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review February 2026

Peasant revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe

Review by Mathias Fuelling
Black-and-white historical photograph of a large crowd gathered outdoors in a rural village setting. The crowd is made up mostly of peasants wearing heavy coats, hats, and headscarves, suggesting cold weather. Several women and elderly people stand in the foreground, along with a young boy in a cap. Faces appear serious and attentive, as if listening or waiting. Bare trees and simple buildings are visible in the background, reinforcing the rural, early-20th-century atmosphere.
In The Last Peasant War (Princeton University Press, 2025), Jakub S. Beneš shows how the peasant revolutions between 1917 and 1921 in Central and Eastern Europe shaped not only interwar politics, but also resistance to totalitarian regimes. Mathias Fuelling writes that Beneš’s work should function as a guide for future historians who seek to do bottom up, regional, and countryside-focused research.
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