Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine how refugee-new-farmers, produced through the land reform, reacted to the formation of rural socialism, specially to the collectivization in Kreis Bad Doberan in Bezirk Rostock 1952-1960. There were some local communities in which the refugee-new-farmers got the political power through the land reform. According to the reactions to the collectivization policy since 1952, we could divide these villages into three types; 1) Villages with positive foundation of the cooperative, 2) Villages with foundation by a minor group, broken down by June 17th Uprising, 3) Villages with the negative reactions to collectivization in 1952-53, therefore without any cooperative till 1957. Analyzing villages of the third type, we find refugee-new-farmers becoming economically strong. Although not faithful to the communist ideology but often joining to a local religious practice, they had held the political power as local SED party members. They were forced to accept the complete collectivization from 1958 to 1960; however, they showed a wide diversity; 1) foundation of a village-wide-cooperative, 2) foundation of plural cooperatives in a village, 3) foundation only by strong new farmers, forcing another small cooperative to disappear. Under the strong political force from above, it suggests that what strategy they had taken was one of significant moments for the formation of rural socialism in Postwar East Germany.
