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One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: Institutionalizing the Party-State and Collective Property in Two Romanian Villages (Galaţi Region) CĂTĂLIN AUGUSTIN STOICA During the second half of 1957, despite the violent methods employed by the socalled “persuasion” (or collectivization) teams, which mainly consisted of industrial workers and Party activists, collectivization in the Galaţi region met strong peasant resistance. In this region, peasants took control of the mayor’s office in several villages (Suraia, Răstoacă, Boţârlău) and burned their petitions to join the collective farms. The police stepped in and made arrests. On December 1, 1957, locals from the neighboring village of Vadu Roşca blocked the visit of a persuasion team to their village. Two days later, the regional authorities and the President of the People’s Council (the mayor of Vulturul commune) resumed their efforts to enter Vadu Roşca. Villagers opposed their visit and tried to sequester the mayor and the district’s representative. A few hours later, the mayor and the district’s representative managed to strike a deal with the locals: the team was set free on the condition that the authorities would return the next day for negotiations . While locals were being reassured that collectivization would not be carried out by force, the Securitate (Secret Police) troops surrounded the village, cut it off from the rest of the commune, and declared a state of emergency. At about 9 AM on December 4, 1957, after a verbal altercation between villagers and authorities, the Securitate troops fired upon the peasants gathered in the center of the village. The attack left nine dead and about sixty wounded; numerous others were arrested. The then-young Nicolae Ceauşescu was sent to coordinate pacification of the village.1 Ceauşescu first dissolved the local chapter of the Communist Party, which had eleven members.According to an eyewitness,2 Ceauşescu’s words were: “You, as Party members, did nothing but hide under the bed! Eleven individuals with eleven bludgeons could have easily controlled this village of reactionaries! I hereby dissolve the local Party chapter!” Eventually, eighteen locals were tried and sentenced to prison for their involvement in the revolt, and the collectivization of the village came to a halt until 1960. Following the rebellion in Vadu Roşca, petitions to join the collective farms were returned to peasants in some neighboring villages. In the spring of 1958, Ceauşescu personally came to one such village (i.e., Năneşti) and agreed to cancel these petitions, acknowledging that many peasants had been forced to sign Collectivization and the Transformation of Social Relations 424 them. According to an eyewitness, Ceauşescu’s words were: “Today we will take one step back in the process of collectivization. We will do this only to make two steps forwards tomorrow. We will return your petitions, but, later on, you’ll beg us to join the collective farm! We will crush with an iron fist all those who oppose collectivization!”3 In Vadu Roşca, post-rebellion collectivization was resumed in 1960 and was accomplished without major incidents or drawbacks. The above paragraphs synthesize the story of collectivization in Vadu Roşca, where, by contrast with Năneşti, resistance to collectivization and the ensuing reprisals took extreme forms. In this study I start from these two tragic cases and analyze the issue of collectivization in relation to the construction of the PartyState in Romania. Drawing on lessons from sociological neoinstitutionalism, I maintain that the post-1945 changes in Romania were profoundly marked by the decoupling of the new institutional forms and the practices adopted for implementing them.4 The consequences of this decoupling were dramatic: they led to the delegitimation of new property forms (i.e., collective farms), and ultimately undermined the flimsy authority of the new power. In Vadu Roşca, the peasants’ rebellion of December 1957 clearly indicates that the communist regime and the new property forms lacked legitimacy. In Năneşti, the crackdown on the peasant rebellion in Vadu Roşca tempered any protest against collectivization. However, as I will discuss in this chapter, in both villages the communist regime and collective property were perceived as illegitimate throughout the communist era. I will illustrate these issues through interviews with participants in the 1957 rebellion , other ordinary peasants, and former local authorities from both Vadu Roşca and Năneşti.5 This chapter is organized as follows: In the first part, I will...

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