Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962

by Gail Kligman, Katherine Verdery

In 1949, Romania's fledgling communist regime unleashed a radical and brutal campaign to collectivize agriculture in this largely agrarian country, following the Soviet model. Peasants under Siege provides the first comprehensive look at the far-reaching social engineering process that ensued. Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery examine how collectivization assaulted the very foundations of rural life, transforming village communities that were organized around kinship and status hierarchies into segments of large bureaucratic organizations, forged by the language of "class warfare" yet saturated with vindictive personal struggles.


Collectivization not only overturned property relations, the authors argue, but was crucial in creating the Party-state that emerged, its mechanisms of rule, and the "new persons" that were its subjects. The book explores how ill-prepared cadres, themselves unconvinced of collectivization's promises, implemented technologies and pedagogies imported from the Soviet Union through actions that contributed to the excessive use of force, which Party leaders were often unable to control. In addition, the authors show how local responses to the Party's initiatives compelled the regime to modify its plans and negotiate outcomes.


Drawing on archival documents, oral histories, and ethnographic data, Peasants under Siege sheds new light on collectivization in the Soviet era and on the complex tensions underlying and constraining political authority.

Genres: History

520 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2011

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mildly idiotic text from two authors who barely understand the subject.

> Because communist power arrived in Romania from without, not through an internally generated revolutionary process, the Party faced a population minimally predisposed to its ideas.

This can be said of any place, from the Soviet Republics to Hungary to Cuba. A small revolutionary group took over. More, Marxism, and later Leninism, is preoccupied with the proletarians, factory workers. Neither Marx, nor Lenin have any idea of how to deal with the peasants, but Lenin discovers quite quickly that they are counter-revolutionary in their [the peasants'] ambition to cling to land ownership.

> Seeking to reduce the evident confusion in defining what a chiabur was, the Party leadership sent down to officials in the regions a document entitled “Basic Indicators for Identifying Chiabur Households,” instructing them on precisely how to do so.

No. It's about setting up a bureaucracy and having to deal with quite uneducated individuals. So there must be some rules and the rules should be as simple to understand as possible or the activists in the countryside won't apply them.

[Stefania Vede · Rating 3 out of 5]

O sinteză a procesului colectivizării din România, cu un puternic accent pe metode și practici de implementare. Nu există din păcate informații despre rezultatele colectivizării pentru satele studiate.

[grace elston · Rating 4 out of 5]

yeah i read it … cover to cover bro i swear …

[Andrei M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book documenting how the Romanian Communist Party came of age via the colossal task of collectivizing agriculture. While many details are part of collective memory for many Romanians (and not entirely engaging), the authors - mostly non-Romanian academic sociologists who spent in years in pre- and post-communist Romania doing field work - do an incredible job of describing Romanian village life and attitudes of the Romanian peasant - many of which are still recognizable in Romanian culture today. The Party, whose Central Committee wanted to create a more "rational" and "depersonalized" bureaucratic state, had no choice but to delegate responsibility for the monumental task of collectivizing agriculture to low-level activists who had their own interpretations of orders from above and who, in the end, had to embed themselves in village relationships to achieve their ends. The last chapters in particular are incredible, touching upon topics that are still very much relevant today in Romania (and beyond), such as Foucault's panopticon, "getting by" in Romania, selective memory, and the deeply personalized - indeed, corrupt - relationship Romanians have with the state.