The IAB relaunched in 1927, after renewed efforts by the RSZML's
Milan Hodža. He attended the First Congress of Slavic Peasant Youth in
Ljubljana (September 1924), where he spoke of
economic liberalism as being "in crisis", and articulated a vision of agrarianism as a "
Third Way", rather than as a syncretic policy. This vision was immediately echoed by Witos, who agreed that Polish peasants needed to reject right- and left-wing ideologies. In later interviews, Hodža also argued that "peasant democracy" would reconcile the constituent "races" of Czechoslovakia, including both Czechs and
Sudeten Germans, leading to "internal peace from social defense". He wished to export this model for the benefit of "toiling, liberal, peaceful peasants", who rejected all extremes; he also commended the BZNS for having adopted a more "reasonable" stance. In addition, Hodža viewed agrarianism as subsumed to his own take on the Danubian Federation, explaining in 1928: "For the past eight years, I've been searching for a collaborative element for the countries of Central Europe, one that would result in stable equilibrium; I believe to have found it in peasant democracy. If we manage to organize a new Central Europe on this basis, it will then be possible, as an automatic development, to also include Austria". Mečíř also contributed, specifically in that he toned down
Pan-Slavism, advocating for a purely internationalist line, which welcomed representatives from outside Slavic Europe. However, the notion of Slavic unity was not entirely dropped from IAB statutes, with Švehla declaring that Slavs, as naturally predisposed farmers, were selected to preach a "gospel of land" during a time when, as he saw it, both socialism and liberalism were in crisis. Summits of the Slavic Peasant Youth continued to be held—at Prague,
Poznań, and
Bratislava; however, Piast delegates were suspicious of such ethnic cooperation, and resented the BZNS's authoritarian tendencies. In fact, later that month, the PȚ fused with Maniu's
Romanian National Party to become the
National Peasants' Party (PNȚ). This stronger and less radical group was finally accepted into the IAB in October 1927. In 1928, the IAB had made a final change to its name, becoming known as the International Agrarian Bureau. It was still informally the "Green International". Despite being the least agrarian state of the region, Czechoslovakia was still the centerpiece of all agrarian projects, through both the RSZML and the BdL, which represented the Sudeten Germans. The IAB's permanent seat was in Prague, with Švehla serving as IAB Chairman. Among the founding parties, the BZNS remained factionalized, with one wing still attending Krestintern sessions until being expelled by the party mainstream in 1930.
Final expansion In addition to all its other original members, the IAB was able to obtain allegiance from the HSS, as well as from the Dutch PB and the Romanian PNȚ; Other new recruits included four national parties: the
Landbund (Austria), the
Farmers' Assemblies (
Estonia), the
Maalaisliitto (
Finland), and the
Farmers' Union (
Latvia); the BdL, ZS and HSS were regional members, as were the
Slovene Peasant Party and two Swiss Parties of Farmers and Traders (in
Argovia and
Bern). An additional member was France's
Agrarian and Peasant Party (PAPF). Explicit in its praise of Eastern European agrarianism, it was criticized by left-wing journalist Guy Le Normand as inauthentic and makeshift: "Founded by some slick and dodgy 'intellectuals' [...] who knew how to cleverly exploit a desire of the 'Green International', which was to set up a chapter in France". The PAPF's first congress, held at Paris in January 1929, was attended by Mečíř, for the IAB, and
Ferdinand Klindera, of the Czechoslovak cooperative movement. Though Mečíř claimed to have enlisted 17 political parties from all over Europe into his International, entire regions remained uncovered—including the one-party states. It was never able to canvass for support in Hungary, possibly because Hungarian agrarianists viewed the IAB as an instrument for Czechoslovak foreign policy; most
Nordic agrarian groups were also glaringly absent. The
Maalaisliitto exception showed that Finnish peasants were becoming aware of similarities between their own agricultural markets and those in "new independent states of the eastern half of Europe". During early 1928, the
Ukrainian Agrarian Statist Party (USKhD), founded in Berlin by exiled supporters of the
Ukrainian Hetmanate, also looked into the possibility of joining the IAB. This project was quickly vetoed from within by M. Kochubei, who underscored ideological incompatibilities: the USKhD viewed itself as
anti-intellectualist,
anti-democratic, and
corporatist, dismissing the Green International as an
intelligentsia movement which "[does] not have a sense of homeland". Kochubei described the IAB's commitment to democracy as "pathological". Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's agrarian movements experienced crisis, triggered by Radić's murder in 1928. The "
Dictatorship of January 6" outlawed them and all other political groups, replacing them with the
Yugoslav National Party. The opposition continued to organize clandestinely, and, in the Slovene case, maintained a direct link with the IAB. The Second IAB Congress was held at Prague on May 23–May 25, 1929, but officially reunited only delegates from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, France, Latvia, Romania, and Switzerland; these unanimously reconfirmed Švehla as Chairman. A RSZML cadre,
Karel Viškovský, spoke during the IAB proceedings to reassure the audience that agrarians still believed in
class collaboration; by contrast, the BdL's
Franz Spina took the rostrum to note that "peasant parties" stood for a "pure community of economic interests", replacing the nationalist allegiances of past decades. By 1932, Paris was home to another "Green International", which, despite the name, was a network of pacifists, "supporting, confronting, publicizing and uniting as one fraternal vision all movements working to organize peace across the world." Also in 1929, the Krestintern's activities were toned down by
Joseph Stalin. The Soviet regime ended in bloodshed its attempt to reach out to the peasantry, inaugurating "
Dekulakization". A new IAB Congress was held in Prague in October–November 1930; delegates represented the Czechoslovak parties and Swiss parties, the BZNS, PAPF, PB, PNȚ, the Latvian Farmers' Union, and the
Agrarian Party of Greece. The core topic for discussion was the
Great Depression. In greeting his foreign colleagues, Hodža supported
price controls at an international level. According to French syndicalist
Émile Guillaumin, the old Green International continued to exist in Prague in 1932, having established "branches in Nordic and Danubian countries, as well as in Switzerland"; PAPF was its westernmost member, as well as that region's "most active". The IAB briefly extended into other countries, enlisting the
Belgian Agricultural League of
Wallonia; while Greek Agrarianists were no longer IAB members in 1931, the
Spanish Agrarian Party (PAE) joined in 1934. Agrarian initiatives were sabotaged from 1933 by
Nazi Germany, whose leadership viewed the entirety of Central Europe as a German
Lebensraum. The Bloc of Agrarian Countries held its last conference in Bucharest in June 1933, after which it faded away due to the hostility of great powers and a lack of commitment among Polish statesmen. Although Italy participated in the 1931 Grain Conference, which was a triumph for the small agrarian states, its
fascist government singled out peasant internationalists as crucial enemies. In 1934, as part of the Italo–German rapprochement, it maneuvered to have Hungary withdraw from the Bloc of Agrarian Countries. The advent of authoritarian and fascist regimes slowly encroached on the IAB, reducing its representation. Green activists recorded the fascization of some peasant parties, describing the
Lapua Movement as incompatible with its agenda, and restated that the IAB remained equally opposed to
Nazism and Bolshevism. Eventually, democratic agrarianism was shunned in its countries of origin. Following Radić's assassination, the HSS had drifted into radical right-wing politics. The
Landbund supported the notion of an
Austrian Corporate State, which dissolved it in early 1934. During the same weeks, agrarianist leaders
Konstantin Päts (in Estonia) and
Kārlis Ulmanis (in Latvia) staged
self-coups to set up personal dictatorships, banning all political groups—including their own. These measures were justified as protection against more radical groups: the
Vaps Movement and the
Pērkonkrusts ''(see
1934 Latvian coup d'état)
. In Latvia, an ideological synthesis was performed, transforming the agrarian youth organization, Mazpulki'', along quasi-fascist lines. In November 1934, asked by Romanian
Ion Clopoțel if the IAB had been abandoned, Hodža responded: "No. Not at all. However, the terrifying agricultural crisis which has been unfolding over these past three years made our reunions pointless. Please inform Mr Mihalache of my wish to convene the next international bureau in February or March [1935]." Radicalization, meanwhile, was also embraced by the PAPF, who, at the height of the
Stavisky Affair, proposed the death penalty by hanging for politicians found guilty of forgery or embezzlement. The group had formed the
Front paysan with the conservative
Union nationale des syndicats agricoles and the militant
Comités de Défense Paysanne, and PAPF's
more moderate members left in the 1936 party congress. Though a close collaborator of the PAPF, the PAE remained loyal to the
Second Spanish Republic, integrating with a family of "right-wing republicans" which also included
CEDA. After years of tacit collaboration with the Romanian left, the PNȚ also dealt a serious blow to the development of democracy by sealing a pact with the fascist
Iron Guard ahead of
national elections in 1937. On February 28, 1937, Mečíř attended the Ninth PAPF Congress in
Compiègne as the IAB overseer. The RSZML had by then entered its own transition toward the far-right. According to historian Roman Holec, the process had begun with Švehla's death in 1933, and was overseen by his successor
Rudolf Beran (noted earlier for his support of the IAB). The decisive movement in this drift to the right was the
German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after which the IAB was no longer active. From 1940, the effective
Nazi hegemony in Continental Europe relocated peasant internationalism to
London. The IAB was partly reconstructed as the
Fabian Society's East European Discussion Group, frequented by the likes of
Milan Gavrilović,
Jerzy Kuncewicz, and
David Mitrany. This initiative produced in July 1942 an International Agrarian Conference, overseen by
Chatham House, during which delegates formally pledged themselves to the
Atlantic Charter, while restating support for cooperative farming and introducing calls for a
planned economy. ==IPU==