\nPhoto: Andrei Mărgulescu<\/strong><\/p>\n
The Questions<\/p>\n
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The collectivization of agriculture in Romania took place between 1949 and 1962, as a mandatory, abusive process, marked by arrests, deportations, loss of human lives. It was designed as part of an objective of installing Communism, namely that of creating an entirely new society, a dictatorship of the proletariat. The failure was complete, and the dramas of peasants being left without all their belongings was overlapped by a long period of poverty and then the post-’89 chaos in agriculture. The disastrous economic effects were doubled by a social rupture, which has not healed yet. Nowadays, questions are many, and not all have been answered:<\/p>\n
Where do the people’s distrust, their suspicion, the farmers’ reticence to associate come from?
\nWhy is the public space, instead of being seen as belonging to all, considered as belonging to none?
\nHow have our cities been affected by the estrangement of peasants, moved to blocks of flats overnight?
\nHow much of the relativization of theft is rooted in the Communists’ official lies?
\nHow have ‘local lords’ (regional politicians of huge wealth and power) come to be?<\/p>\n
Beyond the political, historical and moral investigation, these questions, asked by Iulian Bulai, the initiator of the Romanian Museum of Collectivization, attempt to discover relationships between the Communist past and its sequels in contemporary society. The museum as a place to better explain the present we are living in – we found this to be a good bet when invited to work on this project. To Iulian’s questions, we have added our own, the Zeppelin staff’s ones: How can one tell a story of a difficult and traumatic past, so that it should truly reach the visitor? And do justice to the topic, inasmuch as possible? In any case, not to do any injustice.<\/p>\n
Tămășeni<\/strong><\/p>\n It was to his family’s home in Tămășeni that Iulian – son of Ioachim son of Bulai – returned, after many years spent abroad, to create the Museum of Collectivization. It all started from his questions, as well as from the heated discussions on claiming property, nationalization, CAP (Agricultural Production Cooperatives), Communists and kulaks, that he had witnessed in his home his entire childhood. In the museum, Ioachim becomes the character telling, from his own and others’ experiences, the story of the family and of the peasants in Tămășeni and in the neighbouring villages, as it actually happened along over 100 years. In 1949, when collectivization started, Ioachim was one year old. But all that has happened since has had a powerful impact on his destiny – his, and that of millions others living through collectivization and Communism. The Collectivization Museum starts from one man’s life, to speak of an entire economic, political, social, and moral phenomenon, whose effects we are facing even today, 70 years later, 30 years since the fall of the Communist regime in Romania.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Destiny<\/strong><\/p>\n Petru, Ioachim’s great-grandfather, was a hard-working peasant in Tămășeni, a village on the Siret River’s Valley. During the sugar beet boom in Moldavia, in the late 1800s, he leased land which he cultivated. Then he took out a loan and bought a larger plot – arable land, riverside coppice, and grazing land. He died of typhus, in 1918, a young man, leaving his affairs over to his 7 children and his widow. Ianuș, his eldest son, worked even harder, and that is how he bought two mills on the Siret River, and a crossing bridge. He settled them to Petre, Ioachim’s father.<\/p>\n In 1906, great-grandfather Petru builds Ianuș a house. In 1941, grandfather Ianuș builds a house for Petre, with a store and a pub. In the 50s, Communists took almost everything from Petre – except for the grinders, which remain in the courtyard to this day. Besides seizing the land, bridge, and mill, Communists also seized two halves of his houses. One was used to set up the store of the consumers’ cooperative and purchase centre – where Petre works as a state-employed warehouse operative, to be allowed to go on living in his house together with his family. The other became the police (miliție) station. The police station did not function in the old house for too long, but the consumers’ cooperative store remained in the new house until 1992.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Museum<\/strong><\/p>\n Setting the tone of the story was the most important. We considered that now, 30 years after the fall of Communism, we have the necessary distance for a less heated, calmer, more balanced outlook. In Tămășeni, we found two peasant houses, at a first glance no different from other thousands of houses in other hundreds of villages. But on a closer look, one can see bars on a window in the old house (where the Militia station once was), and the new house has a shop with street access.<\/p>\n The design decision was to leave the houses alone, as the finishes were the original ones, with the decorative wall painting in the Communist era, with woodwork and furniture collected over decades. We were careful to avoid any metaphor, any museification, any excess; to only preserve this brief impression of naturalness, as was the life of people under Communism. Beyond that, the absurdity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The story of the houses and of this family is in fact a typical one, similar to many others throughout the country. The Purchase Centre for the Collective is used as a pretext to showcase the entire phenomenon of collectivist agriculture. The theme of this museum is structured on 18 distinct spaces (rooms in the two houses, annex spaces, outside spaces), with a specific theme dedicated to each space. These themes are: Quotas, The House, Land, Bread, Fury, Revolt, East, Destiny, Militia, The Agitators, The Hideout, the Resistance, The New Man, Meat and Wine, Water, Gas, Scrap Iron, Agricultural tools. The first 3 rooms were opened in the autumn of 2020 (Quotas, The House, and Land), with the rest of spaces scheduled to open over the next period.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For each theme, the curatorial discourse is organized on 2 different content categories, permanently presented side by side, through two interactive installations in each room.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"02_AB_gen_1](\"https:\/\/e-zeppelin.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/02_AB_gen_1-C.jpg\")
<\/a>*Tămășeni Village, Neamț County. To the left, the new house (1941). To the right, the old house (1906). One of the windows preserves the bars installed when this was the police (Miliția) station<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>*The new house (1941). The shop becomes a Consumer’s Cooperative and Purchase Centre for the Collective<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>*The Quotas room, in the space once taken up by the shop, then by the Consumer’s Cooperative<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>*The tap room shelves and the table where people would drink in the shop were found and placed in their original positions. The missing pieces were replaced by a turquoise metallic fixture, to mark the design intervention<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n