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“Never Leave ‘til Tomorrow What You Can Do Today!”* A Case Study of a Model Collective Farm: “New Life” Sântana (Arad Region) CĂLIN GOINA They put their money where their mouths were because the collective started to pay well from the beginning. Hey, when a peasant came home with thirty sacks of wheat, and some barley, and whatever else… So people started [saying] “Man, wait a minute, the collective is actually a good thing, I’m joining. I’m not a servant to the rich anymore, I’m not a servant to the German, I work eight to five. Look how much wheat I got, look how much barley, man!” The poor, they were sort of helpless because they didn’t have any equipment, they didn’t have horses, so they were won over more quickly . Those who were better off, they held out longer. O.M., male, 80 years old, farmer, Comlăuş, July 1995, August 2002. This case study examines the collectivization process in the village of Sântana, located in the Arad Plain of western Romania. Sântana presents an interesting if atypical study because the first collective farm there, designated a “model collective farm,” was a success both in the short and long term, and was praised by Party propagandists and villagers alike, whereas the second farm was not. The GAC “Viaţa Nouă” (New Life) Sântana was created in 1950. By the end of 1952, three years into the collectivization campaign in Romania, more than two thirds of the village’s farmland had been collectivized and over half its families had joined the local collective farm. The “New Life” collective continued to demonstrate its economic viability over time. As further evidence of its beneficial impact on village life, after 1990, the collective’s former members created the “Sântana Romanian –German Agricultural Association,” which took over the collective’s entire inventory and more than 90% of its land. To this day, villagers speak positively about the radical changes that the “socialist transformation of agriculture” produced in Sântana. By contrast, the GAC “Al doilea congres al PMR” (The Second Congress of the Romanian Workers’ Party), the second collective formed in the Comlăuş neighborhood of Sântana in 1956, did not enjoy the success of the GAC “New Life”. * This slogan was painted on a red background over the entry gate of the “New Life” GAC in Sântana. Collectivization and the Transformation of Social Relations 370 Lacking local support from its inception, it lagged well behind in attracting members , as well as in organization and production. Peasant resistance was such that collectivization in Comlăuş was not completed until 1960. This paper examines the conditions that shaped these different outcomes in the GAC Sântana and the GAC Comlăuş, and sheds light on the complexity of the collectivization process. Moreover, it underscores a key feature of the socialist transformation of agriculture, namely its modernizing effects, which, in today’s excavation of the period’s excesses, are too often forgotten or glossed over. In addition to modernizing the practices of agricultural production (e.g., farming large contiguous plots of land and introducing mechanization),1 where successful, collectivization contributed to an increase in villagers’ living standards in terms of relative economic income, educational opportunities, leisure, and welfare benefits. It also brought about a reconfiguration of village social hierarchies, placing a new emphasis on education and the accumulation of consumer goods rather than on hard work, frugality, and the accumulation of land. In what follows, I examine the manner in which collectivization unfolded in Sântana. This process represented the last stage of the state’s sweeping and unprecedented intervention into village life, the traditional rhythms of which had been dramatically altered through massive re-allocations of property, population transfers, and the dramatic transformation of villagers’ economic and social status . These changes were enabled, in part, by the selective application of laws; “targeted ” taxation; and the violation of property and personal rights, including forced entry into households, abusive arrests and physical violence. I argue that the local vulnerabilities generated by the regime’s economic pressures compelled the people of Sântana to enter the collective “New Life” at a high rate. The collective farm, in turn, was able to provide its members with a decent annual income as well as services, credit opportunities and goods that were inaccessible to nonmembers . At the same time, the mechanized farming of large areas greatly reduced the...

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