In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Creating Communist Authority: Class Warfare and Collectivization in Ieud (Maramureş Region) GAIL KLIGMAN “We are living in times of great transformation. One kind of world is dying and another is being born.” D.G., D.S. letter to their brother, D.V., ACNSAS fond “P,” file no. 248/2, 23. “At this time, persons most dangerous to our regime are harbored in Ieud, a community in Maramureş known to us.” ACNSAS, fond “Penal,” file no. 84, vol. 25, 147; Security Service of the Maramureş region, April 26, 1949. “In the heart of the reactionaries, we are going to create the first collective.” Party activist during a meeting about collectivization in Maramureş, Sighetu Marmaţiei, 1949; personal communication. Collectivization was the first mass action through which Romania’s young communist regime initiated its radical agenda of social, political, and economic transformation . To that end, the Party promoted class warfare to achieve the inversion of spatial, symbolic, and social relations. Ieud, a community then of some 3,500 inhabitants, was the first collectivized in “historic” Maramureş, a region in the far north of Romania. On March 5, 1950, nine party members—the village total at the time—had the “honor” of formally announcing the creation of the State Agricultural Collective, Scînteia (The Spark; henceforth, GAC Scînteia).1 Situated in the Iza Valley, Ieud was better suited for animal husbandry, potato cultivation, fruit tree growing and forestry than large-scale agricultural production. Despite the poor quality of land in this mountainous zone (category V productivity), Ieud—like other villages later collectivized in the same area—had contiguous flat lands for cultivation that were represented officially as adequate grounds for collectivization .2 This “official” motive notwithstanding, Ieud was collectivized primarily for socio-political reasons. Over the years, the Party and the secret police (or “Securitate”) employed diverse methods ranging from benign forms of persuasion to forceful coercion techniques to convince villagers to join the collective farm. Even so, in the end, Ieud was only half collectivized. Center and Periphery in the Collectivization Campaign 166 Ieud’s collectivization can only be understood in the context of its particular history in Maramureş, in consequence of which its subjugation was considered crucial for transforming and instantiating communist rule and practices. In this paper, I first review key features of that history to set the stage for examining collectivization in Ieud. I focus especially on the first phase of collectivization (1949–1952) to illuminate how the transformation of property relations transformed social relations and personhood, and simultaneously established and institutionalized communist authority itself. In the final section, I cursorily reflect on collectivization from the perspective of memory and the rewriting of history. After preliminary analysis of the interview and archival data, I conclude that collectivization in “historic” Maramureş as a whole, and of Ieud in particular, correlated highly with the degree and forms of resistance against communist rule rather than with the economically driven policies of socialist transformation.3 1. “REACTIONARIES” IN “REVOLUTIONARY” TIMES: CLASSES AND CLASS WARFARE Throughout the “extreme years, 1945–1949” and beyond, communist authorities —local, regional, and national—viewed Ieud as a hotbed for “reactionaries” of various kinds who allegedly engaged in “subversive,” “counter-revolutionary,” “terrorist” acts. Ieud’s reputation stemmed first from its prominent role in 1945 in resisting Maramureş’ unification with sub-Carpathian Ukraine that had been proposed under the guise of land reform.4 Then, in 1948, one of the village’s Uniate or Eastern Catholic priests, Dunca Ion Joldea, who had been instrumental in the 1945 resistance, was again at the forefront in resisting the Uniate Church’s unification with the Orthodox Church. His leadership role in this struggle added another negative to Ieud’s troubled profile. As was reported: “Upon the unification of the two churches and especially afterward, in Ieud, there has been strong resistance on the part of the population.”5 Father Joldea was also the Vice President of Iuliu Maniu’s Peasant Party in Maramureş. He was further charged with being the “spiritual leader” of the Pop- şa gang, one of several counter-revolutionary groups active in Maramureş. Ieudeni were claimed to have been the most numerous among this group’s direct participants and/or supporters, although quite a number of fugitives from the community hiding in the surrounding mountains were also associated with the Pop Achim gang, which operated largely in the nearby region of Tîrgu Lapuş.The list of Ieud’s “bandits” was long and diverse, including members of terrorist groups...

Share