Author: I. I. MARINESCU

Moscow, Nauka Publishing House. 1974. 240 p. The print run is 1000. Price 79 kopecks.

In recent years, a number of works by Soviet and Romanian scientists devoted to the subject of the book under review have been published. The monograph of Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior researcher of the Institute of Slavic Studies and Balkan Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences T. A. Pokivailova is a generalizing study of this important problem. The author traces the difficult path of the Romanian peasantry from small individual farms to large-scale socialist farms, analyzes the preparation of conditions for cooperation, shows the economic conditionality and socio-economic prerequisites for the emergence of the first production associations, their formation and development.

The fragmented small peasant farms of old Romania struggled in poverty and want; the agrarian reform of 1945 strengthened the position of the working peasantry, but in itself could not free them from exploitation and improve their living and working conditions. T. A. Pokivailova gives a scientific justification for the periodization of this process, shows the forms, rates, and methods of the transition of the Romanian peasantry to socialism, the class struggle in the countryside, and its nature, and notes the mistakes and omissions that took place in the process of cooperation. The author was able to determine the attitude of individual groups of peasants to various forms of production cooperatives at each stage of cooperation, to identify the main features and specifics of this process in Romania.

Having highlighted the main features of the agrarian policy of the Romanian Workers ' Party (RRP), its organizational and political work during the initial stage of industrial cooperation (1949-1953), T. A. Pokivailova shows that the turn of the peasantry to the social economy did not occur immediately. After the March (1949) plenum of the RRP Central Committee, the main focus was on collective farming, the highest form of industrial cooperation. In this connection, the author notes that "insufficient attention to intermediate forms of production cooperation in the context of the preservation of private ownership of land by peasants in Romania to a certain extent hindered the process of cooperation, narrowed the opportunities for joining cooperatives of various social groups of the peasantry, especially the middle peasant, who kept away from collective agriculture" (p.83).

Considerable attention is paid in the book to the organizational and political work of communists in rural areas, the activities of trade unions of agricultural workers, and mass public organizations. The People's Government provided economic assistance and organizational support to collective farms. At the same time, "carried away by the creation of collective farms, party and state bodies sometimes forgot about the variety of possible forms of transferring agriculture to socialist lines" (p.92). A significant part of the peasants were not ready to join the collective farms, but showed a keen interest in forming various associations for the use of tractors and agricultural machines, expressing a desire to unite their lands for this purpose.

Unfortunately, the initiative of the peasantry did not immediately receive all the necessary support. The September (1951) plenum of the RRP Central Committee noted that underestimating the various forms of labor associations of the working peasantry is one of the main mistakes in the party's work on building socialism in the countryside.

Thanks to the state assistance to the peasants, the large organizational and explanatory work of the RRP in rural areas, the number of agricultural associations increased, and the process of strengthening collective farms developed. However, certain difficulties arose in the autumn of 1953, mainly due to the fact that the acceleration of the rate of collectivization in previous years led to the emergence of weak collective farms, which could not demonstrate the advantages of public production over individual production. In 1953-1955, farmers mostly joined agricultural associations rather than collective farms. The book contains a lot of factual material that confirms that industrial cooperation in the Rooms of-

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Up to 1959, the research Institute mainly operated through lower forms of cooperation, such as agricultural partnerships, which helped the peasants gradually join collective labor. The characteristic features of the period 1956-1958 were the development of cooperation in breadth, the turn of the peasantry to the path of mass cooperation through lower forms of production cooperation.

The book notes that Romania's close cooperation with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries contributed to the successful solution of complex problems of collectivization of agriculture: supplies from the USSR, which helped to create the material and technical base of cooperative agriculture in Romania, exchange of scientific achievements, practical experience, seed material and breeding cattle, scientific information, cooperation of scientific and technical specialists in the field of- research institutes, assistance of Soviet agronomists in organizing planned varietal seed production. The abolition of the system of mandatory deliveries of most agricultural products was also possible thanks to the help of the Soviet Union. In the first half of 1957, the Soviet Union supplied Romania with 450,000 tons of grain and 60,000 tons of fodder on preferential terms. This made it possible to avoid difficulties in creating state funds for agricultural products and interruptions in the supply of food to the population (pp. 158-159).

The Soviet Union's cooperation with Romania and its assistance in industrializing the country, creating mechanical engineering, and setting up the production of mineral fertilizers accelerated the creation of a material and technical base for cooperative agriculture. The first steps were taken in establishing domestic production of agricultural machinery and implements. During the first five-year plan (1951-1955), 16 agricultural machinery plants were built in the Russian People's Republic (p. 164). However, during this period, Romania was still forced to import a significant number of agricultural machinery. The most important condition for the mass conversion of the Romanian peasantry to collective farms, which began in 1959, was the creation of an appropriate material and technical base, which, in turn, was associated with the state's investment policy. Considerable assistance was provided to the cooperative peasantry through state farms. Against the background of the extremely backward material and technical base in the past, the efficiency of investment in agriculture in Romania was quite noticeable and was of great importance for the successful development of collectivization. The experience of socialist construction in Romania, the author points out, once again confirms the decisive role of the proletarian state in the socialist transformation of agriculture (p.177).

In each country, the process of collectivization showed its own characteristics. In Romania (as opposed to Bulgaria), for example, such type of cooperation as production cooperatives with rent is not widespread. According to the author, this is primarily due to the fact that they appeared 7 years after the beginning of cooperation, when collective farms and agricultural partnerships were widely spread in the country and gained popularity among the peasants (p.146).

The Third Congress of the RRP in June 1960 put forward as the main task the completion of collectivization in Romania. In the summer of 1961, collective farms were consolidated in many regions of the country. The author notes that the expansion of the collective sector was only one aspect of collectivization. The second, no less important aspect was the organizational and economic strengthening of farms, creating conditions for each of them to ensure a constant increase in gross and marketable products and the material well-being of members of agricultural cooperatives. Political work among the peasantry contributed to the strengthening of the rate of collectivization. The plenum of the RRP Central Committee held on April 23-25, 1962 stated that the collectivization of the peasantry was completed in the country - 3 years ahead of schedule. This was a decisive success achieved by the Romanian people with the fraternal support of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Pointing out its international significance, the author writes that industrial cooperation in Romania, as in other countries of the world socialist system, once again confirmed the universal significance and vitality of Lenin's cooperative plan.

The research conducted by T. A. Pokivailova is based on a large amount of factual material, archival sources, including

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It includes materials from the archive of the Ministry of Agriculture of the SRR and statistical data. The book's merits include a well-reasoned critique of anti-communist views on the socialist transformation of agriculture in the countries of socialism. At the same time, there are some shortcomings in the work. Thus, speaking of the transition of the peasantry from small-scale individual farming to large-scale social production, it should be more clearly shown that this transition took place in Romania without the nationalization of land, which naturally affected the forms, rates and methods of cooperation. The work sparingly shows the process of raising the level of culture and everyday life of rural workers during the first 15 years of people's power. The author's statement about the abolition of the system of mandatory deliveries of most agricultural products within one year (1956) is inaccurate (p.158). As rightly noted elsewhere in the book (p.156), this abolition began on January 1, 1957. There are also inaccuracies in the tables (p. 43, 88).

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