The Soviet experience between 1920 and 1930 helped the leaders of the Eastern European communist states in the late 1940s and early 1950s to adopt complex strategies in order to attract the widest possible segment of the population possible to the new regime’s side, or to at least ensure a neutral attitude from the part of the most important social categories, such as the peasants. The active presence in the rural world of political organizations which were formally autonomous but closely linked to the communist parties customized the collectivization of Eastern European states to the Soviet Union, where the massive collectivization was done under the supervision of the Communist Party exclusively. Another feature, illustrated on the basis of this case study is that, considering the Soviet experience, the Communist parties from Eastern Europe used propaganda in the process of collectivization of agriculture. The Ploughmen’s Front represented the strongest and oldest front organization comrade of the Romanian Communist Party. The main task of this organization was to implement the Communist ideology in the country-side, facilitating the process of communization of the Romanian villages, where the Communists were extremely unpopular. The article focuses on the manner in which the Ploughmen’s Front was involved in the collectivization of agriculture in Romania.
After the establishment of the communist regime in Romania after World War II, the Communist Party concerned with coaching of some office workers who had two important tasks: to ensure the understructure of a party that was on a path of development, and to disseminate the communist political ideology to the population. The role of educating those „aparatciki” belonged to the schools of cadres. They were created after the Soviet model with Soviet instructors in the beginning and they became the fundamentals of the party education in Romania during the 50’s. The schools of cadres were established and functioned in Romania not only within the Communist Party, but also within the organizations of the most important “fellow-travelers” (comrades) in the period 1944-1953: The Ploughmen’s Front. This case study analyses mainly the foundation in 1948 and the organization of the first schools of cadres of that political peasant party, which had over a million members at that time. The main task of the schools of cadres was to create an increasing number of party propagandists who had to implement the communist ideology into the rural world with the aim to facilitate the process of communization in the Romanian villages, especially in those ones where the communists were very unpopular. In this article we analyzed issues as: the leading structure of the schools of cadres, the politics of recruiting students, the program and the mission of the schools of cadres and also some shortcomings which were identified by the leaders of the Ploughmen’s Front. The entire activity of organizing the schools of cadres of the Ploughmen’s Front, as well as the contents of the education process, took place under the guidance and control of the Romanian Communist Party.
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