Communism amongst the cornfields
Sharing in the golden-yellow riches
With successful grain farming came wealth. But only for farmers with their own land. The workers remained poor. This huge gap between rich and poor proved a fertile breeding ground for communism in this region. A few statues recall the period when communism was particularly popular in Oldambt.
A breeding ground for communism
The palace-like farmhouses you see everywhere here in the fields might already give you a clue. It was mainly the farmers themselves who grew rich from grain farming. And this whilst the poorly paid labourers did the back-breaking work. So it’s hardly surprising that more and more labourers demanded equality and were keen to listen to social anarchists such as Domela Nieuwenhuis and Jan Poppes Hommes. In Beerta and Finsterwolde, the Communist Party became the largest. In the 1980s, Beerta was even the only Dutch municipality to date to have a Communist mayor.
Statues honour the past
In Frank Westerman’s De Graanrepubliek , you can read about the connection between the cornfields of Oldambt and communism. But communism is also evident in the landscape. For example, there is a statue of the successful CPN politician Fré Meis at the Wedderklap in Oude Pekela. Slightly more striking is a statue of Lenin that suddenly appeared in Tjuchem at the end of the last century. Entrepreneur Henk Koop had imported the 17,000-kilo bronze statue. Lenin spent some time in the gardens of the Fontana Bad Nieuweschans spa, but has since been put into storage.
