New Europe College Regional Program Yearbook 2001-2002

SRÐAN ÄLJUKIÇ
the political elite “had seen the writing on the wall” and by means of
extensive agrarian reform they swept the landlords out power, confining
them to history. The average size of a peasant holding was 3.8 hectares,
whereby for economic independence at least five hectares were needed.
And it was holdings of less than ten hectares that characterized Romanian
agriculture (Treptow, 1995: 418). Together with the extending of political
rights to the entire (male) population, this provided enormous room for
the creation of new political elite based on the peasantry. The National
Peasant Party and its leaders played a most important role in Romania
between the two World Wars, a time in which peasant estates were
becoming smaller and smaller, due to the inheritance system, and when
the problem of peasant debt became one of the most difficult national
problems.
In these unfavorable circumstances, the co-operative movement
among Romanian peasants did not perform badly at all. The co-operative
idea (of modern forms of co-operation, not any idea of co-operation)
came to Romania with the Saxon colonists in Transylvania. First to appear,
in the last decades of the nineteenth century, were popular banks (rural
co-operative banks), as a response to the fact peasants were suffering
from a lack of capital and were at the mercy of private moneylenders
who were “pulling their skin off”. Legal basis for the movement was
provided by the Law of 1903, and by forming “the Central Office”, the
State made attempted to bring the co-operative movement under its
control. A further law, “the Co-operative Code” (1928), served as an
additional proof of the State’s intentions.
After the First World War and the agrarian reform, the movement not
surprisingly increased. Besides co-operatives in the financial domain,
co-operatives of consumption and for joint cultivation of land also grew
in number. In 1936 there were 4,084 agricultural credit co-operatives
with 799,543 members. The number of agricultural co-operatives of
consumption and production was considerably smaller, however, with
509 such cooperatives with 37,793 members in 1937 (Popovici, 1995:
50, 54).
Social differentiation only started in neighboring countries after the
departure of the Turks. On Serbian territory during Turkish occupation
there had been no difference between being a Serb (an Orthodox Christian)
and being a peasant as stratification was based on religious affiliation.
After the First Serbian Uprising of 1804, it became clear the land would
be transferred into the hands of those who work it, and this indeed took
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