Análisis de las entrevistas

So how did these new political and economic arrangements influence villagersÕ relations and worldviews? To start with, at a very general level, a reality that was documented by different studies across Romanian villages and that was found rooted in the policies of the communist regime was the deterioration of social relations (Gilberg 1979; Mungiu-Pippidi 2002; Mihăilescu 2013; Șișeștean 2011). The cohesion of rural communities was gradually eroded by the new work regime imposed by the communist party. Since most villagers were dispossessed of their lands, the system of mutual support for agricultural works became obsolete (idem). The case was slightly different in uncollectivised mountain areas, where people still helped each other when the time came for scything and haymaking and maintained a somewhat higher degree of unity. However, factories nurtured new contexts for socialisation and villagers formed new networks and relations that disembedded them from their local neighbourhoods (Mihăilescu 2013). Moreover, changes in the village administration and the persecution of local elites had a gradual but long-lasting impact, even in these more remote mountain areas. In the new order of things, status and financial rewards were no longer given on the basis of being hard working, educated or enterprising, but on the account

21

A telling indication are local statistics showing that forty years ago in Albac households had, on average, 1 or 2 rooms which were inhabited by 10 or even 15 people, while at present there are 5-6 people living in an average of 3-4 rooms (Berindei and Todea, 2010:43).

of oneÕs willingness to implement Party policies. Added to this was the permanent suspicion and fear that oneÕs neighbours might be Party informants. The Party encouraged people to denounce any unruly behaviour observed among their fellow villagers. This became a handy tool for managing conflicts and some even resorted to false accusations against their opponents. The actual grounds of the claims were not so important for the authorities as was their contribution to the undermining of social trust and unity (Mungiu-Pippidi and Althabe 2002:42). In Nucșoara, a further incentive for denouncing others, came with the fact that the lands of people who were imprisoned were redistributed among other villagers (64).

The regimeÕs failure to provide the promised economic prosperity, coupled with its administrative inefficiencies and corruption, nurtured resentment and opposition among most Romanians (Gilberg 1979:115). Analysing official documents of the Communist Party, Gilberg found telling evidence for the resistance and reactions of the peasantry to the regimesÕ policies (idem), concluding that

the peasantry has withdrawn into a shell which insulates its members from the mobilization efforts of the activists, and in this process, the family and the village have once more become the social universe of the average peasant, while consciousness of the larger society and its needs and requirements is inadequate or lacking (Gilberg 1979:116).

The epochÕs documents also present accounts of corruption, seen both as a survival from previous political regimes, and a consequence of more recent inadvertencies of the system (117). Gilberg argues that old worldviews have largely persisted among the Romanian villagers without giving way in the face of the new values promoted by the socialist regime. Moreover, the contradictions and tensions between these two different outlooks and the socioeconomic reality were found to be the source of new values and practices (117-118). One of these new developments was that villagers started to recongise an informal hierarchy that placed at the top Ôthe most ingenious members in the community in terms of extracting value from public agencies in return for minimal servicesÕ (Gilberg 1979:116). Another consequence of the systemÕs shortcomings was that Romanians could not develop a genuine concern for ÔpublicÕ space or for collective resources (Mungiu-Pippidi and Althabe 2002:15). In theory, resources were supposed to be collective and belong to Ôthe peopleÕ, while in reality they were under state control, a control increasingly perceived as illegitimate. Consequently, whatever happened outside

oneÕs household was not seen as the realm of a ÔpublicÕ good, but rather as the stateÕs domain. Since this was a monopolist and totalitarian institution, people felt entitled to reclaim and appropriate some of its resources, whenever the channels of the informal economy allowed them to do so.

Overall, changes in Romanian rural society were so profound that some describe it now as a Ôpost-peasant worldÕ (Mihăilescu 2013; Șișeștean 2011), arguing that peasantry disappeared during communism, transforming into the hybrid category of farmer-worker (Șișeștean 2011:2) or peasant-worker (Gilberg 1979:100), a group that shared new worldviews, underlined by a growing individualism, where standards of achievement are based on income and on competition (Șișeștean 2011:2). Compared to the rather conservative traditional peasants, contemporary villagers are more flexible and willing to adapt and change their strategies. This, Mihăilescu argues, is a trait shared by Romanians in general, and it is a consequence of the fact that they are no longer relying on long-term expectations (Mihăilescu 2013). Villagers from the uncollectivised mountain regions have retained and indeed accentuated their individualism and their self-reliance during communism, and there is indication that this made them better prepared for capitalist pursuits in the new economic order of post 1989. Discussing peasant strategies in the context of development projects, Mihălescu found the inhabitants of the mountain and hilly villages to be more profit-oriented, as opposed to villagers from the plains who have a tendency to reproduce poverty (Mihăilescu 2000:11).