The Interwar Romanian Village

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The Interwar Romanian

Village, a Terra Incognita


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The Interwar Romanian Village, a Terra IncognitaIonut Butoi

ACUM 2011, vol. 5, nr. 1

Introduction
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The leading agronomistA lapidary statement made by Vulcanescu in the conference Peasant Household and Capitalist Economy givesa first clue of the method differences existing in the monographic research of the economic life of the Romanianvillage. Citing the monograph from Cornova, a Bessarabian village of free peasants, Vulcanescu argues,

intending to give the example of specialists in agronomy that failed to understand how the village operates

economically:In this system we understand so little the intimate mechanism of peasant household, just like the agronomistfailing to understand how peasants agree to plant unprofitable corn, when they may plant other species, more

profitable. This is characteristic and is repeated in other areas. Thus, a leading agronomist, set down in a

Bessarabian village which had only 75 plows for 353 households, immediately concluded: backward village. Infact, through a system of exchange, labor and inventory, the 353 households ensured the best use of the 75

plows. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 657).Nicolae Cornateanu also participated in the Cornova campaign and he was the leading agronomist that

Vulcanescu referred to. According to H.H. Stahl, Cornateanu began to participate in monographs from the

campaign from Fundul Moldovei (Stahl, 1981),

Nicolae Cornateanu. Sursa foto: tulcealibrary.ro

therefore almost at the same time when Vulcanescu changed his research field for the economic life.Described by Stahl as a well-known specialist, one of the major figures involved by Gusti in his projects,

Cornateanu was working at the Institute of Agronomic Research, Department of Rural Economy; within these

institutions, he coordinated studies on the Romanian agriculture profitability. For him the most significantproblem is the organization and profitability of peasant households. Profitability was calculated by accountingthe revenues, expenses, performance, earnings and production costs from the peasant household; such

calculation was made according to rules set out in international agriculture congresses. The peasant was seenas an employee of his own household; the accounting included the holding wages, namely the wages to be

paid for the work done by the family, counting those who workpermanently in the holding, as the holdingsservants (Cornateanu, 1935: 10).

The research of the Rural Economy Department was carried out by training the selected peasants in keepingcomplicated accounts; the peasants were periodically checked by inspectors of regional divisions. Of course
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there was a high dose of mistrust on the accuracy of the data obtained by such method, both because the

accounting system was not familiar to the peasant thinking and because there were doubts about their willingness

to provide economic information about their household. Therefore the monographic campaigns represented for

Cornateanu a special opportunity to exploit his method of measuring the household profitability, because theaccounts would be kept, this time,by specially trained people, students or members of Gustis team who had tocalculate if the household had a surplus or deficit budget, that is, whether the income exceeded expenses or not.

The personnel from the Rural Economy Department has collaborated with the seminar in the monographiccampaigns from Fundul Moldovei, County of Campu Lung Bucovina, Dragus (Fagaras), Runcu (Gorj); Cornova(Soroca). (Cornateanu, 1935: 4).The peasant household income was of several types:

the agricultural income, i.e. the difference between the gross income and expenses of the holding; net income isthe interest of the capital invested in the holding. Not the interest to be paid for the capital, but the interest

resulting from the production process. The interest to be paid for the capital invested in the holding is the ideal

net income and the difference between real net income and ideal net income is called net income difference.(Cornateanu, 1935: p33).

The labor income had to be researched too, beside the net and agricultural income:the difference between agricultural income and the interest to be paid for the net capital (net assets) invested inthe holding. When the labor income is negative, it is far from providing sufficient profitability (Cornateanu,1935: 35)

The application of this method gave surprising results. According to his studies, comparing similar analysismade in other European countries, the peasant household was among those with the highest net income,

comparable with those recorded in Denmark, Germany or Switzerland, countries that had an appreciable level of

rural development and far from that of Romania, while in the agricultural production we were on the last places;

moreover, there was room to boost peasants to intensify their work. Another paradoxical result was that althoughhouseholds were profitable economic units, the same households failed in large part to support themselves from

their own production:

all holdings (studied A/N) of 19331934 give positive agricultural income. Not all holdings give budgetarysurplus, in other words the agricultural income can not cover and ensure the peasant familys existence in allholdings. Thus, out of 159 holdings studied, 63 are deficient, which means a rate of 33%. (Cornateanu, 1935:106).

In fact, the same accounting method was used by Cornateanu to measure, on the one hand, the holding

profitability in purely economic or technical terms (i.e., the net income issue) and, on the other hand, its social

viability: if the household manages to survive from its production. It is what the agronomist called thesociological dimension of the research, or its social aspect. Consideration of the social aspect was used as a

weighting of the technical results that could have led to devastating conclusions for the small peasant propertyfrom the interwar, as acknowledged by Cornateanu: for example, the peasant household profitability couldserve as a pretext for not applying the law of debt conversion, considered by the agronomist to be a problem, not

of the small property, but of the great holdings which, according to his calculations, were less profitable than the

others!

The sociological method of household profitability, applied in monographic research, was defined as follows: In order to reach thebudgetary surplus or deficit of the peasant family, we must take into account, on the onehand, the agricultural income and the income from related undertakings or side work; on the other hand the food

costs (housekeeping) and the familys private costs. The difference gives us the family surplus or deficit.(Cornateanu, 1935:105).

The calculation of these family budgets was performed in all the campaigns attended by the agronomist, but they

were integrated and nuanced by the broader framework of household economic analysis inspired by Vulcanescu.In purely technical and economic terms, the agronomist concluded that the small property of about 5 ha was

clearly superior to other forms of agricultural holding (especially large property and fragmented property),

requiring only a superior, rational organization of the same, consisting mainly in reorienting agricultural crops to

other products than grain or encouraging households to raise livestock. Comparing several households of the

same level and with the same composition but different gross income, Cornateanus conclusion is harsh: theirdifferentiation as profitability is a technical issue, the first work rationally, the last work worse. Such a discrepancy between social and economic was explained by Cornateanu by the minimuminvestments that the peasant made in his own household, by the poor quality of the inventory and buildings(which did not require maintenance costs) and often by undernourishment or, in any case, poor nutrition. The

paradox of profitable but starving household, whose only fault is lack of rationality and backwardness, putin question the accuracy of the method for calculating the households economic profitability and, moreover, thelegitimacy of the economic perspective used by the agronomist. Thus, all this calculation assumed that the

peasant household is an agricultural holding similar to a capitalist undertaking. As we have seen, the peasants


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were equated with employees of their own household and a number of economic categories specific to the

market economy are used: capital, rent, wages, interest, profit.

Or, in the field, the household looks completely different. As the research in Cornova show, for example, often

not even money, an essential element of modern market economy, played a decisive role in the economic life ofhouseholds. In drawing up the budgets, the monographic School members had to make approximate equivalence,

estimates and assessments in order to monetarize its economic life and the performance made by its members,

seen as employees. The lack of activities theoretically deemed profitable, such as possession of certain animals,was often the result of a very accurate and rational calculation, adjusted to the household possibilities.

Peasant family economy and the monographThe discrepancies and after all, the lack of relevant budgets made by Cornateanus method in the monographiccampaigns is the subject of Vulcanescus criticism in the aforementioned conference. Such criticisms even havesome polemic radicalism:

That Romania is a country essentially agricultural and that we are a country of peasants is a truism that all oureconomic publications multiply over and over again. What this means in terms of economic life forms, nobody

knew until 1928; and ever since, about eight people know it. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 629).Further, Vulcanescu believes that, in the rural economy issue,

brilliant agronomists, economists and very exceptional historians passed by, without even suspecting the issue,their eyes were so distorted by what they had learned about the peasant economy in the foreign teachers books,

regarding the peasant in the same way as any other economic matter in general, endowed with a general typicalpsychology, pursuing, like any economic man, maximum utility with minimum effort, abstractly accountingfor all his household expenses and being guided in his economic activity by the latest circumstantial

information. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 630).

More specifically, the greatest

misconception of these specialists, including the leading agronomist, was that they saw a capitalist undertaking

in the peasant household. The peasant household, far from being a capitalist undertaking is a life community ofa family, namely, of a marriage and its direct descendants, and of the elders of the previous generation. Thus,the peasant household is fundamentally constituted on another structure and knows other categories, completelydifferent from those of the capitalist undertaking. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 635). The peasant household is not onlystructurally different; its economic logic does not know the concept of profit, which is not a goal for the

economic activity. The purpose of the peasant familys economic activity is to cover the familys consumptionneeds and the required intensity of work is crucial in weighing the utility brought by the means of achievingsuch goal. The result is that in the family household, the net income formula has no significance (Vulcanescu,2005: 656).

In a more systematic way, we can find elements of this view on how to properly investigate the peasant

household in its economic dimension, with the campaign from Runcu (1930), when Vulcanescu makes a reportthat has been published only posthumously and quite recently. In this document, the goal of the monographic

research on the village economic manifestation dimension is to determine the type of economic structure in

a typology whose extremes were the autarchical village on the one hand and the village economicallydependent on the general economy on the other hand. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 609). However, this morphologicalapproach was doubled by Cornateanus method of calculating the peasant households profitability, which
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caused difficulties for Vulcanescu in coordinating the field teams and data collection practice. Thus, we find that

the monographists teams intended to collect economic information made cash assessments of all the peasanthouseholds economic activities in order to subsequently draw up the family budgets. A problematic operation,Vulcanescu notes, because on the one hand, an economy which was largely non-monetary is monetarized and on

the other hand, a number of economic information irrelevant for Cornateanus method is left aside. Therefore, the monetary accounting of peasant households led to poor coverage of data collection by the

economic monographists team, which is especially harmful to research as, with regard to such information,peasants were very reluctant to provide real data, hence complex questionnaires were needed in order to verifytheir authenticity.[1]

Therefore, Vulcanescu will complete the necessary information from the data collected by the biological teams;

relevant were the amount of work done by peasants and food consumption. Intensity of work, household

production and consumption are considered economic information for which data collection work must be

provided, and the choice of these indicators follows precisely the vision influenced by Ceajanov on the economic

specificity of peasant households, where the ratio between the peasants work and its usefulness is essentially,that is, the extent in which it covers the familys consumption needs. The budgets drawn up by Cornateanusmethod were not eliminated, but integrated as quantitative elements of the research, in a wider theoreticalresearch plan.The new method is implemented at Cornova, the next stop of Gustis monographs. Among the conferencesorganized by the Romanian Social Institute there is one held by Mircea Vulcanescu, entitledStructure of the

Economic Village Life; there are no remaining written sources from this conference, but the operating modeforeseen by Vulcanescu ever since Runcu can be reconstituted from other research reports left behind the

Bessarabian village monograph. Thus, in the study Contributions to Research of a Peasant Household fromCornova Village conducted by Ion Zamfirescu, in the part called EconomicAspects, the working hours

provided by the family studied are carefully detailed; there are also recorded the working hours in their

household in their own benefit, the side work (in other households) to supplement their income and the partof this work that can be calculated in money. There is also data for food consumption and for other necessaryexpenseshousing, light, heating, clothing, hygiene. The family budget estimating the gross income, expensesand deficit is also integrated in the comprehensive case study, however nuanced by the observation that

cash money played a relatively insignificant role or, in any case, unequal in the history of the household we aredealing with. We can not speak about the first money within the meaning of an initial cash fund, used forsetting up this household. (Gusti, 2011: 189).It is a remark which follows directly from Vulcanescus economic view, according to which the peasant

household can not be equated to a capitalist business, as the basic elements of such type of economy are lacking:money and initial capital.

The result of the research had to lead the observer to conclusions about the pattern in which the household

worked and to capture its moment of development or social change. The extreme ideal types of peasant

household, similar to those defined for the village, were the autarchical ones (that managed to support their

needs through the work done on their properties), also called patriarchal or closed, natural, and thoseapproaching the capitalist model of agricultural undertaking. For the said case study, the researcher notes:

the household studied is at a point of development where the rigid autarchical framework is broken [...]. Themarket category appeared in the household economy, without being supported by a proper mentality, which

stops us from believing that this is however the closest precise form of development, which we should say we

tend to, taking into account life and its current issues. (Gusti, 2011: 197).Another monographic study of Cornova, this time signed by Xenia Costa-Foru (Monographic Study of SeveralTypes of Representative Families) contains a subchapter devoted to the economic life. Here the purpose of

research is more clearly formulated, specifying that there will be tested the hypothesis that the household isclosely linked to family and is a social unit different from the economic undertaking. The test method consistedin an inventory of people and goods and obtaining data on the family work; the relationship between such work

and the goods obtained formed the output or benefit that the household obtained from its own work. Thefamily budget also fitted in this research stage of output verification, but drawn up based on a method morecomplex than Cornateanus, performing income distribution by expenses and by people. We witness here acomplete change of logic of the budgetary method, which sought to calculate the households profitability:namely, try to obtain a ratio between its alleged income and the necessary expenses; however, something else is

intended by the outputcalculation, namely, as Vulcanescu shows elsewhere, the perfect balance between itseffort (work doneA/N) and the benefit gained from it.This working method remains constant, at least when Vulcanescu helped develop the monographic research

plans of Gustis school, as evidenced by a document from 1940 published in the collective volumeGuidance forthe Sociological Monographs. Entitled Plan for Peasant Household Research, it provides a research based on

the same inventory of people and goods, on labor, consumption, and on testing the hypotheses about the natureof the household: to what extent is the household a family social unit or economic undertaking, to what extent
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does it approach the closed family model or that of the organization separate from family, which are trends of the

undergone changes.

It is important to note that Vulcanescu used the family or peasant economic theory as a hypothesis, not as a

thesis steeply applied to reality, like a procustian bed that retains only what fits the theory and leaves the rest outof the sociological inquiry and research findings. The notes of his researches and reports, and of those

investigating the economic life of villages under his coordination, are descriptive findings of the peasant

activities or mentality confirming the hypothesis. We can see the effort to attempt a description within theresearched subject, in order to capture that something, which otherwise remains hidden to the external observerespecially when the latter belongs to a different social world, self-perceived as advanced, civilized. Theagronomist Cornateanu acted completely different, applying his budgets regardless of the context of the research

topic and its internal structure, uninterested in how peasants were thinking, but rather seeking to make them use

the same accounting system as his own.

In conclusion, the village economy was understood by detailed research of the peasant household, a social unit

identifiable with the family, characterized by a particular social and economical structure and functioning in its

own economic, non-capitalist logic; the household was also integrated into a complex of collective relations andactions which formed the village community. The Romanian village knew this structure in different degrees,

depending on the type of available resources (agricultural land, forests, water) and, especially, on the extent to

which it was influenced by the market economy. The research effort involved a complex data collection method

that would make it possible to photograph the moment of social change of the household/village. This was not

easy to do.[2]Therefore, a dynamic sociological approach without being, at the same time, positivist orevolutionary.

Eastern alternativesAfter having identified a conflict between the personalities involved in the monographic campaigns in terms of

the best research method of the economic dimension of the Romanian village, we will move to a higher levelin this part of the paper: the interwar context of the debate about the agricultural nature of the Greater Romania

and the special place held here by Mircea Vulcanescu and Gustis School.The main source of Mircea Vulcanescu for the peasant household approach was the Russian economist

Alexander Ceajanov. His research comes from a return to peasants movement, very representative for theEastern countries, facing the problem of a vast

Al. Ceajanov

majority of the population living in rural areas, perceived as marked by backwardness and poverty. Beyond the

literary aspectsvery present in our country tooin Russia, long before Gustis monographic campaigns, thereturn to peasants took the shape of multiple and exhaustive researches of zemstvos, of peasant settlementsestablished after the release from serfdom. Economists, sociologists, statisticians, agricultural experts were

heavily involved in the clearing of a terra incognito that the village used to be by then. Following such research,no less than 4,000 volumes of data and information were supposedly gathered.[3]As for the economic research,
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Ceajanov led the processing of such data to the level of a complex economic theory with multiple implications:

both in relation to the peasant household and village analysis method and in relation to the macro-economic

systems.

Regarding the peasant household research method, Ceajanov found that the classical Ricardian scheme based on

wages, rent, profit and interest can not be applied to the households economic activity because wages aremissing and the work of its members can not be equated to benefits similar to wages. The Russian economist

draws the conclusion that we are dealing with a fundamentally different economic structure in which there are noconcepts and practice of profit, wages and income, but a balance between work intensity and meeting the family

needs. This balance was actually a subjective evaluation based on experience in agriculture of todaysagricultural generation and of the previous ones. That is the micro-economic household theory that we sawimplemented and tested by Vulcanescu in Gustis monographic research as well.Structurally different from the capitalist economy, with its own economic categories, the peasant household

makes Ceajanov reconsider critically the Marxist theory of social change. The class differentiation likely to

occur in rural areas is not essential, says the Russian economist, but the differentiation caused by the

demographic process. The population growth leads to reconfiguration of small peasant holdings, which are inconstant change as the needs of the household, always contextually different and determined by a number of

factors related to the actual circumstances in which they are (in monographic research such factors were given,

for example, by the type of crop allowed on the agricultural land, the proximity or distance from a city center).

Based on these observations, Ceajanov also develops a macro-economic theory, criticizing both the theory of

classical capitalist economy and that of Marxism. The existence of economic structures different from thecapitalist ones makes the Russian economist deny a determined evolutionary course of historytowardscapitalism and/or socialism. There are, in stead, typical economic forms that can coexist. Ceajanov counts 4 such

forms, some historical, others simultaneous: capitalist, slave, communist and family economy. Family economy,

encountered in the peasant household may be of subsistence or market-oriented. According to Ceajanov, it is

necessary to know these different types of economic systems, because they are of more help in properly

understanding the local realities, than the imposition of a procustian model to peripheral areas

we must take as unquestionable fact that our present capitalist form of economy represents only one particularinstance of economic life and the validity of the scientific discipline of the national economics as we understand

it today, based on the capitalist form and meant for its scientific investigation, cannot and should not be

extended to other organizational forms of economic life. Such a generalization of modern economic theory,practiced by some contemporary authors, creates fiction and clouds the understanding of the nature of non-

capitalist forms and past economic life. (Chayanov, 1966, 25).

Capitalism and agrarianism in the interwar RomaniaDespite the similarity of problems, as the interwar Romania is a country with 80% of the population in the ruralareas, Ceajanovs reception was marginal, which is valid to this day. Moreover, in general, the Russianeconomists reception had no impact in Europe or the U.S.; only in Japan he became manual reading at some

point. But we note this poor responsiveness, including in our country, despite the fact that he became, however,

known among authors like Virgil Madgearu or Mircea Vulcanescu, as something significant for a certain attitudewidely shared by the academic and political elite of modern Romania: namely, the perception of the Romanian

village and peasant as backward, poor social and economical forms of existence, which can not form a

civilizational alternative but, on the contrary, require actions for modernization, education and civilization

carried out mainly through the state.

Backwardness and poverty of peasantry in the interwar period were also connected to a phenomenon that arose

perplexities among the elite: despite the fact that Greater Romania experienced one of the most extensive landreforms in Europe, and peasants were granted land that previously belonged to big landowners, agricultural

productivity declined drastically, which directly affected the state budget, in a critical period in the which

expenditures had increased enormously, in proportion with the new extent of the national territory, with foreign

debts and government programs aimed at industry development. Obviously, the explanation for this poor

economic performance was also related to peasants backwardness and primitivism. In addition, the phenomenaof population growth in rural areas, closely linked to small property fragmentation, questioned even the relative

stability achieved by the land reform.

Agent of modern Romania development: the

bourgeoisie or peasantry?Liberals dominated the political and economic life in certain continuity with the policies of the era before the

war, focusing on national industry development and a domestic banking system. The main doctrinaire of pro-liberal historical theories, Zeletin, believed that this program reflected some objective social and economical

changes, initiated in the 19th century with the opening of the Romanian Principalities to international trade (by


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the Treaty of Adrianople). Through his theories, Zeletin argues with the theory of forms without substance

brought by Titu Maiorescu, representative of the prewar conservative movement. Far from being only

institutional forms imported by a deliberate and revolutionary political act, the changes and policies pursued by

forty-eighters and liberal governments meant, for Zeletin, different stages of a binding course and reflections ofspecific social structures: from the commercial capitalism of the first opening to the world market, towards the

industrial (when, in the late 19 th century, the liberals introduce protectionist policies for development of the

domestic industry) and the financial capitalism.These stages of development were considered analogous to the Western capitalism evolution; modern

Romania necessarily had to continue gentrification and

St. Zeletin

elimination of the last remnants of rural traditionalism. But, unlike classical liberalism (which had its stage in

the first period of modern Romania), neoliberalism, in full compliance with the intellectual developments of thetime, believed that capitalist modernization was a matter of organizationand yet, state organization[4].Therefore, the capitalism agent was no longer the individual, but the state itself, called and legitimized as the

only authority able, through organization, to lead to progress the latent social and economical developmentstructures. Moreover, Zeletin considers justified the creation of bourgeois oligarchy in the second half of the

19th century, precisely because it organized production and thus, played the historical role of the progressive

ruling elite.

We can see a functionalist-positivist view on the state, society and individual, claiming the need for a strongstate to regulate the functions that different social groups have to play in a course which is historically deemed

binding and progressive. As for neoliberalism, the state is supposed to be the development agent of bourgeoisie,

with industry and national capital as main objectives.

Similar in its functionalist mindset, the alternative to this view, coupled with specific policies pursued by the

National Liberal Party, was the peasant conception, which provided the same solutionorganization of societyand economy by the statebut on a social base other than cities and bourgeoisie: peasantry. The peasantalternative was regarded as a third way, not in terms of a Hegelian synthesis between bourgeois capitalism and

proletarian socialism, but as a specific variant of the East European agricultural societies.

Virgil Madgearu challenges Zeletins thesis in the same social history terms; he shows that the emergence ofcapitalism does not lead inexorably to poverty and misery of peasantry. In fact, the contact between the agrarian

society and capitalism leads to differentiated results, based on the land ownership regime existing in that society.

Peasantry not only does not disappear, but, where allowed, through the regime of small agrarian property and

through intensive agriculture, is a special social trend (Madgearu, 1936: 30). Far from becoming an appendage

of capitalism, in an agrarian society, peasantry becomes the main reservoir of authentic development of national

industry that, due to peasants prosperity, will have a sale place in the domestic market. More than that: there is atypical peasant economy, different in its laws from the capitalist one. Here comes in the question the theory of

Ceajanov, the Russian economist, which Madgearu uses to complement his land-based evolutionary thesis. Even

when coming in contact with the capitalist economy, the market, the economy practiced by peasants remains in

the same categories. Thus, the need for cooperatism was founded: as peasants organization to access the marketby controlling credit and trade routes.
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Madgearu goes further with the investigation of the poverty and misery causes. Since structurally, not only that it

was not sentenced to extinction, but it was the only way to develop modern Romania, then, the explanation for

its condition was in the modernization program of the aristocratic oligarchy. Partly taking over Ghereas socialistcriticism about the neo-serfdom where peasants had been kept, Madgearu reinterprets the great reforms of the19th century in a deconstructive key. Thus, the modernizing oligarchy was not the bourgeois class, as Zeletin saw

it, but nobility, which sought to use the Western legal and institutional frameworks in order to perpetuate its

economic and political domination over the peasantry. Indeed, the Treaty of Adrianople opened the RomanianPrincipalities to the world trade, on which occasion the boyards were able to see how economically efficient was

the grain export. So efficient, that all the legal and institutional changes that arose from that time were attempts

of this social class to compel peasantry to become cheap labor force for export.

V. Madgearu

The land reform initiated by A.I. Cuza, for example, was seen as a way in which peasants were pushed todependence on big landowners; their legal release was fictitious and subsequently canceled by the obligation

(imposed manu militari) of nvoieli (pacts between boyards and peasantry) (Madgearu, 1936: 88). Allsubsequent stages of the modernization program of the 19 th century are interpreted as measures to promote the

interests of a narrow social group, disguised as the bourgeoisie: the first laws and institutions on agriculturalcredit are favorable to big landowners and lessees, not to peasants; the creation of modern infrastructure

(communication routes, institutions, post) which also caused excessive external indebtedness, paid by the grain

export, thus by harsher living conditions of peasants; protectionism for its own industry, which mainly affected

also the wide sections of peasantry; creation of NBR (National Bank of Romania) and other national bankingstructures, under the control of the same group. In short, Romanias capitalist modernization agenda by theruling elites was denounced by Madgearu as a systematic exploitation program of peasantry in order to

perpetuate their own privileged positions and to develop their own businesses.

Contemporary research shows that this criticism has its substance: in its debunking approach on the boominginterwar economy, Murgescu shows that the village, very important as a producer of grain for the export, has

been consistently and systematically disadvantaged because the ruling elites intended to develop cities and

industries. (Murgescu, 2010: 272). Vulcanescu also takes over this criticism of the modernization program, thus

describing the real objectives of the liberal government: Liberals do not forget that the essential purpose ofpolitical domination is to acquire economic advantages through the state organization (Vulcanescu, 2009: 245).Madgearus intention was to provide atheoreticalfoundation for the agrarian development path of the interwarRomania and, specifically, for the alternative that the National Peasants Party wanted to crystallize as opposedto that of the National Liberal Party. The studies in which he exposes his ideas and criticism of neoliberalism

were presented in public hearings at the Institute of Social Studies led by D. Gusti: the same place where Zeletinused to lecture. Chronologically, he is situated in a turning point for the interwar history: the end of domination
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of the Liberal Party and beginning of the Peasants Party government (1924 -1928). Therefore, the impact of suchcriticism was echoed at the time, as part of a wide current of public opinion, increasingly challenging the liberal

government, seen as an abusive and authoritarian dictatorship.

What to do with the peasantry?We continue this digression in order to better frame the contextual relevance of research that Gustis followers

bring in the interwar debate on the development of modern Romania and the peasants issue. We also had amovement of return to peasants or to the village, but at least until Gustis campaigns, it had a rather theoreticalnature, either literary-historical, or ideological. In fact, such a village appraisal concealed a perfect ignorance of

its specificity and, often, a contradictory contempt for peasants, similar to that shared by representatives of the

liberal movement, for whom the agricultural nature of the country was a historical impediment.

Symptomatic of this divided attitude of the interwar academic elite is the ignorance of the deep social realities of

rural environment which is shown, for example, by a great philosopher, such as Lucian Blaga. Known for his

attempts to develop a Romanian philosophy, he launched a famous formula, eternity was born in the village,representative for the idealist-romantic genre of village appraisal. However, H.H. Stahl shows in a series of

critical articles of the philosophers approach, Lucian Blaga believed that the Romanian villages were locatedjust meaningless, and the sizes of houses were built as a simple consequence of the hill-valley subconscious

style. However, Stahl shows that, far from being devoid of rationality or built out of obscure subconscious

impulses, the Romanian village was one of the most carefully developed systems of social life. (Stahl, 1938:

108)

A.C. Cuza

Even more obviously, the ideological defenders of peasants also shared the same contempt and the same view of

primitive and uneducated peasant, an irrational being with uncivilized way of life. Thus, the famous professor

A.C. Cuza, mentor of the radical movements of the interwar nationalist right wing, after listing the abuses of the

predator system of peasants, in several critical studies of the modern state, carried out in the late 19th

century,also believed that

a producer with such primitive means as our peasant, who has not learned to spare his strength and to abstainfrom vices, who does not know his interests and has no foresight, who has not even learned to get dressed and

feed better (Cuza, 1930: 295).And, although he criticizes the way in which the modern institutional structure was a tax burden on villages, the

conclusion of this figure of the Romanian reactionary conservatism is surprising:

the principle of the current organization is superior in all respects to our former political organization (that is,the modern state of the forty-eight elites compared to institutions of the old regimeA/N) lets face that our

people did not have the qualities required to be at the height of the principle. In other words, we lacked the

culture suitable to such high organizational frameworks. Fundamental mistake: they released peasants (fromserfdomA/N) without giving them the necessary instructions. (Cuza, 1930: 277).In fact, Cuza insisted that the peasant must be civilized especially through education and the school was seen as

a panacea for all problems that burdened the villagewhich is an idea of Enlightenment origin par excellence. Aperspective partially shared by A. Golopentia, years later.
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Nicolae Cornateanu had the same paternalistic-superior vision towards peasants, even if, theoretically, he was

also a supporter of small peasant holdings. Thus, what could be more suggestive than a statement like this:

when the small landowner will become a true peasant, as in the West, then of course the disproportion betweenthe big landowner and the small landowner will disappear. (Cornateanu; 1935: 102). Basically, the sameattitude as A.C. Cuza, who believed that peasants were released without being educated enough to play their new

role: for Cornateanu, the plowman was ignorant and unorganized, lacking the knowledge necessary for advanced

agriculture, which makes the agronomist believe that the land reform was carried out in a hurry. (Cornateanu,1930: 14). This time, the gaps were not only related to the inadequacy between institutional form and domestic

fund, but to the fact that agricultural productivity had dropped after the reform. As a result, Cornateanu

demanded that the Romanian peasant should get rid of his own views and think like a capitalist. (Cornateanu,1930: 10).

A state capitalism with agricultural accents, the same author asking the state to limit and interfere with the

peasants property rights in order to organize agricultural production according to their needs. The model for thiskind of legislation was the National Socialist Germany that strictly regulated the peasant property regime, the

first obligation of peasants becoming the nation supply. To this end, the law limited succession in order to

prevent property fragmentation and discourage rural population growth. Ideally, Cornateanu notes, the number

of peasants should be small, matter pursued by the German law and expected to be desirable for Romania as

well, where it would have been important to develop a smaller number of peasant families (Cornateanu, 1935:125). A peasantry whose function is to supply the national economy through export and agricultural products

raising domestic production, strictly regulated and organized by the state through the Institute of Rural Economy(where our agronomist was working), embracing a new capitalist mentality, and applying real recipes fororganizing agricultural holdings (Cornateanu, 1935: 131), here is the program of the leading agronomist.Another example is found in one of the Peasants Party doctrinaires, namely the associate professor from Iasi, G.Zane. Visibly influenced by the most important theoretician of the Romanian agrarianism, Virgil Madgearu, he

believes that the state suitable to the social status of the Greater Romania and of the true social and economicaltrends is the peasant state (Zane, 1936: 12). Capitalism, in the authors view, is about to give way to other formsofeconomic development, among which the peasant form, in Romanias case. Just like Cornateanu, Zaneadvocated a strong state, limiting the property rights (Zane, 1936: 28). The main obstacle to this social and

economical trend and to achieving the peasant state was the peasant himself:the sometimes unparalleled millenary poverty and lack of culture of our villages darkened the peasantrysconsciousness, planted in its soul resignation and disbelief. Thus, the political development process of peasantry

is fatally delayed. (Zane, 1936: 41).

Or, as he wishes to clarify right from the start:The idea of the peasant state can easily evoke the current poverty and lack of culture of peasantry. Such a stateform can be easily imagined as a retrograde form of our society and raise well-founded hostilities against it.(Zane, 1936: 12)

Therefore, backwardness, poverty, darkness, peasants who, just like the proletariat in the Marxist-Leninistideology, are themselves powerless in fulfilling the laws of social evolution and who would require, if notprofessional revolutionaries, then at least an enlightened elite to lead them to agricultural progress, throughthe big state.

If peasantry was seen this way by its ideological supporters, what expectations should we have of its opponents?

For Zeletin, the great reform would have led to peasants enrichment (!), thus become a kind of brutal andinsulting social upstart:

the war turned him overnight from a semi-serf into a master, without an extended culture which would planthim, as preparation, the masters spiritual qualities. Therefore, what happened was natural: fear, the external

support of the civic quality in inferior nations disappeared from our peasant, but was not replaced with theinternal support, given by culture, namely, the consciousness of dignity. Therefore, in the absence of external

barriers, the primitive spiritual background of the new master emerges without any restraint. (Zeletin, 1927: 65)In his view, this turning point would have led to the disappearance of rural traditionalism from its last redoubt

(the social one, i.e. the Romanian village, was already missing due to the emergence of capitalism since the19th century): urban intellectuality, characterized by a troublesome rural romance. The verdict given by Zeletin in

the peasants issue is drastic: Romanias future lies in the development brought by cities and in the form of state-organized and required capitalism, preached by the state and partly experienced in modern Romania. Peasantsneo-serfdom and impoverishment was inherent and desirable: compel the peasants to work, in order to learndiscipline of the uniform work, provided by everyone in the bourgeois regime. (apudMadgearu, 1936: 89).Anton Golopentia, a chief representative ofGustis School, provides a much nuanced approach to the Romanianvillage. However influenced by the prevailing views at the time of the peasants return (Nicolae Cornateanu andA.C. Cuza are among the cited sources), Golopentia believes that peasants instruction or literacy is a crucial

factor in their modernization, devoting extensive studies to this research topic. The rural development model,as in D. Gusti and many others, is the Scandinavian or Northern European village, where the ideal of peasantrys


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Peasant village: a distinct social worldThe Romanian village is a world in itself, wrote Vulcanescu in 1929 in a text forRealitatea Ilustrat(Vulcanescu, 2005: 508). A world characterized by a high degree of self-organization by its own rulesexperienced in time and passed on. That is, by the community phenomenon, the favorite research topic of

another prominent member of Gustis School: H.H. Stahl, who also considers that the village was a terra

incognita by the way in which its problems were discussed and the main rural reforms were performed.Essential, says Stahl, isthe central image of a free-standing social being, that of the village community, foundation of our entire socialstructure, to which the boyards, free peasants and serfs are equally bound, by a social mechanism dominated by

the laws of being of the community. (Stahl, 1946: 22).Stahl does the same exercise of criticism of the forty-eighter and liberal type modernization as Madgearu, saying

that Cuzas reform from 1864 brought anarchy in theRomanian village. The same effect is also assigned to the interwar land reform. Therefore, tackling one of the

main problems of the peasants issue peasant property fragmentation after the great interwar land reformStahl points out to the same major error of governors: in the appropriation process, the former ownership,specific to the village with common ownership, was not taken into account:

our appropriation village is not a private property village, but a village with common ownership, starting fromthe agricultural pastoral social structure towards an organization on several strip grounds, however interrupted

and anarchized through haste and lack of skills, to put it mildly, by those who carried out the land allotments.(Stahl, 1946: 284-285).Basically, both the intellectual and the ruling elite referred to the village as to an unshapely mass, lacking

substance, which must be given a human, civilized face. However, the reality on the ground is completelydifferent:

our rural stratum did not live apart from certain types of society, was not built from individuals dust, eachliving in isolation, based on certain principles of law but it was placed in certain forms of social life.Therefore our attention must leave previous concerns and set on these organic assemblies existing in our country

(Stahl, 1946: 30).In this context, taking over Ceajanovs theories in the interwar academic debate becomes relevant not only tocombat Zeletins neoliberal theories, as does Virgil Madgearu, or to highlight a kind of third way betweencapitalism and socialism, but to contrast two approaches of the Romanian village: a paternalistic-modernizing

way, indifferent to the social and rural economic structure, marked by an evolutionary view on history and

functionalist-positivist towards the state, individual and society, and one that may be called realistic-domestic,that sees in the village asocial worldthat contains both a special structure and a world with its own meanings.That is the difference between the reading made by Vulcanescu to the Russian economist, compared to that of
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Madgearu. As we have seen, the last shared the vision of historical evolution, even if unique, specific to

agricultural countries, but understood through various successive phases of social development. Vulcanescu,

however, is much closer to the original theses of Ceajanov, who denied the evolving nature of the economic

systems, focusing on their coexistence:

therefore, there is no unilinear and fatal evolution of the social life [...] pushing all countries in the sameformation paths, guiding them through the same stages to the same ultimate life form. The social life contains

only a divergent plurality of forms arising from all the living conditions of each existing society [...].(Vulcanescu, 2005: 692)

Furthermore, the existence of a personal economic structure

and a mentality specific to peasant households (details are shown above) gives other meanings to the whole

discussion about overpopulation, low agricultural productivity and other shortcomings of the village. Unlike

those who envisaged, as the sole explanations for these problems, either the lack of education or the lack of truepeasant mentality (as in the Nordic countries) or the lack of new technologies, Vulcanescu shows that animportant role is also played by the householders special way of assessing the economic advantage(Vulcanescu, 2005: 790) and the arrangements used by the village community to organize the communaltradition and work. Regarding the reduced productivity, another illustrative example of superficial judgment shotdown by Vulcanescu is a journalists criticism of peasant agriculture because in some county the wheat croplands had declined by 10 times. In fact, Vulcanescu explains, peasants had replaced the wheat crop with other

crops (barley, corn), and it was an adaptation of agriculture to peasants consumption needs and not to theexport needs, which are not theirs. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 652).But the productivity problem was also related to the fact that the profit concept was unknown and unpracticed inthe peasant household:

the organization of work (household A/N) is not based on the principle of obtaining gain, but of a differentkind of economic organization, which Aristotle called and we now call natural economy, which lies in

subordinating production to consumption. The household works to cover consumption needs, not to gain.(Vulcanescu, 2009: 154).

Thus, on the one hand, the logic of peasant economic activity is to intensify work until it manages to cover the

family needs and, on the other hand, until it reaches the living standard decided by the communal life of thevillage. (Vulcanescu, 2009:169). Thus, the agriculture technologization solutions may fail if their purpose was to

raise the overall agricultural production because, Vulcanescu draws the attention, peasants may prefer to reduce

their activity, being helped by machines, rather than to make the same effort for a greater production.

(Vulcanescu, 2005: 642). Similarly, the idea of raising the peasantrys living standard may entail, in turn , its ownperverse effects. Being applied by artificial consumption stimulation, it may lead to loss of the ability to adaptto difficult living conditions that the household used to have, or to entering a circuit of meeting the factualneeds created by advertising suggestion. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 644).
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All these punctual criticisms are part of a broader conservative vision that describes another type of neo-serfdom

the capitalist type, expressed by the peasantrys dependence on intermediaries (to the big markets) and banks.Capitalism, says Vulcanescu, exploits peasantry indirectly, leaving the ownership structure intact. It is enough to

make the agricultural producer dependent on the ways to reach the market and attach him to improper creditpolicies whereby he gets to pay to the new masters almost all or even more than the old tithes. In fact, as a

referent at the Ministry of Economy, Vulcanescu showed that the credit policies used at the time for the

peasantry led to the strong crisis during the Great Depression when, amid the collapse of agricultural prices, debtpayments by the peasants, bankrupt by the economic context, was likely to lead to serious social unrest, which

made governors implement the debt conversion solution, exempting peasants from loan payment. In order toavoid such situations, especially since the conversion iteration was unlikely, Vulcanescu shows that the credit

forms available in agriculture were not suited for the recipients needs, but were credit forms of the formerregime, ill-adapted to the post-reform situation. They were suited for the major agricultural holdings and lessees,not to the peasant holding, which was however required to provide high production and high living standard.

When the peasant household resorts to credit, shows Vulcanescu, it is not in order to increase production or

profit, but to maintain a natural balance between its elements: family size, extent of land, inventory. Therefore,the available credit forms were totally inadequate, advantageous for a large agricultural holding, but for the small

household they meant

servitude, peasants dependence on banks. It is a question that many did not think of, if peasants manumissionby boyars and their appropriation was made so that ten years later peasants should find themselves again, for two

generations, slave to masters and banks, that would steal from their work and land production a rate higherthan the tithe that the boyar used to take [...]. If this had to be the appropriation result, we should admit that itwas only a vain disturbance of our entire economic life. (Vulcanescu, 1930: 15).Of particular interest here is the way in which the ideas spread by economists, sociologists and agronomists

influenced the interwar public life and the specific policies and practices applied to the Romanian village. Both

the definition of peasantrys problems and the solutions proposed, if derived from a hasty and superficialdiagnosis, were likely to contain not only perverse effects but also to justify more subtle operating ways of the

rural population under the pretext of Greater Romanias modernization. In the imagination of the ideologicalsupporters of peasantry, a land reform was sufficient to generate northern type model villages, with prosperous

peasants and modern farms. In the absence of such course, the blame was placed on the peasantrysbackwardness and primitivism, and the solutions were covered by the same register of state modern action:

legislative measures, tax policies, machinization of agriculture, capitalist education of peasants, theirmobilization through cultural education actions, in all sorts of collective activities and in raising the living

standards demands. There was the risk of entering a vicious circle whereby, in the lack of results of thereforms, the intention was to apply the same ineffective remedy, even harmful by its collateral effects. Allthese measures could be used to remedy deficiencies in agriculture, and some of them (especially the corporate

solution) were also supported by Vulcanescu. The starting point was essential here, the pre-judgment from which

came these solutions which, if applied without being adapted to the realities on the ground, they risked being

deprived of the expected effectwhich the best case.The prospect brought in this debate by some members of Gustis School, such as Vulcanescu and Stahl, wasdeep and referred to the content of social and economic life of the village as well as its historical paths, ignored

or considered irrelevant by the academic and ruling elites. The existence of common ownership forms or the

family economic logics of peasant households were social life phenomena that generated typical


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events, incomprehensible for the

countrys leaders. They were the remains of afunctionalsocial world, in which tradition did not mean a body offolk, picturesque traditions, or symbolic items of clothing and nutrition, but a complex lifestyle, a certain social

and economic order in which natural resources were managed together and the agricultural activities necessary

for subsistence were organized rationally, carefully and adapted to the local/family needs. The peasants povertyand backwardness was not the biggest problem, but the very disappearance of this diffuse tradition, as Stahlcalls it. And the modernization applied by the liberal elites, and not only, to rural Romania, a world totally

different from the urban Romania in Vulcanescus view, did nothing but to crumble what sociologists today callsocial capital which, once gone, is hardly restored, if it is restored at all.

The dissolution of the social world of the traditional village is described by H.H. Stahl in lines touched by lyrical

notes, though, as an ideological orientation, he was close to socialism:

after starting the dissolution, everything changes. () The individualism appears and a generalLet he who

can, save himself of these old members of a community to new horizons opened by the possibility of individualundertakings. Thus, all the old allies become hostile. Geographical conditions become insurmountableobstacles, while they used to be only protective crenels. The habit of living together puts lead in the wings of

individualities about to be born. Traditional economy is weak in providing the capital necessary to investment

for modern technical operation. The old common law, too simple, allows abuse and fraud, collective

administration does not protect the weak. Confusion begins. (Stahl, 1939:392).The old orders were not made for the capitalist brave new world Vulcanescuwho also notes in his research observations the dissolution or transition from the old world to thenew onemakes a strong contrast between the village world and the modern world:peasantry defends not only an economic status, but also a true outlook on life, a hierarchy of values, aconsciousness, and moreover, a form of civilization! City dwellers may despise it, in the haughtiness of their

struggle for comfort and technical progress. They can prophesy its destruction. But they can not take away its

integration, more natural across the cosmos than the industrial man; neither the ultimate truth, whichat least I

firmly believe itit may own in the human species attempt to find a form of life which better suits the idea ofhumanity, peace of mind and happiness, than the hybrid, perverse and completely monstrous form of the urbanand industrial life. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 669).Of course, we are dealing here, in Vulcanescus case, with a reactionary option in the ethical sense which, infact, he was fully aware of, marking the limits between the sociological and ethical argument in controversies.

However, I have shown in this research that the interwar debate on economic issues had serious cracks, not as

much between the Liberals and the Agrarians camps, as the Romanian interwar period is commonlydescribed, but between those who, either supporters of the city, industrial capitalism and modernity, or of the

peasant property and agrarian capitalism, identify in peasants the villain and the cause of syncope in Greater

Romanias development, and those who, through sociological research instruments, discover a distinct socialworld which, indeed, is dying out. But the biggest problem, in their view, was precisely this phenomenon.

A current debateThe relevance of these divergences on one of the fundamental issues of modern Romanian historythepeasants issue lies not only in bringing to the surface some internal contradictions of Gustis School and of theinterwar academic elites. The social problems as such are related to a current topic. Besides the fact that in


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todays Romania, much of the rural households are still practicing subsistence agriculture and the fact that, justlike in the past, the mainstream discourse of the academic and ruling elites is to blame the inefficiency,

backwardness and historical retardation of the native people, compared with the infallibility of the European type

neoliberal modernization project, in the current discussions of social science there are some theories where

Vulcanescus and Stahls old-fashioned research becomes significant.These are the theories of social capital and path dependence and the research carried out by Elinor Ostrom on the

commons. The capital, that body of informal rules shared by members of a community, as shown by authors likeFukuyama (Fukuyama, 1999: 8-26), is a necessary precondition for any collective action of cooperation,

including the economic ones. Rather than a mentality which is standard and abstractly defined as capitalist, this

fund may determine the efficiency of institutions and human actions. In the absence or disappearance of social

capital, the reforms, modernization and the developed society building through state action, often takes theoutline of a utopian attempt to translate an abstract prototype into reality. This happens in the happy case wherethe reformist agenda does not hide, in fact, a strategy of monopolization of economic resources in its personal

benefit, as the Romanian forty-eighters and liberal elite was accused of doing.

Beyond the social capital, the peasant matter also raises the issue of economic systems and their universal

validity. Taking over Ceajanovs theories about the peasant family economy, Vulcanescu rejected thegeneralization of capitalist economic categories and the mentality of an abstract and invariable homoeconomicus (Vulcanescu, 2005: 631), considering this process, first of all, an epistemological mistake throughits one-sidedness (Vulcanescu, 2005: 726). The recent research led by Elinor Ostrom about how some

communities (in fact, most of them are rural areas with traditional coexistence rules) manage to deal with scarcecommon resources (such as water) challenges precisely this theoretical model of the tragedy of common goodsand prisoners dilemma, according to which, cooperation between people in such conditions is practicallyimpossible, because it is not a rational choice for those involved, and the only options to avoid a violent anarchy

are either Leviathan (or the state) or the market (privatization). (Ostrom, 2007: 15 -43).What do the theories about social capital and the commons have to do with the Romanian village and the Eastern

peripheral modernity? The diffuse tradition and the community life that H.H. Stahl wrote about, superimposedon a personal, peasant type of economy, in which common resources were managed, tailored to local realities,topic of the research undertaken by Vulcanescu, formed that capital without which, no matter how great the

financial capital is, the society has no consistency: the social capital. Once crumbled, destroyed, reformed,these particularly sensitive social realities that form the fabric of a society gave way to an atomized, nihilistic

society (as Golopentia feared), lacking autonomy and therefore easily subject to servitude, be it dressed in

German clothes.

BibliographyCorneanu, Nicolae (1935), Cercetriasupra rentabilitii agriculturii rneti, Ed. Monitorul Oficial iImprimeriile Statului, Bucureti.Corneanu, Nicolae (1930),Reforma agrar i gospodria noastr agricol,Editura Cartea Romnesc,Bucureti

Cuza, A.C. (1933), Studii economico-politice (1890-1930),Ed. Casei coalelor, Bucureti.Fukuyama, Francis (1999), The great disruption. Human nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, ProfileBooks, London.


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Golopenia, Anton (2002),Opere complete, Vol. II, Ed. Univers Enciclopedic, Bucureti.Gusti, Dimitrie (1938), Plan de aciune pentru 1938,Sociologie Romneasc, nr. 1-3.Gusti, Dimitrie (1938), Participarea satelor la organizarea rii, Sociologie Romneasc, nr. 4-6.Gusti, Dimitrie (1938), Starea de azi a satului romnesc. ntiele concluzii ale cercetrilor ntreprinse n 1938de echipele regale studeneti,Sociologie Romneasc,nr. 10-12.Gusti, Dimitrie i colaboratorii,Cornova 1931, Editura Quant, Chiinu.

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Murgescu, Bogdan (2010),Romnia i Europa. Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500-2010), Ed. Polirom,

Iai.Otrsom, Ellinor (2007), Guvernarea bunurilor comune. Evoluia instituiilor pentru aciunea colectiv,Ed.

Polirom, Iai.Pop, Mihai (2010), Vreau s fiu i eu revizuit,Ed. Paideia, Bucureti.Rostas, Zoltan (2009), Strada Latin nr. 8,Ed. Curtea Veche, Bucureti.Stahl, Henri H. (1981), Amintiri i gnduri din vechea coal a monografiilor sociologice, Ed. Minerva,

Bucureti.Stahl, Henri H. (1946) , Sociologia satului devlma romnesc, vol. I, Fundaia Regele Mihai I, Bucureti.Stahl, Henri H. (1938), Filosofarea despre filosofia poporului romn,Sociologie Romneasc,nr. 4-6.Stahl, Henri H. (1939), Nerej. Un village dune region arhaique, vol. III, Institut des Sciences Sociales de

Roumanie, Bucureti.Thorner,Kerblayand Smith (1966),A.V. Chayanov on The Theory of Peasant Economy, Homewood, Illinois.

Vulcnescu, Mircea (2005),Opere, Vol. II, Ed. Univers Enciclopedic, Bucureti.Vulcnescu, Mircea (2009),Spre un nou medievalism economic. Scrieri economice,Ed. Compania, Bucureti.Vulcnescu, Mircea (1934), Creditul agricol pe termen mijlociu, Tribuna Financiar, nr. 15.Zane, G. (1936), rnismul i organizarea statului romn, PN, Biblioteca de Educaie rneasc.Zeletin, St. (1927),Neoliberalismul, studii asupra istoriei i politicei burgheziei romne, Ed. Pagini agrare isociale, Bucureti.Zeletin, St. (2005),Neoliberalismul. Studii asupra istoriei i politicii burgheziei romne,Ed. Ziua, Bucureti.

[1] Here is how Vulcanescu explains this: The work of the economic team is not like other teams

work. It does not capture manifestation as it occurs, but three quarters of its work consists of reconstitutingmanifestation as it occurred. Therefore, the main element of the research is the economic conversation

(discussion: not in the sense of sociological discussion but current conversation). It happens, however, thatunlike other areas, where peasants converse freely, as soon as you dredge up economic matters, they frown and

shut up, or answer anything you want, but the truth. And yet this truth must be pulled on the spot. (Vulcanescu,2005: 612).

[2] Vulcanescu notes in a few notes on the economic life of the village Dragus, saying three years had

passed since he had last seen the village: compared to the speed with which things here change, for some time,it is a lot. (Vulcanescu, 2005: 778).[3] I took the information in this subchapter from the editionA.V.Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant

Economy, ed. D. Thorner, B. Kerblay, R.E. F. Smith, Illinois, 1966, especially from the introductory study

signed by D. Thorner, Chayanovs Concept of Peasant Economy and from the study of the Russian economistin the same edition, On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems.[4] Zeletin quotes John A. Hobson as an authority; an economist who proposed a constructiveliberalism in which, unlike the classical one, the state plays an important role. Please see St. Zeletin,

Neoliberalism, Ziua Publishing, 2005.

[5] It is interesting how the members of Gustis School positioned towards the model village ideapromoted by Gusti especially during the Cultural Student Teams and Social Services. If the reactionary Mircea

Vulcanescu rejected ironically (and discreetly) the idea of artificially replicating an organic way of life par

excellence, Mihai Pop, another leading member of the school, believes that Gustis project has the flaw ofblocking the social change marking the Romanian village. Pop considered that the Romanian village entered a

process of dismemberment of the old structure that was already in the final phase, and such a model villagewould be served only to fix the old forms of rural life, an illusory and deeply wrong attempt, according tothe famous anthropologist. (Pop, 2010: 366).
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The Interwar Romanian Village

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