Agricultural collectivization in Romania

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Proof of ownership issued in the course of the agrarian reform ( Aruncuta near Cluj ), March 1945

The collectivization of agriculture in Romania , also called agrarian reform , took place between 1945 and 1962 in the People's Republic of Romania . Its aim was to bring about a fundamental socialist change in the acquis and the organization of work in Romanian agriculture .

The collectivization can be roughly divided into three phases. In the first phase of forced collectivization from 1945 to 1953, Romanian German lands and land holdings over 50 hectares were expropriated . Large farmers were temporarily interned and made progressive compulsory taxes to the state. At the same time, all other agricultural producers, including the first collectives, were obliged to pay immense compulsory taxes to the state. Production fell and there was increasing food shortage. After the death of Josef Stalin there was a relaxation. From 1957 the pressure for complete collectivization increased again, which was finally declared to be over in 1962. During the period of collectivization there were repeated revolts and uprisings by the peasantry in large parts of Romania, which were violently suppressed by armed troops.

history

Development of the collectivization of agricultural land in the last phase, by region in percent
Administrative map of Romania, 1960-1968.svg region 1958 1960 1962
Argeș 4.0 35.8 91.1
Bacau 3.4 12.3 95.2
Banat 42.3 76.4 89.2
Brașov 22.3 38.0 94.3
Bucharest 16.0 94.5 99.9
Cluj 8.0 36.8 86.7
Crișana 8.4 28.9 88.5
Dobrogea 89.6 96.9 99.6
Galați 51.5 72.2 97.3
Hunedoara 6.5 32.7 73.6
Iași 8.3 38.3 99.6
Maramureș 9.4 34.6 86.9
Mureș (Hungarian Autonomous Region) 11.5 33.1 92.6
Oltenia 6.6 32.7 94.0
Ploieşti 6.6 18.9 94.1
Suceava 3.1 13.7 96.3
total 20.0 50.3 93.9

The Land Act of March 1945 lowered the maximum limit for private property to 50 hectares and expropriated property from members of the Romanian German minority. ( cf. expropriation in Romania 1945 ). As a result, around 1.8 million hectares were available for distribution to small farmers , agricultural workers and refugees from Bessarabia and Bukovina . The Romanian Workers' Party ( Partidul Muncitoresc Român , PMR) decided at the plenary meeting of the Central Committee from March 3 to 5, 1949, to reorganize agriculture in a socialist manner based on the model of the Soviet collective farms of the 1930s. Farmers were recruited for community structures such as Gospodării Agricole collective (GAC, agricultural collective farms ) and Gospodării Agricole de Stat (GAS; state farms ). State propaganda was directed at the farmers via newspapers and radio programs, with information vehicles, brochures and direct agitation in order to convince them of the advantages of collective agriculture and to get them to join the associations. The then Deputy Minister of Agriculture Nicolae Ceaușescu was responsible for collectivization .

The initial attempts at collectivization in the Romanian villages went hand in hand with an intensification of the class struggle against wealthy large farmers ( Chiaburi , also Kulacks ), who were accused of exploiting agricultural workers in cultivating their lands. Many were intimidated, beaten, arrested and sent to jails. More land was to be gained through the gradual displacement of the not yet expropriated large farmers, who were put under the toughest tax and tax pressure in order to be accused of sabotage and expropriated if they failed to do so. Violent measures were soon directed against anyone who refused to join the associations ( întovărășiri ) and thus refuse to be collectivized. Here, the focus was particularly on rural elites such as teachers, priests or wealthier farmers, who could often only choose between collective farms or an accusation of sabotage and thus prison. The farmers were expected not only to bring their land into the collective farms, but also that of their buildings (barns, houses, warehouses) and their agricultural machines, tools, wagons and work animals. Fighting, which was used by party representatives as a means of persuasion, as well as the harassment with high compulsory taxes for landowners who had not yet entered the collective with their agricultural land, led in places to peasant uprisings. In July and August 1949 there were dozens of spontaneous local revolts in Băița ( Bihor ), Arad and Botoșani , and in July 1950 in Vlașca ( Ialomița ) and Vrancea. Army , militia and Securitate troops put down the riots, resulting in the wounded, dead, arrests and deportations. According to official information at the time, over 80,000 farmers were arrested from 1949 to 1952, of which around 30,000 were convicted. Their number is likely to be much higher, the death toll was never announced.

Party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej warned in 1951 against the use of violence in the course of collectivization. After he had initiated the disempowerment of high-ranking party officials Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca in 1952 , Gheorghiu-Dej accused both of “instigating provocative measures” during the collectivization and “trampling on the free will of the peasants”, even though the former was against each other Foreign Minister Pauker had opposed the collectivization measures. In 1961 Gheorghiu-Dej condemned the large number of public trials in the first phase of collectivization, which had been carried out against the peasants "in the name of the struggle against the kulaks".

Collectivization made slow progress because of the enormous resistance of the peasants. Production fell and there was increasing food shortage. In 1951 only 17 percent of the country was collectivized. In 1952 Romania lagged behind all other Eastern Bloc countries . With the death of Stalin in 1953 a period of revisions began in Romania, which brought certain reliefs for the peasants such as the relaxation of the delivery regulations, price improvements, but also the occasional dissolution of collective farms and withdrawals from them. The share of the "cooperative sector" of all types was 1957 in the regions Brașov (German Kronstadt ) 19.1 percent and Timișoara (Timisoara) 29.9 percent of the cultivated area. Collectivization was most advanced this year with 69.4 percent in Dobruja .

In 1957 the Romanian Communist Party decided to accelerate the process. The Soviet head of government Nikita Khrushchev had spoken out against the Romanian initiative, and Romania's leadership wanted to prove its independence from the Soviet Union. As a result of the student revolt in Timișoara in 1956 , with which many farmers expressed their solidarity and refused to pay taxes, the farmers were exempted from the compulsory taxes on agricultural products in January 1957, so the remaining individual farmers were threatened with expropriation in 1959 if they were with their deliveries fell behind. During this period there were again peasant uprisings, for example in Suraia and Vadu Roşca (both in Vrancea ), in which at least nine people were killed, and in Cudalbi ( Galați ), Răstoaca (Vrancea), Drăgăneşti-Vlaşca and Olt . One of the punitive actions against unruly peasants was directed in 1960 by Nicolae Ceaușescu. All in all, there was hardly a region in Romania during the period of collectivization that did not revolt.

The formal completion of collectivization was announced during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party from April 23-25, 1962. An extraordinary session of the Grand National Assembly took place from April 27 to 30, 1962 , at which General Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej officially announced the end of the collectivization program. 96 percent of the country's arable land and 93.4 percent of the agricultural land were now integrated into the collective structures. On this occasion, around 11,000 collectivized farmers were transported to the capital Bucharest , where they celebrated and cheered the party.

photos

rating

The “History of Romania” published in 1969 in the Socialist Republic of Romania described the end of collectivization as a “profound revolution for the life of the peasants” and a “triumphant victory of socialism”.

The American anthropologist David Kideckel noted that collectivization was less ideologically motivated than a "response to objective circumstances" in post-war Romania.

The Romanian author Stan Stoica wrote that collectivization lost the farmers' “independence, dignity and identity”; it impaired the established structures in the Romanian villages considerably and was responsible for the decline in the rural population. The accelerated industrialization of the country taking place at the same time encouraged many young people to move to the cities. Many families became impoverished, while interest in work fell.

According to the British authors Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, unlike the Stalinist model of the 1930s used in the Soviet Union, collectivization in Romania was not achieved through the liquidation of large sections of the wealthy peasantry, hunger or agricultural sabotage, but successively without excessive violence or destruction carried out.

In the Sighet Memorial , the memorial for the victims of communism and the anti-communist resistance in Romania in Sighetu Marmației , the focus in room 18 is the resistance of the peasants against collectivization, symbolically represented by a furrow in the middle of the room. It is always green and is intended to remind of free and living ground, but also of the countless graves of those who gave their lives for it.

Web links

Commons : Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania  - Pictures, Videos and Audio Files Collection

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tatjana Thelen: Privatization and Social Inequality in Eastern European Agriculture: Two Case Studies from Hungary and Romania , Volume 865 by Campus Research, Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-593-37346-7 , 303 pp., 139 ff .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Katharina Kilzer, Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Spirit behind bars: The Romanian memorial Memorial Sighet. Volume 16 of Forum: Romania. Frank & Timme Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86596-546-2 , p. 79 f.
  3. ^ John Michael Montias: Economic development in Communist Rumania , MIT Press, 1967, p. 94, in English
  4. ↑ a b c Wilhelm Abel : Agricultural Policy. Volume 11 of Grundriss der Sozialwissenschaft. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967, ISBN 3-525-10508-8 , p. 217 ff.
  5. ↑ a b c d Thomas Kunze : Nicolae Ceaușescu: a biography. Ch. Links Verlag, 2009, ISBN 3-86153-562-9 , 464 S., S. 133 f.
  6. ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims : Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe. Volume III: The Fate of the Germans in Romania , Section b. The Bolshevikization and Collectivization of Economic Life , 1957, pp. 109E ff.
  7. ↑ a b Kenneth Jowitt: Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: the Case of Romania, 1944-1965. University of California Press, 1971, ISBN 0-520-01762-5 , p. 99, in English.
  8. ↑ a b c Keno Verseck : Romania , Volume 868 by Beck series, CH Beck Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-406-55835-6 , p. 74
  9. ↑ Elfriede Piringer: The Romanian Revolution 1989: The End of the Ceausescu Dictatorship - A Spotlight in Romanian History , Diploma Theses Agency, ISBN 3-8324-1336-7 , p. 33
  10. ↑ Steven W. Sowards: Modern history of the Balkans: (the Balkans in the age of nationalism). Books on Demand, 2004, ISBN 3-8334-0977-0 , p. 563.
  11. ^ A b Richard Schwertfeger: Romania - forgotten people's democracy. In: Der Donauraum , Volume 3, Research Institute for Issues of the Danube Region, 1958, p. 294.
  12. ↑ Katherine Verdery: The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Post Socialist Transylvania. Cornell University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8014-8869-9 , p. 46, in English
  13. ↑ Kenneth Jowitt: Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: the Case of Romania, 1944-1965. University of California Press, 1971, ISBN 0-520-01762-5 , p. 213, in English.
  14. ↑ Uwe Detemple : "To avoid a situation like in Hungary". The catalog of demands of the Temeswar student movement from 1956. Preliminary remark and translation Memoriu din partea studenților din Timișoara , German memorandum of the Temeswar students . In: Mihaela Sitariu: Oaza de libertate. Timișoara, 30 octombrie 1956 , German The oasis of freedom. Timisoara October 30, 1956. Polirom, Iași, 2004, pp. 195–197, in Romanian
  15. ↑ banaterra.eu ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Uwe Detemple: The Temeswar student revolt of 1956 , October 20, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.banaterra.eu
  16. ↑ Gerald W. Creed: Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village. Penn State Press, 1998, ISBN 0-271-04223-0 , p. 35, in English.
  17. ^ Stan Stoica: Dicţionar de Istorie a României. Editura Merona, Bucharest, 2007, p. 77 f., In Romanian.
  18. ^ Robert Bideleux, Ian Jeffries: A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change. Routledge, 2007, ISBN 1-134-21318-2 , p. 473, in English.