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Collectivization and Resistance in the Shepherding Village of Poiana Sibiului (Sibiu Region) MICHAEL STEWART RĂZVAN STAN “Land enslaves man. That’s poverty.” Răzvan Stan, interview with V.I., 83 years old, former sheepowner, May 6, 2004, commune Poiana Sibiului. The village that is the focus of this paper, Poiana Sibiului, has been known the length and breadth of Romania for at least two decades, if not longer. This is because of their sale of cheese in markets across the country, and perhaps in part due to extremely wide scale of the transhumance practiced by its inhabitants, but above all its fame results from the fabled wealth of its inhabitants. In the 1980s, amusing stories circulated about Poienari who wanted to install lifts in their homes, or who had converted their stables into diesel stores at a time when the rest of the country could barely find enough gasoline to drive around their neighborhood. One concerned a shepherd who had asked the permission of the authorities to purchase a helicopter for a better surveillance of his flocks (the pretext was that he had the collective farms flocks in his care). The story goes that when the regional authorities in Sibiu turned down the request, the shepherds submitted it to President Ceauşescu. These stories were being spread at a time when Romanians, especially those in urban areas, were living at the edge of subsistence.Asking for a private helicopter in a country where even buying a new car was a near impossibility (and where the authorities were obsessed with controlling all the means likely to facilitate escape over the border) was a complete absurdity. Whether these tales were genuinely believed or not—and one has to remember that there was no free press or investigative journalism of any sort in Romania at that time, so rumors had a life of their own—they demonstrate the boldness of the shepherds of Poiana. This paper tries to explain the remarkable achievement of these men and women who effectively resisted many of collectivization’s most debilitating effects. Other articles in this volume examine villages, communities and regions where the collectivization process was completed by 1962. Before 1962, in the hill region village of Ieud (see Kligman’s chapter in this volume), even those who had been labeled as chiaburi (or exploiters) had abandoned resistance and submitted appli- cations to join the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CAP)—as had nearly everyone else in the village. The village that is the object of this case study has an entirely different history, at least if the reader accepts this account. Although some of the villagers became involved in various segments of the socialist economy and found their own ways to adapt to the new structures, the terms of their adaptation were fundamentally different than those of other villagers in Romania. The negotiation process identified as the core of the practice of introducing and removing names from the list of chiaburi (see Lăţea’s article in this volume) existed in Poiana as well. However, the process operated in a very different manner there.Although we are not prepared to advance a conclusive explanation as to the uniqueness of this case, comparative data suggests the types of factors favoring the prosperity of this area, in spite of communist domination. What we argue, however, is that in order to understand what went on in this region, we need to dispose of a misconception about the nature of state policy in general. This is a topic to which we will return in the conclusion. 1. THE POIANA SIBIULUI COMMUNITY AND THE CONTEXT OF THE MĂRGINIMEA SIBIULUI: HISTORICAL, ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND The village of Poiana Sibiului is located in the southern part of the Transylvanian Plateau. It lies at the foot of the Cindrel Mountains, at an elevation of 900 meters. Poiana Sibiului was formed some centuries ago as a colony of the lowland village Dobârca, which played a defensive role on the southern border of the Transylvania province. The area of Mărginimea Sibiului (The Marginal Lands of Sibiu), which lies in central Romania, is in effect a strip of land connecting the high mountains of the south with the lowland to the north. The villages that developed on this narrow strip of land are linked by a network of roads, and have open access to both sides: northwards to the lowland depressions and the Transylvanian Plateau, and southwards, over the mountains, to the historical...

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