Social Change in Communist Romania

Social Change in Communist Romania
Author(s): Daniel Chirot

Source: Social Forces, Vol. 57, No. 2, Special Issue (Dec., 1978), pp. 457-499
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2577678
Accessed: 21/11/2009 10:42
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uncpress.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of North Carolina Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Social Forces.
http://www.jstor.org
Social Change
in Communist Romania
DANIEL CHIROT, University of Washington
ABSTRACT
It has been claimed by scholars, both within Romania and elsewhere,
that Communist rule "saved" Romaniafrom the economiccrisis that existed
in the 1930s. A close analysis reveals, however, that the economicachieve-
ments of the regime are comparableto those which have occurredelsewherein
Europeunder differentpolitical systems. It is argued that Romania's relative
position among the industrial nations has remainedabout the same as it was
in the pre-socialistperiod. Moreover, there is much evidence that the socialist
period representsless of a breakwith the ancien regime than the Romanian
leaders claim. It is suggested in this article that Romania is closer to the
structure of the "corporatist"society outlined by social theorists in the 1930s
than is generally recognized.
The Communist government of Romania lays its main claim to legitimacy

on the rapid economic growth and social modernization which have oc-
curred in the last 30 years, and also on the supposed fact that before 1944
Romania was imprisoned in a set of hopeless problems from which there
seemed to be no escape. Many distinguished foreign observers, both
before and since the advent of Communism, agree. Many Romanian intel-
lectuals, particularly social scientists in the 1930s, also felt that there existed
a major crisis which could only be resolved with difficulty, if at all. Among
those intellectuals who have survived the war, the purges and jailings of
the first decade of Communist rule, and simple old age, many agree today
that the government's claim to have saved Romania has considerable
merit, even if the rescue operation might have been carried out more
rationally and humanely.
In retrospect, and when it is compared to the situation in a number
of Third World countries in the 1970s, Romania's situation in the 1930s was
not, however, all that catastrophic. When Romania in the 1930s was com-
pared to Western Europe, of course, and even to substantial portions of
Eastern Europe, its situation was, indeed, poor. This remains as true today
as it was in the 1930s, except that all of Europe has experienced rapid eco-
nomic growth. Within any one country, Romania included, comparisons
with the levels of the 1930s show impressive progress. Not only has this
progress transformed Western Europe, but all of the poor semicircle of
457
458 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978
southern and eastern European countries. Thus, Portugal, Spain, Italy,

Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, and
even Czechoslovakia (the western part of which was already quite pros-
perous before 1938) have shared in this economic and social transformation
associated with rising literacy, urbanization, and higher levels of personal
consumption. Spain has done this under a Fascist regime, Italy under an
inefficient and unstable capitalist-democratic regime, Greece under a va-
riety of light-wing and moderate regimes, Yugoslavia under a liberal Com-
munist regime, and the others under more orthodox Communism. Only
Portugal has been held back, largely because of its expensive efforts to
maintain an African Empire and of the political turmoil generated by its
colonial wars. It is, therefore, difficult to isolate the particular merit of any
particular regime or style of development.
No one will ever prove that Romania was saved by Communism,
any more than anyone will ever prove that Spain was saved by Francisco
Franco. Nor will anyone ever disprove these contentions, either, and in the
end it remains a matter of personal opinion. But changes have occurred,
and in order to study them I shall divide this paper into two parts: the first
will deal with the history of Romania from the 1930s until 1957, a time
during which dramatic political events set the course of rapid industrializa-
tion which Romania has followed since. The second part will deal with
industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, the population prob-
lem, ethnic minorities, nationalism and international political problems,
and politics in Romania since 1957.
Romania in the 1930s: A Cornered Society?
How serious were Romania's troubles in the 1930s? The 1930 census
showed that 78 percent of the labor force was in agriculture, and only 10
percent was in industry (Madgearu). During the next decade, it seemed
to Romania's leading economist, Virgil Madgearu, that far more surplus
rural laborers appeared than could be absorbed by urban industry. Rural
areas were already overcrowded, and agriculture was apparently stagnant
(Madgearu). In some respects, yields were inferior to what they had been
before World War I (Nulcanescu; Roberts). Even by East European stan-
dards Romania's peasant agriculture was poor and backward (Warriner).
Peasant plots were small and fragmented, and were becoming even smaller
because of increase in population (Cornateanu; Cresin 1, b).
Beneath these gloomy facts, however, the reality was somewhat less
depressing. The birth rate was falling quickly, and by the late 1930s the
yearly population growth rate was down to 1 percent (Roberts). The indus-
trial labor force, on the other hand, grew at 3 percent per year during the
1930s, and after 1932 industrial output grew at an annual rate in excess of
Romania / 459
10 percent (Madgearu). In time the balance would have tipped, and the
problem of rural overpopulation would have been solved. Another indi-
cator that shows that the society was not stagnant is the literacy rate,
which increased quickly after World War I. Thus, by 1930, 67 percent of
those 13-19 years of age, and 72 percent of those aged 7-12 years, were
literate. Only among older people was the majority still illiterate (Manuila).
To be sure, the country was ethnically divided, and large parts of the
new territories added after World War I had non-Romanian majorities or
large minorities. Anti-Semitism was widespread, spurred by the fact that 43
percent of the urban population was Jewish (Anuarul, a), and that Jews were
disproportionately represented in certain key professions (Gheorghiu).
Partly in response to this, the fascist Iron Guard posed a growing threat to
political stability.
In Romania's last more or less free election (in 1937) the Iron Guard
and one other fascist party received 25 percent of the vote, while the
government party would probably have received no more than 20 percent
had there been no fraud (Enescu). The government was ineffective and
corrupt, and by the end of the decade it seemed to be losing its grip on the
country (Weber). However, Romania's political problems were similar to
those found throughout Europe at that time. As such, they hardly reflected
a necessarily hopeless domestic economic situation.
The Revolution from Abroad
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the Romanian Communist party (C.P.)
was small and almost entirely bereft of influence or followers. It scored
minor successes among railway workers, but on the whole it failed to take
advantage of the various crises of the period. During the 1930s more
workers and peasants were attracted by the fascist Iron Guard than by the
C.P. (Ionescu). One of the main problems was that from the very start the
Party was anti-nationalist. Many of its leaders were "foreigners" (Bul-
garians, Hungarians, and Jews) and the ethnic minorities found the C.Ps
program of "self-determination up to complete secession from the existing
state" more appealing than the Romanians. The Party's anti-Romanian
stance was partly a function of its leadership (few of the founders were
Romanians), partly the result of the Soviet Union's claim to Bessarabia
(which was Russian territory between 1812 and 1918, and Romanian from
1918 to 1940), and partly because Comintem strategy for building Com-
munist strength throughout the Danubian-Balkan region called for support
of discontented minorities, particularly Hungarians in the various sections
of Hungary parcelled out to other states after 1918 (Ionescu; Jackson;
Roberts).
During World War II Romania sided with the Germans, invaded the
U.S.S.R., and reoccupied Bessarabia and parts of the Ukraine (in compen-
sation for a part of Transylvania given to Hungary and a small piece of the
Dobrogea given to Bulgaria). But the Romanian C.P was unable to mount
any partisan, anti-regime activities. Only in mid-1944, as the Soviet army
approached Romania, did some sort of anti-German movement take shape.
In the end, in August 1944, the military, pro-German regime was over-
thrown by King Michael (son of Carol II) who saw this as the only way to
save the country from Soviet devastation (Ionescu; Roberts). Official Com-
munist historiography now claims that this act was part of an insurrec-
tionary movement organized and led by the C.P, and that it climaxed a
long period of resistance (Constantinescu et al.). In fact it was an attempt
by the Romanian establishment to change sides before it was too late.
Some Communists were even brought into the government, but it was a
vain effort. The Soviet army plundered Romania anyway, and because of
the country's role as a German ally, the Western powers were hardly in a
position to protest (Wolf).
In 1945 Moscow imposed a Communist government on Romania.
The Party, under the guidance of cadres brought in from the U.S.S.R., had
swelled its ranks by enrolling every variety of opportunist, including
former Iron Guardists and police officials from the old regime. After two
years of fairly cautious maneuvering to strengthen the Communists,
waiting to see if the United States would intervene in Eastern Europe, the
U.S.S.R. finally imposed full Stalinist rule in 1947 (Ionescu; Roberts).
There began the years of terror and repression which were thoroughly to
transform Romanian society, and which destroyed all forces capable of
resisting Party rule.
In 1944 the Romanian C.P had about 1,000 members, but rapid and
indiscriminate recruiting raised membership to about 250,000 by late 1945,
and to over 600,000 by 1948,(Ionescu; Jowitt, a).
It is important to remember that the Romanian C.P. in the 1940s was
weak, filled with opportunists, directed almost entirely from Moscow and
advised by resident Soviet officials, unpopular, inexperienced, and (once
the anti-Titoist purges began in 1948) frightened of itself. This was more or
less the case elsewhere in Eastern Europe (except in Yugoslavia, and to
some extent Albania), but it was far more the case in Romania than in any
other newly Communist country. Nowhere else had the Party been so
weak and alien in the 1930s, and in no other country in Eastern Europe did
it have so little genuine popular support after 1945 (Ionescu). Very rarely
has such a pathetic movement become an overwhelmingly dominant elite
so quickly. Without the period of Stalinist terror enforced by Soviet occupa-
tion, and the continued fear that such a thing might happen again, there is
no question that Communist rule in Romania would have collapsed long
ago. Without understanding this it is impossible to comprehend social
change since 1947.
Romania / 461
The Destruction of the Old Society, 1947-53
The first requirement was to destroy the social and economic bases of
opposition, which meant elimination of the old elites and of the classes
that might resist Communist rule.
The professional army was no longer a serious threat. Decimated in
Russia, its leading generals in disgrace, disarmed, hemmed in by Soviet
troops, filled with untrustworthy recruits, the old army no longer posed a
threat. The king, who was a potential rallying point against Communism,
was isolated, and then exiled in Decemeber 1947. Romania became a
republic (Lendvai).
The first target of Communist rule, even before 1947, was the rem-
nant of the old noble, landowning elite. The land reform of 1945 eliminated
large properties and removed the last economic base of this declining class
(Roberts). A process partially carried out after World War I was now finally
completed. An elite of several thousand families had ruled the Old Kingdom
and had owned about half of its land (Chirot and Ragin). Although its
share had fallen to no more than 15 percent of the arable land after 1918
(Roberts), this class remained a social elite with disproportionate power. In
the Parliament of the 1930s, according to Mattei Dogan, some 20 to 25
percent of the deputies and senators were from large landowning families.
The land reform had little effect on the agrarian overcrowding since the
amounts of land confiscated were too small to raise the size of peasant
holdings by very much. In 1948, over half of all peasant holdings were still
under 3 hectares, and while these minute properties encompassed more
land than in 1930, they were still too small (Murgescu). But the political
purpose of the reform was met-the aristocracy was gone once and for all.
Romania in the 1930s was no longer exclusively a "landowners'
state," for there were also industrialists and a bourgeoisie. The few large
industrialists and bankers (expropriated in 1948) had been, however, depen-
dent on state contracts and favors from the start. In 1945, German-owned
investments (the most important of which were in petroleum production)
had been seized by the Soviets, so that by 1948, joint Soviet-Romanian
companies owned much of the mining and heavy industrial output of the
country. As other large industrial properties (including foreign-owned
ones) were expropriated, many of them went to these "Sovrom" enter-
prises, in which the Romanians provided the capital and labor while the
Soviets took a share of production. By 1950, 90 percent of industrial output
was in state firms (Ionescu; Montias).
The middle ranks of the bourgeoisie were ruined by a currency
reform in 1947, which essentially confiscated all the money (Ionescu; Rob-
erts).
The state gradually expropriated commerce, and the base for an
independent middle class vanished. In 1948, 90 percent of all shops were
still private. By 1953, only 14 percent were still privately owned. (Private
shops did not totally disappear until 1959.) (Anuarul, b).
The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie had not constituted an
elite in the same way that the old nobility once had. A few Romanian
ideologues, like Stefan Zeletin had tried hard to pretend that Romania
after World War I was run by a capitalist, financial-industrial elite, and
Communists saw a state dominated by heavy industry, finance, and big
landowners (Patrascanu). In actual fact, the society was still too rural and
the economy too agricultural to support a strong bourgeoisie, while in the
countryside the power of the landowners had been substantially broken
long before 1945. It was, therefore, fairly easy for the Communists to
destroy these class enemies.
If there was a recognizable elite gradually seizing power from the
declining aristocracy in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a class of intellectuals,
professionals, and top civil servants. Men like Iorga (historian), Cuza
(political scientist), Gusti (sociologist), Madgearu (economist), and Goga
(poet) occupied high political positions and possessed great influence. Of
all the members of parliament (both chambers) from 1922 to 1937, 20.6
percent were school or university teachers or writers and journalists, 7.1
percent were doctors, pharmacists, or engineers, and 35.5 percent were
lawyers. Businessmen made up under 3 percent of the membership, and
peasants only 6 percent. (Compared to the composition of the pre-World
War I parliament, lawyers, teachers and professors, and professionals had
gained at the expense of landowners.) (Dogan).
There is really no way of knowing how many people lost their jobs
and had their goods confiscated, how many arrests there were, how many
deaths, or how many survived, more or less intact, but frightened into
submission. Western visitors in the late 1960s and 1970s have been able to
see that the old Romanian intelligentsia was not completely eliminated.
The period of severe repression lasted no more than a decade, and while
almost all the members of this class suffered, many were jailed, and
thousands died or were murdered, many others lived through the experi-
ence. When the "rehabilitations" of the late 1950s began, these survivors
gradually filtered back into bureaucratic and professional positions, and by
the late 1960s, they formed a distinct strata of aging, well-educated, bitter,
civil servants and teachers. Many of them, in fact, came to feel a kind of
twisted loyalty to the Party that saved them from oblivion after having
consigned them to it in the first place.
The "technical" intelligentsia, the engineers, doctors, agronomists,
scientists, etc., suffered less than the others because they were necessary
for the industrialization and modernization efforts. Even there, however,
coercion was strongly applied between 1948 and 1950 in order to insure
compliance. Those who stepped out of line were quickly punished (Ionescu;
Jowitt, a).
Romania / 463
Another source of potential opposition to Communism was the

church. There were actually many Romanian churches, but for various
reasons they were all weak. Unlike the Catholic Church in Poland, and to a
lesser extent in Hungary, the Romanian churches presented no effective
resistance.
The overwhelming majority of ethnic Romanians were Orthodox,
except in Transylvania where there were about 1,600,000 Uniates (basically
Romanians following an Orthodox ritual but with administrative links to
Rome). The Uniate Church was abolished in 1948 and its followers forced
into Orthodoxy (Wolff). This was not difficult since the differences between
the two churches had always been a matter of politics rather than religious
substance. Orthodoxy had been the faith of most ethnic Romanians since
at least the twelfth century, probably much longer (Chirot, b), and it
should have represented a strong moral force; in fact, it did not. It was
easily manipulated by every government before 1945, and outside Transyl-
vania (where it served to protect the Romanian peasants against the Hun-
garian aristocracy) it was never a focus of political action. Sons of priests
were among the earliest literate "intellectuals" in the nineteenth century,
and many village priests served as local leaders, but the church as a whole
was neither a major intellectual nor a political force. It was, consequently,
rather easily subverted by the Communist regime and quickly brought
under full control (Wolff).
The ethnic minorities (Hungarians, Germans, and Jews) were not
Orthodox, and there was a fairly strong Hungarian and German Catholic
Church which was vigorously persecuted because of its Western connec-
tions. There were also German and Hungarian Protestant churches, but
these were isolated from Western contact and quickly brought under con-
trol (Wolff).
By 1949-50, then, much of the potential opposition to Communism
had been destroyed or brought under strict control. The way was open for
the replacement of old elites by new ones. But there remained one dan-
gerous class that was far from being fully controlled. It was not an organized
class, but it still included 70 percent of the population. Its productive
efforts were also vital to the survival of the national economy. In bringing
the peasantry under control, the Party had to be careful.
In the election of 1937 the winning party probably would have been
the National Peasant Party had there been no electoral fraud. As it was, it
received 21 percent of the vote (Enescu). After World War II, with fascists
and the right wing in disgrace, there is no question that it was the most
popular party, and that it would have won free elections. It was even win-
ning adherents within the urban working class for the first time (Ionescu).
In 1946-47 the Peasant Party was intensively persecuted. Its leaders were
arrested, and thousands of its adherents "disappeared." In 1947 it was dis-
solved by the government, but even though its leaders had been elimi-
nated the peasantry as a whole had not yet been touched deeply (Ionescu).
One reason the C.P had to deal with the peasants carefully was that
agricultural production was very low, and the country hovered at the edge
of severe famine. The war had caused destruction of livestock. In 1946
there were 46 percent fewer horses (critical for plowing), 8 percent fewer
cattle, 33 percent fewer sheep, and 50 percent fewer pigs than in 1938, so
that meat production was low (Statistica agricola). This was combined with
a severe drought in 1945 and 1946, the worst in the twentieth century. Corn
was particularly devastated (Ionescu-Sisesti). Even after 1946, bad condi-
tions persisted. The 1945-48 average annual wheat yields were 7.1 quintals
per hectare, about 30 percent below the average 1934-38 yields (which
were, it will be recalled, 20 percent below 1909-1913 yields). Corn yields
for 1945-48 averaged 6.4 quintals per hectare, a figure 38 percent below
1934-38 averages, and less than half the yields obtained before World War
I. (Anuarul, b; FAO, a; Murgescu).
Between Russian plundering, massive social dislocation brought
on by boundary shifts and population transfers, severe political turmoil,
drought, and the virtual disappearance of the cash economy because of
inflation followed by the currency reform, and also because of the govern-
ment's hostility to all private enterprise and the confiscation of assets, it is
not surprising that the economy was in a state of chaos. This hardly
enhanced the popularity of the Communist regime, and it made precipitate
action with the peasantry risky.
In 1949, however, with the political situation somewhat stabilized
and other opponents under control, the Party began its attempt to subju-
gate the peasantry. All holdings of over 50 hectares (about 6,000 of them
with about 6.5 percent of the land) were confiscated and given to state
farms or collectives (Ionescu; Murgescu). The Chiabur (the Romanian for
Kulak, or rich peasant who hired labor or had over about 15 hectares) was
declared a class enemy (Moldovan et al.). This meant that the most pros-
perous and successful peasants were singled out for deliberate persecution
in the form of unreasonably high delivery quotas and taxes imposed by the
state (Montias).
State farms had been started even before 1949 with lands taken from
former large estates, institutional and government holdings, and royal
lands. These farms were to be large, advanced units, and their workers
were to be treated like industrial workers. Collectives, on the other hand,
were collections of peasants working their own, expropriated lands, and
living in their old villages (Montias; Murgescu).
In principle, the small (0 to 5 hectares) and middle (5 to 20, but not
those with hired labor) peasants were to be allies with the state in this
process of socialist transformation of agriculture and war against the kulaks
(Murgescu). Actually, the combination of steep quotas and forced produce
deliveries for all peasants (the kulaks had the greatest load to bear, but the
Romania / 465
load was not light for the others), the threat of forcible expropriation of
private land, and the rather loose demarcation between kulaks and others
raised active protest and resistance in whole villages. Until 1949, the only
systematic armed resistance against Communism had been conducted by
opponents who had escaped from the cities and gone into the mountains.
Now, matters became more serious as uncoordinated but widespread peas-
ant resistance to the regime began (Ionescu; Prost). By the later admission
of Gheorghiu-Dej, about 80,000 peasants were arrested (cited in Ionescu).
In some ways, the C.P.'s policy had considerable justification. In 1948, 53
percent of all holdings had included areas of less than 3 hectares (19.6
percent of the land) (Murgescu), and some form of consolidation and
cooperation was necessary in order to improve productivity and the peas-
ants' standard of living. But it was evident to the peasants that the teams
sent out to force them into production brigades were there to impose state
control, not to help; and persecution of the more successful villagers by the
state did not reassure their fellow peasants, especially when all they were
promised was more hard work and forced deliveries without title to new
land.
By the early 1950s some 180,000 people (out of a total population of
16,000,000) were in jails and concentration camps, about 40,000 of them at
work on a Danube-Black Sea canal that was never completed (Ionescu). In
all fairness to the Romanian C.P., the proportionate number of arrests,
deportations, and murders was far lower than that which occurred in the
Soviet Union in the 1930s. But these were terrible years in Romania, and it
is impossible to give the full flavor of what happened. Only personal
memoirs and novels written by those who were present can convey the
enormity of a state at war with almost all of its population. (For a novelistic
view of social change in Romania during the 1940s, see Dumitriu, b.)
Kenneth Jowitt, the best American analyst of contemporary Roma-
nian politics, has called the early period of Communist rule the "break-
through" stage. This stage is somewhat analogous to the "take-off" in
economic development. He writes:
Breakingthrough means the decisive alterationor destructionof values, structures,
and behaviors which are perceived by a revolutionary elite as comprising or
contributingto the actual or potential existence of alternative centers of political
power (a, 7).
Such a process is the prerequisite of revolutionary transformation which
alone can enable a society to make rapid economic progress. This, at least,
is the argument, and Jowitt sees the early period of Communist rule as one
in which the new Party elite sought to eliminate, quite rationally, the old
elites. He wonders, however, whether or not the process may not have
been pursued beyond purely rational considerations, and cites Romania's
present chief, Nicolae Ceausescu, speaking in 1967 about the old days:
In their speeches some comrades justly referred to the fact that in the course of
years, especially at the beginning, there was sometimes a lack of political discern-
ment in the activity of the security organs, no distinction being made between
hostile activity, directed against the revolutionarygains of the people, and some
manifestations linked to the natural process of transforming the people's con-
sciousness and mode of thinking. Therefore,some abuses and transgressions(sic!)
of socialist legality were committed, measures were taken against some citizens
that were not justified by their acts and manifestations(a, 98).
Behind the guarded words of Nicolae Ceausescu, however, there
lies a permanent fear among all Romnanians, including the present elite,
that a return to such times remains possible, and that it must be avoided at
all costs.
It seems to me that even Jowitt overinterprets the period of terror.
Destruction of the old elite and the elimination of all possible sources of
opposition were the aim of the Party, but why? The orders were coming
from Stalin, not from the local Party elite, and the only important Com-
munist who spoke up for a more humane line (Lucretiu Patrascanu) was
purged in 1948 as a Titoist, and executed in 1954 (Ionescu; Jowitt, a).
Stalin's immediate goal was control of Eastern Europe in order to maintain
a "cordon sanitaire" in reverse, a protective blanket shielding the U. S. S. R.
from Western intervention. The fact that the same policies were uniformly
applied throughout Eastern Europe in 1947-48, and intensified in 1949-51,
shows that they were coordinated from Moscow and did not respond to
local needs. The Soviets also wanted to use the industrial potential of
Eastern Europe to help with their own rearmament. For all its relative
backwardness Romania had some major industries, and these were built
up and expanded as quickly as possible (Turnock). Was this all part of a
Soviet master plan, or a series of improvisations? Even without an answer
it is evident that the orders did not come from Bucharest.
Who was in control in Romania during these years? Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej was the formal chief, and ruled with Anna Pauker, Vasile
Luca, and Teohari Georgescu. The last three were Soviet agents, and it was
Pauker and Luca, Jewish and Hungarian, respectively, who were the most
powerful. Gheorghiu-Dej, an authentic Romanian worker, was at first a
"facade" secretary-general (Ionescu). The Minister of the Armed Forces,
Emil Bodnaras, a half-German, half-Ukrainian, was an NKVD (Soviet
secret police) agent (Ionescu). In other words, the Romanian C.P. was
firmly controlled by Moscow.
By the early 1950s the old elites had been eliminated, and the
peasantry was increasingly subjected to state control. Industrialization and
massive infusion of new cadres were advancing quickly. Industrial produc-
tion returned to pre-war levels in 1949 and passed above World War II
peaks in 1950. Very large investments were made in heavy industry (but
little in agriculture or consumer goods) in 1950, and a first Five-Year Plan
was launched for 1951-55 (Montias). Nevertheless, the agricultural situa-
Romania / 467
tion remained depressed, though better than in the immediate post-war

years, and the general level of discontent rose. Resistance to the gov-
ernment continued into 1951, and in 1952 there were industrial strikes
(Ionescu).
Something cracked, first in agricultural policy, and then in general.
Perhaps the lingering partisan warfare contributed to the change. Perhaps
rising urban discontent and the inability of the Party to feed and house its
workers properly had something to do with it. The C.P. was still very
weak, and repeated purges, combined with indiscriminate Party recruit-
ment had left the new elite incoherent and demoralized (Jowitt, a). In
1951-52 the collectivization effort was virtually halted, and Pauker, Luca,
and Georgescu were purged, presumably with Stalin's approval. They
were blamed for all the problems, and for the first time the "Romanian"
element of the party, led by Gheorghiu-Dej, came to the fore over the
"Muscovites" and foreigners. Stalin's innate anti-Semitism may have been
responsible for Pauker's fall (Jowitt, a; Lendvai). Stalin was planning mas-
sive new purges himself, and it is unclear what happened (Jowitt, a). The
Soviet goal was to maintain compliance, not to provoke anarchy, and there
is little doubt that the extreme policies of the Muscovites were leading to a
breakdown, not a breakthrough. In any event, it was the 1952-53 period
that saw the start of the construction of a real and indigenous Communist
society in Romania.
The importance of the 1947-53 period cannot be underestimated.
Whether one follows Jowitt's "breakthrough" interpretation or chooses to
view the period as one of randomly applied terror in order to insure total
submission, there is no question that for the Party elite as well as for
Romania this was a formative experience. In the following decade, as
Romania slowly emerged from the darkness and despair of the Stalinist
years, those years were remembered. The Party cadres (including Nicolae
Ceasescu) who rule Romania in the 1970s, were in their late 20s and early
30s during this time. What they thought of their situation, trapped be-
tween a hostile population and an irresolutely harsh ally, can only remain a
matter of speculation. But in later years, their continuing distrust of their
own masses and the great bitterness they expressed toward the Soviet
Union combined to create a unique and distinctly Romanian pattern of
Communist development.
Political Change and the New Elite, 1953-57
The very rapid rate of industrial growth from 1948 to 1953 (an average
yearly growth of 18.2 percent) created severe problems. Urban growth
(from 3,747,000 to 4,424,000) raised demand for housing and food, but
virtually no new housing was built as all investment funds went into the
industrialization drive. As for food, production remained below the 1938

levels, when urban demand was lower. To keep rising demand from
increasing prices, the state forced peasants to make compulsory deliveries
(about one-quarter of production, in the case of cereals). In 1952, a new
monetary reform again confiscated any personal reserves that might have
built up, and consumer goods were rationed. The average standard of
living, whether measured by supplies of meat, housing, or general mer-
chandise, remained below pre-war levels (Montias).
The political struggle and purges of 1952-53 eased the situation. The
proportion of national income invested in industry was lowered, and
increased amounts went to agriculture, consumer goods, and housing.
The process of forced collectivization was stopped, and forced delivery
quotas reduced. (They were virtually eliminated in 1956.) Living standards
rose markedly in 1953-55, though average food consumption still did not
return to pre-war levels, and the merchandise trade remained below the
level of the late 1930s until the 1960s (Montias).
To make the peasants more compliant without endangering pro-
duction through protest, a new type of semi-collective was devised called
"intovarasiriagricole" (agricultural associations). Private ownership of land,
animals, and equipment was retained, but the land was worked in common.
Owners took a share of production proportionate to their investment.
Machine and tractor stations run by the state were to aid these associations
in working the land with more advanced methods (Turnock). The associa-
tions were certainly more bearable than the collectives, and recruitment
seems to have been voluntary. Associations were to serve as "a school for
working peasants on the road toward collectives" (Frasie and Lazar, 259).
However, because force was no longer used, the rate of collectivization and
the growth of associations slowed.
The relaxation of 1953-55 was not meant to be permanent, however,
and in 1955 there was rendwed pressure for rapid industrialization through-
out Eastern Europe. State investments were again scheduled to rise, and
an ambitious Romanian Second Five-Year Plan (1956-60) was established.
The confusion that set in after Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech of
February 1956, and the lesson of the Polish and Hungarian uprisings that
followed later in 1956, set back these plans. In 1957 state investments were
again curtailed, and urban living standards were raised (Montias).
The political turmoil in Eastern Europe had its counterpart in Roma-
nia during this period. Romania remained much more quiet than Hungary
and Poland (though the Hungarians in Transylvania were agitated by
events across the border), but the political maneuvering in Romania was
very important for its future. But by the late 1950s, internal Party politics
were no longer as rarified an affair as in the early 1950s, when there were
only a few key individuals plotting against each other and courting Mos-
cow's favor. A whole new elite had arisen, with its own interests, its own internal
Romania / 469
divisions, and a greater sense of security than it had possessed a few years before.
The menace of crude Soviet intervention was also reduced, both by the
power struggle going on in Moscow between Khrushchev and his various
opponents, and also by the threats to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe
in 1956. Romania firmly sided with the Soviet Union's intervention in
Hungary, and the Soviet leadership was able to appreciate the benefits of a
docile, orthodox leadership capable of keeping itself and its people under
solid control.
Khrushchev eased his de-Stalinization campaign in Eastern Europe,
and after the fighting in Hungary, Romania received more Soviet economic
aid; also, the Romanian C.P. obtained more freedom of action for itself
(Ionescu). The internal struggle that broke out at this time was resolved
internally, and brought into play the conflicting elements in the elite that
had developed and grown since the late 1940s.
In 1955 the Romanian C.P. had about 600,000 members, roughly 5
percent of the population over 20 years of age (Anuarul, a; Gilberg). Forty-
three percent were classified as working class, but it is not clear what were
the social origins of the membership or even what proportion of those
listed as "workers" were actual manual workers (Ionescu). Since 34 per-
cent of the C.P. in 1960 were peasants, it can be supposed that in the late
1950s, that proportion was not too different (Gilberg). In 1956, 20 percent
of the general population were workers, 3 percent tradesmen, 9 percent
"intellectuals" (professionals, teachers, and many white collar employees),
and the remainder, or 68 percent, peasants (Murgescu et al.). So the Party
was overrepresented by workers and members of the intelligentsia, and
underrepresented by peasants. About 55 percent were under 40 years of
age (Ionescu).
The apparatchiks,the "New Class" of functionaries who had risen to
power under Communism, were not well-educated specialists, but tough
career bureaucrats who had survived the difficulties of the early period,
pushed through massive economic and social change, and recently risen to
a position of relative ease and security in a society still dominated by fear
and hardship. In the late 1950s they were being challenged by another kind
of new class, the technocrats and relatively better educated specialists
trained to take over key positions in the new industrial economy. The
"old" new class, therefore, was being challenged by a more rational, more
capable, less dogmatic "newer" new class (Dumitriu, a; Jowitt, a).
A third leg of the Romanian elite in the late 1950s was the secret
police, a privileged, military, feared group which held the state together at
a time when popular opinion was still overwhelmingly anti-Communist,
and when the C.P. itself still suffered from institutional instability (Jowitt,
a).
This constellation of competing groups is not, of course, unique to
Romania. All Communist regimes have the same groups and many have a
fourth, the army. In Romania, however, the army does not seem to have
played the kind of political role it has enjoyed in the U.S.S.R., China, or
even Bulgaria.
Gheorghiu-Dej ruled the C.P., and through it, Romania, as a classic
party boss, a patrimonial chief dispensing material favors to this or that
subgroup, and always seeking to prevent the formation of permanent
personal fiefs underneath him. This was often antithetical to rational eco-
nomic planning and coordination, but it suited the professional bureau-
crats in the system, as well as the secret police, which was the personal
enforcing arm of the ruler (Jowitt, a; Roth).
In 1956-57, Dej was challenged by Miron Constantinescu (a soci-
ologist, from a middle class background, who had joined the C.P. in the
1930s), whom Jowitt has compared to Malenkov in the U.S.S.R. In many
ways, the challenge presented by Constantinescu was similar to that rep-
resented by Malenkov against Khrushchev. He seems to have favored
more rational planning and a more liberal treatment of the intellectuals. He
favored the technocrats over the pure functionaries, and also the develop-
ment of a consumer-oriented, rather than a heavy-industrial, economy
(Jowitt, a). He represented the rising "new new class," and he seems to
have been slated for top leadership after the completion of the anti-Stalinist
drive. When that drive stalled and the struggle became purely internal, he
lost to Dej, the regular Party bureaucracy, and the police. The intellectuals
and technocrats were not sufficiently strong to carry the day.
Purged, he sank into obscurity but resurfaced as a leading intel-
lectual in the 1960s. In his later days (he died in 1974), many younger
Romanian intellectuals considered him an old Stalinist and dogmatist. But
this was a false perception. Those who knew him in the 1950s believe he
was the only leader with the vision, intellectual scope, and appreciation of
technical skills to build a more humane, rational Communist society. His
defeat in 1957 was a major tragedy for Romania and, ultimately, for the
class of educated technocrats he represented.
In the late 1960s, it seemed that Romania would take a relatively
more open path, like the one for which Constantinescu had stood in the
late 1950s. But the crude orthodoxy that had won in 1957 was to remain
entrenched in power, and in the 1970s, faced with renewed crisis, Romania
would turn back to a more rigid, Party-oriented line. Many of Romania's
current problems stem from this decision, and that, in turn, was at least
partly a function of the struggle in 1957. If Constantinescu had won then,
Romania would have become more like Poland or Hungary. As it was, the
apparatchiksof the 1950s had time to consolidate their position and to
remain in control at the time of the next struggle.
In many respects, then, after 1957, the Romanian path toward
continued Communist development was fixed, and everything which has
followed has been a logical outcome of the political settlement of that time.
Romania / 471
Industrialization and Its Social Effects
Since 1947-48 on, the Romanian C.P.'s main economic goal has been
industrialization. Until 1952-53 this was part of the Soviet design for
Eastern Europe. Up to 1957 progress was uneven, however, and there
remained questions about the speed and direction of industrialization.
After 1957, these questions were resolved, and no more doubts appeared
in the ruling councils about the validity of the basic goal, or even its feasi-
bility. The entire society was harnessed to industrialization, and in the
1960s, when the U.S.S.R. itself questioned the rationality of Romania's
economic goals, this pushed the Romanian leadership into a break with
Moscow. Since 1958, only foreign intervention, or an unexpected and
unlikely internal revolt, could have changed the direction of Romanian
economic development. (Montias calls the 1958-65 period that of the "Take-
Off.")
All European Communist economies (as well as those outside Eu-
rope, in differing degrees) have stressed industrial growth. But Romania
since 1958 has done so to an extraordinary degree. Romanian industrial
production in recent decades has grown proportionately more rapidly than
that of any other European country. (Leaving aside Albania, perhaps,
which began with a non-existent industrial base, and which does not, in
any case, provide adequate statistics.) Obviously, the more developed
European economies, even those in Communist Europe (Czechoslovakia,
East Germany) could not be expected to experience the same kind of rapid
industrial growth as economies starting at lower base lines, but even by
comparing Romania to other economies at roughly similar levels of indus-
trialization before World War II, its astonishing record is clear (Table 1).
Accompanying this growth, there has occurred in Romania's national
income (a concept similar to national product except that it excludes many
services and includes turnover taxes-see Montias, 267-8) a dramatic shift
toward industry (Table 2). Thus, by 1969 the industrial share of Romania's
national income was higher than in Bulgaria or Hungary and closing in on
that of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland (Turnock).
Table 1. INDEXOFINDUSTRIALPRODUCTION(1953 = 100)
Romania Bulgaria Yugoslavia Spain Poland Greece Hungary
1953 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

1958 159 138 188 149 163 162 133
1963 300 259 321 233 248 229 211
1968 545 458 446 378 375 362 279
Source: Mitchell, 358.
Table 2. NATIONALINCOMEIN PERCENTAGESOF TOTAL

Industry Construction Agriculture*
1938 30.8 4.4 38.1

1950 44.0 6.0 28.0
1958 42.7 7.7 34.8
1966 48.6 7.8 31.4
1974 56.6t 8.3 15.9
-The remainder consists mostly of transportation,

communications, and circulation of goods.
tin 1970-71 some definitions were changed, making
industry a somewhat smaller percentage of the whole
than it was according to the old definition.
Source: Anuarul, b:111; d:109; f:54,
Not just industry, but heavy industry was particularly emphasized.

During the critical 1960-65 plan, 35 percent of all government economic
investment went into developing fuels and electric power, 25 percent into
metallurgy and machine building, and 14 percent into the chemical indus-
try (which was actually supposed to receive 20 percent according to the
plan). Light and food industries received only 10 percent of investment.
From 1966 to 1970 electric power and fuel received 31 percent of all invest-
ment, metallurgy and machine building 28 percent, and chemicals 14
percent. Food and light industries received 12 percent.
Naturally the fact that industrial production was growing at better
than 12 percent per year does not mean that the entire economy was
growing at anything close to that. Agriculture, for one, grew much more
slowly. In 1953 net production was only 94 percent of 1938 production, and
it had only grown to 123 percent of 1938 production by 1965 (Montias).
From 1965 to 1974 agricultural production grew at an average of 4.25
percent per year (Anuarul, f).
The nearest figure to GNP per capita growth available for Romania
is the index of real (controlled for price changes) national income per capita
from 1950 to 1974. While this figure is not calculated in the same way as
GNP, percentage change in it is close enough to percentage change in per
capita GNP to provide some comparisons. Thus, from 1950 to 1974 Roma-
nian per capita net national income grew at the rate of 5.3 percent per year,
or 68 percent per decade. (Gross national income grew at an almost
identical rate, but government figures on it are not as detailed.) (Anuarul, f;
1975, Montias). This is a very good, but not surprising, rate of economic
growth. In the 1950s and 1960s per capita GNP grew at the rate of 63
percent per decade in West Germany, 60 percent per decade in Italy, and
at about 40 percent per decade in most of the other advanced Western
European economies (but at only about 20 percent per decade in the U.S.
and Canada). Japan's economy, however, grew at a per capita rate of 128
Romania / 473
percent per decade, Greece's at 69 percent from 1951 to 1969, and even
Portugal grew at slightly over 50 percent per capita from 1953 to 1969
(Mitchell; figures corrected for population). In other words, the capitalist
economies of southern Europe (Spain, Greece, and Italy) grew at about the
same per capita rate as Romania's economy, somewhere between 60 per-
cent and 70 percent per decade. Yugoslavia's net material product per
capita (a concept similar to Romania's net national income) grew at the
rate of 6.5 percent per year, or 88 percent per decade from 1953 to 1969
(Mitchell).
This is not to say that the Romanian economy has performed poorly,
but only that it has not been as miraculous as one might expect from
reading the Bucharest press. What has been extraordinary has been the
emphasis on industry, and the consequent neglect of other sectors. Com-
pared to Yugoslavia, Romania has grown more slowly, but its industry has
expanded quite a bit faster. Spain, Greece, and Italy, which have had
overall growth rates similar to Romania's, have all had considerably lower
(though still respectable) industrial growth.
In social terms, rapid industrialization in Romania has involved
most of the changes that have occurred in other industrializing societies,
but always with an interesting twist. Labor force composition, for example,
has changed markedly since 1950 (Table 3).
If, following Kuznets, we group transportation and communications
with industry, 42.3 percent of Romania's labor force in 1974 was in the
industrial sector, 40 percent in agriculture, and 17.7 percent in services.
This is a peculiar breakdown compared to that found in non-socialist
economies at similar levels of development. Economies with 40 percent of
their labor force in agriculture could normally be expected to have 30
percent in industry, and 30 percent in services. On the other hand, those
with about 40 percent in industry could normally be expected to have only
20-25 percent in agriculture, and 35-40 percent in services.
Romania, even more than most Communist economies, has an over-
developed industrial sector compared to its weak (because it still employs
too many people for too little production) agricultural sector. Compared
to capitalist economies, this is even more so; and, of course (as with
most Communist economies), Romania's service sector is inadequately
developed.
Table 3. PERCENTOF LABOR FORCE BY SECTOR
Lower Higher
Industry, Transportation, Agriculture, Level Level
Construction Communication Forestry Commerce Services Services Other
1950 14.3 2.2 74.3 2.5 0.7 5.3 0.8

1960 20.0 2.8 65.6 3.4 1.5 5.9 o.8
1970 30.8 4.3 49.3 4.3 3.0 7.2 1.1
1974 37.7 4.6 40.0 5.4 3.2 7.8 1.3
Source: Anuarul, f:67.

Industrialization and changing labor force composition have been

associated with rapid urbanization, as we can see in Table 4. Compared to
most of Southern and Eastern Europe, Romania was distinctly backward in
urbanization in 1950, but by the 1970s it had greatly narrowed the gap
(Davis). Bucharest, with an official 1.7 million people (actually, close to 2
million probably live there, many without legal permission) has 8 percent
of the country's population. Cities with over 100,000 people (not counting
Bucharest) contain 11 percent of the population, and those with 20,000 to
100,000 contain 12 percent (Anuarul, f).
Massive migration to the cities in the 1950s and 1960s created severe
strains for an economy that emphasized investment in heavy industry
rather than consumer goods and housing. From 1951 to 1955 about 14,000
apartments were built per year to accommodate over 150,000 new urbanites
per year. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 26,000 new urban apartments
were built per year, and in the early 1960s, about 45,000. During those
years, close to 200,000 new urbanites had to be housed each year. The
number of new apartments built annually rose to 80,000 in the late 1960s,
and in the 1970s over 100,000 new urban apartments have been built each
year. New apartments have also grown in size. In the 1950s, over 20 per-
cent had only one room, and under 15 percent three or more rooms; by
1974, 7 percent had one room, and over 40 percent had three or more
(Anuarul, b, e, f). So it was not until the late 1960s that enough new
apartments were built each year to keep up with urban growth, and not
until the 1970s that the accumulated, unsatisfied backlog began to dimin-
ish. Now, immense new blocks of apartment buildings stretch for miles
into the Bucharest suburbs, and similar projects (on a correspondingly
more modest scale) exist in every town.
The housing shortage throughout the 1950s and 1960s (common in
all Communist countries) set a distinctive stamp on urban life. It crowded
families together and probably contributed to the rapid fall in birth rates.
Quite surprisingly, the overcrowding did not produce the massive social
problems associated with rapid urban growth in non-socialist industrial-
izing countries. No evidence exists of increases in crime, prostitution,
alcoholism, or other social pathologies associated with urban slums. All
Table 4. URBAN POPULATION
As % of National
Total Urban Population
1930 3,051,253 21.4

1948 3,713,139 23.4
1966 7,305,714 38.2
1974 8,978,917 42.7
Source: Anuarul, f :9. 1930, 1948,

and 1966 figures are from censuses. The
1974 figure is an official estimate.
Romania / 475
these things exist, but to an observer used to city life in Latin America,
Africa, and much of Asia, or reading about early industrial Western Euro-
pean cities, it is their relative absence which is most obvious. In part, this
has been because of the tight discipline imposed by the state. New Shanty
towns were not allowed to grow around the cities (rather, people were
crowded into existing housing), and the pervasive power of the state
prevented a distinct, hostile, marginal slum subculture from developing.
Another and less obvious reason for the relatively smooth process of
urbanization has been the fact that industrialization has occurred through-
out the country, and investments have deliberately tried to prevent a few
major centers from extending their advantage in previous development.
Bucharest's population, for example, has grown by 58 percent since 1948,
while urban growth in general has been 141 percent. (Even if we include an
extra several hundred thousand people living in Bucharest illegally, its
population has not quite doubled since 1948.) This is unusual for a city
which is both the political and industrial center of a rapidly developing
country. It is not only through balanced urban growth, but by building
factories accessible to large numbers of commuting villagers that Romania
has kept its urban growth under some control, and thus prevented the
disruptions which might otherwise have occurred. The fairly uniform
spread of industrialization, the widespread (if crowded) public transporta-
tion system, and the fairly small size of the country have also helped by
allowing new urban migrants to keep in frequent touch with their old
families.
That a great effort has been made to distribute industrial growth
fairly evenly throughout the country can be demonstrated by looking at
the growth of industrial employment on a county by county basis. From
1960 to 1974 industrial employment grew most quickly in the Wallachian
and Moldavian plains (which, aside from the city of Bucharest, were the
most rural, least industrial parts of the country). Industrial employment
has grown much more slowly, below the national average, in almost all of
the counties that were more highly industrialized to begin with. (The only
exception is Prahova, the center of the petroleum industry.) Taking the
level of industrialization as the percentage of the population employed by
industry in 1966 (at the time of the last census) in each county, and cor-
relating this with the percentage growth of the industrial labor force in
each county from 1960 to 1974 (there are 40 counties, including Bucharest),
yields an R of -.88 (Spearman's R) (Anuarul, d, f).
Not only has the relatively even distribution of investment slowed
urban concentration, it has also allowed a large number of villagers to
become commuting workers, picked up by buses or trains, employed in
factories but maintaining residence in their own village. This has made
the relatively slow growth of urban housing and services less severe than if
all new workers had become permanent migrants to the cities. Commuting
from villages to factories remains most common in the hill and mountain
counties that are the most industrialized in the country. These stretch
roughly along the Carpathian mountains, from the Danube to Moldavia,
and include the counties of Caras-Severin, Hunedoara, Sibiu, Arges, Bra-
sov, and Prahova. But even within the most industrialized counties, in-
dustry is more evenly distributed than it used to be. The pattern of
commuting from village to new factories has spread to a significant degree
throughout other hill and mountain counties, and more recently even into
the agricultural plains. A nationwide study of rural youth in 1968 showed
that 34 percent of all males between the ages of 19 and 25 commuted out of
their village to work, and of these, about 40 percent worked in industry or
construction. Since commuters are disproportionately young, male, and
relatively skilled workers, agriculture is increasingly carried out in villages
by the old, the less skilled, and women. Industrial workers are consider-
ably better paid than agricultural ones, so this tendency is not surprising
(Cresin, c; Dragan; Stahl et al., a).
The primary aim of the Communist party, the creation of a modern
working class distributed throughout the country, and the gradual elimina-
tion of the peasantry as a distinct class, is very far on the road to comple-
tion. But, if the relatively even spread of industry has been a boon to
villagers seeking to improve their situation, either by migrating or by
commuting, it has also given Romania a genuinely industrial physical
appearance, particularly in the hill areas that are the most highly indus-
trialized. It is difficult to get away from smoke, noise, and roads crowded
with dusty trucks and buses. All towns, even small ones, are in the midst
of this industrial boom, and some of the most beautiful low mountain
valleys of Romania are now filthy with smog. The society emerging from
this transformation is primarily one of small industrial towns. Even in
the larger cities, with a few exceptions, the rows of factories and colorless
new apartments create a distinctive, provincial atmosphere that resembles
neither the cultured and affluent best of European urban life nor the worst
of the crowded and desperate slums which are common in the poorer
countries of the world.
What is good for the growing working class, however, is less agree-
able for the middle class, particularly for the intelligentsia. Assignment to
provincial towns or to rural industries is feared by university graduates,
though they often cannot avoid it. Established bureaucrats in the largest
cities, particularly in Bucharest, consider transfers to lesser towns as severe
and unpleasant demotions. Cultural opportunities, stores, restaurants,
and other services, including medical care and schooling for children are
distinctly inferior outside of a few big cities. The rapid rate of industrializa-
tion and urbanization of the country have left neither time nor available
investment for such amenities. Rather, urban services throughout most of
the country, and even in the new suburbs of the large cities, are aimed at
Romania / 477
mass needs. Basic schooling and medical care, minimal recreation facilities,
too few stores with too few goods, scattered restaurants with bad food and
almost no service-these have been provided. In Bucharest, Cluj, and to
some extent Brasov, Sibiu, Timisoara, and Iasi, older cities with well-
established urban centers, amenities are available for the intelligentsia,
though they tend to be badly overcrowded. In the new industrial towns,
however, they are absent. As a result, members of the intelligentsia not
only try to remain in the major urban centers, but if they are transferred,
they try to commute without moving their families away from the main
centers. Among the middle class, urban to rural, or big city to small city
commuting is much more common than the reverse. (This pattern is
described for the new industrial center of Boldesti in Herseni; the problems
of engineers living in the small town of Slatina are touched upon by Stela
Cernea; but on the whole, this is a problem which is almost never dis-
cussed in Romanian publications even though it is obsessively discussed in
private. See also Chirot, a.)
The marked difference between the available life styles in the main
cities and outside them particularly concerns university students. Scho-
lastic standing determines choice of job, so that the best remain in Bucharest
or Cluj, and the worst are consigned to the least desirable locations. Not
only students, but urban bureaucrats and graduates of technical schools
bargain, bribe, and connive to get choice geographic assignments. The
situation is particularly serious for young professional couples where both
partners have careers, for they risk being assigned to widely different
locations. The power to move members of the intelligentsia from one post
to another is one of the strongest levers of control that the Party and the
State can exercise on this class.
Thus, industrialization has thoroughly transformed Romania. It has
created a semi-urban society extending even into village areas. By spreading
industrial investment throughout the country, and by maintaining tight
social discipline, Romania has avoided the worst problems of rapid urban-
ization. It has also physically defaced much of its area, and given large
portions of the intelligentsia grounds for discontent.
Rural Society and the Collectivization of Agriculture
A corollary of the decisive victory of the orthodox "industrializing" ten-

dency of the C.P. was a renewed determination to collectivize agriculture.
The period of rapid change was from 1957 to 1962, and since then the
overall situation has remained stable. In 1974, the proportional breakdown
of types of control of arable land was almost exactly the same as in 1967
(Anuarul, f). (See Table 5.)
During the collectivization drive, peasants were forced into associa-
tions which were quickly transformed into full collectives, or, as the Roma-
nians call them, cooperatives. Only mountain villages escaped. Because
the latter have little arable land, most of it poor, and because mechaniza-
tion of agriculture is out of the question in high altitude areas, they have
remained privately owned ever since. (The private plots of cooperative
members are not really privately owned, even though they are privately
used.)
The 1955 statistics are somewhat misleading because most of the
countryside remained untouched by collectivization; almost all socialist
agriculture was concentrated in the flatest lands best suited to extensive
cereal cultivation and mechanization (Montias). Throughout much of the
rest of the country, family control (with considerable state interference)
was still the rule, and the collectivization drive that began in 1957 aimed at
rapid, thorough transformation of the situation, not simply an acceleration
of existing trends. There was peasant opposition, as before, but in the late
1950s the situation was quite different from what it had been in the early
1950s. Collectivization was better planned, less brutal, more beneficial to
the peasants, and carried out more flexibly than in the earlier attempt. The
Party was also in much better control of the country as a whole. I have
heard stories about violent resistance in villages in the late 1950s, and even
the early 1960s, but it is quite clear that whatever opposition there was, it
was neither as effective nor as bitter as it had been earlier, and there do not
seem to have been either large-scale violence or mass arrests.
By the time it was carried out, collectivization (or some kind of
drastic reform) had become necessary. The years of insecurity, when it was
not known how much land would be confiscated (or when, or under what
terms), combined with the lack of investment in agriculture, had caused
severe stagnation. Montias has calculated that net agricultural output did
not rise significantly and consistently above 1938 levels until the early
1960s. It is not certain that collectivization was the best possible solution,
however, since a firm commitment to private agriculture might have had
equally good or better results. But since a firm decision of some sort had to
be made, and given the political atmosphere, it was better to collectivize
quickly than to continue the uncertainty.
Table 5. PERCENTOF ARABLELAND BY TYPEOF CONTROL
1950 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963
State units 9.2 13.7 13.3 13.3 13.5 16.4 17.2 17.5 17.6 20.2
Collectives 2.8 8.2 9.7 14.5 17.5 27.3 41.8 53.5 77.4 75.1
Within which,
private members' 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.6 0.8 1.6 2.8 4.3 7.8 8.2
plots
Associations 0 4.0 7.8 20.2 24.3 30.3 25.3 15.9 1.5 0.1
Private 88.0 74.1 69.2 52.0 44.7 26.0 15.7 13.1 3.5 4.6
Source: Anuarul, d:250-53.

Romania / 479
Agricultural backwardness is an old Romanian problem, and recent

progress shows that it cannot be blamed on collectivization. Since the
1930s Romania has progressed at a rate roughly similar to that experienced
by European countries with similar geographic conditions (Table 6).
Romanian cereal yields were lower in 1934-38 than in these other
comparable countries, and they remain lower today (Table 7).
Cereal production statistics do not tell the whole story since Roma-
nian agriculture has diversified considerably since the 1930s. Production of
industrial crops (particularly sunflower for oil, and beet for sugar) has
grown about tenfold since 1934-38. Potato, vegetable, and animal produc-
tion have also grown significantly. In 1938, 81 percent of all the arable land
was used for cereal production, and in 1974 only 61 percent was so used. In
other words, while far from spectacular, the performance of collectivized
agriculture has not been as dismal as some of its critics believe (Anuarul, f).
Changes in agriculture have transformed the peasant family from a
relatively closed unit into a diversified organization that needs to send
members into the outside world to perform specialized tasks. In order to
survive, families have come to rely on members' participation in various
sectors of the labor force. Those who are able migrate or commute to fac-
tories (but maintain strong ties with parents, siblings, or other relatives in
the village), while some people commute to work in state agricultural
units. Yet others work in the local collective, not only for direct remunera-
tion, in cash, but also for payment in kind (normally a large portion of the
pay), and (an important consideration) for the right to cultivate a small plot
privately. With this plot, some animals can be maintained, or vegetables
and fruit grown, or extra cash obtained. Because dairy products, vege-
tables, fruit, and good quality meat are often difficult to purchase in towns,
access to them undoubtedly strengthens ties between new urban migrants
and kin left behind in the villages. On the other hand, since most collective
members are short of cash (if not of produce), the money earned by outside
family members is a valuable addition to the village standard of living. This
is particularly evident in the surprisingly good private housing built by
peasants in villages throughout the land. It is also responsible for a wider
Table 6. INDEXOF WHEATAND CORN Table 7. INDEXOF WHEATAND
YIELDS(1934-38 = 1.00)
CORN YIELDSPER HECTARE1970-74
1970-74 (YUGOSLAVIA= 100)
Wheat Corn Wheat Corn
Romania 2.03 2.37 Romania 76 77

Hungary 2.22 1.94 Hungary 114 118
Yugoslavia 2.40 1.86 Yugoslavia 100 100
Bulgaria 2.58 3.46 Bulgaria 118 119
Italy 1.73 2.57 Italy 91 161
Source: FAQ, a:2, 20; b:44-45, Source: FAQ, b:44-45, 50-51.

50-51.
dispersal in villages of modern consumer goods than might otherwise be

possible. Far from having been weakened by modernization, the peasant
family has simply become more diversified. Since, for potential rural-
urban migrants, it is always an advantage to have a relative in town to help
find a job, or to help the newcomer with bureaucratic problems, and since
urban dwellers can enjoy holidays in the country more easily if they retain
rural roots, there is great advantage in keeping family awareness high.
At a routine, daily level, the diversification of rural family activity
can be seen by some time budget statistics collected by Romanian sociolo-
gists in several collective villages in the county of Arges in the early 1970s.
These statistics also show important facts about the division of labor
between the sexes and the influence of various geographic settings. As we
can see in Table 8, household tasks are performed primarily by women and
do not vary significantly according to geographical setting. But in the
plains, where collective agriculture is more mechanized and lucrative for
peasants, twice as much time is spent on that activity than in the hill and
border villages, and the men put a relatively greater proportion of their
time into this activity than women. Where collective agriculture is less
remunerative, both sexes work a lot less at it, and women slightly more
than men.
In Arges, as in other counties that touch the Carpathian mountains,
factories tend to be concentrated at the juncture of hill and plain. Villages
near such factories obviously send more of their labor outside the village,
and serve more as "dormitories" rather than pure agricultural villages,
than elsewhere. This, at least, is the case for men, though not for women. At
the same time, villages which have many permanent outside workers have
fewer temporary ones. Temporary outside work tends to be agricultural
(helping at peak times in neighboring or more distant collectives and state
farms) rather than industrial.
Table 8. PERCENTOF WORKTIMEUSED FOR VARIOUSACTIVITIES

Border Villages
Hill Villages (part hill, part plains) Plains Villages
Male Female Male Female Male Female
On collective 5.9 6.4 5.5 6.2 14.2 11.2

Household tasks 26.3 61.9 23.2 62.1 23.4 58.8
Family plot 15.1 9.3 11.7 10.9 15.6 6.1
Permanent
outside work 33.3 17.6 47.3 16.3 25.1 20.8
Temporary
outside work 19.4 4.8 12.3 4.4 21.7 3.2
100 100 100 99.9 100 100.1
Source: M. Cernea, 236.

Romania / 481
I suspect that women work many more hours than men because
they work outside the home but are still called upon to perform the many
household tasks necessary in the villages which have very poor service
structures. (The same is true in the cities, though possibly to a lesser
extent.)
Since, in fact, the less lucrative collective agricultural work tends to
be left to older people, many collectives rely heavily on the labor of old
men and overworked peasant women. This obviously retards the growth
and rationalization of agricultural production, but it is highly rational from
the point of view of the individual family which needs a connection with
the collective in order to obtain certain produce, and access to the rewarding
private plot. The problem is particularly severe where there are nearby
industrial facilities. Not only do these drain away the best labor, but they
also provide a ready market for produce from private plots, which can be
brought to nearby markets by family members. Thus, collective labor
comes third in importance, after labor in factories, and on private plots (or
for marketing private produce). The problem is nicely illustrated by a
comparison carried out in the late 1960s between two villages, both poten-
tially rich in agriculture, but one near an urban center, and the other rela-
tively isolated (Stahl, et al., b). Whereas the village near the urban area
used to be far more advanced and productive than the isolated one, in
recent years the situation has been reversed. As of the late 1960s, the
isolated village had a collective that worked very well, whereas the sup-
posedly more advanced village had one which worked poorly. Moreover,
since industrialization is proceeding quickly throughout the land, this type
of problem is likely to get worse.
Collectives are neither small private enterprises nor large industrial
or bureaucratic employers. Rather, as M. Cernea has pointed out, they are
something quite unique and virtually unknown outside the Communist
countries. They are large state enterprises without a regular salaried labor
force. They depend on labor recruited from privately oriented micro-units
(families) with outside options. One doesn't "join" a collective like a
factory or office, one "lives" in a collective. But living there does not entail
necessary obligations, or even the necessity of working there. (Houses and
their courtyards are privately owned.) The collective must therefore attract
labor from the village. To do so it offers pay, but this is often low. It also
offers use of a private plot (which cannot, however, be inherited or sold).
Wihout private plots, total agricultural output would fall dramatically, and
work on the collective would become much less attractive, so that available
voluntary labor would decline. On the other hand, private plots also drain
away much available agricultural labor.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that in order to keep
their labor force collectives must also pay wages in kind. This means that
most collectives try to grow some of everything to provide goods to
distribute to members. A rational strategy from the point of view of local

labor needs and community interests is to provide as many necessary
foods as possible. From the point of view of the general economy, however,
this is not a rational strategy. Geographic diversity calls for considerable
local specialization, but individual collectives resist this in order to satisfy
their laborers. This is especially evident with cereals, which should be con-
centrated in the plains where high mechanization is possible. But cereals
continue to be grown in areas where they do poorly, particularly in certain
hill areas, simply to feed the local peasants. (M. Cernea; see also Neamtu
for a case study of a Transylvanian hill village where this happens.) The
only remedy for this kind of systematic irrationality, where micro-rationality
(family interests) conflicts with local collective rationality, which in turn
conflicts with national economic rationality, is the creation of an effective
retail market network throughout the entire country. But the establishment
of an effective retail network is considered a low priority by the national
government, and the consequent irrationalities are simply logical adapta-
tions to an artificially distorted market situation.
Before condemning the irrationality of collective agriculture, how-
ever, two points must be made. The first has already been discussed in the
section on industrialization and can be elaborated here more fully. Para-
doxical as it may seem, beneath the naked political force used to carry out
economic change, theRomanianC.P has shieldedits populationto a remarkable
extentfromthe disturbingeffectsof the spreadof marketpressuresassociatedwith
rapid modernization.Force there has been, even a great deal, but the distor-
tion of short-term market pressures has also produced some beneficial
effects. The very irrationality of collective agriculture, combined with the
spread of factories throughout the country, have allowed a much smoother
transition to an industrial state than would otherwise have been possible.
There are no depopulated villages, hopelessly poverty-stricken districts, or
large numbers of floating, unemployed migrants. Village collectives that
should be disbanded on strict economic grounds continue to produce food
for their population, at a net loss for the national economy. Factories that
should have been located near other industrial centers provide work for
villagers who do not have to migrate. Individuals who cannot adapt to
modern life continue to live and work in activities that would have disap-
peared a long time ago in free market economies. All this obviously cuts
down on social overhead costs, and it also humanizes the transformation,
particularly for those least adapted to it.
This general leniency also extends to other spheres. It is, for example,
difficult to fire factory workers under any circumstances, and managers
complain about this. But urban intellectuals and the middle class who
complain about the low standard of living in Romania, and about the lack
of personal political freedom, rarely understand the benign aspects of a
social system that affords some protection from the impersonal market.
Romania / 483
They compare themselves to the middle classes in West Germany or

France, but should, instead, look at the insecure poor in Greece, Yugo-
slavia, and Southern Italy.
The second important point is that sheer economic rationality has
never been the main point of the Party's agricultural program. To be sure,
production is important, but not at the cost of orthodox political principles
or the safety of Communist achievements. An agricultural planner in
Bucharest told me in 1970 that from a strictly economic viewpoint, collec-
tivization was a disaster in certain parts of the country, while it worked
well in other parts. He gave the hill regions of Oltenia as a good example of
the former, and the flat, dry Baragan (as well as the Dobrogea) as an
example of the latter. But the Party was adamantly opposed to any return
to private holdings in any area that had been collectivized (though its
experience had persuaded it to leave the few privately held mountain
lands alone). Even a slight change backward would engender too many
hopes for a return to private property in other parts of the country, and this
could set off a chain reaction of false expectations throughout the society.
That would create impossible political pressures and frustrations. Experts
therefore came up with a series of reforms designed to stimulate private
interest in collective work without weakening socialist ownership or con-
trol. And whatever concessions were made in order to stimulate produc-
tion, the ultimate goal was, and remains, full socialism in agriculture as in
every other aspect of the economy. The backsliding Poles (who still have
mostly privately owned land) and Hungarians (who have reformed their
collectives far more than the Romanians to take into account private in-
terests) are definitely not viewed as potential models. (This is equally the
case in industry, and particularly in the retail trade sector of the economy.)
The Yugoslav model is seen as totally irrelevant to Romania, despite the
Yugoslav-Romanian alliance in foreign affairs.
Yet private production remains vitally important to Romanian agri-
culture. For example, while only 9.4 percent of the land in 1974 was
privately owned, it produced 20.6 percent of the fruit, 20 percent of the
milk, and 14 percent of the eggs. Land on collectives which was privately
worked did even better, for while it was only 6.5 percent of the land it
produced 33.9 percent of the potatoes, 29.5 percent of the vegetables, 38.5
percent of the fruit, 33.8 percent of the meat, 37.8 percent of the milk, 32.3
percent of the wool, and 52.7 percent of the eggs (Anuarul, f). Even these
figures, however, represent a slight decline since 1969, especially in the
production of potatoes, fruit, meat, and eggs.
In order to resolve some of the contradictions between private
interests and socialist agriculture, a series of reforms were passed in the
early 1970s. They emphasized the right of collective members to use pri-
vately worked plots, and allowed families who satisfied certain conditions
to cultivate more land privately than before. The key portions of the
reforms were related to what Romanians call the "global contract" system.
Individuals or groups sign contracts with the collective to perform a given
amount of work, yielding a certain amount of produce during the coming
season. Fulfillment of the contract (or overfulfillment) brings rewards,
while underfulfillment brings financial penalties. The collective and tractor
stations are held responsible for providing the necessary help, and failures
on their part do not penalize the work group. Individuals, several indi-
viduals, families, several families, or larger groups united as teams may
sign such agreements (M. Cernea).
In practice, most contracts are signed by individuals who then
divide the work tasks among family members, or they are signed by single
families as wholes. Even village residents who are not normally members
of the collective may sign agreements and work part time for extra income
(M. Cernea). Thus, production has been partially reprivatized, and the
family's role has been strengthened, without allowing a formal retreat
from socialist principle. Cernea points out that many collective officials
have resisted this tendency because it weakens their control over produc-
tion; but where the new system has been allowed to function according to
the rules, it seems to have raised production significantly.
In the long run, the proportion of the population involved in agri-
culture will decline, and an ever growing proportion of production will
come from large mechanized collectives and state units. In the meantime,
the Party has adapted somewhat to private and family interests, and this
has certainly helped. Many instances of gross inefficiency remain-fields
plowed too late, harvests left to rot on the ground because of labor shortages
and machine breakdowns, inadequate distribution of seed and fertilizer. It
is still common to see students and members of the army in the fields at
harvest time, trying to make up by mass manual labor what has been left
undone by normal procedures. Synchronization of production and trans-
portation creates severe problems. But despite these flaws, the modified
collective system has made life far more pleasant for peasants than it had
been in the past. The peasantry remains poorer than the urban population,
and overcentralization of agriculture will produce bottlenecks for a long
time to come, but as long as the Party remains willing to take a flexible
approach, the situation will remain under control.
Population and Morality
Romania's industrial and agricultural development, and the associated

social changes that have taken place in the last thirty years, are easily tied
to the logical demands of socialism, at least as it is understood by the
orthodox neo-Stalinist elite that controls the political process. The morality
imposed on the daily social behavior of the population, though it has a
Romania / 485
great deal in common with the puritanism, even prudery, so common in

Communist societies, is less logically connected to Marxism; and in Roma-
nia it has been pushed to an extreme unique in the European Communist
world in at least one respect, demographic policy. We may one day see
similar policies adopted in other European Communist states (though that
is far from certain), but for the time being, Romania stands out as the only
European, or even fairly industrialized, society that has pursued such a
harsh pro-natalist line. Since this pro-natalism is connected to general
public morality, as well as to strong nationalism, it should be discussed in
conjunction with these other aspects of Party ideology.
First, let us consider the astonishing demographic trends of the
Communist period (Table 9). As we can see, in 1967 total births increased
by 93 percent over 1966 and divorces fell by 100 percent. Infant mortality in
1967 (total numbers) was also 93 percent higher than in 1966, but in 1968 it
rose by 146 percent over 1966 figures.
What happened? Simply, in 1966 the law was changed. There had
been easy and cheap abortions before, and suddenly abortion was out-
lawed except for certain very strictly defined medical reasons. Divorce was
also outlawed, though the law has been gradually relaxed since then.
Contraception was made very difficult to obtain. George Schopflin has
written that this was produced by an extreme burst of nationalism com-
bined with a perception of falling birth rates. Romanians have long feared
being overwhelmed by a "Slavic tide," both before 1944 and since. The
independence and renewal of nationalism within the Romanian C.P in the
Table 9. AVERAGEYEARLYRATES PER 1,000 POPULATION
Infant Mortality
(Deaths in First Year
Births Deaths Divorces Per 1,000 Live Births)
1938 28.3 18.2 0.59 179.0

1950-54 25.3 12.0 1.42 104.9
1955-59 22.9 9.7 1.79 77.1
1960-64 16.7 8.6 1.93 61.3
1965 14.6 8.6 1.94 44.1
1966 14.3 8.2 1.35 46.6
1967 27.4 9.3 0* 46.6
1968 26.7 9.6 0.20 59.5
1969 23.3 10.1 0.35 54.9
1970 21.1 9.5 0.39 49.4
1971 19.5 9.5 0.47 42.4
1972 18.8 9.2 0.54 40.0
1973 18.2 9.8 0.69 38.1
1974 20.3 9.1 0.85 35.0
*In 1967 there were 48, divorces in Rornania.

Source: Anuarul, f:22-23.
early 1960s combined with the puritanism of the official morality to pro-
duce this change in policy. Whether or not a nation of 20,000,000 can ever
compete demographically with the U.S.S.R. is a pointless question as far
as the C.P. is concerned. Whether or not there was a fear that the army or
the youthful industrial labor force would be depleted by declining natality
may be more to the point, but it is unlikely that rational calculations can
ever explain such a decisive break with previous laws. The only explana-
tion lies in the extreme emotional reaction of a few people at the top,
perhaps only Nicolae Ceausescu himself, to a host of coexisting factors.
Since 1967, the government has relented somewhat, though divorce
remains difficult, hedged with bureaucratic difficulties, and very expen-
sive. Some mechanical contraception is available, but (except for a small
urban elite) with great difficulty. Illegal abortion rings have also grown up,
but the political and medical dangers, along with the high cost of the
procedure, have created a situation radically different from that which
prevailed in the first half of the 1960s. (In 1970 an illegal abortion in
Bucharest cost about $100 (2,000 lei), more than a month's salary for a
typical urban Romanian at that time. But obviously, for people with good
connections, and money, there are always easy solutions.)
In an urban setting where apartment space is still short, and where
many young couples still live with relatives, the prohibition of divorce has
created many sad situations. Throughout the country, there have been
many unwanted babies as well, particularly among those caught unpre-
pared at the time of the sudden change in laws. Since the change, how-
ever, it is obvious that the population has begun to adapt, and birth rates
are again falling back to more normal levels. But this does not remove the
social problem created by the "baby boom" of the late 60s and early 70s.
The school system has been strained, and for a long time the sudden
demographic spurt will produce its own overcrowding problems.
An unusual thing about birth rates is that in 1974 rural natality was
20.8 per 1,000, and the urban rate 19.7 (Anuarul, f). In 1965, the rural rate
was 15.9, and the urban 12.1 (Anuarul, c). Thus, it seems that those hardest
hit by the change have been the urbanites, probably because until the
change abortion and contraception were both more easily available and
more eagerly sought in cities than in the villages. Today one can only
assume that birth control is still more widely sought in urban areas, but it is
hardly more available.
What is to be made of this? From all accounts (and here I am relying
on hearsay) Nicolae Ceausescu is personally behind the policy which
corresponds well with his general feelings about morality and the citizens'
duties to the state. Ceausescu is personally free of corruption, and he has
been a devoted Party act:vist since his teens. His entire life has been dedi-
cated to the construction of an advanced, independent, socialist Romania,
and he has little tolerance for the human vagaries that impede develop-
Romania / 487
ment. Because of him, periodic anti-smoking and anti-drinking directives

are issued to Party members, and he seems to have strongly traditional
beliefs about the "sanctity" of the family and the waste caused by frivolity.
At all levels of society, these attitudes have an effect, though no-
where as strongly as in the implementation of demographic and family-
related policies. Corruption remains a problem in the bureaucracy, but at a
level far below that which prevailed in the 1930s. There are no serious
problems connected with the rise of a "youth culture," as there are in the
West, and even, to a certain extent, in some of the more advanced Euro-
pean Communist societies. There are periodic drives against long hair on
males and "indecent" dress for young women, and while these campaigns
are loosely carried out in Bucharest (particularly during the summer tourist
season to avoid unpleasant experiences for Westerners), they do result in
occasional beatings of "disreputable-looking" youths. In the smaller towns,
dress codes are strict. Everywhere pornography is absent, there are no
sensationalist news stories about crime or sex, prostitution is rare, and
there is no drug culture. (Curbing traditional alcoholism is, of course, a
problem of a different order.) Compared to Yugoslavia, or even Poland and
Hungary, Romania is a quiet place indeed. This official puritanism has its
soothing aspects, even if it is not appreciated by young urban intellectuals.
But the effects of the demographic policy on the personal lives of millions
is harder to accept, particularly when it seems so arbitrarily tied to the
whims of one man at the top.
The Ethnic Minorities
The problem of the ethnic minorities, so serious in the 1930s, disappeared,

with one major exception, after World War II. The changed boundaries
eliminated a large portion of the Slavic minorities, and many (Bessarabian
and Bukovinan) Jews as well. Deportation and killings of Jews during the
war were followed by large-scale emigration (mostly to Israel) after the
war. Many Germans emigrated as well after the withdrawal of the German
armies in 1944. A comparison of ethnic statistics shows that the only large
minority that remained was Hungarian (Table 10).
The vagaries of Romanian ethnic policy after 1945 are too compli-
cated in detail and ultimately too insignificant to justify any but the briefest
summary. There were many shifts. When the Soviet armies entered, Ger-
mans were persecuted because they had been allies of the Nazis. By the
late 1940s, however, the Germans who remained were given their own
cultural institutions, which they have retained to this day (Wolff). Jews, on
the other hand, were favored at first and allowed to emigrate freely, but in
the early 1950s Zionism was denounced, and anti-Semitism resurfaced
(Wolff). Later it diminished, and Romania has maintained good relations
Table 10. PERCENTAGEOF POPULATIONBY ETHNICITY
1930 1956 1966
Romanian 71.9 85.7 87.7

Hungarian 7.9 9.1 8.5
German 4.1 2.2 2.0
Jewish 4.0 0.8 0.2
Gypsy 1.5 0.6 0.3*
Other 10.6 1.6 1.3
*Understated.
Source: Anuarul, a:37; Gilberg:208, 223.
with Israel through the 1960s and 1970s and allowed relatively free emigra-
tion of Jews. There are periodic complaints that anti-Semitism persists, but
officially this is not the case, and compared to Poland or the U.S.S.R.,
Romania's record is not bad at all.
Hungarians, too, were treated as a privileged minority in the early
days of Communist rule, and in 1952 received an "autonomous" region of
their own (Wolff). Hungarian autonomy was gradually eroded by the
rising strength of Romanian nationalism in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
and there is now no distinct Hungarian administrative zone, though, like
the Germans, the- Hungarians maintain their own school system and
newspapers. While it does not openly persecute its Hungarians, "The
Romanian government ... aims at the assimilation of the Hungarian
minority" without using force, that is, by continuing". . . its attempts to
demonstrate to the Hungarians that they really have no alternative to
becoming part of the Romanian state community" (Shapiro, 176). Many
individual Hungarians complain about this policy, and Romania's Hunga-
rians are probably not loyal to the Romanian state. It is known that during
the 1956 Hungarian revolt there was considerable agitation among Transyl-
vanian Hungarians (Shoup), and in 1968 there were some Hungarian
student demonstrations in Cluj to oppose the gradual de-Magyarization of
the Hungarian University. Because they form a fairly compact and large
minority, it is unlikely that the Hungarians will be quickly assimilated. But
unless there is outside intervention, notably by the U.S.S.R., it is even
more unlikely that they will be separated from the Romanian state.
Gypsies were a despised, excluded minority before 1944. During
World War II they were, like the Jews, subject to deportation and murder.
Since then, the government has made considerable efforts to integrate
them into Romanian life and evidently it has had some success; but there
still remain some fiercely independent Gypsy nomads, and a larger num-
ber of unassimilated Gypsies on the margins of many villages and towns.
Some anti-Communist Romanians, particularly in rural areas, complain
that the Gypsies have been systematically favored, but there is little evi-
Romania / 489
dence of this today, and despite government assimilationist policies, it is

obvious that there remains considerable anti-Gypsy prejudice within the
general population.
In the late 1940s, as the Soviet Union attempted to bring the Roma-
nian population under full control, a massive "denationalization" cam-
paign took place. Romanians were told that neither their language nor
their culture was Latin but rather Slavic, and that perhaps there was no
real Romanian nationality at all. Every ethnic minority, no matter how
small, was given its own cultural institutions (except for Serbs who were
near the Yugoslav border and who were persecuted and deported to the
Baragan after the break with Tito). So there were Tartar, Ukrainian, and
Armenian schools and "national committees" for other groups with even
fewer members in Romania. An attempt was made to suggest that Walla-
chians and Moldavians were themselves different nationalities (a sugges-
tion which struck at the very heart of the existence of the Romanian nation)
(Wolff). But during the 1950s most of these anti-nationalist manifestations
vanished, and since the early 1960s Romania has been openly and some-
times loudly nationalistic.
Foreign Affairs and Nationalism
Since 1962 Romania has managed to antagonize the Russians without

either making a complete break (like Albania, Yugoslavia, or China, none
of which can be invaded by the Soviets without threatening a large and
dangerous war) or provoking an invasion (as happened in Hungary in 1956
and Czechoslovakia in 1968). Internal Romanian party policies have re-
mained orthodox, and Communist rule has never been threatened there,
as it has been in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. This probably explains
Soviet reluctance to invade Romania, which is, after all, only a minor thorn
in its side and which does not threaten to infect the rest of Eastern Europe.
But the threat of invasion is always present, and Romania knows that it
could not count on Western assistance if it came. The best units of Roma-
nia's army have long been deployed to fight on an Eastern front, and there
supposedly exist plans to mobilize the population to fight a partisan war in
the mountains in case of a Soviet invasion.
Why would a perfectly orthodox, servile party with relatively little
native legitimacy (this was the case in the late 1950s) take such an immense
risk, particularly when there were no obvious internal forces pushing for
such policies at the time? (The decision was taken by the very top Party
elite, not by pressure from below.) This is a topic which has been discussed
in detail by many (Brown; Fischer-Galati; Floyd; Jowitt, a; King, b; Lendvai;
Levesque; Schopflin) but I shall concentrate here only on those interpre-
tations which seem to be consistent with the general pattern of social
change.
Even though there were signs of disagreement between Romania

and the U.S.S.R. (actually, these were originally part of a dispute between
Czechoslovakia and Romania) in the late 1950s (Montias), the dispute
became serious in 1962 and broke into public view in 1963. The most
advanced Communist states, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, wanted
to keep on exporting heavy industrial machinery and other manufactured
goods to the less developed Communist states, among them Romania.
Romania, on the other hand, was committed to heavy industrialization
and did not wish to remain a primary product exporter. Nor was it satisfied
with Czech and East German machinery, which was inferior to what could
be purchased in the West. At the same time, Romania sought more aid
from the U.S.S.R., particularly to develop its steel industry by building a
large steel plant in Galati. The U.S.S.R., which was having economic
problems of its own, took the side of the Czechs and Germans, and
Khrushchev suggested to the Romanians that they specialize in agricul-
ture and industries related to petroleum and gas (both of which were
abundant). This would have helped the Soviets by lessening the primary
product dependence of the advanced Communist states, and freed Soviet
primary exports for trade with the West. Khrushchev's call for greater
"rationalization" in the Communist division of labor and for greater inte-
gration of Eastern European economies thus presented the Romanian elite
with a major problem. It threatened to change the entire direction taken
since 1947, and strongly affirmed in 1957 (Montias). Jowitt argues, con-
vincingly, that the Romanian elite was faced by "cognitive dissonance"
(a, 203). Everything it had believed in and worked for was threatened.
Once the break became public, China, already at serious odds with the
U.S.S.R., came to the defense of the Romanian position, and this worsened
the dispute (Levesque). Then, the question of centralization vs. decentral-
ization became an issue. The advanced Communist economies, including
Hungary and Poland, but also the U.S.S.R. went through a partial decen-
tralization of their economies. The poorer ones, notably Romania and
Bulgaria, felt they could not yet afford this and clung to more orthodox
Stalinist policies. But Bulgaria had always played the Soviet game and
been rewarded by much more aid from that source than Romania. So this
potential dispute between the Bulgarians and the Soviets never broke into
the open, while in the case of Romania it made a bad situation worse
(Jowitt, a). Seen in that light, the Romanian actions make a great deal of
sense. While Jowitt does not seem to agree, I also feel that the years of
terror and humiliation suffered by the Romanian elite during the late 1940s
and early 1950s played a role. It is not that the elite had necessarily
harbored feelings of independence, but that the direct threat to their
hegemony and policies in 1962-63 brought forth feelings which otherwise
might have remained latent.
In orderto buildup domesticlegitimacy,the C.P begantogivefreereignto
Romania / 491
the nationalism that had remained in the general population, particularlyamong

intellectuals. Old intellectuals who had survived were rehabilitated, and the
literary works of many past nationalists were reprinted and brought into
favor. Greater freedom was allowed to the general population, and the
government began to justify its rule on the basis of its defense of national
independence. It was not just that before the war there had been consider-
able anti-Russian feeling (dating back to the nineteenth century), but on
top of this the period of Soviet occupation and ruthless exploitation had
created a whole new generation of anti-Russians. So for the first time in its
history, the Romanian Communist party came to be viewed as a defender
of national interests, and this greatly consolidated its position with the
general population. In 1965 Gheorghiu-Dej, who obviously felt very un-
comfortable with this new nationalism and liberalism forced on him by
the Soviet Union, died, and under his follower, Ceausescu, liberalization
accelerated (Levesque).
But as Levesque has pointed out, Ceausescu's liberalism, while it
was more flexible than Gheorghiu-Dej's, was equally manipulative and
insincere. It reached a high point in 1968, when it seemed that the U.S.S.R.
would invade Romania along with Czechoslovakia. In a massive public
demonstration in Bucharest, Ceausescu promised that the population
would be armed, that the lies and errors of the past would not be repeated,
and that there would be freedom of the press and greater liberty. The
Romanian C.P probably reached a peak of popularity at that time. But the
invasion never came, and gradually many of the liberal reforms were
dismantled. In the 1970s, while Romania has hardly returned to the days of
1948-53, it has moved back from the relative liberalism of the late 1960s.
There are several reasons for this. First, while Romania's foreign
trade has become more diversified and relies less on other Communist
economies than in the past, the West has not proved to be the source of
investment and trade that was once hoped for. In 1958, 73 percent of all
Romanian foreign trade was with Communist, CMEA countries, while in
1967 it was only 47 percent (Mickiewicz). But, as Robert King has written,
"By the late 1960s its growing trade deficit with the West led Romania to
seek closer economic ties with the U.S.S.R., since Romanian industrial
goods were more welcome in the East than in the West. At the same time, a
growing need for raw materials led Romania to make long-term contracts
for deliveries from the Soviet Union and to agree to invest in the extraction
of these materials." Also, while Romania has tried to diversify its export
base by sending manufactured goods to developing countries, in 1975 38
percent of its trade was still with other European Communist countries,
7 percent with other Communist countries, 38 percent with developed
capitalist countries, and only 16 percent with developing countries (King,
a; Radio Free Europe). Romanian industrial goods are not competitive in
Western markets, except for certain light consumer goods which the leader-
ship does not want to push too far, and to become a mainly raw material
and agricultural exporter once again is out of the question. Since economic
integration with the West is impossible, with time, some of the original
economic motivation for remaining independent from the U.S.S.R. is
diminishing. So the need to mobilize opinion against the Russians has
decreased.
Second, and probably more important, is the fact that the top lead-
ership has never felt comfortable with liberalism. It has never trusted its
masses and does not tolerate the threat to central Party control posed
by liberalization. Liberalism and greater contact with Western economies
would have the same effect-the technocratic intelligentsia would be
strengthened, there would be greater emphasis on consumer goods, and
the masses would ultimately gain more power. It has been to prevent such
a trend that the entrenched elite has reversed its 1960s policies to some
extent.
Today, then, Romania remains more nationalistic and independent
(if less noisily so than before), but also less liberal and decentralized than
Poland or Hungary. The Party elite uses the threat of a potential Soviet in-
vasion to justify its retreat from liberalism. Excessive liberalism would pro-
voke attack. Such an invasion, it claims, would bring back the bad old days
of 1948-53. This threat, as much as the Romanian secret police, helps to
keep a rein on domestic protest, particularly among intellectuals who con-
stantly face a contradiction between their liberalism and their nationalism.
Nationalism, which is a strongly liberal force in Hungary, Poland,
and Czechoslovakia (and was a key ingredient of Yugoslav liberalism at
least until the 1970s) is quite different in Romania. Without wishing to
demean Romanian nationalism, I should point out that it resembles the old
pre-war, "fascist" spirit more than it does the spirit of Czech nationalism in
1968. Nation, Party, Work, the Leader, Autarky, these are the slogans of the
day. Individual liberty and government flexibility are not part of the na-
tionalist program. This is a realistic ideology since, as the top Party people
repeatedly emphasize, liberalism and the Soviet threat are so closely linked
that they could one day combine to bring down the existing regime, with
probably disastrous consequences for Romania's development.
Politics in a Modern Corporate Society
Nationalism in contemporary Romania has adopted many of the attitudes

and even heroes of the pre-Communist past. (A 1967 edition of Octavian
Goga's poetry-he was also a strongly anti-Semitic, fascist prime minister
in the late 1930s-called him the "poet of the nation.") The economic
policies developed in the 1960s and which persist to this day are similar to
the protectionist, nationalistic ones proposed by Mihail Mainolescu, who
Romania / 493
also wrote an internationally influential praise of fascism in 1934 called The

Century of Corporatism. (For a brief discussion of current applications of
his economic theories, see Montias, 195-6.) The revival of a "Dacian-
Latin" mythology, which comes close to promoting the existence of a
"pure" and continuous national entity, marks a "reversion of pre-war
practices" (Schopflin, 89). I believe that the present structure of contem-
porary Romanian society is also a lot closer to the idea expounded by
Manoilescu and other "corporatist" theorists than is commonly recog-
nized, and that by referring to that ideal, some useful insights may be
gained into Romanian stratification and politics.
The point is not to insult the Romanian C.P., even though it is easy
to imagine what kind of reception a Romanian sociologist would receive if
he dared to propose such views. The point, rather, is to suggest that much
of the ideology developed by the "fascists" during the 1920s and 1930s was
a natural form of expression for intellectuals in a developing but backward,
threatened society, and that aside from the change in superficial termi-
nology, it remains viable today. The dreams of the right-wing nationalists
in the 1930s were premature; in the 1960s and 1970s they have born fruit.
In his book on corporatism, Manoilescu wrote:
The corporation is a collective and public organization composed of all persons
(physical and juridical) who together fill the same function in the nation. Its
purpose is to assure the exercise of this function, in the supreme interest of the
nation, by means of rules and rights imposed on its members (176).
Manoilescu's notion of corporations was similar to, and largely derived
from, Durkheim's work in Division of Labor.Corporations were to be vertical
organizations. The various key industrial sectors were to constitute corpo-
rations, but they would avoid horizontal, class-based solidarities. Workers
and managers would be in the same, not distinct, corporate bodies. The
military, the educational establishment, agriculturalists, merchants, artists,
and so on, would form corporations, with functional and regional sub-
sections, of course, but without setting rich against poor or superiors
against subordinates. On top of the structure, there would be the nation,
the supreme corporate body, that would "organically" integrate the other
lesser bodies. This type of organization would not only eliminate futile,
destructive class warfare, but also permit great coordination for the good of
the whole. It would also protect the poor from the vagaries of unregulated
free market forces.
We know that in practice the fascist corporate experiment turned
into a travesty (particularly in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, where it survived
long enough to be judged), because "functional, organic solidarity" became
a thinly veiled justification for the exploitation of workers and peasants by
big business and landowners. But in a Communist society, where classes
have been destroyed to the extent that there are no owners of the chief
means of production and where the entire society is imperatively coordi-
nated for the greater good of the nation, corporate (or functional) vertical
organization is a working reality. There are horizontally defined classes-
the middle-class technocratic intelligentsia, the peasants, the workers,
etc., but these are not accorded official legitimacy or the power to organize
as distinct interest groups. Corporate groups, however, are specifically
organized and legitimized, so that open political competition is more easily
carried on between them than between suppressed classes.
This should be familiar to students of Communist societies, where,
for example, "agriculture" (collectives and state farms coordinated through
a ministry and officially represented at elite levels) competes with "heavy
industry" or the "military" for scarce resources. A triumph by "agricul-
ture" presumably benefits everyone in the corporation, from the minister
and his top aids who gain more power in top councils, to local collective
managers, and even peasants at the bottom of the corporation. It is, in fact,
in these terms that much of Communist politics is discussed, both by
outsiders and insiders.
In Romania, there is at the top a coordinating corporation consisting
of its own functionaries and representatives of the other functionally de-
fined corporate groups, the Party, whose ruling body is the effective ruling
body of the nation, the Central Committee. The Party has its own institu-
tions, its own officials, its meetings, rules, and at the very top, a great deal
of social solidarity. The Central Committee, for example, has its own
restaurants, schools, medical services, stores, vacation and hunting lodges,
etc.
But similar, if less privileged, versions exist at every level. University
professors (including graduate students) have their own corporate institu-
tions, as do writers, artists, journalists, youths, collective farm members
(individual collectives are joined in regional associations which are coordi-
nated into a national organization which holds periodic meetings of dele-
gates), factories (grouped into industries), the military, and every other
identifiable group. To be sure, something like this exists in capitalist so-
cieties as well, but what is lacking there is the overall coordination of the
various corporate groups, and in no capitalist society does everyone fit into
one or another similarly organized corporate body. Also, in capitalist so-
cieties, horizontal, class-based organizations abound and are open partici-
pants in the political process.
At the higher levels of Romanian society, corporate bodies resemble
medieval guilds (except that there are no official hereditarily based restric-
tions on entry), and when one enters, say, the Union of Plastic Artists, one
is protected, regulated, rewarded or punished by the Union and lives as a
member. Certain "guilds" are more privileged. Members of the Academy
(researchers, who have a rank distinctly higher than that held by mere
professors), for example, have one of the finer Bucharest restaurants at
their disposal and pay relatively littlo for their meals. The Academy's
Romania / 495
vacation homes are also palatial compared to those available to factory

workers, but, of course, not as nice as those for members of the Party elite.
Political competition between corporate groups is a constant, normal
process in Romania, and its existence hardly threatens the stability of the
government. Class conflict, however, is something else, and it is covert
and dangerous. Strikes by workers do occur, although rarely, but they are
hushed up and quickly dismantled, by force or concessions. Both of these
were used during the Jiu Valley miners' strikes in 1977, the most serious
anti-regime outburst in recent years. Over the long run, the most dan-
gerous potential class conflict, even more than the occasional workers'
strike, is that between the technically skilled intelligentsia, in all spheres of
the economy, and the Party, a conflict which has broken out into the open
in the past and remains latent at all times.
We saw above that such a conflict broke out in 1957 and was
resolved by the victory of the professional Party functionaries. In the 1960s
it came to the fore once again, but much more strongly. Industrialization
and the rapid growth of higher education had greatly increased the size of
the technocratic-managerial class, and the liberalization, greater emphasis
on economic efficiency, and general cultural relaxation after 1965 precipi-
tated a crisis. One of the forms that it took was that "bright young men"
(and women) were sent in to replace Party hacks at various critical levels of
the economy. The older, loyal but often technically incompetent Party
functionaries were demoted or sent out to the provinces. Various reorgan-
izations took place which emphasized accountability of economic units (in
terms of profits and losses), and this further threatened the old elite. This
was a cause for rejoicing among the younger, better educated members of
the intelligentsia, and a cause for despair among those who were being
replaced.
The conflict threatened Ceausescu, who briefly backed the reformers
in 1965-69 for the sake of economic progress. His position has always
rested on his control of, and loyalty from, the Party organization. Many of
the best educated young technocrats, in fact, consider him to be an old-
fashioned, uneducated boor. In 1971 Ceausescu visited North Korea and
evidently took inspiration from his "beloved friend" (his own words), Kim
Il-sung (Jowitt, b). He returned to initiate a "little cultural revolution" that
reversed the late 1960s trend. Party control over "economic managers and
planners, technical experts, academic personnel, and the literary intelli-
gentsia" was reaffirmed (Gilberg). Ion Iliescu, leader of the youth wing of
the Party and the very model of the young, brash, technocratic liberal, was
demoted (Gilberg; Jowitt, b). To cover the conflict and maintain national
unity, Ceausescu (who had gradually encouraged a "cult of personality" in
his favor) went further, so that today it is a permanent, omnipresent facet
of Romanian life (Jowitt, b). Ceausescu is now as powerful in Romania as
Stalin was in the U.S.S.R., a position unique in Eastern Europe (with the
possible exception of Albania) (Gilberg). In large measure, however, this is

more than pure personal power; it reflects the renewed ascendancy of the
same old Party functionaries (or their institutional followers) who backed
Gheorghiu-Dej against Constantinescu in 1957.
The change in the early 1970s continues (at least into 1977), and one
of its most obvious manifestations is a constant call for "ideological mobili-
zation" and emphasis on "ideological appeals rather than material incen-
tives" (King, b: 16). One of the distinctive aspects of the semi-covert
conflict is that the Writers' Union has become the foremost defender of
liberalism and presumably the interests of the technocratic intelligentsia.
At a recent conference (May 1977) of Romanian writers, the post-1971
dogmatic attitude toward literature was reaffirmed, and the leading liberal
dissident in Romania, writer Paul Goma, has been seriously persecuted
(Maier). (Goma has now been exiled abroad.)
But even in literature, dogmatism and Stalinist orthodoxy present
problems. The Romanian C.P. would like to extend its cultural influence
abroad as part of its drive to keep economic and political independence
from the U. S. S. R. To make Romanian literature acceptable in the world, its
quality must be raised, and this conflicts with a dogmatic emphasis on
socialist realism and cheerful praise of the workers' state. So repression is
not at all as bad as it was in the early 1950s, because Romania cannot afford
the international protest and ridicule heaped on countries which go too far
in persecuting their literary intellectuals (Maier).
If the problem exists in literature, it is more severe in economic
matters. Gilberg has pointed out that the partial return to ideologicalpurity
threatensefficienteconomicgrowth becauseit attacksthe very cadreswho must
managethe increasinglycomplex,advancedeconomy.Growthfurtherenlargesthe
sizeandfunctionalroleof the intelligentsia,andit is no longereasy to sweepaway
discontent. The same dilemma exists in all Communist states, but in Eastern
Europe it is particularly acute in Romania, which has moved backward in
this respect while others (most notably Hungary and Poland) have moved
forward.
Romania has made a great deal of progress since the 1930s. In one
sense, however, it has not escaped from two of its main problems. It
remains poor and backward relativeto the referencegroupof its intellectual
elite, the rest of Europe, and particularly Western Europe. It also remains
threatened by potential big power (Soviet) intervention. Internally, it faces
rising discontent from the technocratic intelligentsia and, in the long run,
from its masses that demand increasing material rewards for the years of
intense effort and sacrifice. The process of development has taken place
under the leadership of a narrow, inflexible, dogmatic (though intensely
nationalistic) Party elite. Any open conflict between this elite and the rising
intelligentsia, particularly if it were to arouse mass protest, might provoke
Soviet invasion, and this could dramatically set back development. But in
Romania / 497
the absence of conflict, the aging, technically inept elite will be unable to
solve the problems of an advanced and complex economy. So far, the Party
has maintained a balance. There has been industrial growth and an in-
creasing standard of living for the masses, there has been some loosening
of Stalinist orthodoxy (compared to the 1950s), the old Party functionaries
have retained control, and the Soviet Union has been kept at bay. To
predict that the balancing act will succeed permanently would be foolish,
but it would be equally foolish to predict when or how Romania will fall off
its tightrope. If it ever does. the social consequences will be enormous.
References
Anuarul Statistic al Romaniei 1935 si 1936. a: 1935-36.
Anuarul Statistic al RepubliciiPopulareRomine 1963. b: 1963.
Anuarul Statistic al RepubliciiSocialisteRomania 1966. c: 1966.
. d: 1970.
. e: 1974.
. f: 1975.
Brown, J. F. 1963. "Rumania Steps out of Line." Survey 49(October):19-35.
Cernea, Mihail. 1974. Sociologiacooperativeagricole. Bucharest: Editura academiei.
Cernea, Stela. 1970. "Mobilitate verticala in grupul social al intelectualitatii tehnice."
In Miron Constantinescu and Henri H. Stahl (eds.), Procesul de urbanizarein
R. S. Romania, zona Slatina-Olt. Bucharest: Editura academiei.
Chirot, Daniel. a: 1972. "Sociology in Romania: A Review of Recent Works." Social
Forces 51(September):99-102.
. b:1976. Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The Creation of a Balkan Colony.
New York: Academic Press.
Chirot, Daniel, and Charles Ragin. 1975. "The Market, Tradition and Peasant
Rebellion:.The Case of Romania in 1907." American SociologicalReview 40(Au-
gust):428-444.
Constantinescu, Miron, Constantin Daicoviciu, and Stefan Pascu. 1969. Istoria
Romaniei:Compediu. Bucharest: Editura didactica si pedagogica.
Cornateanu, N. 1937. "Problema lotului taranesc indivizibil." SociologieRomaneasca
2(February-March):100-02.
Cresin, Roman. a:1937. "Care este structura proprietatii agrare din Romania."
SociologieRomaneasca2(February-March):90-95.
. b:1945. Recensamantul agricol al Romaniei din 1941. Vol. 1. Bucharest: Institul
central de statistica.
. c:1975. "Cine sint cei care ne-au raspuns" and "Un tinert cu scolarizare
ridicata, in sectoare variate, si cu o marediversitate de ocupatii." In Ovidiu
Badina, Dumitru Dumitriu, Octavian Neamtu (eds.), Tineret rural '68. Bucha-
rest: Editura academiei.
Davis, Kingsley. 1972. WorldUrbanization1950-1970. Vol. 2 Population Monograph
Series, No. 9. Berkeley: University of California.
Dogan, Mattei. 1953. "L'origine sociale du personnel parlementaire d'un pays
essentiellement agraire, la Roumanie." Revue de l'Institut de Sociologie 2-3:165-
208 (Brussels).
Dragan, Ion. 1973. "Aspects sociaux de l'industrialisation des zones rurales en
Roumanie." Revue Roumainedes sciences sociales, serie de sociologie 17:77-100.
Dumitriu, Petru. a:1961. "The Two New Classes." East Europe 10(September):3.
___. b:1964. Incognito. New York: Macmillan.
Durkheim, Emile. 1893. The Division of Laborin Society. New York: Free Press, 1964.
Enescu, C. 1937. "Semnificatia alegerilor din decembrie 1937 in evolutia politica a
neamului Romanesc." SociologieRomaneasca2(November-December):512-29.
Fischer-Galati, Stephen. 1967. The New Rumania:From People'sDemocracyto Socialist
Republic. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
Floyd, David. 1965. Rumania:Russia's Dissident Ally. London: Pall Mall.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. a:1947. Yearbookof Food
and Agricultural Statistics 1947. Washington: U.N.
. b:1975. Production Yearbook 1974. Vol. 28:1. Rome: FAO.
Frasie, D., and Tr. Lazar. 1960. "Probleme ale dezvoltarii economice a intovarasirilor
agricole." In Costin Murgescu (ed.), Problemeale dezvoltariisi consolidariiagricul-
turii socialiste. Bucharest: Editura academiei.
Gheorghiu, Constantin. 1937. "Asistenta medicala rurala in Romania." Sociologie
Romaneasca2(February-March):84-85.
Gilberg, Trond. 1975. Modernizationin Romaniasince WorldWarII. New York:Praeger.
Goga, Octavian. 1905-39. Poezii. Bucharest: Biblioteca scolarului, 1967.
Herseni, Traian. 1970. Industrializaresi urbanizare:cercetari de psihologie concreta la
Boldesti. Bucharest: Editura academiei.
Ionescu, Ghita. 1964. Communism in Rumania, 1944-1962. London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Ionescu-Sisesti, G. 1966. Culegere din lucrarile stiintifice. Bucharest: Editura aca-
demiei.
Jackson, George D. 1966. Cominternand Peasant in East Europe1919-1930. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Jowitt, Kenneth. a:1971. Revolutionary Breakthroughsand National Development: The
Case of Romania, 1944-1965. Berkeley: University of California Press.
. b:1974. "Political Innovation in Rumania." Survey 4(Autumn):132-51.
King, Robert K. a:1974. "The Problems of Rumanian Foreign Policy." Survey 4
(Autumn):105-20.
. b:1977. "Ideological Mobilization in Romania." Radio Free Europe Background
Report 40(21 February).
Kuznets, Simon. 1971. Economic Growth of Nations: Total Output and Production
Structures. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lendvai, Paul. 1969. Eagles in Cobwebs.New York: Doubleday.
Levesque, Jacques. 1970. Le conflit sino-sovietique et l'Europe de l'Est. Mlontreal: Les
presses de l'universite de Montreal.
Madgearu, Virgil. 1940. Evolutia economieiRomanestidupa razboiulmondial. Bucharest:
Biblioteca economica.
Maier, Anneli. 1977. "The National Conference of Romanian Writers." Radio Free
EuropeBackgroundReport 118(22 June).
Manoilescu, Mihail. 1934. Le siecle du corporatismeintegral et pur. Paris: Librairie Felix
Alcan.
Manuila, Sabin. 1936. "Stfinta de carte a populatiei Romaniei." Reprint from Arhiva
pentru stiinta si reformasociala 14(2).
Mickiewicz, Ellen. 1973. Handbookof Soviet Social ScienceData. New York:Free Press.
Mitchell, B. R. 1976. EuropeanHistorical Statistics 1750-1970. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Moldovan, Roman et al. 1964. Dezvoltareaeconomicaa Rominiei 1944-1964. Bucharest:
Editura academiei.
Montias, John M. 1967. Economic Development in Communist Rumania. Cambridge:
M.I.T. Press.
Murgescu, Costin. 1956. Reformaagraradin 1945. Bucharest: Editura academiei.
Romania / 499
Murgescu, Costin et al. 1966. "Influences of the Process of Industrialization on

Social Mobility-on Romanian Data." The Romanian Journal of Sociology 4-5:
181-92.
Neamtu, Octavian. 1970. Buciumi: Un sat din Tarade Sub Munte. Bucharest: Editura
academiei.
Patrascanu, Lucretiu. 1944. Sub trei dictaturi. Bucharest: Editura politica, 1970.
Prost, Henri. 1954. Destin de la Roumanie. Paris: Berger-Levrault.
Radio Free Europe. 1977. "Situation Report No. 2 (January 20).
Roberts, Henry L. 1951. Rumania: The Political Problems of an Agrarian State. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Roth, Guenther. 1968. "Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism, and Empire-Building
in the New States." WorldPolitics 20(January):194-207.
Schopflin, George. 1974. "Rumanian Nationalism." Survey 4(Autumn):77-104.
Shapiro, Paul. 1972. "Analysis of Paul Shoup's Article." (See Shoup, Paul.)
Shoup, Paul. 1972. "The National Question and the Political Systems of Eastern
Europe." In Sylvia Sinanian, Istvan Deak, Peter C. Ludz (eds.), Eastern Europe
in the 1970s. New York: Praeger.
Stahl, Henri H. et al. a:1970. "Navetistii." In Ovidiu Badina, Dumitru Dumitriu,
Octavian Neamtu (eds.), Tineret rural '68. Bucharest: Editura academiei.
Stahl, Henri H., Mihail Cernea, and Gh. Chepes (eds.). b: 1970. Doua sate: structuri
sociale si progres tehnic. Bucharest: Editura politica.
Statistica agricolaa Romaniei. Inventarul agricol in anul 1946. Bucharest, 1948.
Turnock, David. 1974. An EconomicGeographyof Romania. London: Bell.
Vulcanescu, M. 1937. "Excedentul populatiei agricole si perspectivele gospodariei
taranesti." SociologieRomaneasca2(February-March):95-100.
Warriner, Doreen. 1939. Economicsof Peasant Farming. New York: Barnes & Noble,
1964.
Weber, Eugen. 1966. "Romania." In Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber (eds.), The
EuropeanRight: A Historical Profile. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wolff, Robert Lee. 1956. The Balkansin Our Time. New York: Norton, 1967.
Zeletin, Stefan. 1925. BurgheziaRomana:origina ri folul ei historic. Bucharest: Cultura
nationala.

Social Change in Communist Romania

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Change in Communist Romania

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Change in Communist Romania

Author(s): Daniel Chirot

The Communist government of Romania lays its main claim to legitimacy

southern and eastern European countries. Thus, Portugal, Spain, Italy,

Romania in the 1930s: A Cornered Society?

The Revolution from Abroad

The Destruction of the Old Society, 1947-53

Another source of potential opposition to Communism was the

tion remained depressed, though better than in the immediate post-war

Political Change and the New Elite, 1953-57

industrialization drive. As for food, production remained below the 1938

Industrialization and Its Social Effects

Table 1. INDEXOFINDUSTRIALPRODUCTION(1953 = 100)

Romania Bulgaria Yugoslavia Spain Poland Greece Hungary

1953 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Table 2. NATIONALINCOMEIN PERCENTAGESOF TOTAL

1938 30.8 4.4 38.1

-The remainder consists mostly of transportation,

Not just industry, but heavy industry was particularly emphasized.

1950 14.3 2.2 74.3 2.5 0.7 5.3 0.8

Source: Anuarul, f:67.

Industrialization and changing labor force composition have been

1930 3,051,253 21.4

Source: Anuarul, f :9. 1930, 1948,

Rural Society and the Collectivization of Agriculture

A corollary of the decisive victory of the orthodox "industrializing" ten-

Source: Anuarul, d:250-53.

Agricultural backwardness is an old Romanian problem, and recent

Wheat Corn Wheat Corn

Romania 2.03 2.37 Romania 76 77

Source: FAQ, a:2, 20; b:44-45, Source: FAQ, b:44-45, 50-51.

dispersal in villages of modern consumer goods than might otherwise be

Table 8. PERCENTOF WORKTIMEUSED FOR VARIOUSACTIVITIES

Male Female Male Female Male Female

On collective 5.9 6.4 5.5 6.2 14.2 11.2

100 100 100 99.9 100 100.1

Source: M. Cernea, 236.

distribute to members. A rational strategy from the point of view of local

They compare themselves to the middle classes in West Germany or

Population and Morality

Romania's industrial and agricultural development, and the associated

great deal in common with the puritanism, even prudery, so common in

Table 9. AVERAGEYEARLYRATES PER 1,000 POPULATION

1938 28.3 18.2 0.59 179.0

*In 1967 there were 48, divorces in Rornania.

ment. Because of him, periodic anti-smoking and anti-drinking directives

The Ethnic Minorities

The problem of the ethnic minorities, so serious in the 1930s, disappeared,

Table 10. PERCENTAGEOF POPULATIONBY ETHNICITY

1930 1956 1966

Romanian 71.9 85.7 87.7

dence of this today, and despite government assimilationist policies, it is

Foreign Affairs and Nationalism

Since 1962 Romania has managed to antagonize the Russians without

Even though there were signs of disagreement between Romania

the nationalism that had remained in the general population, particularlyamong

Politics in a Modern Corporate Society

Nationalism in contemporary Romania has adopted many of the attitudes

also wrote an internationally influential praise of fascism in 1934 called The

vacation homes are also palatial compared to those available to factory

possible exception of Albania) (Gilberg). In large measure, however, this is

Murgescu, Costin et al. 1966. "Influences of the Process of Industrialization on

You might also like