The following is the history of the agrarian problem since the Restoration. An Agrarian Reform Law was passed in 1919, but remained a dead letter for a year till 15 August 1920, when the peasant premier, Witos, introduced a second reform. The new law divided up all landed property in Poland into seven categories as follows :
(1) State domains ;
(2) estates belonging to members of ex-dynasties (Romanoff, Hapsburg, Hohenzollern) ;
(3) properties belong to the Russian Land Bank and the Prussian Expropriation Commission ;
(4) Church lands ;
(5) land belonging to public bodies ;
(6) land � administered contrary to economic or national inter4ests � ;
(7) other privately owned land.
Category 1 was to be expropriated first : then category 2 : and so on. It was obviously going to be some time before the reform reached category 7.
The Witos ministry fell immediately after passing this law, and the execution of the agrarian reform languished. In 1920 some 181,300 acres were expropriated ; in 1921-2 rather more. In the spring of 1923 Witos returned to power in � unholy coalition � with the Right, whose consent to the enforcement of the agrarian reform he had failed to obtain. When he endeavoured to make a beginning with the expropriation of the Church lands (category 4), the Vatican protested and the Government fell. It was not until two years later that a law was passed (28 December 1925) t o accelerate progress. Four hundred and ninety thousand acres were to be expropriated each year. In the autumn of the following year (October 1926) Piłsudski met the representatives of the big land-owners at the castle of Prince Janusz Radziwill at Nieswiez, and a tacit arrangement was reached by which, in return for the political support of the land-owners at the elections in the coming spring, Piłsudski agreed to mitigate the application of the agrarian reform. It is very difficult to obtain any figures as to what has happened to the agrarian reform since that date : but down to the end of 1927 some 2,464,000 acres in all had been expropriated, of which 1,602,000 went to create new holdings and 1,087,000 to the enlargement of existing holdings. The remainder went to � special purposes � (mainly co-operative undertakings) or were � returned � to the original owners.
( pages 171 - 2 )