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Foreword GAIL KLIGMAN KATHERINE VERDERY The present volume is the result of an interdisciplinary collaborative project entitled Transforming Property, Persons, and State: Collectivization in Romania, 1949– 1962, which we initiated in 1998. The project was the fruit of the extensive research each of us had conducted separately over more than three decades; we wanted finally to carry out a project together. In the early 1990s, while Robert Levy was conducting research on the life and political activity of Ana Pauker for his dissertation at UCLA, he identified numerous unpublished documents concerning collectivization. At the same time, we were each in the Romanian villages where we have worked for many years, researching the processes of decollectivization and postsocialist transformation, with the aid of oral histories. The convergence of these research themes suggested that the history of collectivization was ideal for a joint project. This is a very complex subject, one far exceeding our joint capacities. Therefore , we formulated the project as a multi-disciplinary, collaborative endeavor and invited a number of Romanian colleagues to join us. We also invited Robert Levy, Michael Stewart (anthropologist, University College, London), and Linda Miller (legal consultant, New York and Bucharest). The disciplines included in our team were history, anthropology, sociology, ethnography, law, and literary criticism. Our main objectives in selecting our research team were to foster cooperation that was not only international and interdisciplinary, but also intergenerational. Toward this end, we invited a number of doctoral students and young researchers to join our project as well.1 The methods we adopted combined techniques and sources from all the disciplines represented, with particular emphasis on archival documents, official statistics , legislation, and oral history interviews. In using these sources, we profited greatly from the different experiences and skills of our team members. The historians provided instruction on how to use archives—where to find the various collections , how they were created, what problems to anticipate—and the anthropologists , sociologists, and ethnographers underscored the necessity of careful research preparation within a shared conceptual framework. We discussed at length how to carry out the interviews, what kinds of questions all team members should pursue, and the categories of individuals we should interview. Seeking as diverse a group of respondents as possible, we included people of different re- x Transforming Peasants, Property and Power gions, nationalities, religions, gender, age (although most would have been mature adults in the years 1940–1960),2 and social class—poor, middle, or wealthy, according to the categories created during the communist period—as well as Party activists, functionaries, and both peasants who joined collectives and those who refused to do so. For this project, we conceptualized collectivization as a fundamental means for understanding the very formation of the Romanian Party-State, in contrast to its more customary conceptualization as an auxiliary to industrialization and urbanization (see the editors’ introduction). Moreover, we emphasized that collectivization was not simply a top-down process, but one resulting from complex interactions between centrally created policies and their local implementation.We viewed the process as variable across space and time, and therefore selected a broad sample of research sites differing not just in religious and ethnic composition but also in economy, terrain, date of collectivization, and other related variables . Several of the project participants (Robert Levy, Linda Miller, Eugen Negrici , Marius Oprea, and Octavian Roske) focused on national level policies and practices (i.e., property legislation, requisitions, propaganda, and debates about the form collectivization should take).The others conducted case studies, working across a broad span of communities and experiences. The geographical distribution of our research sites was as follows: 1. For Transylvania, Julianna Bodó, two villages (Armaşeni and Corund) from the area inhabited by Szeklers (now Harghita county); Călin Goina, Sântana commune (Arad county); Gail Kligman, Ieud commune (Maramureş county); Sándor Oláh, two villages (Sânpaul and Lueta/Lövéte) from the former district (raion) of Odorhei (Harghita county); Michael Stewart, three villages (Poiana, Jina, and Apoldu de Jos) from Sibiu county; Virgiliu Ţârău, two villages (Rimetea and Măgina) in the former district of Aiud (Cluj county); Katherine Verdery , the village of Aurel Vlaicu (Hunedoara county); and Smaranda Vultur, Tomnatic commune (Timiş county) and Domaşnea commune (Caraş-Severin county). 2. For Moldavia, Dorin Dobrincu, the settlement of Darabani (Botoşani county); Cătălin Stoica, two villages (Vadu Roşca and Năneşti) in Vrancea county; and Dumitru Şandru, the commune of Pechea (Galaţi county). 3. For...

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