Agrarianism (Twilight of a New Era)

Agrarianism is a social philosophy or political ideology that stresses superiority of rural life over the urban life or dwelling. Agrarian parties appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, with the introduction of commercialized agriculture and world market forces that disrupts traditional rural society. The railways and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers in organizing and promoting an agrarian agenda. Initially lacking an ideologue and working has pressure groups until 1900s. Aleksandar Stamboliyski's Political Parties or Estatist Organizations (1909) in Bulgaria and others would articulate the bases of agrarian politics.

Common elements in the platforms of all agrarian parties where: land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. Safeguards t for the small and medium property. Promotion of cooperatives and easy access to credit. Village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands, and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Improvement of education in the rural areas and technological improvement and extension. Some agrarian parties still restrict their membership only to peasants, smallholders and agricultural workers.

Agrarian parties are important in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Serbia, Poland, Austria-Hungary), Baltic and Nordic Countries (Estonia, Lituania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland Finland and Greenland).

The creation in 1921 of the International Agrarian Bureau (IAB) in Cluj (Austria-Hungary), provided a network and discussion center for parties and organizations associated with agrarianism. Its membership is mainly drawn from Europe and Dominions of the ICF. In 1931 the IAB became the secretariat and liaison office of the International Peasants' Union.

Similar, but with lesser impact is the Red Peasant International (Krestintern) of the Comintern, that mainly functions in Asia and the Americas.

An notable variants of agrarianism are:
 * Agrarian socialism. Defined as socioeconomic political movement that seeks to combine an agrarian way of life with socialist (or semi-socialist) economic policies. An important difference with socialdemocrat and communist parties was the belief that that the rural peasantry, not the industrial proletariat, would be the revolutionary class. The building block of society is the rural commune. It was the official ideology of the Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) parties of the former Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution (1918) and its Civil War (1919-1920), SR parties where banned and its members pursued or exiled. The influence of SR's ideology extended to the agrarian parties of Romania. In the exile the SR parties maintained a Foreign Delegation of the Central Committee associated for a brief time with the Labour and Socialist International (LSI), until the failed 1923 coup in the Belarus SR. Since them they gravitated around the International Peasants' Union.
 * and Baltic-Nordic agrarian parties. Founded has farmers' party with a political agenda that combined agrarianism with nationalism. The progress of industrialization and declining of farmer population made them broaden their scope to other issues.