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The Role of Ethnicity in the Collectivization of Tomnatic/Triebswetter (Banat Region) (1949–1956)
- Central European University Press
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The Role of Ethnicity in the Collectivization of Tomnatic/Triebswetter (Banat Region) (1949–1956) SMARANDA VULTUR “One, two, three, four / Throw the chiabur in the hole” Familiar slogan of the collectivization era that the author heard repeated by many of the persons interviewed. Any cross-regional analysis of collectivization in Romania ought to be concerned with the impact of local specificities on the strategies employed by the Party, as well as on the timing and pace of collectivization. Ecological, socioeconomic, and historical particulars left their mark on the way the “socialist transformation of agriculture” was carried out. This was especially true of the historical province of the Banat, which, at the time of collectivization, was a region of rich ethnic diversity . The same conclusions hold for other regions of Romania with similar characteristics (see the chapters by Iordachi and Goina in this volume). This article analyzes the case of the Banat commune of Tomnatic (Triebswetter, in German), currently located in Timiş county. I have chosen Tomnatic because it is a representative case for an ethnic German (Swabian) village community from the Western Banat Plains. The history of Banat’s Germans is interesting because this group was exposed to particularly intense repression by the Romanian government after 1945. In January of that year, Romania’s Germans faced large-scale expropriations and deportations to the USSR, whence about half of them returned in the late 1940s. In June 1951, along with thousands of ethnic Romanians from the Romanian–Yugoslav border areas, many ethnic Germans were also deported from the Banat to the Great Romanian Plains, in Bărăgan. My study looks at how political and ethnic aspects of collectivization are intertwined with variables such as demographic dynamics and the constitution and operation of new local administrative and political structures. It attempts to isolate the longterm effects of collectivization on the community of Tomnatic. To do so, I triangulated findings by using both archival documents authored by Party and state officials and interview data.1 This enabled me to compare the official discourse about collectivization with the direct testimonies of individuals subject to it. Tomnatic is situated in the county of Timiş and is 10 km from the town of Sânnicolau Mare. Until 1968, Tomnatic had the administrative status of a commune and belonged to the Sânnicolau Mare district. After 1968, it was downgraded to Center and Periphery in the Collectivization Campaign 142 the status of village and integrated into the commune of Lovrin. The settlement was established in 1772 at the initiative of Habsburg authorities, to colonize the area with French and German speaking immigrants from Lorraine, Alsace and Luxembourg. If, in the beginning, over 90 percent of the population belonged to these three groups and spoke French and German, at present Germans represent less than 10 percent of the population. Before 1945, Germans represented over 95 percent of the village population. The population of colonists had been almost entirely Germanized by the end of the 19th century, yet the memory of French identity endures today and has been the object of many demographic and linguistic studies.2 The possibility to shift back and forth between German and French ethnic identities became politically relevant during collectivization. Until the end of World War II endogamy was the norm, and the end of the war brought about significant demographic changes (for comparative perspectives on this point, see Iordachi and Goina in this volume). On August 13, 1950, the regime forced the establishment of GAC “December the 30th” in Tomnatic.3 Throughout the entire Banat region, coercion was used to establish new GACs. However, it needs to be emphasized that, in the case of the German speaking peasantry, the transfer of their property and agricultural inventory occurred in very special circumstances that I will discuss below, focusing on three main analytical dimensions: demography, class struggle, and the symbolic division of the village community into “us” versus “them.” 1. DEMOGRAPHIC DYNAMICS AND COLLECTIVIZATION The village archive of Tomnatic contains a wealth of demographic information collected for the purposes of requisition quotas, lists of chiaburi, and collectivization . Archival documents also make reference to the policies through which administrative power was gradually conflated with the Stalinist one-party system. A comparative analysis of census data in the village archives requires us to answer two key questions: Why does the French-speaking population appear and then disappear at certain intervals? How can one explain why the ratio between Romanian-speakers and German-speakers changes significantly in...