New Life in Our Villages

We learn – from the monograph Collectivization in Teleorman, 1949-1962. Resistance and forced acceptance (2011) – that the “30 Decembrie” Collective Agricultural Holding (GAC) from the Conțești commune was established in March 1950. This newsreel story was filmed in the autumn of the following year, after more than a year of the farm in operation; at its heart are the beneficiaries of collectivization, that is, the poor and middle peasants who allegedly enjoyed sharing produce and earnings as part of their work for the collective. The only hint at opposition that we get is a dog barking angrily in a yard and the shot of a hand slamming a window shut – a metaphor meant to stand for the chiabur as antagonist and loser of history.

After more than three decades since the fall of the communist regime, we already know that the collectivization process was more complex than a simple top-down implementation of a body of central directives; in other words, it was a process that unfolded differently in various regions of the country, at different times between 1949 and 1962.

Data collected from the archives about the collectivization process in Conțeşti can be found in the volume mentioned above. We do not learn much from this particular newsreel story, aside from the (probably politically skewed) information provided by the voice-over commentary. Here is a village with narrow, wonky and muddy streets crossed by carts adorned with flags of political leaders. Here are a few, possibly genuine smiles of peasants filmed as they receive their earned goods from the collective: these smiles may be expressions of joy due to the goods obtained, but perhaps also of surprise at their encounter with the camera. As for the end of the story, we may presume that the newsreel crew have forgotten for a minute that the newsreel was part of the press and therefore required to document reality, so they indulged in staging a brief rural idyll right at the end of this clip: see the kiss deposed by the woman peasant on the cheek of her husband (?), still covered in the flour freshly obtained from the collective.