Peasant uprising in Romania 1907
In the peasant uprising in Romania in 1907 , the Romanian peasants protested against their living and working conditions and against what they saw as the unjust distribution of land.
prehistory
The agrarian reform planned by Mihail Kogălniceanu in 1864 aimed to improve rural living conditions. However, the reality was different. Most of the farmers had been given their own piece of land, less than five hectares, and what they could earn on it was below the subsistence level . 60% of Romanian farmers owned very little or no land.
This led to the indebtedness of numerous farmers, who were forced to work on the large estates ( latifundia ). Contrary to what was planned in 1864, however, no freely negotiated employment contracts were concluded. The landowners took advantage of the indebted farmers' situation. They demanded high, sometimes long-term, work commitments and could also dictate the terms of lease agreements . Ultimately, the farmers' situation had deteriorated due to the reform attempts of 1864.
After unrest broke out again in 1888, new regulations were enacted in 1893, according to which employment contracts were limited to a maximum of one year and leases had to be concluded for at least three years. The state also began to sell the land that it had taken over in 1863 through the expropriation of the monasteries to landless farmers. But even this did not improve the situation significantly, the new regulations were undermined in many places. There were frequent protests and rebellions, and in 1907 the situation finally escalated.
The riot
At the end of February 1907, farmers in the village of Flămânzi in northern Moldova demanded the immediate conclusion of leases. This had been postponed by the large Jewish tenant Mochi Fischer until the beginning of the sowing season, in order to put the farmers under time pressure and then to force the most favorable conditions from them. However, Fischer fled from the insurgents without having signed the lease agreements.
The protests spread and became violent. Residential houses of intermediate tenants and landowners as well as farm buildings were looted, then also shops and restaurants. Local and provincial government buildings were destroyed in order to destroy the employment contracts stored there. Market towns and small towns like Botoșani and Buzău fell victim to devastation, others were endangered. Soon the whole of Moldova and then Wallachia were in an uproar. Groups of up to 1,000 men, primitively armed, set out on marches of pillage and destruction and did not shy away from abuse and manslaughter. The battle cry rang out: “Noi vrem pămînt” (“We want land”).
Intermediate tenants, land managers, members of the district and local government as well as parts of the Jewish population fled to the cities. In March several thousand peasants marched against Bucharest , but were repulsed by soldiers in advance. When a new government was installed on March 25, 1907, General Alexandru Averescu took over the war ministry and with it military responsibility. Averescu suppressed the uprising within a few days through the planned deployment of all military forces, even with the help of artillery.
The exact number of deaths caused by the military action is not known, but the official figure of 419 has certainly been exceeded by far. The opposition in parliament even suspected 1,100 dead. According to official sources, 7,807 insurgents have been arrested and charged. A number were acquitted; 6,500 fell under a general amnesty announced in April 1907. The victory of state power over the rebellious peasants meant that the conditions in the country remained almost unchanged.
literature
- Philip Gabriel Eidelberg: The Great Rumanian Peasant Revolt of 1907: Origins of a Modern Jacquerie. EJ Brill, Leiden 1974.
- Ion Ilincioiu (ed.): The Great Rumanian Peasant Revolt of 1907 (= Bibliotheca Historica Romaniae. 72). Editura Academiei Române, Bucharest 1991, ISBN 973-27-0137-4 .
- Leo Katz : Burning Villages. Roman (= anti-fascist literature and exile literature. 7). Publishing house for social criticism, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85115-166-6 (autobiographical).
- Karl Scheerer: The Romanian peasant uprisings of spring 1907 (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. Vol. 32). Lang, Bern et al. 1974, ISBN 3-261-01390-7 (at the same time: Mainz, University, dissertation, 1968).
See also
Web links
Franz Schausberger : Unrest in the Balkans. Peasant uprisings, demonstrations, political murder - a hundred years ago there were political crises in Romania and Bulgaria. (Article in the Wiener Zeitung of March 17, 2007)