Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 1 (2012), p. 148

It is difficult to disagree with the verdicts of the eminent scholars that its publishers have recruited to help market this book. It is without doubt an ‘important work of scholarship’ and ‘the most comprehensive … and penetrating work on the collectivization of agriculture in Romania available in any language’. The result of a multi-disciplinary research project involving 20 scholars using local and national archives and oral history techniques, the book is divided into three sections. Chapters one to three cover the Soviet blueprint, the Romanian village prior to collectivization and the politics of collectivization, and the creation of cadres to implement it. Chapters four, five and six address the means (from propaganda to brute force) used to persuade peasants to sign up (‘pedagogies of power’), and the nature of ‘class war’. Chapter seven considers the final achievement of collectivization and factors that contributed to its variable success, while chapter eight addresses its impact on village life, in particular the lack of commitment of peasants to collective farming.

Both authors have worked extensively on Romania for many years, Kligman as a sociologist, Verdery as an anthropologist, and both with an eye to history. As might be expected from these backgrounds, the book is exceptionally strong on the social implications and consequences of collectivization’s attempt at total transformation. They remind us, for example, that crucial concerns for peasants were issues like dowries and the organization of marriages under collectivized agriculture, matters that figured nowhere in the Socialist modernizing rationale that underpinned collectivization, let alone the minds of the poorly educated cadres who implemented it. The book is particularly strong on the latter, the extent to which cadres were not in place and had to be trained as the campaigns developed. Equally, it is strong on complexity and variability. The experience of collectivization was not uniform. There was cruelty, violence and brutality, but also scope for concessions and bargains.

Nevertheless, as with all important contributions to scholarship, the nature of that contribution should be delineated. First, the book is not, strictly speaking, agenda-setting in that another book from this research project (Constantin Iordachi and Dorin Dobrincu [eds], Transforming peasants, property and power. The collec tivization of agriculture in Romania, 1949–62 [2009]) came out first. As an edited collection, it lacks the coherence of the earlier volume, but it contains many fascinating papers, including contributions by both Kligman and Verdery. Second, the authors insist on seeing the land reform of the immediate post-war years, together with the introduction of quotas, teleologically as precursors to collectivization. For historians, it is far from clear that collectivization was a Communist goal in 1945, other than a long-term ideal. Its sudden emergence as an agenda item in 1948, in the context of the Stalin-Tito dispute, surprised most of the Eastern European Communist leadership.

The authors also see collectivization as an unchanging process, one that entailed a continuous ‘class war’ in the countryside. Yet it becomes clear from the text that collectivization policy was not uniform, that in a ‘second major wave’ (p. 320), from 1957 to 1962, the focus switched to attracting wealthier peasants into co-operatives so as to encourage others to join. There is increasing evidence from across the region that ‘class war’ in the countryside, which was always in theory against the kulaks and not the peasantry as a whole, was Stalin’s peculiar obsession. After his death, and in particular, the debacle of 1956, which had ramifications throughout the region, all Eastern European governments quietly switched their focus away from making war against kulaks. Less centrally, the authors’ explanation of the slow pace of collectivization in Romania when compared to the Soviet Union, in terms of the Russian tradition of communal tenure in the mir, is presented ambiguously. In places they seem to suggest Russian peasants were less committed to their land, while elsewhere they argue that tenure in the mir made it possible to persuade peasants collectively to join, obviating the need to convince them individually. This suggests the central issue was legality rather than tenure; indeed, as the authors stress, the need for a spurious legality for collectivization, for peasants to petition to join farms, was an important feature Romanian ‘voluntary’ collectivization.

Finally, the book ends in 1962 when total collectivization was achieved, omitting any discussion of how collective farming proceeded after that. Having persuaded peasants to sign up to collective farming, the next challenge was to get them to participate in it. Romania was particularly unsuccessful in this respect; yet collectivized agriculture really did succeed in overcoming rural poverty in countries that abandoned further elements of Stalin’s model.