ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

THE ROMANIAN LEGISLATION BETWEEN 1949-1952– AN UNCONDITIONAL BASEOF THE COLLECTIVIZATION PROCESSCEZAR AVRAMThe form of Soviet hegemony found in Romania, as in all other statesunder the influence of the Iron Curtain, was the existence of the unique party –the state party, and also the presence of the ideology imposed by the system ofphysical an psychological terror, the absolute control over the individual and thecommunity, the monopole over the institution of coercion – the party, theSecurity, the militia, the justice system, the centralization of the entire economyand the setting up of the socialist production relations in parallel with thenationalization or the seizure of private property.In order to attain the goal of “the soldier devoted to worldlycommunism”, docile performer of “the father of all nations”, General Stalin’sorders, the state and party leaders, made use of decrees, disposition and laws,through which any seizure, nationalization or expropriation, any brutal or illegalaction, any arrest or murder became lawful 1 .However wiling and devoted the PRM activists were, without thesupport of the law, the action of social homogenization and the setting up ofsocialism would have been less efficient and its result less powerful. The law asupport of violence has offered all participants a feeling of safety and solidaritywhile committing various aggressions and abolished all guilt in view of aneventual trial. Through a series of decrees with special destination, many ofthem kept secret, the delinquents that deserved penal sanctions becameprotectors of social order. The popular justice, with the special laws on the onehand and the Marxist and Leninist teachings of the Party on the other hand,became an accomplice to the repression of the peasantry to the destroying ofprivate property and the maintaining of the aggressive class struggle.The object of the legislation set up in the years of the coming to beingand consolidation of the new regime, was nationalization, expropriation, theseizure of the land, the extermination of a certain social category and thecreation of a lawful and ideological support for the class struggle. The goal wasthat of the policy and the whole, that of maintaining the power of the communistparty, particularly the power of the small elitist group at the top of the hierarchy.1 Cezar Avram, Politici agrare în Oltenia anilor 1949-1962. Muta ţii socio-economice înstatul românesc, Craiova, 1999.ARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p. 93–104