239
CASE STUDIES
FIELD WORK IN R O M A N I A : INTRODUCTION
John Cole
The Communist Party came to power in
Romania in the late 1940s and began the task
of building a socialist society. It had inherited a
country that was basically agrarian, im-
poverished by years of conflict, and facing
heavy reparations imposed by the Soviet Union
because of its role as a German ally in the early
years of World War II. Today the majority of
people continue to live and work in the rural
areas, but the proportion in the cities has
doubled and industrial capacity has dramatical-
ly increased. A t the same time, social and prop-
erty relations have been transformed. Private
ownership of the means of production has been
abolished in all but a few marginal enterprises,
and as a result the class o f property owners has
disappeared. Factories and commercial enter-
prises have become the property of the state,
and most agricultural production is carried out
on multi-village coopei"ative farms and, to a
lesser extent, on state farms [ 1 ].
While Romania appeared to be a carefully
controlled satellite of Soviet Russia in the first
years of Communist rule, it is clear that today
it has become an independent state, determin-
ing its own path to socialism. This is most
obvious in its foreign policy, which often
diverges from that of its Warsaw Pact allies.
Romanian political economy, however, is more
orthodox in that it is highly centralized, with
long-term economic planning administered
through an elaborate bureaucracy. But the
Romanians maintain that their goals and
methods, developed over the past generation,
are distinctively Romanian, the product of
Marxist-Leninist thought applied to the specific
historical and environmental circumstances of
the Romanian people.
In 1973 six of us, anthropologists from the
University of Massachusetts, began a study of
the nature of this process of socialist trans-
formation in County Brasov (Judetul Brasov),
which lies in southern Transylvania near the
geographical center of the country [2]. We
concentrated on the details of this process in a
number of representative villages in order to
examine the interaction between state planning
on the one hand and villager action on the
other. It is, after all, at the local level that
people must ultimately reconcile state plans
with the realities of their day-to-day lives.
The aspects of the socialist transformation
that we have focused on are: (1) the formation
and operation of cooperative farms; (2) the
rapid development of opportunities for
industrial employment, together with an educa-
tional system which provides training in
industrial skills; (3) environmental variations as
they affect agricultural planning, the location
of industry, and access to industrial employ-
ment; (4) the changing nature of ethnic identity
and interethnic relations; (5) the social organ-
ization of the communes, especially the com-
position of the family and relations among
family units; and (6) the interrelationships of
the above factors in a complex and dynamic
system.
It is, of course, in the nature of a socialist
state to initiate social change and to guide this
change toward specific goals; the ideology sets
240

forth the goals and develops plans for achieving of the research, therefore, has been on state
them. Each aspect of our research involves an planning and the transformation of county
area of fundamental concern to the Socialist Brasov.
Republic of Romania and we are fully aware of
the pertinent governmental policies and plans.
JUDETULBRASOV
v V
These are administered through county-level
offices of the national bureaucracy, which
articulate directly or indirectly with the com- County Brasov was selected for research for
munes. It is therefore obvious that in order to two main reasons [3]. In the first place, it is the
understand the dynamics of the transformation most industrialized district in Romania, and
in the rural communes, one must understand thus presumably the area in which socialist
national goals and plans, as well as the organiza- transformation has progressed farthest. It in-
tion of the county that includes each commune. cludes not only the industrial center of Bra§ov
Our assumption is that the actual transforma- city, one of Romania's largest, but a number of
tion o f the countryside is the result of the inter- other industrial cities as well (see sketch map).
play between local conditions and outside pres- Every rural commune in the district is within
sures, represented both by state planning as it commuting distance of one of these cities, and
involves the communes and by changes occur- they are connected by frequent and reliable
ring in the county as a whole. A second focus public transportation. The second reason for

, , " - - " -~ "~ ~- ~ JUDEq~UL

.'2 ~ BRA~OV
r.j"'" Rupe

', LoW r°\\~g

;=
~%,s, e

,':i' " Rt nov },

,
Bucharest
A[tltude Le,qend
] sea level to 500rn City of Br'a~ov
pop. circ. ~00,000
[] 500 to 1OO0 m ~ City over 20,000 pop.
~{) City between 10,000 clnd 20,000 pop.
• City between 6,000 and 10,000 pop.
[]~ 1000 to 1500m
• Research locations
1. Feldioara
] 1500 to 2000m 2, M~ndro
3. HTrsertl
4. PoJana M•ruiul
] over- 2000m 5. Bran villages
 241

TABLE I

Village Pop. Altitude Location Characteristics

Feldioara 2,929 c.300m. Fertile agricultural Large agricultural

plain thirteen miles cooperative; small
from major industrial local factories;
city undergoing trans-
formation into a
small city;
Romanian,German,
and Hungarian
residents;
nucleated village
MNdra 1,352 c.300m. Gently rising land Medium-sized co-
in Olt Valley; ad- operative; many
jacent to small in- commuting workers;
dustrial city population is
Romanian; nucleated
village
H~seni 820 c.600m. Poor soil; broken, Medium-sized co-
hilly land rising to operative; many
mountains; eight commuting workers;
miles from small population is
industrial city Romanian; nucleated
village

Poiana 3,815 c.1000m. In rugged hills and Agriculture not

M~frului mountains; eight to cooperativized;
fifteen miles from many commuting
nearest cities workers; population
is Romanian; smart
nucleated center
but most households
remote and dispersed

selecting this district is its unusual environ-
mental and ethnic diversity, which permits us
to examine the socialist transformation under a
variety of local conditions. Environmental con-
ditions vary from a large fertile plain (the Bt"rsei
depression), through a major river valley (that
of the Olt), to the rugged Carpathian mountains.
Moreover, in addition to Romanians, the
district includes significant numbers of
Romania's two major ethnic minorities,
Hungarians and Germans, and a sizeable Gypsy
population as well.
The communes that are the focus of research
were carefully selected so as to represent this
diversity. They crosscut the environmental grain
of the district and include multi-ethnic as well
as homogeneous Romanian communities. As a
consequence, they have been assigned s o m e -
what different roles in the state's plans. Some
of the characteristics of each are summarized in
Table I [4].
THE RESEARCH
The villages were selected on the basis of a
survey of the district conducted by three
members of the team during the summer of
1973. This was followed by six to eight months
of preliminary research in the communes by
each of the participants between January 1 and
September 1, 1974. Researchers took up resi-
dence in the communities as follows: Kideckel
in Htrseni, Cole in M~ndra, Beck at the center of
Poiana M]rului and Randall among the s c a t -
tered outlying households; and Sampson in the
Romanian community and McArthur in the
242
German community of Feldioara. Research
activities include participant observation and
interviews, identification of relevant archival
materials, and consultation with Romanian
scholars and officials. We were also provided
with central archival materials from Brasov and
Bucharest.
The project continues: Beck has spent an ad-
ditional year in Poiana Mgrului; Kideckel,
McArthur, Randall, and Sampson returned to
Romania in the fall of 1975, extending their
field and archival research for an additional year;
and Cole will make two trips to the area during
1976. The group has met frequently to discuss
the progress of research, and will spend the
1 9 7 6 - 1 9 7 7 academic year at Amherst analyz-
ing the data and continuing work with pub-
lished materials [ 5].
We owe a great deal to the Romanian govern-
ment and to our Romanian colleagues. Each of
our research projects was approved by the
government, which gave us permission to live in
private homes in the villages, gave us access to
critical documents, and allowed us to attend
meetings of the various agencies responsible for
administration and planning. In spite of their
busy schedules, officials in the communities we
lived and worked in have been unusually
generous in granting us interviews and allowing
us to observe them working in their official
capacities. The people in the villages welcomed
us as friends.
Throughout our research we have consulted
with Romanian scholars. We are conscious of
being novices in Romanian studies and sincere-
ly appreciate the patience and skill with which
they have responded to our requests for advice
and information. That we have profited from
their writings goes without saying. Beyond this,
we have discussed our research with them at
their universities and institutes; they have spent
time with us in the villages and participated in
our seminars, both in Romania and Amherst.
We have constantly subjected our thinking to
the scrutiny of these men and women; if our
descriptions, interpretations, and analysis ap-
proach the reality of modern Romania, these
scholars deserve much of the credit [ 61.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF MODERN
ROMANIA
The consolidation of the modern Romanian
state from the nationalist movement was a long,
complex affair that unwound during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. It was
facilitated by the erosion of centuries-long
Turkish domination in the Balkans in the face
of growing Austrian and Russian power, and it
was accompanied by internal struggles between
capitalist and feudal elements, and by peasants
against both. The first Romanian princes were
appointed as rulers in the principalities of
Wallachia and Moldavia in the 1820s, but it was
not until the 1860s that the two principalities
were united to create a single Romanian state,
usually referred to as the Regat, or "Old King-
dom." During these years, Romanians in
Transylvania agitated against Hapsburg control,
but were not united with the Old Kingdom
until after the defeat of the central powers and
the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian empire
at the end of World War I.
Economically, the nineteenth century was
the main period of expansion of capitalist
economic relations in Romania, as elsewhere in
southeastern Europe. Romania was a pre-
dominantly agrarian state with production
dominated by grains grown on small peasant
holdings and on latifundia and sold for export.
While Romanian serfdom had resulted from
Western European demands for grain in earlier
centuries, feudal relationships inhibited the ex-
pansion of market production in the early nine-
teenth century. The agrarian reforms of 1848
in Transylvania, and of 1864 in the Old
Kingdom, dissolved feudal obligations and gave
both peasants and latifundists full ownership of
their property. This resulted in advantages for a
small class of wealthy peasants, moneylenders,
middlemen, large estate owners, and estate
managers, but for the poorer peasantry and
rural proletariat it meant increased poverty and

deprivation, and precipitated a number of rebel-
lions, most notably in the Old Kingdom in
1888 and 1907.
World War I radically altered the situation.
Turkish power in the Balkans was obliterated;
Russia experienced its revolution and civil war,
along with other internal problems, and its
Balkan interests were set aside for a time. The
Hapsburg empire was dissolved and none of the
successor states was strong enough to be a real
power in the Balkans. With the support of
France and Britain, Romania not only in-
corporated Transylvania, but also annexed ter-
ritory at the expense of its other neighbors,
creating a "Greater Romania" that survived to
the eve of World War II.
Between the two wars the Romanian state
identified itself as a civilized Christian outpost
against godless Bolshevism in the East. While
Communism was vigorously suppressed during
the 1920s, a variety of political parties r e p -
resenting various combinations of domestic and
foreign interests vied with one another for
political control. Although some industry devel-
oped in the interwar period, the economy re-
mained dependent on the export of grains.
Politically motivated agrarian reforms were in-
efficient to contain peasant agitation without
changing the basic economic structure. With the
depression, Romania's economy deteriorated as
agricultural prices fell in relation to manu-
factured goods. At the same time, the scope of
organized political expression narrowed and
came to be dominated by fascist imitators of
Mussolini and Hitler. German economic
interests invested in Romania and the German
market provided virtually the only outlet for
Romanian produce. With the Nazi incorpora-
tion of Austria and Czechoslovakia, German
domination of the Romanian economy was
complete.
The next traumatic event was the invasion of
Greater Romanian territory by Russia (in
Bessarabia and Bukovina), Bulgaria (in Dobruga),
and Hungary (in Transylvania). Ion Antonescu,
an opportunistic ally of Nazi Germany,
emerged from the ensuing political crisis to take
243
control of what remained of the Romanian
state. Thereafter, until Romanian fascism was
brought down by partisan uprisings, civilian and
military conspiring, and the invasion by the Red
Army in 1944, Romania remained a satellite of
Nazi Germany.
Following World War II, Romanian political
economy was rapidly oriented toward the
Soviet Union, and by 1949 the Communist Party
was in firm control. The apparatus of the state
was used to repress all vestiges both of fascism
and of the liberal capitalist elements that had re-
emerged following the war. All industrial and
commercial establishments were nationalized
and large agricultural properties expropriated.
The latter were sometimes organized as state
farms, but more often were divided among poor
and landless peasants. Because of its coopera-
tion with Nazi Germany early in the war,
Romania was assessed heavy reparations by the
Soviet Union, and joint Russian-Romanian
corporations (SOVROMS) were established to
facilitate the movement of Romanian produce
to Russia. In the grand economic plan devel-
oped for Eastern Europe by COMECON,
Romania was assigned its traditional role as pro-
vider of agricultural products and raw materials.
During the late 1950s, however, Romania
began to develop economic plans that were at
variance with the role assigned it through
COMECON. This was facilitated by the with-
drawal of the Red Army in 1958 and the dis-
solution of the SOVROMs. By 1964 Romania
was declaring its dedication to the principle of
the equality of all socialist states and of the
right of each to build socialism in accordance
with its own particular geographical, cultural,
and historical circumstances. Since then, the
nation has become increasingly independent in
its economic planning and foreign policy. It re-
mained (and remains) neutral in the Sino-Soviet
split, and not only stood aside when its Warsaw
Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, but
reiterated its belief in the principle of the in-
dependence of each socialist state, while
publically expressing opposition to the invasion.
Through the 1960s and into the 1970s thole
244
has been an obvious connection between
Romania's foreign policy and its economic in-
dependence. The plans to accelerate industrial-
ization, developed in opposition to its assigned
COMECON role, have been facilitated by cordial
diplomatic relations with the West. Romania
also responded enthusiastically to West
Germany's Ostpolitik, and has sought both
markets and sources of capital in other Western
states, as well as in the so-called Third World.
The Soviet Union remains the country's most
important trading partner, however. While
Romania has inultiplied its ties outside of the
Communist bloc, it has maintained formally
cordial relations with its East European
neighbors. The vigilant political control that is
exercised at home has served to protect the
country from external opponents, and to pre-
vent the growth of internal opposition which
foreign powers might conceivably exploit.
SOCIALIZATION OF AGRICULTURAL
PRODUCTION
In the part of Transylvania under study the
traditional rural economy was based on an in-
dependent peasantry. Although there were a
few large landowners and landless laborers,
most of the people were middle and small
peasants (owning 5 - 2 0 and 0 - 5 hectares of
land respectively). Their numerical preponder-
ance in all ethnic groups was increased by
various reforms carried .out during the 1920s
and 1930s and immediately following World
War II.
However, as the Communist Party con-
solidated political control, it took a series of
steps to socialize agricultural production.
Productioon quotas have been a feature of state
planning since the party came to power, and
since 1949 the establishment of cooperative
farms wherever feasible has been a national
objective. A t first incentives were provided to
induce the formation of voluntary cooperatives
(~ntovffrflsire), and at the same time a number
of villages throughout the country were
selected as sites for village-wide cooperatives
(cooperativa~). Incentives and pressure to form
village-wide cooperatives were then accelerated,
and by 1963 only about 10 percent of all agri-
cultural land remained in private hands. Since
1963 village cooperatives have been grouped in-
to multivillage co-ops, and even more recently
councils to coordinate production in groups of
multivillage co-ops have been formed. Both the
multivillage Jco-ops and the councils are re-
sponsible to district agricultural boards, and
these are in turn responsible to the national
agricultural ministry.
The communities we are studying here did not
all have the same experiences in the socializa-
tion of agricultural production. In Hi'rseni and
Feldioara, some people responded early to state
incentives to form voluntary co-ops. In H/rseni,
this served as a first step toward forming
cooperativds, but in Feldioara an ~ntrovdrffsire
and a cooperativY existed side by side for a
number of years before both were incorporated
into a cooperative. In contrast, Mi'ndra resisted
all inducements and pressures to cooperativize
until the very end of the formative period, and
it was only in 1962 that the entire village was
cooperativized at one stroke. In the upland vil-
lages of County Brasov, including Poiana
Mgrului, no agricultural production co-
operatives have been formed, but a variety of
inducements and pressures mold the direction
of production and a good part of the produce is
marketed through state agencies. Moreover, the
state has nationalized the extensive forests
formerly owned individually b y these upland
peasants.
Our findings indicate that these variations
are neither idiosyncratic nor random; there are,
as anticipated, practical reasons why co-
operativization proceeded as it did in each case,
including variations among the villages in
ecology, ethnic composition, and internal social
• .organization. Furthermore, since the com-
munities we studied were selected as represen-
tative of classes of villages within the county,
we believe that their experiences with co-
operativization reflect the range of experiences
within the district.

It is clear from the writings of both
Romanian and other Communist theorists that
cooperativization is an economic and a political
policy. The economic goal is both to increase
production and to increase the percentage of
the harvest that can be diverted from local con-
sumption into the national economy. Political-
ly, cooperativization eliminates any power based
on private ownership of land, a power which
might be mobilized in opposition to socialist
goals. Strategically, the economic goals are
primary; in the long run production and ef-
ficiency will have to increase in order to sup-
port the growing number of people involved in
industrial development and urbanization.
However, these long-range interests are some-
times best served by tactics which, although
they may temporarily block increased product-
ivity or even reduce it, nevertheless remove
obstacles to socialist planning.
Our study of the cooperativization process
in County Bra§ov focuses on the strategy of co-
operative formation. Our tentative hypothesis
is that the priorities in this process were
political, and that the methods employed were
political rather than economic. The rural areas
of County Bra~ov were conservative, with each
village made up mainly of land-owning peasants.
The leadership in M~ndra was Romanian and in
Feldioara, Saxon, but both villages were active
before and during the,war in fascist politics
on the regional and the national levels; in
both, these leaders were removed when the
postwar government was formed. Many
Gypsies and even some Romanians in Feldioara
were deported to the Soviet Union, as was
virtually the entire Saxon adult population.
Poor villagers, including Gypsies, and
mountainers from hill villages in the
Carpathians settled on the Saxon estates. It was
this land which was consolidated to form a
cooperative. The remainder of the community,
made up of Romanian small-holders, lacked
local leadership once the Saxons had been re-
moved and more or less willingly formed an
~ntovdr~isire under the new party leadership.
In Mtndra, however, although the leaders
245
were arrested, their families and relatives re-
mained behind to work their estates, and all
land remained in the hands of the original
owners. The leaders were gone, but the network
of kin relations served to mobilize and unite
opposition against cooperativization. Resistance
continued until 1962, when the entire village
was organized into a cooperative by party
officials.
Other villages around M2ndra lacked its
internal cohesion, and internal political differ-
ences were used as the basis for cooperative
formation. In Ht"rseni, one faction made up of
less well-off peasants formed an ~ntov?irdsire
with party support. Once this was operating
satisfactorily, it became a springboard for the
formation of a village-wide cooperative.
Today, cooperative farms are an accepted
fact of village life, although, as David Kideckel's
essay indicates, problems in integrating the
sometimes divergent goals of the villagers and
of the technical and administrative hierarchy of
the farms remain.
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
Agricultural development in the county has
been substantially influenced by the industrial
and urban dynamic of this period. The cities of
Bra~ov and F~g~ras had some industry before
World War II, and there were a number of light
industries in towns and villages throughout the
area. Since the war the existing plants have
been considerably expanded, new industries
have been introduced, and a whole new
industrial city, Victoria, was created (see map),
Large apartment complexes have been built to
house the growing work force. Villagers have
been attracted to these new cities from all parts
of Romania. However, commuting villagers still
make up a significant part of the labor force,
and in some factories as many as one-half of
the workers commute to work daily.
The availability of industrial employment for
villagers has had a profound effect on the
organization of village life and on the operation
of the cooperatives. The overwhelming majority
246
of village men in their prime are employed full
time in industrial work in the cities and towns,
commuting daily; many women are also em-
ployed in industry. Obviously this has an im-
pact on the work force left in the agricultural
cooperatives. While the technical and. admini-
strative personnel may well be young. ~dult men
and women, the bulk of the agricultural labor
force is made up of middle-aged and older
women and older men. While the cash income
from urban employment is much higher than
for agricultural labor, the returns from work in
a co-op and from the household's own private
agricultural output remain important. (Each
household in a village has its own garden and
most raise a few animals; workers on the co-op
receive a good part of their pay in kind.) Rural
residence is thus attractive to many workers,
who hope to feed their families mainly from
village resources, freeing their salaries for the
purchase of other commodities and services.
The practice of workers remaining in the vil-
lage has recently become national policy. F o r
one thing, with many workers commuting from
the villages, industry can be expanded without
being limited by the rate of apartment construc-
tion. Following the most recent Romanian
Communist Party conference, the government
announced that the rate of urban growth would
be centrally controlled and that services to the
countryside would be extended. Between 300
and 350 villages are to be expanded into towns
and will serve as shopping, service, administra-
tive, and cultural centers for clusters of sur-
rounding villages. The plan, known as
sistematizarea, also includes the establishment
of industry throughout the countryside, with
an emphasis on those areas where industrial
development has faltered.
Feldioara is one of the communities selected
for expansion into a city, and Steven Sampson
has made this process the focus of his study.
City-building began in Feldioara about the time
our study got under way, and to date addi-
tional stores, cultural and administrative facil-
ities, and a few multistorey apartment com-
plexes have been constructed. At the same time,
changes in leadership, which reflect the growing
complexity of the community, are occurring.
Administrative personnel and enterprise
managers, formerly recruited from among the
local people, are being replaced by individuals
from outside of the community who are more
experienced and have received specialized train-
ing. Moreover, workers from other parts of the
country are moving into the apartments.
Relations between these newcomers and the
original residents of the village are not easily re-
solved by traditional means, and new tensions
arise as the old and new residents experiment
with ways of establishing and maintaining social
relationships.
ETHNIC RELATIONS
Less than 20 percent of the Romanian
people belong to one of the "cohabiting
nationalities," as ethnic groups are officially
called. Nevertheless, ethnic policy is critical for
the development of socialism in Romania. The
regime has taken the position that an ethnically
diverse population is not an impediment to the
development of socialism. It permits, and even
encourages, the cultural expression of ethnicity
while constantly reiterating the policy that all
n~ttionalities must work together to build.a
socialist state. Political action based solely on
ethnicity is not tolerated.
Enunciated in the name of Marxism-
Leninism, this policy is highly pragmatic. The
largest ethnic group is the Hungarian-speaking
minority in Transylvania. Although it only
amounts to approximately 13 percent of the
national population, here it often constitutes a
local majority. Romania and Hungary have long
contested the ethnically mixed areas in
Transylvania, and although the socialist
countries have agreed that present inter-
national boundaries are inviolate, Hungary main-
tains an active interest in the fate of the
Hungarian ethnics in Romania. A resurgence of
irredentism could pose a serious problem to the
Romanian state, particularly if an outside
power encouraged it in order to force Romania

into curtailing its independent course.
Ethnic policy also plays a role in the local
and international affairs of the two German-
speaking minorities, the Saxons and the
Swabians, which together make up less than
3 percent of the population. Romania's in-
dependent route to socialism also depends on
its ability to maintain active economic relations
with countries outside Eastern Europe, and the
most important of these at present is West
Germany (second only to the Soviet Union in
its volume of trade with Romania). Cordial rela-
tions with West Germany are in part due to
Romania's liberal policy toward the German-
speaking Romanians, which includes giving
them the right to migrate to join relatives in
Germany. A t the same time, Saxons and
Swabians are permitted to pursue their re-
spective cultural usages and to participate fully
in Romanian society if they choose. They are
on a par with Romanians on the cooperative
farms, and enjoy equal opportunities for educa-
tion and industrial employment.
Marilyn McArthur has made the impact of
these policies on the Saxon-Germans of
Feldioara the focus of her research. As her
essay shows, Romania's liberal policies toward
this group have pulled them in three directions
at once. One of these "pulls" is their eight-
hundred-year-old tradition of "Saxonness,"
their desire to preserve the identity and
integrity of the Saxon community. Another
stems from their respect for the benefits of
education and professional careers, which means
leaving the Saxon community to live in a
Romanian world. (The same is true of those
Saxons who take on urban employment because
it pays better than work on the cooperative
farm.) The third possibility, emigration to
Germany, where they know they will find a
higher material standard of living, has its own
difficulties. They will be marked by accent and
behavior as foreigners, regarded by many
Germans as inferior, and face widespread pre-
judice. This is not easy for a proud Saxon to
accept, and yet for those who fear the eventual
assimilation of all Saxons inside Romania, it may
247
be preferred. Some Saxons have opted for one
or another of these possibilities, while others
are attempting to keep several options open and
postponing a final decision. Meanwhile, the
fabric of Saxon social organization is being
worn thin and their survival as an ethnic group
is problematic.
The growth of socialism in Romania is having
a profound impact on social relations between
Saxons and Romanians. In the past the Saxons
were politically and economically dominant, in
Feldioara as in County Brasov at large. This re-
sulted in caste-like relations between the two
groups. Intermarriage was almost nonexistent
and everyday association, while cordial, was
distant, with Romanians traditionally showing
deference to Saxons. It is clear both from inter-
views and published sources that the Saxons
had a pronounced attitude of ethnic superiority.
Romanians, on the other hand, admired the
Saxons. They speak of how they have "learned"
from the Saxons, and Saxon practices have
been imitated by the Romanians.
Today, however, the national ideology is one
of equality, a message that is constantly con-
veyed to the Saxons in the schools and through
the media, and their former condescension to
the Romanians is criticized. Moreover, they
now work together as equals in the factories
and in the fields. Where Saxons in the past grew
up in a controlled social environment, they are
now constantly interacting with Romanians.
Higher education also brings Romanians and
Saxons together, but in a setting that is cultural-
ly Romanian. Taken together, these usages and
messages conflict with the Saxon ideal of ethnic
separation. From the Romanian side, such
liaisons are viewed more favorably.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
The process of socialist transformation in
Romania has radically altered the economic,
political, and social character of the village. One
aspect of this transformation has been the
eradication of social relations based on private
property. While this is particularly eviden~ in
248
our study of Saxon-Romanian relations, it is
also true in the Romanian villages. In southern
Transylvania there were few of the large landed
properties, villages of landless laborers, and
dwarf property holders that characterized much
of Moldavia and Wallacia, but enough variation
in property ownership existed to allow the
exploitation of villagers with little or no land
by those who had more. Redistribution of vil-
lage property after World War II reduced the
level of such exploitation, and. it has been
eliminated in villages where cooperative farms
have been formed.
However, new problems have arisen at the
points of articulation between the network of
social relations within the village and state
institutions. Officeholders in the agricultural
and consumer cooperatives and village admini-
strators have jobs that are clearly defined in
national statutes. As functionaries in a national
bureaucracy, they are responsible to officials at
the county level; at the same time, however, the
successful performance of their duties requires
cooperation from the villagers. Here a contra-
diction is encountered: as officeholders they
are charged with the impartial execution of
their duties, yet within the village cooperation
has always depended on degree of relationship.
Closer relatives, neighbors, or ritual kin were
favored over those more distantly related, and
in turn were more likely to respond to requests
for assistance. Officials therefore have to
balance traditional means of mobilizing support
with the use of the authority of their offices
and the rewards and sanctions which they can
mete out as agents of the state.
In the essays that follow there are many
examples of this problem, but it is presented
most fully by Sampson in his analysis of the
changes in leadership in Feldioara as the village
expanded into a city, and by Kideckel in his
discussion of the impact of the problem on the
structure and function of the cooperative farm
in H~rseni.
The elimination of class relations between
more and less propertied villagers and the
development of the present administrative
organization provide the most obvious
examples of the transformation of social rela-
tions within the villages. Although horizontal
social relations among villagers of equivalent
status show strong resemblances to those of the
past, there has been a profound, if less obvious,
transformation in the nature of these relation-
ships as well. The basic social unit in Romanian
villages is the household, sometimes consisting
of a nuclear family, sometimes of a lineally
extended family. These are knit together into a
complex web of activities, encompassing con-
sanguinial kinship, marriage, neighborliness, age
categories, and ritual kinship relations. The
entire structure in the past was predicated on a
system of peasant agriculture, which served as
the means for economic, political, and ritual
coordination.
It is often - and too simply - assumed that
a transformation in political economy will
automatically lead to a reduction in the number
of extended families, to a breakdown in the net-
work of relationships between families, and to
the eventual preponderance of independent
nuclear families. Our research indicates that the
process of social change in southern
Transylvania is much more complex. As Beck (in
the next issue) and Randall demonstrate for the
upland villages, and Cole for the lowlands, it is
the function of these relationships, rather than
the form that is altered. It is clear that the three-
generational household has definite advantages
under modern conditions; moreover, the net-
work of relations among families continues to
operate to the advantage of those members, and
the three-generation family provides a better
standard of living for its members than would be
the case if the household were divided into sub-
Units. At the same time, networks among house-
holds effectively serve to mobilize people for
economic, social, and ritual ends. Each
participant household can draw on others for
services that it could not provide out of its own
resources, and the social and ritual support that
the ensemble of families provides strengthens
its members in confronting the problems of
everyday life. These relations thus combat
alienation.

I t is also clear t h a t t h e socialist t r a n s i t i o n h a s
p r o c e e d e d m o s t s m o o t h l y w h e n t h e goals a n d
benefits of a particular plan have been under-
stood by the people, w h o have c o n s e q u e n t l y
b e e n m o b i l i z e d in its s u p p o r t b y e x t e n d e d
family consent. Conversely, m a j o r difficulties
have b e e n e x p e r i e n c e d w h e n t h e s e r e l a t i o n s h i p s
h a v e b e e n i g n o r e d a n d r e c r u i t m e n t h a s b e e n at-
tempted through impersonal bureaucratic
procedures.
CONCLUSIONS
A n even b r o a d e r t h e o r e t i c a l c o n c l u s i o n is in
order. The term " m o d e r n i z a t i o n " has been
e n s h r i n e d in t h e " v a l u e - f r e e " l i t e r a t u r e o n
d e v e l o p m e n t which the Western a c a d e m y has
created and supported. But the experience of
B r a s o v , a local m a n i f e s t a t i o n o f R o m a n i a n
d e v e l o p m e n t , m a k e s it clear t h a t " m o d e r n i z a -
t i o n " is b y n o m e a n s c o n f i n e d t o W e s t e r n as-
s u m p t i o n s , a n d t h a t it a l w a y s o c c u r s in specific
w a y s d e p e n d i n g o n t h e social s i t u a t i o n o f t h e
s o c i e t y u n d e r g o i n g c h a n g e , a n d o n t h e political
nature of the p r o g r a m being adopted. In short,
socialist m o d e r n i z a t i o n in R o m a n i a is n o t paral-
lel t o m o d e r n i z a t i o n u n d e r c a p i t a l i s t a u s p i c e s in
a n a l o g o u s areas.
DialecticalAnthropology 1 (1976) 239--250
© Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in The Netherlands
249
NOTES
1 Romanians avoid use of the terms "collective," "collectivize,'
and "collectivization" since their agricultural reconstruction
programs are not to be confused with policies elsewhere.
2 Romania is administratively divided into thirty-nine counties
(ludet~). Each of these is in turn divided into cities (ora#) and
communes (eomungi). Each commune consists of one or
(usually) more villages. Cooperative farms (CAP, or
cooperativ~ are usually coterminous with a commune, al-
though occasionally there will be two or even more co-
operative farms in one commune.
The former principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and
Transylvania (also called Ardeal) axe no longer administra-
tive units, but they are still used to refer to different parts of
the country.
3 The next issue of this journal will carry the articles by Beck,
Sampson and McArthur, along with an essay by Mihail
Cernea entitled "Macrosoeial Change in a Microcommunity
Mirror: The Society, the Village, and the Family System," a
Romanian perspective on the work of the Cole team, and an
essay on Marxist theory and practice by another senior
Romanian scholar.
4 The scope of the project was expanded in 1975 to include
villages in the vicinity of Bran.
5 In our group approach to this research we were initially in-
fluenced by the Puerto Rican project led by Julian Steward
in the 1950s, and have drawn further inspiration from the
models for cooperative research provided by Romanian
scholars.
6 Among'those who have been especially helpful in Romania
are Professors Heni Stahl, Mihai Pop, Romulus Vulcanescu,
Mihail Cernea, and Trian HTrseni.Joel Halpern contributed
much to the project by sharing with us his knowledge of
Eastern Europe, and with keen and useful criticism of our
work. Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider furthered the pro-
ject through discussion and moral support.
ACLA language grants brought two of us to Romania in
the summer of 1973. The 1974 research was made possible
by a Fulbright-Hays Senior Research Fellowship awarded to
Cole, and by stipends from the University of Massachusetts
Anthropology Department, European field training program.