REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

206
Remembrance in Time
unprecedented scale. This way, in 1951, there were seized 0,5 ha land possessed by each
nun in part, the community only possessing 11,55 ha of land, whereof 8 ha arable land,
0,8 ha vineyard and 1,35 ha orchard [24]. The fields close to the nuns’ houses were
drastically reduced, rendering impossible the maintenance of every dweller in part, but
also of the churches and household facilities.
By 1952, the news was disseminated that after liquidating Tabăra nunnery, only the
carpet-manufacturing workshop will keep on operating, managed by president Isai
Vasserman, a Jew, one of the first initiators to close the nunnery. Among the nuns,
there also were some willing to continue the activity in the carpet workshop, such as
Vera (Garştea), Xenia (Donescu) etc. The president of the workshop stated without
reluctance that he would banish from Tabăra monastery any nun that would not
apply for entering the carpet-manufacturing workshop and respectively giving up
monastic life [25].
We notice that the opened workshop, through promoting libertinism, disobedience
towards the management of the monastery etc., had an anticipated goal, namely to lead
the monastic community to the idea of the necessity for the self-liquidation of Tabăra
nunnery. The pride of this workshop, the famous Moldavian carpets, were well known
and appreciated in the country and abroad, standing for a genuine historical-artistic value,
therefore they opted for keeping the monastic workshop.
Under these circumstances, we bring information on the workshop from Tabăra
monastery, which was placed in a monastic facility, at 10-m-distance from the monastery
and 20-m-distance from the abbey.[26]. Until 1952, between the abbey administration
and the workshop management, an agreement was signed whereby only the monastery
inmates could work here and the raw-material deposit was placed outside the monastic
complex. However, in 1952, the president of the workshop modified the convention,
enabled co-opting within the neighbouring village dwellers, he installed the radio, which
much upset the abbess. In line with the aforementioned, the bishop Nectarie was to decide
whether to liquidate the village workshop or to close the monastery. In the case of
liquidating the former, the carpet-weaving workshop within the monastery would have
remained without raw material, whilst its production was deemed the best in MSSR,
being highly searched.
In 1954, in the hope of paying all taxes and delivering some products even beyond
the workload, the nuns from Tabăra thought they would not share the same fate with
the monasteries already abolished at the time [27]. However, on January 1, 1955 the
monastery fields were diminished again, reaching only 9,46 ha land, whereof 7,44 ha
arable land; 0,82 ha garden and 0,89 ha vineyard [28]. The monastic land had been
secularized; therefore some nuns were summoned to work at the local carpet factory.
We notice, in this context, that the economic choking was a major measure in the
monastery-liquidation process. In 1957, the commissioner on church issues P.
Romenski had come with proposals as regards the diminution in the use of the land
by the monasteries, pursuant to whom the land significantly diminished, the lands
being unconditionally ceded for the benefit of the local kolkhoz. Thereby, Tabăra
nunnery was entitled to use only the land within the perimeter of its yard [29].