COLECTIVIZAREA LA SÂN-PETRU DE CÂMPIE
COLLECTIVIZATION IN SÂNPETRU DE CÂMPIE

Summary/Abstract: The introduction of this study deals with a general framework of collectivization in Romania, containing a chronology, methods and strategies used by the communists for the abolishment of the private properties in the country. The second part of it deals with the very process of collectivization in the village of SânPetru de Câmpie. For a better image of this phenomenon, which is a part of an immediate history and a local one, we took into consideration two interviews, inserted in this study; the interviewees are Ioan Banu, born in 1927, a party secretary in the village during the collectivization and his wife, Mărioara Banu, born in 1930, a teacher. Although our interviewees were implicated in a communist administration and educational system they tried to “purify” collectivization and relate about a history they survived; on the one hand they tried to rebuild the image of a bearable collectivization, on the other they noted the existance of some abuses. They related about them in a very abstract terms: “Collectivization involved a lot of things, it was like a swan song for more of us. Nobody did want to join it but the poor, to whom they gave a lot from the land confiscated from landlords.” The study also mentions some of the most interesting methods and strategies the Party militants used for the “future success” of collectivization. This interviews came to reveal some cliches of oficial historiography. The handbook for twelfth form, edited in 1994, related about collectivization in these terms: ”The zeal of the forces led to a compelled movement of the villages from Banat to Bărăgan in 1948 and also to trials for 80 000 villagers, (according to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej)”. This is about a biassed look on the process of collectivization because those villages were not moved just like that, but in the name of “the communist fight” and having a perfect plan to destroy all the opponents.

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