“We made up another collective farm… a third one!” Everyday Life and the Collectivisation of Agriculture
“We made up another collective farm… a third one!” Everyday Life and the Collectivisation of Agriculture

Summary/Abstract: The collectivisation of agriculture was the first policy of the Romanian state aiming to radically change the rural area. It affected directly the everyday life of the Romanian villagers by transforming the state from a distant, rather “urban” idea, into a social, political and economic actor directly involved at the local level. Lasting for more than 13 years, the collectivisation was the most noticeable aspect of the communist intervention, taking place alongside with other policies such as the development of party organisations in the villages, the expanding of the local bureaucracy or the nationalisation of the village economy. As the rural population represented the majority of Romanians and the support for communism was rather scarce in the villages, the party used a cautious strategy of collectivisation, preferring, at least in the initial stages of it, to strengthen its presence in the villages and to avoid forcing the peasants to join the collective farms. Although it did not manage to completely avoid the usage of repression and the clashes with the peasants, the Romanian communist party was successful in preventing widespread protest movements such as the ones in 1953 in Poland and DDR, in 1956 in Hungary or in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. This article try to explain, based on the everyday life in several villages in Romania, the strategies which the party used in order to gradually transform the rural are and to avoid widespread protests from the peasants.

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