Eyewitness, in Vrancea, of the drama of the Romanian peasant during collectivization

Citizen journalism

In April of the same year, 62 years have passed since the communist authorities in Romania decreed the triumph of socialist relations in agriculture, which was confirmed by the PMR Plenary of April 23-25, 1962.

What did collectivization mean for the Romanian peasant? A long period of troubles and misfortunes consisting of the confiscation of land, agricultural machinery, houses, hard years of imprisonment for those who opposed collectivization, the displacement of families to Bărăgan, etc.

We add to these misfortunes the system of mandatory quotas that did not take into account natural calamities (drought, hail, frost). This further impoverished the peasantry and completely unbalanced the peasantry which constituted about 75% of the country’s population.

In fact, only in Romania and Albania did the communist authorities apply to the peasantry a regime of austerity unprecedented in the other countries under the domination of the USSR.

The agricultural associations that had been established since 1949 paved the way for the cooperativeization of agriculture.

Stalin’s death in 1953 led to a process of loosening the pressure on the peasantry for a period of 2 years.

Starting with 1956, the propaganda for the collectivization of agriculture intensified.

The Romanian peasants had been divided into five categories: the poor peasants without land, the peasants who owned some land, the middle peasants, the peasants and the landlords.

If in the plains the establishment of GACs was easier to do due to the configuration of the land, in the hill and mountain areas, this was made more difficult.

The first collectivized region was Constanta. Then followed Galațiul, Banat, etc.

The event meant that, being a student at the School in Vizantea-Răzășească, a village that was part of the old Vizantea commune, I witnessed the establishment of the GAC in this commune.

In a frosty March of 1956, our Russian language teacher (graduated from Vizantea-Răzășeasca), took some of our students to Vizantea Mănăstirească on the day when the foundation stone of the future Collective Farm was laid, pompously titled, “The 2nd Congress of the PMR”.

In front of the headquarters of the future collective household, a stage was erected, decorated with carpets and fir branches.

There were about three local fiddlers who were barely playing some popular tunes and a few people who were walking around to keep from freezing to death.

At 10:00 a.m. an all-terrain vehicle arrives from which the driver and two more people get out, wearing leather boots, black raglans and leather caps on their heads.

They greeted the people in front and entered the premises, from where they came out after about ten minutes. A table was brought onto the stage where the two guests and the president of the People’s Council of the commune took their seats.

The president spoke first, then the two who were the first secretary of the Panciu district and the secretary for agricultural issues. After the solemn wishes, the three entered the building, and on the stage followed several young people who performed popular songs, then we, the students from Vizantea-Răzășească.

I recited a poem in Russian”Vsegda gatov“(“Tsometimes ready”) of which I don’t think anyone understood a grain. We went behind the future GAC to see the “wealth” with which the future unit was starting. I saw a couple of battered wooden carts, some sheep and goats that had been given a bundle of coccine, a mare and a foal and two beef cows and a calf tied to a fence.

Here, too, a barbecue was sizzling with steaks for the guests, carefully guarded by two men.

Hungry and cold, we left for the school we came from, telling our parents and friends what we saw at the new GAC.

In the neighboring commune of Găuri, where I also lived, the establishment of GAGs took place much later. Here, party activists walked through the three villages of the commune to enlighten the peasants to join the collective. But the men ran away from these teams and hid in…… around the villages or even fled to other villages to relatives or friends.

The president of the People’s Council of the commune, named Toader Holban, used to notify his close friends when activists from the district arrived in the commune and organized teams that walked from house to house, to run away from them.

One evening, a team of five arrived at our house, among which were the agricultural agent of the commune, the president of the Women’s Democratic Front, a foreign activist and two poor peasants from the village, one of them being blind in one eye. After many contentious discussions, the one with one missing eye says to dad:

– “What’s up, Dumitre, from now on this is the way!”

Father, extremely annoyed by the discussions held until then, answers him:

– “How the hell do you see the way forward with one eye and I don’t?” chi and

The next day dad was called to the Militia Station summoned to hand over a weapon he allegedly had from the war, according to the militia’s information.

He had indeed had a gun, but he had buried it in a fox’s den by a stream. He spent a whole day digging to find the gun, because he had forgotten the exact place where he buried it.

In the end, the GAC was also established in the former Găuri commune, which was called “Lenin’s Road” and which had its headquarters in the same building as the Popular Council, in the houses of Lina Constantinescu, houses that had been confiscated by the communist regime.

However, the life of this GAC was not too long, because it was abolished by order of the authorities, because it, like other similar units in Vrancea, had been established using less orthodox methods and the party had passed a law abolishing GACs established in a certain period.

The PMR leaders celebrated the end of the collectivization process by organizing a special plenary session of the CC of the PMR on April 23-25, 1962 and a special session of the MAN on April 27-30, 1962, in which 11,000 peasants participated, the number of invited peasants being a allusion to the number of victims of the 1907 Uprising.

Gheorghe Ghiroghiu-Dej, the general secretary of the Romanian Workers’ Party (PMR), reported that socialist forms of ownership owned 96% of the arable land and 93.4% of the agricultural area.

He did not mention anything about the communist terror exercised in the villages of Romania and the justified revolts of the peasants against collectivization.

The protests of the peasants in Vrancea (Bârsești, Răstoaca, Suraia, etc.) as in other counties of the country, were liquidated by shooting the rioters, hard years in prison, confiscation of property, preventing their children from attending universities, etc.

Forced collectivization in Romania left deep traces in the life of the peasantry, some of which have not been healed even today.

Phew. Victor Herchea

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