Cast the Kulaks Out of Our Collective Farms

Collectivization appears in the Sahia newsreel as a fairly straightforward process that follows the official narrative of the era: centred around the upward evolution of the peasantry as a unified group on the journey from the “old” to the “new”, and set against the chiabur (kulak) as antagonist.

This newsreel story shows a meeting of the members of the collective agricultural holding „Înainte” from Coțofenii din Față (Oltenia), where the discussion regards the expulsion of two chiaburi. The accused are introduced by their full names and filmed in close-up; the object of their accusation is their undeclared land, and goods that they have hidden or destroyed in order to avoid having to give it over to the collective. The meeting ends with a call for increased vigilance on the part of the so-called “working peasantry” to defend the new order and the common good.

Collectivization began in Romania with the Plenary of March 3-5, 1949 and officially ended with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s speech of April 1962, in which he declared the process of the socialist transformation of agriculture complete. The first stage of collectivization (1949-1953) was characterized by hesitation and inconsistency in the instructions sent from the central authorities to the regional and local bodies responsible for implementing them on the ground. At the time this newsreel story was filmed in 1952, Gheorghiu-Dej had recently spoken with renewed urgency about the need to double down on the fight against the chiaburi – a decision possibly influenced by the arrival of a special Soviet commission in September 1951, sent to support the Romanian government in its preparation of the second monetary reform (see the topic Our money). The presence of this commission would influence a firmer approach to collectivization at the central level; the creation of new agricultural collectives resumed in 1952 after a period of hesitation and internal fighting in the PMR, which would later lead to the purge of Ana Pauker and of the so-called “right-wing deviationists”.

Collectivization began at a time when the political power of the new regime was still being consolidated: it played a crucial role not only in the infiltration of the state and the party into the everyday life of the peasantry – which resulted in a massive overhaul of the social, political and cultural values of the rural world – but also in the institutionalization of the regime’s repressive practices. And yet, ‘unmaskings’ and ‘exclusions’ such as the one here are the most dramatic visual representations meant for public screening associated with the process of collectivization. This prompts us to reflect on the version(s) of reality offered to us by the Sahia studio as a centrally controlled, factual image producer whose archives do not include anything about the deportations that were part of the process of collectivization, or about other disciplinary or punitive measures we know were taken by the authorities at the time.

Here is yet another newsreel story meant to remind us about the need to approach these images carefully in the present, seeking to place them in wider contexts provided by different archives and by oral history interviews with participants or witnesses of the collectivization process. Another newsreel subject on the theme of collectivization included on this platform (Enemy of the people, unmasked, newsreel no. 5/1952) refers to a case that reminds us of the need to be cautious when working with this type of archival images today.

We could also try this exercise of focusing solely on the visual material, by running this clip without sound and image and trying to imagine potential follow-up narratives that go beyond the content of the image. What are the two men (probably middle-class peasants, rather than kulaks) thinking as they learn about their exclusion from the collective, while their fellow citizens raise their hands to condemn them? What kind of lives await them, and their loved ones, upon exiting the frame, in the closing images of the clip, watched by the averted gazes of those who voted for their exclusion? How might their descendants remember this moment today, and how might the descendants of those who participated in it on the other side of the camera remember the same moment? In the space between these memories we may find the beginning of a possible understanding of the trauma left by collectivization on Romania’s villages.  (AB)