The “Comrades”, Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe
The “Comrades”, Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe

The Ploughmen’s Front in Romania

Summary/Abstract: RADU, Sorin – BUDEANCĂ, Cosmin – SOLOMON, Flavius. The “Comrades”, Propaganda and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe. The Ploughmen’s Front in Romania. Historický časopis, 2015, 63, 1, pp. 113-135, Bratislava. The Soviet experience between 1920 and 1930 helped the leaders of the Eastern European communist states in the late 1940s and early 1950s to adopt complex strategies in order to attract the widest possible segment of the population possible to the new regime’s side, or to at least ensure a neutral attitude from the part of the most important social categories, such as the peasants. The active presence in the rural world of political organizations which were formally autonomous but closely linked to the communist parties customized the collectivization of Eastern European states to the Soviet Union, where the massive collectivization was done under the supervision of the Communist Party exclusively. Another feature, illustrated on the basis of this case study is that, considering the Soviet experience, the Communist parties from Eastern Europe used propaganda in the process of collectivization of agriculture. The Ploughmen’s Front represented the strongest and oldest front organization comrade of the Romanian Communist Party. The main task of this organization was to implement the Communist ideology in the countryside, facilitating the process of communization of the Romanian villages, where the Communists were extremely unpopular. The article focuses on the manner in which the Ploughmen’s Front was involved in the collectivization of agriculture in Romania.

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