Political Activism in the Romanian Countryside of the 1930s: The Peasants from Hunedoara County and the Ploughmen’s Front
Political Activism in the Romanian Countryside of the 1930s: The Peasants from Hunedoara County and the Ploughmen’s Front

Summary/Abstract: Our article contends that the effort of organizing and developing the Ploughmen’s Front, even if it was first limited to Hunedoara County, represents a case of political engagement and activism in which the peasants showed that they could surmount political passivity, understanding that in order to overcome the underdevelopment of the rural world and economic decline, voting and ballot participation were not enough; that is why they decided to adhere to a political structure. In this case, the peasants were important actors in the process of building a political organization, and not just the subject of political rhetoric and propaganda. Our thesis claims that there was a direct involvement of the peasants in the organization of the Ploughmen’s Front, with great enthusiasm on their part, which may partially refute the dominant thesis in Romanian history which states that the peasants were an unstructured, uneducated, easily manipulated crowd, freely recruited in a political maneuver conducted by a sort of dandy of Romanian politics.

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