"Agricultural Statecraft" in the Cold War: A Case Study of Poland and the West from 1945 to 1957

Abstract

This paper examines how the rise and fall of Polish agriculture affected the larger political and economic relationship among Poland and three key members of the western alliance - the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Federal Republic of Germany - in the first decade of the Cold War. This period is revealing precisely because the reversal of fortunes in the Polish agricultural economy required the Polish government and some western counterparts to maneuver through periods of both agricultural advantage and disadvantage. Agricultural strategies as means and ends motivated the Polish, British, West German, and American governments to actions that bent, stretched, and limited some well-established practices in Cold War relations across divided Europe. By explicating the political consequences of changing flows of agricultural exports and imports in one specific context, this essay serves as case study of the role of agriculture in the global context of the Cold War.