4.2.1. Poland
Historical, political, and ethnic conditions cover several spheres of the EE, including politics, legal conditions, culture, human capital, and investment. Starting with a historical overview, it should be noted that the region of West Pomerania was incorporated into Poland in 1945 after almost a thousand years of affiliation to German-speaking countries. After the forced migration following the new borders of Europe, decided at the conferences in Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam, the region was populated by people resettled from the former Polish eastern borderlands and a small number of Ukrainians, Polish citizens, and people displaced during the “Wisła” action. The current ethnic structure of the region’s population is almost homogeneous. Representatives of the largest national and ethnic minorities, Ukrainian (4482 people), German (3165 people), or Roma (1002 people), according to data from the last population census (2011), represent less than 0.5% of the region’s population.
In the People’s Republic of Poland, the rural population mostly worked on state or cooperative farms. However, the ethos of working on one’s own farm carried over from the interwar period was substantial. As in other real socialist countries, leisure was organised by the omnipotent workers’ party, which provided work, home, entertainment, and leisure. People rested at the seaside, in the mountains, or in cities. Its development in Poland was hampered by poor infrastructure in the countryside, discouraging conditions of stay on rural farms, and a total lack of assistance from the state [
59,
60].
After 1989, Poland changed its political system to a parliamentary democracy and the economic system was transformed towards a free market. The party initiating the transformation became the leading state institution. Hence, the sources of economic liberalism in Poland were successive government teams and a bicameral parliament. In Poland’s political tradition, peasant groups played a strong role already before World War I (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe “Piast”; Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe-Lewica; Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe “Wyzwolenie”), and played an important political role in the inter-war period (1918–1939). During the period of communist rule, the sense of moral and financial autonomy of the rural population was so strong that Poland did not fully collectivise agriculture and individual farms were preserved. In the political sphere, however, the distinctiveness of the peasantry was symbolised by the existence of a grouping called the United Peasant Party (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe), a front for the ruling communist party. When communism was overthrown in 1989, the peasant groups were reactivated, but the strongest of them, the Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe), competed from 1993 with a new peasant party called “Samoobrona” (Self-defence). From 1989 to 2021, the peasant groups were part of government coalitions in 1993–1997, 2001–2003, 2006–2007, and 2007–2015. The strong position of peasant groupings perpetuated, among other things, a meagre disability contribution for people engaged in agricultural activity or a very favourably defined status of an individual farmer [
61]. These circumstances allow us to presume equally favourable legal and political regulations of agritourism.
In Poland, conducting economic activity in the light of the Law on Freedom of Economic Activity [
62] does not refer to agritourism, farmers renting out rooms, selling homemade meals, and providing other services related to tourists’ stay on the farm. Thus, while carrying out agritourism activities, a farmer who limits himself to the activities described above is not obliged to enter them in the register of economic activities at the relevant municipal office. Agritourism activities may not lead to the transformation of the essential functions of an agricultural holding or any parts of its equipment in a permanent manner. In addition, the Act on Tourism Services [
63] distinguishes, in favour of farmers, the category of room rental and provision of space for pitching tents on an agricultural holding as not subject to registration as a hotel activity. Instead, a requirement is made to report the farm to the municipal register of accommodation facilities.
These regulatory provisions came into conflict with the foundations of the free market economy, which was the result of the expectations of rural communities towards the state in terms of protecting existing agricultural land distribution and preventing land trafficking. The fear of subjecting agricultural land to free trade had precise historical determinants resulting, in a general sense, from the mentality of the Polish rural population and, to a special extent, from the uncertainty felt by the Polish resettlers in the lands annexed to Poland in 1945 at the expense of Germany. In the 1990s, the political debate centred around fears of massive land acquisition by former residents of western and northern Poland or their heirs. These fears were rooted in the communist period when state propaganda publicised the activities of revisionist associations in West Germany (cf., Union of Expellees). The state land trade regulations [
64] came into force under the rule of a populist coalition of conservative parties, whose electorate is now predominantly rural and small-town dwellers.
The development of agritourism is supported by government and local government programmes under numerous schemes, including the Rural Development Programme 2014–2020. An essential source of financial support is European Union programmes, for the development of transport infrastructure, regional development, rural development under the European Regional Development Funds, the European Social Fund, the Cohesion Fund, or the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. Banks provide investment support by offering specialised forms of loans for the development of agritourism activities. The Polish Tourism Organisation and Regional and Local Tourist Organisations offer marketing support and technical advice on the organisation of various forms of agritourism farms.
4.2.2. Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan in a sense received its independence as a result of the treaty on the dissolution of the Soviet Union signed by Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine in December 1991. However, the statehood of Kazakhstan, in its various forms, dates back at least to the Middle Ages, when the lands of the present state were part of the Mongol Empire, the remnants of which are still present today in the division of the Kazakh population into three zhuz (ords/tribes). In the orbit of Russian influence, the Kazakh lands came under Peter I the Great and Catherine II, the rulers of Russia conducting intensive colonisation in Siberia and Central Asia. In the middle of the 18th century, Kazakhstan accepted the sovereignty of Russia. The Russians conquered and strengthened their presence in the steppes of Kazakhstan by building military fortresses in Pavlodar (1720), Petropavle (1752), Kokchetav (1824), and Almaty (1854). Kazakhstan was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1873. After the Russian revolution, in 1920, the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Republic was established. Five years later, it changed its name to Kazakhstan to become part of the USSR in 1936 as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic until 1991. The country’s long-standing president Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power from 1991 to 2019, while maintaining excellent relations with Russia, partly modernised the country by funding reforms with revenues from the sale of raw materials. He made a significant contribution to the denuclearisation of the region. In domestic politics, he promoted the idea of cooperation between all national and ethnic groups, which made it possible to mitigate social differences and avoid ethnic conflicts.
During Soviet times, agriculture in the country was dominated by large-scale state-owned (sovkhoz; russ.: coвeтcкoe xoзяйcтвo) and cooperative (kolkhoz; russ.: кoллeктивнoe xoзяйcтвo) farms, and private ownership was limited to small home gardens. The extensive pastoralism of horses, camels, cattle, and sheep, traditional for Kazakhs, was replaced by monocultures of cereal and industrial crops. In the 1950s, a huge programme of steppe and uncultivated land was implemented, creating more than 400 sovkhozes, which brought a significant increase in cereal production, reinforcing the myth of the superiority of socialism over the capitalist type of production. However, the droughts of 1963–1964 and the subsequent decline in cereal production wiped out the initial successes of the reform. Its consequences include the consolidation of the belief in the success of large-scale state farms, in the importance of central control, and the presence of another group of migrants, Russians and Ukrainians, who came to Kazakhstan to implement the agrarian reform.
In terms of structure, agriculture is heterogeneous due to the combination of pastoral traditions in the central part of the country, horticultural traditions in the south, and European agriculture in the north. The present-day Republic of Kazakhstan is an ethnically heterogeneous state, which is significant in the context of the subject under study and is due to the historical past of this part of Asia. The presence of Russian settlements since the 18th century in the northern part of the country favoured the emergence of urban centres specialised in trans-Asian trade and base cities for military garrisons. The Slavic population (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish) brought the tradition of European agriculture to the north of Kazakhstan, hampered by the continental climate and low rainfall. The areas to the south were until the 1930s subjected to traditional pastoralism combined with nomadism typical of the Kazakh majority population [
65]. The years 1928–1929 brought political decisions of Moscow on collectivisation of agriculture in the Kazakh Soviet Republic, which resulted in the depopulation of the country due to starvation deaths on a massive scale and exodus outside the USSR to China, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mongolia [
66]. The decline in the population, accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle, facilitated forced settlement on state farms called kolkhozes, where, as part of the all-Soviet division of tasks between the individual union republics, the so-called technical agriculture (cotton, sugar beet, and tobacco farming) was to be developed. As a consequence of the depopulation of the 1930s and 1940s, Kazakhstan became a transit zone for the resettlement of the Slavic population [
67], especially Poles and Ukrainians, who, regardless of their previous occupations, were employed in simple physical work at kolkhozes (urban intelligentsia) or factories (so-called kulaks, i.e., deported owners of individual farms) [
68]. Treated as class enemies, they did not have the opportunity to develop individual farms, which could already in independent Kazakhstan form the nucleus of agritourism, creating obvious barriers and impediments to the development of these services.
The situation with foreign capital investment is equally tricky. Back in 2003, regulations on state land trade were adopted, and the Mahilis (parliament in Kazakhstan) in 2016 passed amendments allowing foreigners to buy land. However, after massive protests by the population, opposing the creation of opportunities for mainly Chinese agricultural companies to purchase land, a special decree suspended the planned land reform for 5 years. According to the latest announcements by the new president, Kasy-Ma-Zhomart Tokayev, further regulations will prohibit the sale of land to foreigners and companies in which Kazakh capital is a minority shareholder. This may, to a large extent, limit new investment, also in the field of tourism.
At the same time, the region has sufficient natural and socio-economic potential for the development of alternative types of rural economy, in various particular forms of tourism, including ecotourism and agritourism. Among the factors favouring its development, the landscape diversity of villages inhabited by the descendants of the country’s multi-ethnic population should be emphasised. The nationality policy allows for free development and promotes numerous national and ethnic minorities, and the freedom of religious worship makes it possible to admire Orthodox church architecture, Catholic churches, or mosques (e.g., Petropavlosk) nearby. The city’s diverse architecture, with a predominance of Russian styles, is due to its demographic structure. Petropavlovsk, where the dominant groups are Russians (59%) and Kazakhs (30%), is also inhabited by Tatars (3%), Ukrainians (2%), Germans (2%), Poles (0.5%), and Belarusians, Azeris, Armenians, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and many other representatives of national and ethnic minorities [
69] (there are about 130 minority groups in the whole country).
Currently, Kazakhstan is implementing a development-oriented economic policy, planning to enter the group of the 30 most developed economies in the world by 2050. However, despite the country’s raw material wealth, the plans due to the decline in global energy commodity prices (2019–2020) remain mainly in the realm of wishful thinking. On the other hand, several measures have been taken to create a business-friendly eco-entrepreneurial system, including a somewhat liberal tax system, concessions in special economic zones, and support for small and medium-sized companies, which may positively impact the development of agritourism. However, the country is still dependent on the sale of energy (76%) and metallurgical raw materials (12%), which in 2018 accounted for 88% of total export earnings. Kazakhstan has risen again in the Ease of Doing Business 2020 ranking [
70] and is now ranked 25th (Poland is at 40). However, the ranking presents the ease of undertaking business activities by large companies. It highlighted the differential conditions of the entrepreneurial eco-system for large companies investing in the development of the economy in comparison with small, often family-run agribusinesses. Kazakhstan has undergone a real transformation in the past twenty years, but with its openness to foreign investment in new technologies, the local service sector has been somewhat forgotten.
Despite the announcements and declarative policy of the authorities [
71], real institutional support for the development of tourism, especially agritourism, is small. There are no special programmes promoting this sphere of activity of the population, no developed marketing in the field of agritourism, poor infrastructure development (water supply, sewerage, gas network), and low standards of living in Russian/Kazakh villages. Although every real tourist will appreciate the charms of real life in the countryside in the forests and steppes of Siberia, nowadays, agritourism farms are more and more often required to offer conditions of stay similar to the standards known in Western European countries. Financial support for investments in agritourism, as in the entire economy, is still primarily related to the existence of private relationships rather than the evaluation of the presented business plan.