International Women’s Day
It is March 1951, during the first Five-Year Plan of the newly-installed regime, and shortly after the concluding sessions of the World Peace Council (WPC) held in February in Berlin. Founded in 1949, the WPC aimed to coordinate efforts to maintain peace in Europe amidst the remilitarization of West Germany. At the end of February 1951, the World Peace Council issued an appeal calling for the conclusion of a Peace Pact, a message that resonated across European countries. In Romania, this call was met with meetings with citizens organized throughout the country in March 1951, aimed at fostering solidarity with the global movement of the Partisans of Peace and the decisions made by the WPC.
The rally in University Square was part of the growing momentum surrounding the future Peace Pact, organized not only to celebrate International Women’s Day but also as a show of support for the decisions of the WPC. Among those present at the rally was Constanța Crăciun, president of the Union of Democratic Women of Romania (UFDR), who spoke about the necessity of the fight for peace and emphasized the crucial role of women in this struggle. The UFDR was one of the women’s organizations that, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, played a significant role in improving women’s health, literacy, and political engagement.
Ana Pauker, also present at the rally and praised by one of the speakers at the podium, was the honorary president of the UFDR. Constanța Crăciun served as its active president, while Maria Rosetti held the position of vice president. However, just two years after the rally, the UFDR was disbanded and replaced by a special section for women under the Central Committee of the PCR, followed by various women’s commissions placed under the local People’s Councils. The decision to dissolve the UFDR stemmed from the fact that the idea of a single women’s organization in Romania was deemed unacceptable at the official political level, being seen as a form of separatism.
This segment reports on the March 8, 1951 rally, stressing the active participation of women, presented as equal citizens in the fight for peace and the realisation of the first Five-Year Plan. The subject highlights three distinct portrayals of women drawn from the diversity of smiling faces in the streets. The first woman, identified by name, is described as a “mother of eight children”; the second is a “leading worker in the cotton industry”; and the third is a pioneer who praises the female political model of the time, Ana Pauker.
Could the order in which women are identified—starting with the mother, moving to the working woman, and then on to the woman-in-the-making— be a coincidence? What does the future hold for these smiling women, captured in close-up as they chant Stalin’s name? The former pioneer is perhaps the only one who could still be alive among us today, as we watch this newsreel at the end of 2024, more than seven decades after it was filmed.
We are relaunching this topic online in the wake of a significant international movement born from the exasperation of women facing sexual assaults (#MeToo), on the heels of the re-election of a president known for his offensive attitude towards women, and in a Romania that still bears deep scars from the “state feminism” of the socialist regime. (The regime’s approach to the formal emancipation of women—based on their capacity to work full-time alongside men—preserved the traditional patriarchal model, while also enforcing the repressive demographic policies of the Ceaușescu era). (AB)
