Let’s beat Illiteracy
1951, the year this topic was produced, was Sahia’s first year in charge of the newsreel. As we follow this story, we are prompted to reflect on several key themes, including: women and collective labor in feminised industries (e.g. the textile sector); leisure spaces for female workers (the factory club, the library, and shared dorms); women’s involvement in ideological work (see the slogan on the common room wall: “Long live the International Democratic Women’s Union!”); and, finally, the intersection of working women and literacy: the central theme of the topic being “Let’s beat illiteracy.”
Similar to other factual works of the time, this story is built on a simplified version of an “exemplary biography”: Elisabeta Barbu, a leading factory worker who overcame the burden of illiteracy, spreads the passion for reading among her factory colleagues, promoting, among others, Nikolai Ostrovski’s socialist realist classic How the steel was tempered.
The first five-year plan (1951-55) set out to achieve, among other things, the total elimination of illiteracy: a goal which would turn out to be unrealistic, despite enlisting the help of companies, large organizations/institutions, schools, and both the written and the ‘filmed press’ (the newsreel). Illiteracy was rightly considered to be a great obstacle to the development of the country; the new regime needed qualified personnel not only among workers, but among the “working peasantry”, so that they could understand and adopt scientific methods of cultivating the land. At the same time, the literacy of the population, first and foremost of the workers, was part of a wider gesture of opening this demographic up to the official discourse and the new party press.
Much of the education work for literacy, political engagement, and public health was carried out in the late 40s and early 50s through women’s organizations – one of them being the Union of Democratic Women of Romania (see the slogan on the wall), created in 1948 by renaming the Federation of Democratic Women. Ana Pauker was the honorary president of the UDWR (Romanian UFDR: Uniunea Femeilor Democrate din România), Constanța Crăciun the active president, and Maria Rosetti the vice-president.
UFDR published magazines such as Femeia (The Woman) or Săteanca (The Village Woman), which discussed issues such as improving the living conditions of women and their families, combating illiteracy, raising the cultural level of women, obtaining equal legal rights, improving the lives of rural women, etc. The UDWR would be abolished in 1953 and replaced by the setting up of special women’s divisions adjacent to the CC (Central Committee) of the RCP (Romanian Communist Party) and, later, some women’s commissions alongside the executive committees of the Popular Councils – because the idea of a single organization of women in Romania was not accepted at the official political level, being interpreted as a form of sectarianism.
As viewers of this newsreel subject today – and in the absence of any production documents – we can ask ourselves about the true nature of the relationship between these female workers and their employer organisation. What was their level of political consciousness? Did they really like Ostrovski’s book? How long before the filming were they notified that they would be participating? Did they style their hair of their own volition or at the suggestion of the Sahia team? (A possibly trivial question, inspired by an interview with Doru Segall – a cameraman educated at VGIK, the Soviet film school, who recounted the common practice of the professional socialist cameraman to have a razor in his Arriflex kit to improve his workers’ appearances before filming.
The archival image is powerful and seductive. Let’s not forget to question it. (AB)
