Social Change In Communist Romania

Social Change in Communist Romania Author(s): Daniel Chirot Source: Social Forces, Vol. 57, No. 2, Special Issue (Dec., 1978), pp. 457-499 Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2577678 Accessed: 21/11/2009 10:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uncpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Social Change in Communist Romania DANIEL

CHIROT,

University of Washington

ABSTRACT It has been claimed by scholars, both within Romania and elsewhere, that Communist rule "saved" Romaniafrom the economiccrisis that existed in the 1930s. A close analysis reveals, however, that the economicachievements of the regime are comparableto those which have occurredelsewherein Europeunder differentpolitical systems. It is argued that Romania's relative position among the industrial nations has remainedabout the same as it was in the pre-socialistperiod. Moreover, there is much evidence that the socialist period representsless of a breakwith the ancien regime than the Romanian leaders claim. It is suggested in this article that Romania is closer to the structure of the "corporatist"society outlined by social theorists in the 1930s than is generally recognized. The Communist government of Romania lays its main claim to legitimacy on the rapid economic growth and social modernization which have occurred in the last 30 years, and also on the supposed fact that before 1944 Romania was imprisoned in a set of hopeless problems from which there seemed to be no escape. Many distinguished foreign observers, both before and since the advent of Communism, agree. Many Romanian intellectuals, particularly social scientists in the 1930s, also felt that there existed a major crisis which could only be resolved with difficulty, if at all. Among those intellectuals who have survived the war, the purges and jailings of the first decade of Communist rule, and simple old age, many agree today that the government's claim to have saved Romania has considerable merit, even if the rescue operation might have been carried out more rationally and humanely. In retrospect, and when it is compared to the situation in a number of Third World countries in the 1970s, Romania's situation in the 1930s was not, however, all that catastrophic. When Romania in the 1930s was compared to Western Europe, of course, and even to substantial portions of Eastern Europe, its situation was, indeed, poor. This remains as true today as it was in the 1930s, except that all of Europe has experienced rapid economic growth. Within any one country, Romania included, comparisons with the levels of the 1930s show impressive progress. Not only has this progress transformed Western Europe, but all of the poor semicircle of 457

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southern and eastern European countries. Thus, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, and even Czechoslovakia (the western part of which was already quite prosperous before 1938) have shared in this economic and social transformation associated with rising literacy, urbanization, and higher levels of personal consumption. Spain has done this under a Fascist regime, Italy under an inefficient and unstable capitalist-democratic regime, Greece under a variety of light-wing and moderate regimes, Yugoslavia under a liberal Communist regime, and the others under more orthodox Communism. Only Portugal has been held back, largely because of its expensive efforts to maintain an African Empire and of the political turmoil generated by its colonial wars. It is, therefore, difficult to isolate the particular merit of any particular regime or style of development. No one will ever prove that Romania was saved by Communism, any more than anyone will ever prove that Spain was saved by Francisco Franco. Nor will anyone ever disprove these contentions, either, and in the end it remains a matter of personal opinion. But changes have occurred, and in order to study them I shall divide this paper into two parts: the first will deal with the history of Romania from the 1930s until 1957, a time during which dramatic political events set the course of rapid industrialization which Romania has followed since. The second part will deal with industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, the population problem, ethnic minorities, nationalism and international political problems, and politics in Romania since 1957. Romania in the 1930s: A Cornered Society? How serious were Romania's troubles in the 1930s? The 1930 census showed that 78 percent of the labor force was in agriculture, and only 10 percent was in industry (Madgearu). During the next decade, it seemed to Romania's leading economist, Virgil Madgearu, that far more surplus rural laborers appeared than could be absorbed by urban industry. Rural areas were already overcrowded, and agriculture was apparently stagnant (Madgearu). In some respects, yields were inferior to what they had been before World War I (Nulcanescu; Roberts). Even by East European standards Romania's peasant agriculture was poor and backward (Warriner). Peasant plots were small and fragmented, and were becoming even smaller because of increase in population (Cornateanu; Cresin 1, b). Beneath these gloomy facts, however, the reality was somewhat less depressing. The birth rate was falling quickly, and by the late 1930s the yearly population growth rate was down to 1 percent (Roberts). The industrial labor force, on the other hand, grew at 3 percent per year during the 1930s, and after 1932 industrial output grew at an annual rate in excess of

Romania / 459 10 percent (Madgearu). In time the balance would have tipped, and the problem of rural overpopulation would have been solved. Another indicator that shows that the society was not stagnant is the literacy rate, which increased quickly after World War I. Thus, by 1930, 67 percent of those 13-19 years of age, and 72 percent of those aged 7-12 years, were literate. Only among older people was the majority still illiterate (Manuila). To be sure, the country was ethnically divided, and large parts of the new territories added after World War I had non-Romanian majorities or large minorities. Anti-Semitism was widespread, spurred by the fact that 43 percent of the urban population was Jewish (Anuarul, a), and that Jews were disproportionately represented in certain key professions (Gheorghiu). Partly in response to this, the fascist Iron Guard posed a growing threat to political stability. In Romania's last more or less free election (in 1937) the Iron Guard and one other fascist party received 25 percent of the vote, while the government party would probably have received no more than 20 percent had there been no fraud (Enescu). The government was ineffective and corrupt, and by the end of the decade it seemed to be losing its grip on the country (Weber). However, Romania's political problems were similar to those found throughout Europe at that time. As such, they hardly reflected a necessarily hopeless domestic economic situation. The Revolution from Abroad Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the Romanian Communist party (C.P.) was small and almost entirely bereft of influence or followers. It scored minor successes among railway workers, but on the whole it failed to take advantage of the various crises of the period. During the 1930s more workers and peasants were attracted by the fascist Iron Guard than by the C.P. (Ionescu). One of the main problems was that from the very start the Party was anti-nationalist. Many of its leaders were "foreigners" (Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Jews) and the ethnic minorities found the C.Ps program of "self-determination up to complete secession from the existing state" more appealing than the Romanians. The Party's anti-Romanian stance was partly a function of its leadership (few of the founders were Romanians), partly the result of the Soviet Union's claim to Bessarabia (which was Russian territory between 1812 and 1918, and Romanian from 1918 to 1940), and partly because Comintem strategy for building Communist strength throughout the Danubian-Balkan region called for support of discontented minorities, particularly Hungarians in the various sections of Hungary parcelled out to other states after 1918 (Ionescu; Jackson; Roberts). During World War II Romania sided with the Germans, invaded the

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U.S.S.R., and reoccupied Bessarabia and parts of the Ukraine (in compensation for a part of Transylvania given to Hungary and a small piece of the Dobrogea given to Bulgaria). But the Romanian C.P was unable to mount any partisan, anti-regime activities. Only in mid-1944, as the Soviet army approached Romania, did some sort of anti-German movement take shape. In the end, in August 1944, the military, pro-German regime was overthrown by King Michael (son of Carol II) who saw this as the only way to save the country from Soviet devastation (Ionescu; Roberts). Official Communist historiography now claims that this act was part of an insurrectionary movement organized and led by the C.P, and that it climaxed a long period of resistance (Constantinescu et al.). In fact it was an attempt by the Romanian establishment to change sides before it was too late. Some Communists were even brought into the government, but it was a vain effort. The Soviet army plundered Romania anyway, and because of the country's role as a German ally, the Western powers were hardly in a position to protest (Wolf). In 1945 Moscow imposed a Communist government on Romania. The Party, under the guidance of cadres brought in from the U.S.S.R., had swelled its ranks by enrolling every variety of opportunist, including former Iron Guardists and police officials from the old regime. After two years of fairly cautious maneuvering to strengthen the Communists, waiting to see if the United States would intervene in Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R. finally imposed full Stalinist rule in 1947 (Ionescu; Roberts). There began the years of terror and repression which were thoroughly to transform Romanian society, and which destroyed all forces capable of resisting Party rule. In 1944 the Romanian C.P had about 1,000 members, but rapid and indiscriminate recruiting raised membership to about 250,000 by late 1945, and to over 600,000 by 1948,(Ionescu; Jowitt, a). It is important to remember that the Romanian C.P. in the 1940s was weak, filled with opportunists, directed almost entirely from Moscow and advised by resident Soviet officials, unpopular, inexperienced, and (once the anti-Titoist purges began in 1948) frightened of itself. This was more or less the case elsewhere in Eastern Europe (except in Yugoslavia, and to some extent Albania), but it was far more the case in Romania than in any other newly Communist country. Nowhere else had the Party been so weak and alien in the 1930s, and in no other country in Eastern Europe did it have so little genuine popular support after 1945 (Ionescu). Very rarely has such a pathetic movement become an overwhelmingly dominant elite so quickly. Without the period of Stalinist terror enforced by Soviet occupation, and the continued fear that such a thing might happen again, there is no question that Communist rule in Romania would have collapsed long ago. Without understanding this it is impossible to comprehend social change since 1947.

Romania / 461 The Destruction of the Old Society, 1947-53 The first requirement was to destroy the social and economic bases of opposition, which meant elimination of the old elites and of the classes that might resist Communist rule. The professional army was no longer a serious threat. Decimated in Russia, its leading generals in disgrace, disarmed, hemmed in by Soviet troops, filled with untrustworthy recruits, the old army no longer posed a threat. The king, who was a potential rallying point against Communism, was isolated, and then exiled in Decemeber 1947. Romania became a republic (Lendvai). The first target of Communist rule, even before 1947, was the remnant of the old noble, landowning elite. The land reform of 1945 eliminated large properties and removed the last economic base of this declining class (Roberts). A process partially carried out after World War I was now finally completed. An elite of several thousand families had ruled the Old Kingdom and had owned about half of its land (Chirot and Ragin). Although its share had fallen to no more than 15 percent of the arable land after 1918 (Roberts), this class remained a social elite with disproportionate power. In the Parliament of the 1930s, according to Mattei Dogan, some 20 to 25 percent of the deputies and senators were from large landowning families. The land reform had little effect on the agrarian overcrowding since the amounts of land confiscated were too small to raise the size of peasant holdings by very much. In 1948, over half of all peasant holdings were still under 3 hectares, and while these minute properties encompassed more land than in 1930, they were still too small (Murgescu). But the political purpose of the reform was met-the aristocracy was gone once and for all. Romania in the 1930s was no longer exclusively a "landowners' state," for there were also industrialists and a bourgeoisie. The few large industrialists and bankers (expropriated in 1948) had been, however, dependent on state contracts and favors from the start. In 1945, German-owned investments (the most important of which were in petroleum production) had been seized by the Soviets, so that by 1948, joint Soviet-Romanian companies owned much of the mining and heavy industrial output of the country. As other large industrial properties (including foreign-owned ones) were expropriated, many of them went to these "Sovrom" enterprises, in which the Romanians provided the capital and labor while the Soviets took a share of production. By 1950, 90 percent of industrial output was in state firms (Ionescu; Montias). The middle ranks of the bourgeoisie were ruined by a currency reform in 1947, which essentially confiscated all the money (Ionescu; Roberts). The state gradually expropriated commerce, and the base for an independent middle class vanished. In 1948, 90 percent of all shops were

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still private. By 1953, only 14 percent were still privately owned. (Private shops did not totally disappear until 1959.) (Anuarul, b). The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie had not constituted an elite in the same way that the old nobility once had. A few Romanian ideologues, like Stefan Zeletin had tried hard to pretend that Romania after World War I was run by a capitalist, financial-industrial elite, and Communists saw a state dominated by heavy industry, finance, and big landowners (Patrascanu). In actual fact, the society was still too rural and the economy too agricultural to support a strong bourgeoisie, while in the countryside the power of the landowners had been substantially broken long before 1945. It was, therefore, fairly easy for the Communists to destroy these class enemies. If there was a recognizable elite gradually seizing power from the declining aristocracy in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a class of intellectuals, professionals, and top civil servants. Men like Iorga (historian), Cuza (political scientist), Gusti (sociologist), Madgearu (economist), and Goga (poet) occupied high political positions and possessed great influence. Of all the members of parliament (both chambers) from 1922 to 1937, 20.6 percent were school or university teachers or writers and journalists, 7.1 percent were doctors, pharmacists, or engineers, and 35.5 percent were lawyers. Businessmen made up under 3 percent of the membership, and peasants only 6 percent. (Compared to the composition of the pre-World War I parliament, lawyers, teachers and professors, and professionals had gained at the expense of landowners.) (Dogan). There is really no way of knowing how many people lost their jobs and had their goods confiscated, how many arrests there were, how many deaths, or how many survived, more or less intact, but frightened into submission. Western visitors in the late 1960s and 1970s have been able to see that the old Romanian intelligentsia was not completely eliminated. The period of severe repression lasted no more than a decade, and while almost all the members of this class suffered, many were jailed, and thousands died or were murdered, many others lived through the experience. When the "rehabilitations" of the late 1950s began, these survivors gradually filtered back into bureaucratic and professional positions, and by the late 1960s, they formed a distinct strata of aging, well-educated, bitter, civil servants and teachers. Many of them, in fact, came to feel a kind of twisted loyalty to the Party that saved them from oblivion after having consigned them to it in the first place. The "technical" intelligentsia, the engineers, doctors, agronomists, scientists, etc., suffered less than the others because they were necessary for the industrialization and modernization efforts. Even there, however, coercion was strongly applied between 1948 and 1950 in order to insure compliance. Those who stepped out of line were quickly punished (Ionescu; Jowitt, a).

Romania / 463 Another source of potential opposition to Communism was the church. There were actually many Romanian churches, but for various reasons they were all weak. Unlike the Catholic Church in Poland, and to a lesser extent in Hungary, the Romanian churches presented no effective resistance. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Romanians were Orthodox, except in Transylvania where there were about 1,600,000 Uniates (basically Romanians following an Orthodox ritual but with administrative links to Rome). The Uniate Church was abolished in 1948 and its followers forced into Orthodoxy (Wolff). This was not difficult since the differences between the two churches had always been a matter of politics rather than religious substance. Orthodoxy had been the faith of most ethnic Romanians since at least the twelfth century, probably much longer (Chirot, b), and it should have represented a strong moral force; in fact, it did not. It was easily manipulated by every government before 1945, and outside Transylvania (where it served to protect the Romanian peasants against the Hungarian aristocracy) it was never a focus of political action. Sons of priests were among the earliest literate "intellectuals" in the nineteenth century, and many village priests served as local leaders, but the church as a whole was neither a major intellectual nor a political force. It was, consequently, rather easily subverted by the Communist regime and quickly brought under full control (Wolff). The ethnic minorities (Hungarians, Germans, and Jews) were not Orthodox, and there was a fairly strong Hungarian and German Catholic Church which was vigorously persecuted because of its Western connections. There were also German and Hungarian Protestant churches, but these were isolated from Western contact and quickly brought under control (Wolff). By 1949-50, then, much of the potential opposition to Communism had been destroyed or brought under strict control. The way was open for the replacement of old elites by new ones. But there remained one dangerous class that was far from being fully controlled. It was not an organized class, but it still included 70 percent of the population. Its productive efforts were also vital to the survival of the national economy. In bringing the peasantry under control, the Party had to be careful. In the election of 1937 the winning party probably would have been the National Peasant Party had there been no electoral fraud. As it was, it received 21 percent of the vote (Enescu). After World War II, with fascists and the right wing in disgrace, there is no question that it was the most popular party, and that it would have won free elections. It was even winning adherents within the urban working class for the first time (Ionescu). In 1946-47 the Peasant Party was intensively persecuted. Its leaders were arrested, and thousands of its adherents "disappeared." In 1947 it was dissolved by the government, but even though its leaders had been elimi-

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nated the peasantry as a whole had not yet been touched deeply (Ionescu). One reason the C.P had to deal with the peasants carefully was that agricultural production was very low, and the country hovered at the edge of severe famine. The war had caused destruction of livestock. In 1946 there were 46 percent fewer horses (critical for plowing), 8 percent fewer cattle, 33 percent fewer sheep, and 50 percent fewer pigs than in 1938, so that meat production was low (Statistica agricola). This was combined with a severe drought in 1945 and 1946, the worst in the twentieth century. Corn was particularly devastated (Ionescu-Sisesti). Even after 1946, bad conditions persisted. The 1945-48 average annual wheat yields were 7.1 quintals per hectare, about 30 percent below the average 1934-38 yields (which were, it will be recalled, 20 percent below 1909-1913 yields). Corn yields for 1945-48 averaged 6.4 quintals per hectare, a figure 38 percent below 1934-38 averages, and less than half the yields obtained before World War I. (Anuarul, b; FAO, a; Murgescu). Between Russian plundering, massive social dislocation brought on by boundary shifts and population transfers, severe political turmoil, drought, and the virtual disappearance of the cash economy because of inflation followed by the currency reform, and also because of the government's hostility to all private enterprise and the confiscation of assets, it is not surprising that the economy was in a state of chaos. This hardly enhanced the popularity of the Communist regime, and it made precipitate action with the peasantry risky. In 1949, however, with the political situation somewhat stabilized and other opponents under control, the Party began its attempt to subjugate the peasantry. All holdings of over 50 hectares (about 6,000 of them with about 6.5 percent of the land) were confiscated and given to state farms or collectives (Ionescu; Murgescu). The Chiabur (the Romanian for Kulak, or rich peasant who hired labor or had over about 15 hectares) was declared a class enemy (Moldovan et al.). This meant that the most prosperous and successful peasants were singled out for deliberate persecution in the form of unreasonably high delivery quotas and taxes imposed by the state (Montias). State farms had been started even before 1949 with lands taken from former large estates, institutional and government holdings, and royal lands. These farms were to be large, advanced units, and their workers were to be treated like industrial workers. Collectives, on the other hand, were collections of peasants working their own, expropriated lands, and living in their old villages (Montias; Murgescu). In principle, the small (0 to 5 hectares) and middle (5 to 20, but not those with hired labor) peasants were to be allies with the state in this process of socialist transformation of agriculture and war against the kulaks (Murgescu). Actually, the combination of steep quotas and forced produce deliveries for all peasants (the kulaks had the greatest load to bear, but the

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load was not light for the others), the threat of forcible expropriation of private land, and the rather loose demarcation between kulaks and others raised active protest and resistance in whole villages. Until 1949, the only systematic armed resistance against Communism had been conducted by opponents who had escaped from the cities and gone into the mountains. Now, matters became more serious as uncoordinated but widespread peasant resistance to the regime began (Ionescu; Prost). By the later admission of Gheorghiu-Dej, about 80,000 peasants were arrested (cited in Ionescu). In some ways, the C.P.'s policy had considerable justification. In 1948, 53 percent of all holdings had included areas of less than 3 hectares (19.6 percent of the land) (Murgescu), and some form of consolidation and cooperation was necessary in order to improve productivity and the peasants' standard of living. But it was evident to the peasants that the teams sent out to force them into production brigades were there to impose state control, not to help; and persecution of the more successful villagers by the state did not reassure their fellow peasants, especially when all they were promised was more hard work and forced deliveries without title to new land. By the early 1950s some 180,000 people (out of a total population of 16,000,000) were in jails and concentration camps, about 40,000 of them at work on a Danube-Black Sea canal that was never completed (Ionescu). In all fairness to the Romanian C.P., the proportionate number of arrests, deportations, and murders was far lower than that which occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. But these were terrible years in Romania, and it is impossible to give the full flavor of what happened. Only personal memoirs and novels written by those who were present can convey the enormity of a state at war with almost all of its population. (For a novelistic view of social change in Romania during the 1940s, see Dumitriu, b.) Kenneth Jowitt, the best American analyst of contemporary Romanian politics, has called the early period of Communist rule the "breakthrough" stage. This stage is somewhat analogous to the "take-off" in economic development. He writes: Breakingthrough means the decisive alterationor destructionof values, structures, and behaviors which are perceived by a revolutionary elite as comprising or contributingto the actual or potential existence of alternative centers of political power (a, 7). Such a process is the prerequisite of revolutionary transformation which alone can enable a society to make rapid economic progress. This, at least, is the argument, and Jowitt sees the early period of Communist rule as one in which the new Party elite sought to eliminate, quite rationally, the old elites. He wonders, however, whether or not the process may not have been pursued beyond purely rational considerations, and cites Romania's present chief, Nicolae Ceausescu, speaking in 1967 about the old days:

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In their speeches some comrades justly referred to the fact that in the course of years, especially at the beginning, there was sometimes a lack of political discernment in the activity of the security organs, no distinction being made between hostile activity, directed against the revolutionarygains of the people, and some manifestations linked to the natural process of transforming the people's consciousness and mode of thinking. Therefore,some abuses and transgressions(sic!) of socialist legality were committed, measures were taken against some citizens that were not justified by their acts and manifestations(a, 98). Behind the guarded words of Nicolae Ceausescu, however, there lies a permanent fear among all Romnanians, including the present elite, that a return to such times remains possible, and that it must be avoided at all costs. It seems to me that even Jowitt overinterprets the period of terror. Destruction of the old elite and the elimination of all possible sources of opposition were the aim of the Party, but why? The orders were coming from Stalin, not from the local Party elite, and the only important Communist who spoke up for a more humane line (Lucretiu Patrascanu) was purged in 1948 as a Titoist, and executed in 1954 (Ionescu; Jowitt, a). Stalin's immediate goal was control of Eastern Europe in order to maintain a "cordon sanitaire" in reverse, a protective blanket shielding the U. S. S. R. from Western intervention. The fact that the same policies were uniformly applied throughout Eastern Europe in 1947-48, and intensified in 1949-51, shows that they were coordinated from Moscow and did not respond to local needs. The Soviets also wanted to use the industrial potential of Eastern Europe to help with their own rearmament. For all its relative backwardness Romania had some major industries, and these were built up and expanded as quickly as possible (Turnock). Was this all part of a Soviet master plan, or a series of improvisations? Even without an answer it is evident that the orders did not come from Bucharest. Who was in control in Romania during these years? Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the formal chief, and ruled with Anna Pauker, Vasile Luca, and Teohari Georgescu. The last three were Soviet agents, and it was Pauker and Luca, Jewish and Hungarian, respectively, who were the most powerful. Gheorghiu-Dej, an authentic Romanian worker, was at first a "facade" secretary-general (Ionescu). The Minister of the Armed Forces, Emil Bodnaras, a half-German, half-Ukrainian, was an NKVD (Soviet secret police) agent (Ionescu). In other words, the Romanian C.P. was firmly controlled by Moscow. By the early 1950s the old elites had been eliminated, and the peasantry was increasingly subjected to state control. Industrialization and massive infusion of new cadres were advancing quickly. Industrial production returned to pre-war levels in 1949 and passed above World War II peaks in 1950. Very large investments were made in heavy industry (but little in agriculture or consumer goods) in 1950, and a first Five-Year Plan was launched for 1951-55 (Montias). Nevertheless, the agricultural situa-

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tion remained depressed, though better than in the immediate post-war years, and the general level of discontent rose. Resistance to the government continued into 1951, and in 1952 there were industrial strikes (Ionescu). Something cracked, first in agricultural policy, and then in general. Perhaps the lingering partisan warfare contributed to the change. Perhaps rising urban discontent and the inability of the Party to feed and house its workers properly had something to do with it. The C.P. was still very weak, and repeated purges, combined with indiscriminate Party recruitment had left the new elite incoherent and demoralized (Jowitt, a). In 1951-52 the collectivization effort was virtually halted, and Pauker, Luca, and Georgescu were purged, presumably with Stalin's approval. They were blamed for all the problems, and for the first time the "Romanian" element of the party, led by Gheorghiu-Dej, came to the fore over the "Muscovites" and foreigners. Stalin's innate anti-Semitism may have been responsible for Pauker's fall (Jowitt, a; Lendvai). Stalin was planning massive new purges himself, and it is unclear what happened (Jowitt, a). The Soviet goal was to maintain compliance, not to provoke anarchy, and there is little doubt that the extreme policies of the Muscovites were leading to a breakdown, not a breakthrough. In any event, it was the 1952-53 period that saw the start of the construction of a real and indigenous Communist society in Romania. The importance of the 1947-53 period cannot be underestimated. Whether one follows Jowitt's "breakthrough" interpretation or chooses to view the period as one of randomly applied terror in order to insure total submission, there is no question that for the Party elite as well as for Romania this was a formative experience. In the following decade, as Romania slowly emerged from the darkness and despair of the Stalinist years, those years were remembered. The Party cadres (including Nicolae Ceasescu) who rule Romania in the 1970s, were in their late 20s and early 30s during this time. What they thought of their situation, trapped between a hostile population and an irresolutely harsh ally, can only remain a matter of speculation. But in later years, their continuing distrust of their own masses and the great bitterness they expressed toward the Soviet Union combined to create a unique and distinctly Romanian pattern of Communist development. Political Change and the New Elite, 1953-57 The very rapid rate of industrial growth from 1948 to 1953 (an average yearly growth of 18.2 percent) created severe problems. Urban growth (from 3,747,000 to 4,424,000) raised demand for housing and food, but virtually no new housing was built as all investment funds went into the

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industrialization drive. As for food, production remained below the 1938 levels, when urban demand was lower. To keep rising demand from increasing prices, the state forced peasants to make compulsory deliveries (about one-quarter of production, in the case of cereals). In 1952, a new monetary reform again confiscated any personal reserves that might have built up, and consumer goods were rationed. The average standard of living, whether measured by supplies of meat, housing, or general merchandise, remained below pre-war levels (Montias). The political struggle and purges of 1952-53 eased the situation. The proportion of national income invested in industry was lowered, and increased amounts went to agriculture, consumer goods, and housing. The process of forced collectivization was stopped, and forced delivery quotas reduced. (They were virtually eliminated in 1956.) Living standards rose markedly in 1953-55, though average food consumption still did not return to pre-war levels, and the merchandise trade remained below the level of the late 1930s until the 1960s (Montias). To make the peasants more compliant without endangering production through protest, a new type of semi-collective was devised called "intovarasiriagricole" (agricultural associations). Private ownership of land, animals, and equipment was retained, but the land was worked in common. Owners took a share of production proportionate to their investment. Machine and tractor stations run by the state were to aid these associations in working the land with more advanced methods (Turnock). The associations were certainly more bearable than the collectives, and recruitment seems to have been voluntary. Associations were to serve as "a school for working peasants on the road toward collectives" (Frasie and Lazar, 259). However, because force was no longer used, the rate of collectivization and the growth of associations slowed. The relaxation of 1953-55 was not meant to be permanent, however, and in 1955 there was rendwed pressure for rapid industrialization throughout Eastern Europe. State investments were again scheduled to rise, and an ambitious Romanian Second Five-Year Plan (1956-60) was established. The confusion that set in after Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech of February 1956, and the lesson of the Polish and Hungarian uprisings that followed later in 1956, set back these plans. In 1957 state investments were again curtailed, and urban living standards were raised (Montias). The political turmoil in Eastern Europe had its counterpart in Romania during this period. Romania remained much more quiet than Hungary and Poland (though the Hungarians in Transylvania were agitated by events across the border), but the political maneuvering in Romania was very important for its future. But by the late 1950s, internal Party politics were no longer as rarified an affair as in the early 1950s, when there were only a few key individuals plotting against each other and courting Moscow's favor. A whole new elite had arisen, with its own interests, its own internal

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divisions, and a greater sense of security than it had possessed a few years before. The menace of crude Soviet intervention was also reduced, both by the power struggle going on in Moscow between Khrushchev and his various opponents, and also by the threats to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe in 1956. Romania firmly sided with the Soviet Union's intervention in Hungary, and the Soviet leadership was able to appreciate the benefits of a docile, orthodox leadership capable of keeping itself and its people under solid control. Khrushchev eased his de-Stalinization campaign in Eastern Europe, and after the fighting in Hungary, Romania received more Soviet economic aid; also, the Romanian C.P. obtained more freedom of action for itself (Ionescu). The internal struggle that broke out at this time was resolved internally, and brought into play the conflicting elements in the elite that had developed and grown since the late 1940s. In 1955 the Romanian C.P. had about 600,000 members, roughly 5 percent of the population over 20 years of age (Anuarul, a; Gilberg). Fortythree percent were classified as working class, but it is not clear what were the social origins of the membership or even what proportion of those listed as "workers" were actual manual workers (Ionescu). Since 34 percent of the C.P. in 1960 were peasants, it can be supposed that in the late 1950s, that proportion was not too different (Gilberg). In 1956, 20 percent of the general population were workers, 3 percent tradesmen, 9 percent "intellectuals" (professionals, teachers, and many white collar employees), and the remainder, or 68 percent, peasants (Murgescu et al.). So the Party was overrepresented by workers and members of the intelligentsia, and underrepresented by peasants. About 55 percent were under 40 years of age (Ionescu). The apparatchiks,the "New Class" of functionaries who had risen to power under Communism, were not well-educated specialists, but tough career bureaucrats who had survived the difficulties of the early period, pushed through massive economic and social change, and recently risen to a position of relative ease and security in a society still dominated by fear and hardship. In the late 1950s they were being challenged by another kind of new class, the technocrats and relatively better educated specialists trained to take over key positions in the new industrial economy. The "old" new class, therefore, was being challenged by a more rational, more capable, less dogmatic "newer" new class (Dumitriu, a; Jowitt, a). A third leg of the Romanian elite in the late 1950s was the secret police, a privileged, military, feared group which held the state together at a time when popular opinion was still overwhelmingly anti-Communist, and when the C.P. itself still suffered from institutional instability (Jowitt, a). This constellation of competing groups is not, of course, unique to Romania. All Communist regimes have the same groups and many have a

470 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978 fourth, the army. In Romania, however, the army does not seem to have played the kind of political role it has enjoyed in the U.S.S.R., China, or even Bulgaria. Gheorghiu-Dej ruled the C.P., and through it, Romania, as a classic party boss, a patrimonial chief dispensing material favors to this or that subgroup, and always seeking to prevent the formation of permanent personal fiefs underneath him. This was often antithetical to rational economic planning and coordination, but it suited the professional bureaucrats in the system, as well as the secret police, which was the personal enforcing arm of the ruler (Jowitt, a; Roth). In 1956-57, Dej was challenged by Miron Constantinescu (a sociologist, from a middle class background, who had joined the C.P. in the 1930s), whom Jowitt has compared to Malenkov in the U.S.S.R. In many ways, the challenge presented by Constantinescu was similar to that represented by Malenkov against Khrushchev. He seems to have favored more rational planning and a more liberal treatment of the intellectuals. He favored the technocrats over the pure functionaries, and also the development of a consumer-oriented, rather than a heavy-industrial, economy (Jowitt, a). He represented the rising "new new class," and he seems to have been slated for top leadership after the completion of the anti-Stalinist drive. When that drive stalled and the struggle became purely internal, he lost to Dej, the regular Party bureaucracy, and the police. The intellectuals and technocrats were not sufficiently strong to carry the day. Purged, he sank into obscurity but resurfaced as a leading intellectual in the 1960s. In his later days (he died in 1974), many younger Romanian intellectuals considered him an old Stalinist and dogmatist. But this was a false perception. Those who knew him in the 1950s believe he was the only leader with the vision, intellectual scope, and appreciation of technical skills to build a more humane, rational Communist society. His defeat in 1957 was a major tragedy for Romania and, ultimately, for the class of educated technocrats he represented. In the late 1960s, it seemed that Romania would take a relatively more open path, like the one for which Constantinescu had stood in the late 1950s. But the crude orthodoxy that had won in 1957 was to remain entrenched in power, and in the 1970s, faced with renewed crisis, Romania would turn back to a more rigid, Party-oriented line. Many of Romania's current problems stem from this decision, and that, in turn, was at least partly a function of the struggle in 1957. If Constantinescu had won then, Romania would have become more like Poland or Hungary. As it was, the apparatchiksof the 1950s had time to consolidate their position and to remain in control at the time of the next struggle. In many respects, then, after 1957, the Romanian path toward continued Communist development was fixed, and everything which has followed has been a logical outcome of the political settlement of that time.

Romania / 471

Industrialization and Its Social Effects Since 1947-48 on, the Romanian C.P.'s main economic goal has been industrialization. Until 1952-53 this was part of the Soviet design for Eastern Europe. Up to 1957 progress was uneven, however, and there remained questions about the speed and direction of industrialization. After 1957, these questions were resolved, and no more doubts appeared in the ruling councils about the validity of the basic goal, or even its feasibility. The entire society was harnessed to industrialization, and in the 1960s, when the U.S.S.R. itself questioned the rationality of Romania's economic goals, this pushed the Romanian leadership into a break with Moscow. Since 1958, only foreign intervention, or an unexpected and unlikely internal revolt, could have changed the direction of Romanian economic development. (Montias calls the 1958-65 period that of the "TakeOff.") All European Communist economies (as well as those outside Europe, in differing degrees) have stressed industrial growth. But Romania since 1958 has done so to an extraordinary degree. Romanian industrial production in recent decades has grown proportionately more rapidly than that of any other European country. (Leaving aside Albania, perhaps, which began with a non-existent industrial base, and which does not, in any case, provide adequate statistics.) Obviously, the more developed European economies, even those in Communist Europe (Czechoslovakia, East Germany) could not be expected to experience the same kind of rapid industrial growth as economies starting at lower base lines, but even by comparing Romania to other economies at roughly similar levels of industrialization before World War II, its astonishing record is clear (Table 1). Accompanying this growth, there has occurred in Romania's national income (a concept similar to national product except that it excludes many services and includes turnover taxes-see Montias, 267-8) a dramatic shift toward industry (Table 2). Thus, by 1969 the industrial share of Romania's national income was higher than in Bulgaria or Hungary and closing in on that of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland (Turnock).

Table 1.

INDEXOFINDUSTRIALPRODUCTION(1953 = 100) Romania

Bulgaria

Yugoslavia

Spain

Poland

Greece

Hungary 100

1953

100

100

100

100

100

100

1958

159

138

188

149

163

162

133

1963

300

259

321

233

248

229

211

1968

545

458

446

378

375

362

279

Source:

Mitchell,

358.

472 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

Table 2. NATIONALINCOMEIN PERCENTAGESOF TOTAL Industry

Construction

Agriculture*

1938

30.8

4.4

38.1

1950

44.0

6.0

28.0

1958

42.7

7.7

34.8

1966

48.6

7.8

31.4

1974

56.6t

8.3

15.9

-The remainder consists mostly of transportation, of goods. communications, and circulation were changed, making tin 1970-71 some definitions industry a somewhat smaller percentage of the whole old to the definition. it according than was Source:

Anuarul, b:111; d:109;

f:54,

Not just industry, but heavy industry was particularly emphasized. During the critical 1960-65 plan, 35 percent of all government economic investment went into developing fuels and electric power, 25 percent into metallurgy and machine building, and 14 percent into the chemical industry (which was actually supposed to receive 20 percent according to the plan). Light and food industries received only 10 percent of investment. From 1966 to 1970 electric power and fuel received 31 percent of all investment, metallurgy and machine building 28 percent, and chemicals 14 percent. Food and light industries received 12 percent. Naturally the fact that industrial production was growing at better than 12 percent per year does not mean that the entire economy was growing at anything close to that. Agriculture, for one, grew much more slowly. In 1953 net production was only 94 percent of 1938 production, and it had only grown to 123 percent of 1938 production by 1965 (Montias). From 1965 to 1974 agricultural production grew at an average of 4.25 percent per year (Anuarul, f). The nearest figure to GNP per capita growth available for Romania is the index of real (controlled for price changes) national income per capita from 1950 to 1974. While this figure is not calculated in the same way as GNP, percentage change in it is close enough to percentage change in per capita GNP to provide some comparisons. Thus, from 1950 to 1974 Romanian per capita net national income grew at the rate of 5.3 percent per year, or 68 percent per decade. (Gross national income grew at an almost identical rate, but government figures on it are not as detailed.) (Anuarul, f; 1975, Montias). This is a very good, but not surprising, rate of economic growth. In the 1950s and 1960s per capita GNP grew at the rate of 63 percent per decade in West Germany, 60 percent per decade in Italy, and at about 40 percent per decade in most of the other advanced Western European economies (but at only about 20 percent per decade in the U.S. and Canada). Japan's economy, however, grew at a per capita rate of 128

Romania / 473

percent per decade, Greece's at 69 percent from 1951 to 1969, and even Portugal grew at slightly over 50 percent per capita from 1953 to 1969 (Mitchell; figures corrected for population). In other words, the capitalist economies of southern Europe (Spain, Greece, and Italy) grew at about the same per capita rate as Romania's economy, somewhere between 60 percent and 70 percent per decade. Yugoslavia's net material product per capita (a concept similar to Romania's net national income) grew at the rate of 6.5 percent per year, or 88 percent per decade from 1953 to 1969 (Mitchell). This is not to say that the Romanian economy has performed poorly, but only that it has not been as miraculous as one might expect from reading the Bucharest press. What has been extraordinary has been the emphasis on industry, and the consequent neglect of other sectors. Compared to Yugoslavia, Romania has grown more slowly, but its industry has expanded quite a bit faster. Spain, Greece, and Italy, which have had overall growth rates similar to Romania's, have all had considerably lower (though still respectable) industrial growth. In social terms, rapid industrialization in Romania has involved most of the changes that have occurred in other industrializing societies, but always with an interesting twist. Labor force composition, for example, has changed markedly since 1950 (Table 3). If, following Kuznets, we group transportation and communications with industry, 42.3 percent of Romania's labor force in 1974 was in the industrial sector, 40 percent in agriculture, and 17.7 percent in services. This is a peculiar breakdown compared to that found in non-socialist economies at similar levels of development. Economies with 40 percent of their labor force in agriculture could normally be expected to have 30 percent in industry, and 30 percent in services. On the other hand, those with about 40 percent in industry could normally be expected to have only 20-25 percent in agriculture, and 35-40 percent in services. Romania, even more than most Communist economies, has an overdeveloped industrial sector compared to its weak (because it still employs too many people for too little production) agricultural sector. Compared to capitalist economies, this is even more so; and, of course (as with most Communist economies), Romania's service sector is inadequately developed. Table 3.

PERCENTOF LABOR FORCE BY SECTOR Industry, Construction

Transportation, Communication

Agriculture, Forestry

Lower Level Commerce Services

Higher Level Services

Other

1950

14.3

2.2

74.3

2.5

0.7

5.3

0.8

1960

20.0

2.8

65.6

3.4

1.5

5.9

o.8

1970

30.8

4.3

49.3

4.3

3.0

7.2

1.1

1974

37.7

4.6

40.0

5.4

3.2

7.8

1.3

Source:

Anuarul, f:67.

474 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

Industrialization and changing labor force composition have been associated with rapid urbanization, as we can see in Table 4. Compared to most of Southern and Eastern Europe, Romania was distinctly backward in urbanization in 1950, but by the 1970s it had greatly narrowed the gap (Davis). Bucharest, with an official 1.7 million people (actually, close to 2 million probably live there, many without legal permission) has 8 percent of the country's population. Cities with over 100,000 people (not counting Bucharest) contain 11 percent of the population, and those with 20,000 to 100,000 contain 12 percent (Anuarul, f). Massive migration to the cities in the 1950s and 1960s created severe strains for an economy that emphasized investment in heavy industry rather than consumer goods and housing. From 1951 to 1955 about 14,000 apartments were built per year to accommodate over 150,000 new urbanites per year. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 26,000 new urban apartments were built per year, and in the early 1960s, about 45,000. During those years, close to 200,000 new urbanites had to be housed each year. The number of new apartments built annually rose to 80,000 in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s over 100,000 new urban apartments have been built each year. New apartments have also grown in size. In the 1950s, over 20 percent had only one room, and under 15 percent three or more rooms; by 1974, 7 percent had one room, and over 40 percent had three or more (Anuarul, b, e, f). So it was not until the late 1960s that enough new apartments were built each year to keep up with urban growth, and not until the 1970s that the accumulated, unsatisfied backlog began to diminish. Now, immense new blocks of apartment buildings stretch for miles into the Bucharest suburbs, and similar projects (on a correspondingly more modest scale) exist in every town. The housing shortage throughout the 1950s and 1960s (common in all Communist countries) set a distinctive stamp on urban life. It crowded families together and probably contributed to the rapid fall in birth rates. Quite surprisingly, the overcrowding did not produce the massive social problems associated with rapid urban growth in non-socialist industrializing countries. No evidence exists of increases in crime, prostitution, alcoholism, or other social pathologies associated with urban slums. All Table 4.

URBAN POPULATION Total Urban

As % of National Population

1930

3,051,253

21.4

1948

3,713,139

23.4

1966

7,305,714

38.2

1974

8,978,917

42.7

Source: Anuarul, f :9. 1930, 1948, and 1966 figures are from censuses. The 1974 figure is an official estimate.

Romania / 475

these things exist, but to an observer used to city life in Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia, or reading about early industrial Western European cities, it is their relative absence which is most obvious. In part, this has been because of the tight discipline imposed by the state. New Shanty towns were not allowed to grow around the cities (rather, people were crowded into existing housing), and the pervasive power of the state prevented a distinct, hostile, marginal slum subculture from developing. Another and less obvious reason for the relatively smooth process of urbanization has been the fact that industrialization has occurred throughout the country, and investments have deliberately tried to prevent a few major centers from extending their advantage in previous development. Bucharest's population, for example, has grown by 58 percent since 1948, while urban growth in general has been 141 percent. (Even if we include an extra several hundred thousand people living in Bucharest illegally, its population has not quite doubled since 1948.) This is unusual for a city which is both the political and industrial center of a rapidly developing country. It is not only through balanced urban growth, but by building factories accessible to large numbers of commuting villagers that Romania has kept its urban growth under some control, and thus prevented the disruptions which might otherwise have occurred. The fairly uniform spread of industrialization, the widespread (if crowded) public transportation system, and the fairly small size of the country have also helped by allowing new urban migrants to keep in frequent touch with their old families. That a great effort has been made to distribute industrial growth fairly evenly throughout the country can be demonstrated by looking at the growth of industrial employment on a county by county basis. From 1960 to 1974 industrial employment grew most quickly in the Wallachian and Moldavian plains (which, aside from the city of Bucharest, were the most rural, least industrial parts of the country). Industrial employment has grown much more slowly, below the national average, in almost all of the counties that were more highly industrialized to begin with. (The only exception is Prahova, the center of the petroleum industry.) Taking the level of industrialization as the percentage of the population employed by industry in 1966 (at the time of the last census) in each county, and correlating this with the percentage growth of the industrial labor force in each county from 1960 to 1974 (there are 40 counties, including Bucharest), yields an R of -.88 (Spearman's R) (Anuarul, d, f). Not only has the relatively even distribution of investment slowed urban concentration, it has also allowed a large number of villagers to become commuting workers, picked up by buses or trains, employed in factories but maintaining residence in their own village. This has made the relatively slow growth of urban housing and services less severe than if all new workers had become permanent migrants to the cities. Commuting

476 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

from villages to factories remains most common in the hill and mountain counties that are the most industrialized in the country. These stretch roughly along the Carpathian mountains, from the Danube to Moldavia, and include the counties of Caras-Severin, Hunedoara, Sibiu, Arges, Brasov, and Prahova. But even within the most industrialized counties, industry is more evenly distributed than it used to be. The pattern of commuting from village to new factories has spread to a significant degree throughout other hill and mountain counties, and more recently even into the agricultural plains. A nationwide study of rural youth in 1968 showed that 34 percent of all males between the ages of 19 and 25 commuted out of their village to work, and of these, about 40 percent worked in industry or construction. Since commuters are disproportionately young, male, and relatively skilled workers, agriculture is increasingly carried out in villages by the old, the less skilled, and women. Industrial workers are considerably better paid than agricultural ones, so this tendency is not surprising (Cresin, c; Dragan; Stahl et al., a). The primary aim of the Communist party, the creation of a modern working class distributed throughout the country, and the gradual elimination of the peasantry as a distinct class, is very far on the road to completion. But, if the relatively even spread of industry has been a boon to villagers seeking to improve their situation, either by migrating or by commuting, it has also given Romania a genuinely industrial physical appearance, particularly in the hill areas that are the most highly industrialized. It is difficult to get away from smoke, noise, and roads crowded with dusty trucks and buses. All towns, even small ones, are in the midst of this industrial boom, and some of the most beautiful low mountain valleys of Romania are now filthy with smog. The society emerging from this transformation is primarily one of small industrial towns. Even in the larger cities, with a few exceptions, the rows of factories and colorless new apartments create a distinctive, provincial atmosphere that resembles neither the cultured and affluent best of European urban life nor the worst of the crowded and desperate slums which are common in the poorer countries of the world. What is good for the growing working class, however, is less agreeable for the middle class, particularly for the intelligentsia. Assignment to provincial towns or to rural industries is feared by university graduates, though they often cannot avoid it. Established bureaucrats in the largest cities, particularly in Bucharest, consider transfers to lesser towns as severe and unpleasant demotions. Cultural opportunities, stores, restaurants, and other services, including medical care and schooling for children are distinctly inferior outside of a few big cities. The rapid rate of industrialization and urbanization of the country have left neither time nor available investment for such amenities. Rather, urban services throughout most of the country, and even in the new suburbs of the large cities, are aimed at

Romania / 477

mass needs. Basic schooling and medical care, minimal recreation facilities, too few stores with too few goods, scattered restaurants with bad food and almost no service-these have been provided. In Bucharest, Cluj, and to some extent Brasov, Sibiu, Timisoara, and Iasi, older cities with wellestablished urban centers, amenities are available for the intelligentsia, though they tend to be badly overcrowded. In the new industrial towns, however, they are absent. As a result, members of the intelligentsia not only try to remain in the major urban centers, but if they are transferred, they try to commute without moving their families away from the main centers. Among the middle class, urban to rural, or big city to small city commuting is much more common than the reverse. (This pattern is described for the new industrial center of Boldesti in Herseni; the problems of engineers living in the small town of Slatina are touched upon by Stela Cernea; but on the whole, this is a problem which is almost never discussed in Romanian publications even though it is obsessively discussed in private. See also Chirot, a.) The marked difference between the available life styles in the main cities and outside them particularly concerns university students. Scholastic standing determines choice of job, so that the best remain in Bucharest or Cluj, and the worst are consigned to the least desirable locations. Not only students, but urban bureaucrats and graduates of technical schools bargain, bribe, and connive to get choice geographic assignments. The situation is particularly serious for young professional couples where both partners have careers, for they risk being assigned to widely different locations. The power to move members of the intelligentsia from one post to another is one of the strongest levers of control that the Party and the State can exercise on this class. Thus, industrialization has thoroughly transformed Romania. It has created a semi-urban society extending even into village areas. By spreading industrial investment throughout the country, and by maintaining tight social discipline, Romania has avoided the worst problems of rapid urbanization. It has also physically defaced much of its area, and given large portions of the intelligentsia grounds for discontent. Rural Society and the Collectivization of Agriculture A corollary of the decisive victory of the orthodox "industrializing" tendency of the C.P. was a renewed determination to collectivize agriculture. The period of rapid change was from 1957 to 1962, and since then the overall situation has remained stable. In 1974, the proportional breakdown of types of control of arable land was almost exactly the same as in 1967 (Anuarul, f). (See Table 5.) During the collectivization drive, peasants were forced into associa-

478 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978 tions which were quickly transformed into full collectives, or, as the Romanians call them, cooperatives. Only mountain villages escaped. Because the latter have little arable land, most of it poor, and because mechanization of agriculture is out of the question in high altitude areas, they have remained privately owned ever since. (The private plots of cooperative members are not really privately owned, even though they are privately used.) The 1955 statistics are somewhat misleading because most of the countryside remained untouched by collectivization; almost all socialist agriculture was concentrated in the flatest lands best suited to extensive cereal cultivation and mechanization (Montias). Throughout much of the rest of the country, family control (with considerable state interference) was still the rule, and the collectivization drive that began in 1957 aimed at rapid, thorough transformation of the situation, not simply an acceleration of existing trends. There was peasant opposition, as before, but in the late 1950s the situation was quite different from what it had been in the early 1950s. Collectivization was better planned, less brutal, more beneficial to the peasants, and carried out more flexibly than in the earlier attempt. The Party was also in much better control of the country as a whole. I have heard stories about violent resistance in villages in the late 1950s, and even the early 1960s, but it is quite clear that whatever opposition there was, it was neither as effective nor as bitter as it had been earlier, and there do not seem to have been either large-scale violence or mass arrests. By the time it was carried out, collectivization (or some kind of drastic reform) had become necessary. The years of insecurity, when it was not known how much land would be confiscated (or when, or under what terms), combined with the lack of investment in agriculture, had caused severe stagnation. Montias has calculated that net agricultural output did not rise significantly and consistently above 1938 levels until the early 1960s. It is not certain that collectivization was the best possible solution, however, since a firm commitment to private agriculture might have had equally good or better results. But since a firm decision of some sort had to be made, and given the political atmosphere, it was better to collectivize quickly than to continue the uncertainty. Table 5.

State

PERCENTOF ARABLELAND BY TYPEOF CONTROL

units

Collectives Within which, private members' plots Associations Private Source:

1950

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

9.2

13.7

13.3

13.3

13.5

16.4

17.2

17.5

17.6

20.2

2.8

8.2

9.7

14.5

17.5

27.3

41.8

53.5

77.4

75.1

0.1

0.3

0.5

0.6

0.8

1.6

2.8

4.3

7.8

8.2

4.0

7.8

20.2

24.3

30.3

25.3

15.9

1.5

0.1

74.1

69.2

52.0

44.7

26.0

15.7

13.1

3.5

4.6

0 88.0

Anuarul, d:250-53.

Romania / 479

Agricultural backwardness is an old Romanian problem, and recent progress shows that it cannot be blamed on collectivization. Since the 1930s Romania has progressed at a rate roughly similar to that experienced by European countries with similar geographic conditions (Table 6). Romanian cereal yields were lower in 1934-38 than in these other comparable countries, and they remain lower today (Table 7). Cereal production statistics do not tell the whole story since Romanian agriculture has diversified considerably since the 1930s. Production of industrial crops (particularly sunflower for oil, and beet for sugar) has grown about tenfold since 1934-38. Potato, vegetable, and animal production have also grown significantly. In 1938, 81 percent of all the arable land was used for cereal production, and in 1974 only 61 percent was so used. In other words, while far from spectacular, the performance of collectivized agriculture has not been as dismal as some of its critics believe (Anuarul, f). Changes in agriculture have transformed the peasant family from a relatively closed unit into a diversified organization that needs to send members into the outside world to perform specialized tasks. In order to survive, families have come to rely on members' participation in various sectors of the labor force. Those who are able migrate or commute to factories (but maintain strong ties with parents, siblings, or other relatives in the village), while some people commute to work in state agricultural units. Yet others work in the local collective, not only for direct remuneration, in cash, but also for payment in kind (normally a large portion of the pay), and (an important consideration) for the right to cultivate a small plot privately. With this plot, some animals can be maintained, or vegetables and fruit grown, or extra cash obtained. Because dairy products, vegetables, fruit, and good quality meat are often difficult to purchase in towns, access to them undoubtedly strengthens ties between new urban migrants and kin left behind in the villages. On the other hand, since most collective members are short of cash (if not of produce), the money earned by outside family members is a valuable addition to the village standard of living. This is particularly evident in the surprisingly good private housing built by peasants in villages throughout the land. It is also responsible for a wider Table 6. INDEXOF WHEATAND CORN YIELDS(1934-38 = 1.00)

Table 7. INDEXOF WHEATAND CORN YIELDSPER HECTARE1970-74 (YUGOSLAVIA= 100)

1970-74

Wheat

Corn

Wheat

Corn

Romania

2.03

2.37

Romania

76

77

Hungary

2.22

1.94

Hungary

114

118

Yugoslavia

2.40

1.86

Yugoslavia

100

100

Bulgaria

2.58

3.46

Bulgaria

Italy

1.73

2.57

Italy

118 91

119 161

Source: 50-51.

FAQ, a:2,

20; b:44-45,

Source:

FAQ, b:44-45,

50-51.

480 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978 dispersal in villages of modern consumer goods than might otherwise be possible. Far from having been weakened by modernization, the peasant family has simply become more diversified. Since, for potential ruralurban migrants, it is always an advantage to have a relative in town to help find a job, or to help the newcomer with bureaucratic problems, and since urban dwellers can enjoy holidays in the country more easily if they retain rural roots, there is great advantage in keeping family awareness high. At a routine, daily level, the diversification of rural family activity can be seen by some time budget statistics collected by Romanian sociologists in several collective villages in the county of Arges in the early 1970s. These statistics also show important facts about the division of labor between the sexes and the influence of various geographic settings. As we can see in Table 8, household tasks are performed primarily by women and do not vary significantly according to geographical setting. But in the plains, where collective agriculture is more mechanized and lucrative for peasants, twice as much time is spent on that activity than in the hill and border villages, and the men put a relatively greater proportion of their time into this activity than women. Where collective agriculture is less remunerative, both sexes work a lot less at it, and women slightly more than men. In Arges, as in other counties that touch the Carpathian mountains, factories tend to be concentrated at the juncture of hill and plain. Villages near such factories obviously send more of their labor outside the village, and serve more as "dormitories" rather than pure agricultural villages, than elsewhere. This, at least, is the case for men, though not for women. At the same time, villages which have many permanent outside workers have fewer temporary ones. Temporary outside work tends to be agricultural (helping at peak times in neighboring or more distant collectives and state farms) rather than industrial.

Table 8.

PERCENTOF WORKTIMEUSED FOR VARIOUSACTIVITIES Hill Male

Villages Female

Border Villages (part hill, part plains) Male

Female

Plains

Villages

Male

Female

5.9

6.4

5.5

6.2

14.2

11.2

Household tasks

26.3

61.9

23.2

62.1

23.4

58.8

Family plot

15.1

9.3

11.7

10.9

15.6

6.1

Permanent outside work

33.3

17.6

47.3

16.3

25.1

20.8

Temporary outside work

19.4

4.8

12.3

4.4

21.7

3.2

On collective

100 Source:

100

M. Cernea, 236.

100

99.9

100

100.1

Romania / 481

I suspect that women work many more hours than men because they work outside the home but are still called upon to perform the many household tasks necessary in the villages which have very poor service structures. (The same is true in the cities, though possibly to a lesser extent.) Since, in fact, the less lucrative collective agricultural work tends to be left to older people, many collectives rely heavily on the labor of old men and overworked peasant women. This obviously retards the growth and rationalization of agricultural production, but it is highly rational from the point of view of the individual family which needs a connection with the collective in order to obtain certain produce, and access to the rewarding private plot. The problem is particularly severe where there are nearby industrial facilities. Not only do these drain away the best labor, but they also provide a ready market for produce from private plots, which can be brought to nearby markets by family members. Thus, collective labor comes third in importance, after labor in factories, and on private plots (or for marketing private produce). The problem is nicely illustrated by a comparison carried out in the late 1960s between two villages, both potentially rich in agriculture, but one near an urban center, and the other relatively isolated (Stahl, et al., b). Whereas the village near the urban area used to be far more advanced and productive than the isolated one, in recent years the situation has been reversed. As of the late 1960s, the isolated village had a collective that worked very well, whereas the supposedly more advanced village had one which worked poorly. Moreover, since industrialization is proceeding quickly throughout the land, this type of problem is likely to get worse. Collectives are neither small private enterprises nor large industrial or bureaucratic employers. Rather, as M. Cernea has pointed out, they are something quite unique and virtually unknown outside the Communist countries. They are large state enterprises without a regular salaried labor force. They depend on labor recruited from privately oriented micro-units (families) with outside options. One doesn't "join" a collective like a factory or office, one "lives" in a collective. But living there does not entail necessary obligations, or even the necessity of working there. (Houses and their courtyards are privately owned.) The collective must therefore attract labor from the village. To do so it offers pay, but this is often low. It also offers use of a private plot (which cannot, however, be inherited or sold). Wihout private plots, total agricultural output would fall dramatically, and work on the collective would become much less attractive, so that available voluntary labor would decline. On the other hand, private plots also drain away much available agricultural labor. The problem is further complicated by the fact that in order to keep their labor force collectives must also pay wages in kind. This means that most collectives try to grow some of everything to provide goods to

482 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978 distribute to members. A rational strategy from the point of view of local labor needs and community interests is to provide as many necessary foods as possible. From the point of view of the general economy, however, this is not a rational strategy. Geographic diversity calls for considerable local specialization, but individual collectives resist this in order to satisfy their laborers. This is especially evident with cereals, which should be concentrated in the plains where high mechanization is possible. But cereals continue to be grown in areas where they do poorly, particularly in certain hill areas, simply to feed the local peasants. (M. Cernea; see also Neamtu for a case study of a Transylvanian hill village where this happens.) The only remedy for this kind of systematic irrationality, where micro-rationality (family interests) conflicts with local collective rationality, which in turn conflicts with national economic rationality, is the creation of an effective retail market network throughout the entire country. But the establishment of an effective retail network is considered a low priority by the national government, and the consequent irrationalities are simply logical adaptations to an artificially distorted market situation. Before condemning the irrationality of collective agriculture, however, two points must be made. The first has already been discussed in the section on industrialization and can be elaborated here more fully. Paradoxical as it may seem, beneath the naked political force used to carry out

economic change, theRomanianC.P has shieldedits populationto a remarkable extentfromthe disturbingeffectsof the spreadof marketpressuresassociatedwith rapid modernization.Force there has been, even a great deal, but the distortion of short-term market pressures has also produced some beneficial effects. The very irrationality of collective agriculture, combined with the spread of factories throughout the country, have allowed a much smoother transition to an industrial state than would otherwise have been possible. There are no depopulated villages, hopelessly poverty-stricken districts, or large numbers of floating, unemployed migrants. Village collectives that should be disbanded on strict economic grounds continue to produce food for their population, at a net loss for the national economy. Factories that should have been located near other industrial centers provide work for villagers who do not have to migrate. Individuals who cannot adapt to modern life continue to live and work in activities that would have disappeared a long time ago in free market economies. All this obviously cuts down on social overhead costs, and it also humanizes the transformation, particularly for those least adapted to it. This general leniency also extends to other spheres. It is, for example, difficult to fire factory workers under any circumstances, and managers complain about this. But urban intellectuals and the middle class who complain about the low standard of living in Romania, and about the lack of personal political freedom, rarely understand the benign aspects of a social system that affords some protection from the impersonal market.

Romania / 483

They compare themselves to the middle classes in West Germany or France, but should, instead, look at the insecure poor in Greece, Yugoslavia, and Southern Italy. The second important point is that sheer economic rationality has never been the main point of the Party's agricultural program. To be sure, production is important, but not at the cost of orthodox political principles or the safety of Communist achievements. An agricultural planner in Bucharest told me in 1970 that from a strictly economic viewpoint, collectivization was a disaster in certain parts of the country, while it worked well in other parts. He gave the hill regions of Oltenia as a good example of the former, and the flat, dry Baragan (as well as the Dobrogea) as an example of the latter. But the Party was adamantly opposed to any return to private holdings in any area that had been collectivized (though its experience had persuaded it to leave the few privately held mountain lands alone). Even a slight change backward would engender too many hopes for a return to private property in other parts of the country, and this could set off a chain reaction of false expectations throughout the society. That would create impossible political pressures and frustrations. Experts therefore came up with a series of reforms designed to stimulate private interest in collective work without weakening socialist ownership or control. And whatever concessions were made in order to stimulate production, the ultimate goal was, and remains, full socialism in agriculture as in every other aspect of the economy. The backsliding Poles (who still have mostly privately owned land) and Hungarians (who have reformed their collectives far more than the Romanians to take into account private interests) are definitely not viewed as potential models. (This is equally the case in industry, and particularly in the retail trade sector of the economy.) The Yugoslav model is seen as totally irrelevant to Romania, despite the Yugoslav-Romanian alliance in foreign affairs. Yet private production remains vitally important to Romanian agriculture. For example, while only 9.4 percent of the land in 1974 was privately owned, it produced 20.6 percent of the fruit, 20 percent of the milk, and 14 percent of the eggs. Land on collectives which was privately worked did even better, for while it was only 6.5 percent of the land it produced 33.9 percent of the potatoes, 29.5 percent of the vegetables, 38.5 percent of the fruit, 33.8 percent of the meat, 37.8 percent of the milk, 32.3 percent of the wool, and 52.7 percent of the eggs (Anuarul, f). Even these figures, however, represent a slight decline since 1969, especially in the production of potatoes, fruit, meat, and eggs. In order to resolve some of the contradictions between private interests and socialist agriculture, a series of reforms were passed in the early 1970s. They emphasized the right of collective members to use privately worked plots, and allowed families who satisfied certain conditions to cultivate more land privately than before. The key portions of the

484 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

reforms were related to what Romanians call the "global contract" system. Individuals or groups sign contracts with the collective to perform a given amount of work, yielding a certain amount of produce during the coming season. Fulfillment of the contract (or overfulfillment) brings rewards, while underfulfillment brings financial penalties. The collective and tractor stations are held responsible for providing the necessary help, and failures on their part do not penalize the work group. Individuals, several individuals, families, several families, or larger groups united as teams may sign such agreements (M. Cernea). In practice, most contracts are signed by individuals who then divide the work tasks among family members, or they are signed by single families as wholes. Even village residents who are not normally members of the collective may sign agreements and work part time for extra income (M. Cernea). Thus, production has been partially reprivatized, and the family's role has been strengthened, without allowing a formal retreat from socialist principle. Cernea points out that many collective officials have resisted this tendency because it weakens their control over production; but where the new system has been allowed to function according to the rules, it seems to have raised production significantly. In the long run, the proportion of the population involved in agriculture will decline, and an ever growing proportion of production will come from large mechanized collectives and state units. In the meantime, the Party has adapted somewhat to private and family interests, and this has certainly helped. Many instances of gross inefficiency remain-fields plowed too late, harvests left to rot on the ground because of labor shortages and machine breakdowns, inadequate distribution of seed and fertilizer. It is still common to see students and members of the army in the fields at harvest time, trying to make up by mass manual labor what has been left undone by normal procedures. Synchronization of production and transportation creates severe problems. But despite these flaws, the modified collective system has made life far more pleasant for peasants than it had been in the past. The peasantry remains poorer than the urban population, and overcentralization of agriculture will produce bottlenecks for a long time to come, but as long as the Party remains willing to take a flexible approach, the situation will remain under control. Population and Morality Romania's industrial and agricultural development, and the associated social changes that have taken place in the last thirty years, are easily tied to the logical demands of socialism, at least as it is understood by the orthodox neo-Stalinist elite that controls the political process. The morality imposed on the daily social behavior of the population, though it has a

Romania / 485

great deal in common with the puritanism, even prudery, so common in Communist societies, is less logically connected to Marxism; and in Romania it has been pushed to an extreme unique in the European Communist world in at least one respect, demographic policy. We may one day see similar policies adopted in other European Communist states (though that is far from certain), but for the time being, Romania stands out as the only European, or even fairly industrialized, society that has pursued such a harsh pro-natalist line. Since this pro-natalism is connected to general public morality, as well as to strong nationalism, it should be discussed in conjunction with these other aspects of Party ideology. First, let us consider the astonishing demographic trends of the Communist period (Table 9). As we can see, in 1967 total births increased by 93 percent over 1966 and divorces fell by 100 percent. Infant mortality in 1967 (total numbers) was also 93 percent higher than in 1966, but in 1968 it rose by 146 percent over 1966 figures. What happened? Simply, in 1966 the law was changed. There had been easy and cheap abortions before, and suddenly abortion was outlawed except for certain very strictly defined medical reasons. Divorce was also outlawed, though the law has been gradually relaxed since then. Contraception was made very difficult to obtain. George Schopflin has written that this was produced by an extreme burst of nationalism combined with a perception of falling birth rates. Romanians have long feared being overwhelmed by a "Slavic tide," both before 1944 and since. The independence and renewal of nationalism within the Romanian C.P in the Table 9.

AVERAGEYEARLYRATES PER 1,000 POPULATION

Births

Deaths

Divorces

Infant Mortality (Deaths in First Year Per 1,000 Live Births)

1938

28.3

18.2

0.59

179.0

1950-54

25.3

12.0

1.42

104.9

1955-59

22.9

9.7

1.79

77.1

1960-64

16.7

8.6

1.93

61.3

1965

14.6

8.6

1.94

44.1

1966

14.3

8.2

27.4

9.3

1.35 0*

46.6

1967 1968

26.7

9.6

0.20

59.5

1969

23.3

10.1

0.35

54.9

1970

21.1

9.5

0.39

49.4

1971

19.5

9.5

0.47

42.4

1972

18.8

9.2

0.54

40.0

1973

18.2

9.8

0.69

38.1

1974

20.3

9.1

0.85

35.0

*In 1967 there were 48, divorces Source:

Anuarul, f:22-23.

in Rornania.

46.6

486 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

early 1960s combined with the puritanism of the official morality to produce this change in policy. Whether or not a nation of 20,000,000 can ever compete demographically with the U.S.S.R. is a pointless question as far as the C.P. is concerned. Whether or not there was a fear that the army or the youthful industrial labor force would be depleted by declining natality may be more to the point, but it is unlikely that rational calculations can ever explain such a decisive break with previous laws. The only explanation lies in the extreme emotional reaction of a few people at the top, perhaps only Nicolae Ceausescu himself, to a host of coexisting factors. Since 1967, the government has relented somewhat, though divorce remains difficult, hedged with bureaucratic difficulties, and very expensive. Some mechanical contraception is available, but (except for a small urban elite) with great difficulty. Illegal abortion rings have also grown up, but the political and medical dangers, along with the high cost of the procedure, have created a situation radically different from that which prevailed in the first half of the 1960s. (In 1970 an illegal abortion in Bucharest cost about $100 (2,000 lei), more than a month's salary for a typical urban Romanian at that time. But obviously, for people with good connections, and money, there are always easy solutions.) In an urban setting where apartment space is still short, and where many young couples still live with relatives, the prohibition of divorce has created many sad situations. Throughout the country, there have been many unwanted babies as well, particularly among those caught unprepared at the time of the sudden change in laws. Since the change, however, it is obvious that the population has begun to adapt, and birth rates are again falling back to more normal levels. But this does not remove the social problem created by the "baby boom" of the late 60s and early 70s. The school system has been strained, and for a long time the sudden demographic spurt will produce its own overcrowding problems. An unusual thing about birth rates is that in 1974 rural natality was 20.8 per 1,000, and the urban rate 19.7 (Anuarul, f). In 1965, the rural rate was 15.9, and the urban 12.1 (Anuarul, c). Thus, it seems that those hardest hit by the change have been the urbanites, probably because until the change abortion and contraception were both more easily available and more eagerly sought in cities than in the villages. Today one can only assume that birth control is still more widely sought in urban areas, but it is hardly more available. What is to be made of this? From all accounts (and here I am relying on hearsay) Nicolae Ceausescu is personally behind the policy which corresponds well with his general feelings about morality and the citizens' duties to the state. Ceausescu is personally free of corruption, and he has been a devoted Party act:vist since his teens. His entire life has been dedicated to the construction of an advanced, independent, socialist Romania, and he has little tolerance for the human vagaries that impede develop-

Romania / 487 ment. Because of him, periodic anti-smoking and anti-drinking directives are issued to Party members, and he seems to have strongly traditional beliefs about the "sanctity" of the family and the waste caused by frivolity. At all levels of society, these attitudes have an effect, though nowhere as strongly as in the implementation of demographic and familyrelated policies. Corruption remains a problem in the bureaucracy, but at a level far below that which prevailed in the 1930s. There are no serious problems connected with the rise of a "youth culture," as there are in the West, and even, to a certain extent, in some of the more advanced European Communist societies. There are periodic drives against long hair on males and "indecent" dress for young women, and while these campaigns are loosely carried out in Bucharest (particularly during the summer tourist season to avoid unpleasant experiences for Westerners), they do result in occasional beatings of "disreputable-looking" youths. In the smaller towns, dress codes are strict. Everywhere pornography is absent, there are no sensationalist news stories about crime or sex, prostitution is rare, and there is no drug culture. (Curbing traditional alcoholism is, of course, a problem of a different order.) Compared to Yugoslavia, or even Poland and Hungary, Romania is a quiet place indeed. This official puritanism has its soothing aspects, even if it is not appreciated by young urban intellectuals. But the effects of the demographic policy on the personal lives of millions is harder to accept, particularly when it seems so arbitrarily tied to the whims of one man at the top. The Ethnic Minorities The problem of the ethnic minorities, so serious in the 1930s, disappeared, with one major exception, after World War II. The changed boundaries eliminated a large portion of the Slavic minorities, and many (Bessarabian and Bukovinan) Jews as well. Deportation and killings of Jews during the war were followed by large-scale emigration (mostly to Israel) after the war. Many Germans emigrated as well after the withdrawal of the German armies in 1944. A comparison of ethnic statistics shows that the only large minority that remained was Hungarian (Table 10). The vagaries of Romanian ethnic policy after 1945 are too complicated in detail and ultimately too insignificant to justify any but the briefest summary. There were many shifts. When the Soviet armies entered, Germans were persecuted because they had been allies of the Nazis. By the late 1940s, however, the Germans who remained were given their own cultural institutions, which they have retained to this day (Wolff). Jews, on the other hand, were favored at first and allowed to emigrate freely, but in the early 1950s Zionism was denounced, and anti-Semitism resurfaced (Wolff). Later it diminished, and Romania has maintained good relations

488 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

Table 10.

PERCENTAGEOF POPULATIONBY ETHNICITY 1930

1956

1966

Romanian

71.9

85.7

87.7

Hungarian

7.9

9.1

8.5

German

4.1

2.2

2.0

Jewish

4.0

0.8

0.2

Gypsy

1.5

0.6

0.3*

Other

10.6

1.6

1.3

*Understated. Source: Anuarul, a:37;

Gilberg:208,

223.

with Israel through the 1960s and 1970s and allowed relatively free emigration of Jews. There are periodic complaints that anti-Semitism persists, but officially this is not the case, and compared to Poland or the U.S.S.R., Romania's record is not bad at all. Hungarians, too, were treated as a privileged minority in the early days of Communist rule, and in 1952 received an "autonomous" region of their own (Wolff). Hungarian autonomy was gradually eroded by the rising strength of Romanian nationalism in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and there is now no distinct Hungarian administrative zone, though, like the Germans, the- Hungarians maintain their own school system and newspapers. While it does not openly persecute its Hungarians, "The Romanian government ... aims at the assimilation of the Hungarian minority" without using force, that is, by continuing". . . its attempts to demonstrate to the Hungarians that they really have no alternative to becoming part of the Romanian state community" (Shapiro, 176). Many individual Hungarians complain about this policy, and Romania's Hungarians are probably not loyal to the Romanian state. It is known that during the 1956 Hungarian revolt there was considerable agitation among Transylvanian Hungarians (Shoup), and in 1968 there were some Hungarian student demonstrations in Cluj to oppose the gradual de-Magyarization of the Hungarian University. Because they form a fairly compact and large minority, it is unlikely that the Hungarians will be quickly assimilated. But unless there is outside intervention, notably by the U.S.S.R., it is even more unlikely that they will be separated from the Romanian state. Gypsies were a despised, excluded minority before 1944. During World War II they were, like the Jews, subject to deportation and murder. Since then, the government has made considerable efforts to integrate them into Romanian life and evidently it has had some success; but there still remain some fiercely independent Gypsy nomads, and a larger number of unassimilated Gypsies on the margins of many villages and towns. Some anti-Communist Romanians, particularly in rural areas, complain that the Gypsies have been systematically favored, but there is little evi-

Romania / 489

dence of this today, and despite government assimilationist policies, it is obvious that there remains considerable anti-Gypsy prejudice within the general population. In the late 1940s, as the Soviet Union attempted to bring the Romanian population under full control, a massive "denationalization" campaign took place. Romanians were told that neither their language nor their culture was Latin but rather Slavic, and that perhaps there was no real Romanian nationality at all. Every ethnic minority, no matter how small, was given its own cultural institutions (except for Serbs who were near the Yugoslav border and who were persecuted and deported to the Baragan after the break with Tito). So there were Tartar, Ukrainian, and Armenian schools and "national committees" for other groups with even fewer members in Romania. An attempt was made to suggest that Wallachians and Moldavians were themselves different nationalities (a suggestion which struck at the very heart of the existence of the Romanian nation) (Wolff). But during the 1950s most of these anti-nationalist manifestations vanished, and since the early 1960s Romania has been openly and sometimes loudly nationalistic. Foreign Affairs and Nationalism Since 1962 Romania has managed to antagonize the Russians without either making a complete break (like Albania, Yugoslavia, or China, none of which can be invaded by the Soviets without threatening a large and dangerous war) or provoking an invasion (as happened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). Internal Romanian party policies have remained orthodox, and Communist rule has never been threatened there, as it has been in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. This probably explains Soviet reluctance to invade Romania, which is, after all, only a minor thorn in its side and which does not threaten to infect the rest of Eastern Europe. But the threat of invasion is always present, and Romania knows that it could not count on Western assistance if it came. The best units of Romania's army have long been deployed to fight on an Eastern front, and there supposedly exist plans to mobilize the population to fight a partisan war in the mountains in case of a Soviet invasion. Why would a perfectly orthodox, servile party with relatively little native legitimacy (this was the case in the late 1950s) take such an immense risk, particularly when there were no obvious internal forces pushing for such policies at the time? (The decision was taken by the very top Party elite, not by pressure from below.) This is a topic which has been discussed in detail by many (Brown; Fischer-Galati; Floyd; Jowitt, a; King, b; Lendvai; Levesque; Schopflin) but I shall concentrate here only on those interpretations which seem to be consistent with the general pattern of social change.

490 / Social Forces / vol. 57:2, december 1978

Even though there were signs of disagreement between Romania and the U.S.S.R. (actually, these were originally part of a dispute between Czechoslovakia and Romania) in the late 1950s (Montias), the dispute became serious in 1962 and broke into public view in 1963. The most advanced Communist states, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, wanted to keep on exporting heavy industrial machinery and other manufactured goods to the less developed Communist states, among them Romania. Romania, on the other hand, was committed to heavy industrialization and did not wish to remain a primary product exporter. Nor was it satisfied with Czech and East German machinery, which was inferior to what could be purchased in the West. At the same time, Romania sought more aid from the U.S.S.R., particularly to develop its steel industry by building a large steel plant in Galati. The U.S.S.R., which was having economic problems of its own, took the side of the Czechs and Germans, and Khrushchev suggested to the Romanians that they specialize in agriculture and industries related to petroleum and gas (both of which were abundant). This would have helped the Soviets by lessening the primary product dependence of the advanced Communist states, and freed Soviet primary exports for trade with the West. Khrushchev's call for greater "rationalization" in the Communist division of labor and for greater integration of Eastern European economies thus presented the Romanian elite with a major problem. It threatened to change the entire direction taken since 1947, and strongly affirmed in 1957 (Montias). Jowitt argues, convincingly, that the Romanian elite was faced by "cognitive dissonance" (a, 203). Everything it had believed in and worked for was threatened. Once the break became public, China, already at serious odds with the U.S.S.R., came to the defense of the Romanian position, and this worsened the dispute (Levesque). Then, the question of centralization vs. decentralization became an issue. The advanced Communist economies, including Hungary and Poland, but also the U.S.S.R. went through a partial decentralization of their economies. The poorer ones, notably Romania and Bulgaria, felt they could not yet afford this and clung to more orthodox Stalinist policies. But Bulgaria had always played the Soviet game and been rewarded by much more aid from that source than Romania. So this potential dispute between the Bulgarians and the Soviets never broke into the open, while in the case of Romania it made a bad situation worse (Jowitt, a). Seen in that light, the Romanian actions make a great deal of sense. While Jowitt does not seem to agree, I also feel that the years of terror and humiliation suffered by the Romanian elite during the late 1940s and early 1950s played a role. It is not that the elite had necessarily harbored feelings of independence, but that the direct threat to their hegemony and policies in 1962-63 brought forth feelings which otherwise might have remained latent.

In orderto buildup domesticlegitimacy,the C.P begantogivefreereignto

Romania / 491

the nationalism that had remained in the general population, particularlyamong intellectuals. Old intellectuals who had survived were rehabilitated, and the literary works of many past nationalists were reprinted and brought into favor. Greater freedom was allowed to the general population, and the government began to justify its rule on the basis of its defense of national independence. It was not just that before the war there had been considerable anti-Russian feeling (dating back to the nineteenth century), but on top of this the period of Soviet occupation and ruthless exploitation had created a whole new generation of anti-Russians. So for the first time in its history, the Romanian Communist party came to be viewed as a defender of national interests, and this greatly consolidated its position with the general population. In 1965 Gheorghiu-Dej, who obviously felt very uncomfortable with this new nationalism and liberalism forced on him by the Soviet Union, died, and under his follower, Ceausescu, liberalization accelerated (Levesque). But as Levesque has pointed out, Ceausescu's liberalism, while it was more flexible than Gheorghiu-Dej's, was equally manipulative and insincere. It reached a high point in 1968, when it seemed that the U.S.S.R. would invade Romania along with Czechoslovakia. In a massive public demonstration in Bucharest, Ceausescu promised that the population would be armed, that the lies and errors of the past would not be repeated, and that there would be freedom of the press and greater liberty. The Romanian C.P probably reached a peak of popularity at that time. But the invasion never came, and gradually many of the liberal reforms were dismantled. In the 1970s, while Romania has hardly returned to the days of 1948-53, it has moved back from the relative liberalism of the late 1960s. There are several reasons for this. First, while Romania's foreign trade has become more diversified and relies less on other Communist economies than in the past, the West has not proved to be the source of investment and trade that was once hoped for. In 1958, 73 percent of all Romanian foreign trade was with Communist, CMEA countries, while in 1967 it was only 47 percent (Mickiewicz). But, as Robert King has written, "By the late 1960s its growing trade deficit with the West led Romania to seek closer economic ties with the U.S.S.R., since Romanian industrial goods were more welcome in the East than in the West. At the same time, a growing need for raw materials led Romania to make long-term contracts for deliveries from the Soviet Union and to agree to invest in the extraction of these materials." Also, while Romania has tried to diversify its export base by sending manufactured goods to developing countries, in 1975 38 percent of its trade was still with other European Communist countries, 7 percent with other Communist countries, 38 percent with developed capitalist countries, and only 16 percent with developing countries (King, a; Radio Free Europe). Romanian industrial goods are not competitive in Western markets, except for certain light consumer goods which the leader-

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ship does not want to push too far, and to become a mainly raw material and agricultural exporter once again is out of the question. Since economic integration with the West is impossible, with time, some of the original economic motivation for remaining independent from the U.S.S.R. is diminishing. So the need to mobilize opinion against the Russians has decreased. Second, and probably more important, is the fact that the top leadership has never felt comfortable with liberalism. It has never trusted its masses and does not tolerate the threat to central Party control posed by liberalization. Liberalism and greater contact with Western economies would have the same effect-the technocratic intelligentsia would be strengthened, there would be greater emphasis on consumer goods, and the masses would ultimately gain more power. It has been to prevent such a trend that the entrenched elite has reversed its 1960s policies to some extent. Today, then, Romania remains more nationalistic and independent (if less noisily so than before), but also less liberal and decentralized than Poland or Hungary. The Party elite uses the threat of a potential Soviet invasion to justify its retreat from liberalism. Excessive liberalism would provoke attack. Such an invasion, it claims, would bring back the bad old days of 1948-53. This threat, as much as the Romanian secret police, helps to keep a rein on domestic protest, particularly among intellectuals who constantly face a contradiction between their liberalism and their nationalism. Nationalism, which is a strongly liberal force in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia (and was a key ingredient of Yugoslav liberalism at least until the 1970s) is quite different in Romania. Without wishing to demean Romanian nationalism, I should point out that it resembles the old pre-war, "fascist" spirit more than it does the spirit of Czech nationalism in 1968. Nation, Party, Work, the Leader, Autarky, these are the slogans of the day. Individual liberty and government flexibility are not part of the nationalist program. This is a realistic ideology since, as the top Party people repeatedly emphasize, liberalism and the Soviet threat are so closely linked that they could one day combine to bring down the existing regime, with probably disastrous consequences for Romania's development. Politics in a Modern Corporate Society Nationalism in contemporary Romania has adopted many of the attitudes and even heroes of the pre-Communist past. (A 1967 edition of Octavian Goga's poetry-he was also a strongly anti-Semitic, fascist prime minister in the late 1930s-called him the "poet of the nation.") The economic policies developed in the 1960s and which persist to this day are similar to the protectionist, nationalistic ones proposed by Mihail Mainolescu, who

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also wrote an internationally influential praise of fascism in 1934 called The Century of Corporatism. (For a brief discussion of current applications of his economic theories, see Montias, 195-6.) The revival of a "DacianLatin" mythology, which comes close to promoting the existence of a "pure" and continuous national entity, marks a "reversion of pre-war practices" (Schopflin, 89). I believe that the present structure of contemporary Romanian society is also a lot closer to the idea expounded by Manoilescu and other "corporatist" theorists than is commonly recognized, and that by referring to that ideal, some useful insights may be gained into Romanian stratification and politics. The point is not to insult the Romanian C.P., even though it is easy to imagine what kind of reception a Romanian sociologist would receive if he dared to propose such views. The point, rather, is to suggest that much of the ideology developed by the "fascists" during the 1920s and 1930s was a natural form of expression for intellectuals in a developing but backward, threatened society, and that aside from the change in superficial terminology, it remains viable today. The dreams of the right-wing nationalists in the 1930s were premature; in the 1960s and 1970s they have born fruit. In his book on corporatism, Manoilescu wrote: The corporation is a collective and public organization composed of all persons (physical and juridical) who together fill the same function in the nation. Its purpose is to assure the exercise of this function, in the supreme interest of the nation, by means of rules and rights imposed on its members (176). Manoilescu's notion of corporations was similar to, and largely derived from, Durkheim's work in Division of Labor.Corporations were to be vertical organizations. The various key industrial sectors were to constitute corporations, but they would avoid horizontal, class-based solidarities. Workers and managers would be in the same, not distinct, corporate bodies. The military, the educational establishment, agriculturalists, merchants, artists, and so on, would form corporations, with functional and regional subsections, of course, but without setting rich against poor or superiors against subordinates. On top of the structure, there would be the nation, the supreme corporate body, that would "organically" integrate the other lesser bodies. This type of organization would not only eliminate futile, destructive class warfare, but also permit great coordination for the good of the whole. It would also protect the poor from the vagaries of unregulated free market forces. We know that in practice the fascist corporate experiment turned into a travesty (particularly in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, where it survived long enough to be judged), because "functional, organic solidarity" became a thinly veiled justification for the exploitation of workers and peasants by big business and landowners. But in a Communist society, where classes have been destroyed to the extent that there are no owners of the chief means of production and where the entire society is imperatively coordi-

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nated for the greater good of the nation, corporate (or functional) vertical organization is a working reality. There are horizontally defined classesthe middle-class technocratic intelligentsia, the peasants, the workers, etc., but these are not accorded official legitimacy or the power to organize as distinct interest groups. Corporate groups, however, are specifically organized and legitimized, so that open political competition is more easily carried on between them than between suppressed classes. This should be familiar to students of Communist societies, where, for example, "agriculture" (collectives and state farms coordinated through a ministry and officially represented at elite levels) competes with "heavy industry" or the "military" for scarce resources. A triumph by "agriculture" presumably benefits everyone in the corporation, from the minister and his top aids who gain more power in top councils, to local collective managers, and even peasants at the bottom of the corporation. It is, in fact, in these terms that much of Communist politics is discussed, both by outsiders and insiders. In Romania, there is at the top a coordinating corporation consisting of its own functionaries and representatives of the other functionally defined corporate groups, the Party, whose ruling body is the effective ruling body of the nation, the Central Committee. The Party has its own institutions, its own officials, its meetings, rules, and at the very top, a great deal of social solidarity. The Central Committee, for example, has its own restaurants, schools, medical services, stores, vacation and hunting lodges, etc. But similar, if less privileged, versions exist at every level. University professors (including graduate students) have their own corporate institutions, as do writers, artists, journalists, youths, collective farm members (individual collectives are joined in regional associations which are coordinated into a national organization which holds periodic meetings of delegates), factories (grouped into industries), the military, and every other identifiable group. To be sure, something like this exists in capitalist societies as well, but what is lacking there is the overall coordination of the various corporate groups, and in no capitalist society does everyone fit into one or another similarly organized corporate body. Also, in capitalist societies, horizontal, class-based organizations abound and are open participants in the political process. At the higher levels of Romanian society, corporate bodies resemble medieval guilds (except that there are no official hereditarily based restrictions on entry), and when one enters, say, the Union of Plastic Artists, one is protected, regulated, rewarded or punished by the Union and lives as a member. Certain "guilds" are more privileged. Members of the Academy (researchers, who have a rank distinctly higher than that held by mere professors), for example, have one of the finer Bucharest restaurants at their disposal and pay relatively littlo for their meals. The Academy's

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vacation homes are also palatial compared to those available to factory workers, but, of course, not as nice as those for members of the Party elite. Political competition between corporate groups is a constant, normal process in Romania, and its existence hardly threatens the stability of the government. Class conflict, however, is something else, and it is covert and dangerous. Strikes by workers do occur, although rarely, but they are hushed up and quickly dismantled, by force or concessions. Both of these were used during the Jiu Valley miners' strikes in 1977, the most serious anti-regime outburst in recent years. Over the long run, the most dangerous potential class conflict, even more than the occasional workers' strike, is that between the technically skilled intelligentsia, in all spheres of the economy, and the Party, a conflict which has broken out into the open in the past and remains latent at all times. We saw above that such a conflict broke out in 1957 and was resolved by the victory of the professional Party functionaries. In the 1960s it came to the fore once again, but much more strongly. Industrialization and the rapid growth of higher education had greatly increased the size of the technocratic-managerial class, and the liberalization, greater emphasis on economic efficiency, and general cultural relaxation after 1965 precipitated a crisis. One of the forms that it took was that "bright young men" (and women) were sent in to replace Party hacks at various critical levels of the economy. The older, loyal but often technically incompetent Party functionaries were demoted or sent out to the provinces. Various reorganizations took place which emphasized accountability of economic units (in terms of profits and losses), and this further threatened the old elite. This was a cause for rejoicing among the younger, better educated members of the intelligentsia, and a cause for despair among those who were being replaced. The conflict threatened Ceausescu, who briefly backed the reformers in 1965-69 for the sake of economic progress. His position has always rested on his control of, and loyalty from, the Party organization. Many of the best educated young technocrats, in fact, consider him to be an oldfashioned, uneducated boor. In 1971 Ceausescu visited North Korea and evidently took inspiration from his "beloved friend" (his own words), Kim Il-sung (Jowitt, b). He returned to initiate a "little cultural revolution" that reversed the late 1960s trend. Party control over "economic managers and planners, technical experts, academic personnel, and the literary intelligentsia" was reaffirmed (Gilberg). Ion Iliescu, leader of the youth wing of the Party and the very model of the young, brash, technocratic liberal, was demoted (Gilberg; Jowitt, b). To cover the conflict and maintain national unity, Ceausescu (who had gradually encouraged a "cult of personality" in his favor) went further, so that today it is a permanent, omnipresent facet of Romanian life (Jowitt, b). Ceausescu is now as powerful in Romania as Stalin was in the U.S.S.R., a position unique in Eastern Europe (with the

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possible exception of Albania) (Gilberg). In large measure, however, this is more than pure personal power; it reflects the renewed ascendancy of the same old Party functionaries (or their institutional followers) who backed Gheorghiu-Dej against Constantinescu in 1957. The change in the early 1970s continues (at least into 1977), and one of its most obvious manifestations is a constant call for "ideological mobilization" and emphasis on "ideological appeals rather than material incentives" (King, b: 16). One of the distinctive aspects of the semi-covert conflict is that the Writers' Union has become the foremost defender of liberalism and presumably the interests of the technocratic intelligentsia. At a recent conference (May 1977) of Romanian writers, the post-1971 dogmatic attitude toward literature was reaffirmed, and the leading liberal dissident in Romania, writer Paul Goma, has been seriously persecuted (Maier). (Goma has now been exiled abroad.) But even in literature, dogmatism and Stalinist orthodoxy present problems. The Romanian C.P. would like to extend its cultural influence abroad as part of its drive to keep economic and political independence from the U. S. S. R. To make Romanian literature acceptable in the world, its quality must be raised, and this conflicts with a dogmatic emphasis on socialist realism and cheerful praise of the workers' state. So repression is not at all as bad as it was in the early 1950s, because Romania cannot afford the international protest and ridicule heaped on countries which go too far in persecuting their literary intellectuals (Maier). If the problem exists in literature, it is more severe in economic matters. Gilberg has pointed out that the partial return to ideologicalpurity

threatensefficienteconomicgrowth becauseit attacksthe very cadreswho must managethe increasinglycomplex,advancedeconomy.Growthfurtherenlargesthe sizeandfunctionalroleof the intelligentsia,andit is no longereasy to sweepaway discontent. The same dilemma exists in all Communist states, but in Eastern Europe it is particularly acute in Romania, which has moved backward in this respect while others (most notably Hungary and Poland) have moved forward. Romania has made a great deal of progress since the 1930s. In one sense, however, it has not escaped from two of its main problems. It

remains poor and backward relativeto the referencegroupof its intellectual elite, the rest of Europe, and particularly Western Europe. It also remains threatened by potential big power (Soviet) intervention. Internally, it faces rising discontent from the technocratic intelligentsia and, in the long run, from its masses that demand increasing material rewards for the years of intense effort and sacrifice. The process of development has taken place under the leadership of a narrow, inflexible, dogmatic (though intensely nationalistic) Party elite. Any open conflict between this elite and the rising intelligentsia, particularly if it were to arouse mass protest, might provoke Soviet invasion, and this could dramatically set back development. But in

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the absence of conflict, the aging, technically inept elite will be unable to solve the problems of an advanced and complex economy. So far, the Party has maintained a balance. There has been industrial growth and an increasing standard of living for the masses, there has been some loosening of Stalinist orthodoxy (compared to the 1950s), the old Party functionaries have retained control, and the Soviet Union has been kept at bay. To predict that the balancing act will succeed permanently would be foolish, but it would be equally foolish to predict when or how Romania will fall off its tightrope. If it ever does. the social consequences will be enormous. References Anuarul Statistic al Romaniei 1935 si 1936. a: 1935-36. Anuarul Statistic al RepubliciiPopulareRomine 1963. b: 1963. Anuarul Statistic al RepubliciiSocialisteRomania 1966. c: 1966. . d: 1970. . e: 1974. . f: 1975.

Brown, J. F. 1963. "Rumania Steps out of Line." Survey 49(October):19-35. Cernea, Mihail. 1974. Sociologiacooperativeagricole. Bucharest: Editura academiei. Cernea, Stela. 1970. "Mobilitate verticala in grupul social al intelectualitatii tehnice." In Miron Constantinescu and Henri H. Stahl (eds.), Procesul de urbanizarein R. S. Romania, zona Slatina-Olt. Bucharest: Editura academiei. Chirot, Daniel. a: 1972. "Sociology in Romania: A Review of Recent Works." Social Forces 51(September):99-102. . b:1976. Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The Creation of a Balkan Colony.

New York: Academic Press. Chirot, Daniel, and Charles Ragin. 1975. "The Market, Tradition and Peasant Rebellion:.The Case of Romania in 1907." American SociologicalReview 40(August):428-444. Constantinescu, Miron, Constantin Daicoviciu, and Stefan Pascu. 1969. Istoria Romaniei:Compediu. Bucharest: Editura didactica si pedagogica. Cornateanu, N. 1937. "Problema lotului taranesc indivizibil." SociologieRomaneasca 2(February-March):100-02. Cresin, Roman. a:1937. "Care este structura proprietatii agrare din Romania." SociologieRomaneasca2(February-March):90-95. . b:1945. Recensamantul agricol al Romaniei din 1941. Vol. 1. Bucharest: Institul

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