Bulletin UASVM Horticulture, 66(2)/2009 Print ISSN 1843-5254; Electronic ISSN 1843-5394 The Characteristics of the Romanian Village Tureni – Case Study Vasile Mihai CUCERZAN Faculty of Horticulture, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, 3-5 Calea Manastur St., Cluj Napoca, Romania; [email protected] Abstract: The aim of the present thesis is to submit an analysis of a current topic, from a practical and a theoretical point of view, such as the regional and rural development applied in general to the Romanian North-Western Region with special emphasis on Tureni village, Cluj county. Keywords: modernization, development, rural development, region, This research confronted itself with novelty and with difficult complex theoretical and practical issues, all these transforming it’s creation into a process needing no external incentives for its completion. As well as the whole of the Romanian society, the village is in many ways confronted with an innovative experience: the slow, sinuous and contradictory passage from a socio- political totalitarian regime to a democratic and centralized economy (better said: towards a functional economical system). The actual economical transition meant passing from a collective property form (collectivism) - actually a disguised form of state ownership – to the private owning. At a social, interpersonal level, that meant passing from “collectivism” as required subordination of the individual and of the social micro groups (in this case family), to individual work. A certain lack of interest and even manifested apathy of the rural population towards these historical processes was noticed. We are talking afterwards about a sample of people mainly consisting out of aged persons and the major consequence of this situation is expressed in the case of the Romanian agriculture crisis. Specifically, the factors that explain the precarious situation of the Romanian village are: A) Excessive segmentation of the owned land and of batches - the process began long ago (The Agrarian Reform in 1921) and was brutally stopped during the centralizing economy period and again recently, after 1989. B) Difficulty, and in many cases the impossibility to use technological and modern methods of work; C) Return to traditional working methods and the technical instruments, with ethnographic value (plow, dig, oxen cart etc.) As a result of this complex social and economical factors, lack of confidence towards farming associations (sometimes confused with the early CAP), it restricted the production for the immediate needs of the family (or household) with little or no market orientation (the so- called “subsistence farming”). Major features of today’s Romanian village, also found in the social realities of the two analyzed communes (Tureni Feleacu), is a decrease in the number of inhabitants, an aging workforce and the feminine preponderance in what concerns it, and internal (town- 156 village) or external exodus. But these issues, except for migration, represented a continuously developing process of dramatic acuity in the previous decade. The reason is similar: lack of agricultural interest (in terms of technical equipping, activity forms and profit making), as agriculture alone is not able to satisfy the needs and demands of the inhabitants. The model is now the city, and also, especially lately, the experience of living and working in other countries. Faced with integration in the European Union, the Romanian village of the North- Western Region presents a somehow contradictory situation: it is beyond the level of European agricultural production, the efforts to overcome the drawbacks of a collectivism are minimal and still most subjects have an optimistic point of view and seek immediate benefits coming from the integration phenomenon, while superficially ignoring difficulties and risks arising from it. Despite the last statement, our research led to the finding that Romanian villages are willing to progress. The interests towards benefits are manifested mainly by upgrading households, increasing the comfort, improving access to information trough technology, and a manifested desire to work (however, not in agriculture). Almost all respondents have television and radio, telephone (fixed or mobile), washing machines, refrigerators and freezers; we are also dealing with an increased number of car owners. But not all of these benefits are resulting from agriculture, but mainly from money coming from abroad and from the working commuters. Sociologist George Em. Marica once said that “the Romanian village’s days are numbered.” In fact, we are still (!) “counting” the days of the traditional Romanian village. Writers, philosophers and artists have deplored often this phenomenon. Sociologists (see Dimitrie Gusti School) sought to provide a truthful objective scientific contemporary Romanian village image, the purpose being to improve its situation throughout reform. Yet we can not speak of an extinction of the village. The village is rather in an extended phase of change and modernization, affecting productive economical activity, people and of course, ways of thinking. It is also obvious that different generation react differently to chance. We could say that we are dealing with the re-affirmation of concepts such as village and peasants. If once (in the interwar period) being called a peasant was the synonym for being given a title of pride (evoked, among others by Lucian Blaga in Elogiul satului românesc or Liviu Rebreanu in Lauda ţăranului român), later (after the war) being a peasant was often associated with an obsolete state of things, even regarded as a retrograde society role. Thus, to the definition of the village by a series of notes such as its isolated, traditional and autarkical features, we may add that the village is now a more open concept, as it is experiencing changes utterly necessary in order to redefine itself as part of a modern society. The experience of former communist states from Eastern Europe, including Romania, is in this sense an example as it exposes significant and original aspects of the conditions concerning the transition to a new socio-political and economical regime – meaning democracy and decentralized economy -, leaving behind a centralized system and a totalitarian regime. Thus, in Eastern Europe, including Romania and its North-Western Region, the change must take into account the per durance of the still active <<old peasants’ community>>, i.e. traditional patterns that comprise both thought and action. Of course, the traditional village we find described by the sociological, folkloric or fiction literature, has suffered many changes after the Second World War: the abolition – in other terms cooperativization - of the old forms of property and labor, and after December 1989, the “return” to market economy and private ownership. 157 Taking into consideration the experience of the field research conducted in Tureni and coming back to the issue of changes in the Romanian rural environment, we feel entitled to express our opinion regarding the fact that upgrading should not be made by any copying - especially without previous judgement of the already existing context - the Western experience or a urban focus; we however do find appropriate the adoption of a path that combines both internal rural traditional and foreign Western experience. This paradigm reminds us of the well known debate about “forms without substance”, criticized at the end of the XIX century by Mihai Eminescu and Titu Maiorescu. The concern is the inefficient loan of some Western forms of life - socio-political, legal, economic, administrative, and cultural - without first adjusting these to our society’s real patterns and basic civilization features. The problem is to achieve a synthesis between internal needs and opportunities that may emerge out of change - to maintain the Romanian village identity and to improve it when assimilating Western experience. As a matter of fact, Romanian history researchers pointed out the material and spiritual synthetic capacity that our people have. In addition, we see as necessary orienting individual and subsistence agriculture towards common organization forms such as an association of farmer owners. The need for modernizing the Romanian village relates not only to the desire to accomplish improvement, but also represents a basic survival condition. The question is: how does the future of our rural settlements, including communes such as Tureni and Feleacu, look like? Referring to our particular case – the Romanian village in general and the studied communities in particular -, we see that these criteria are only partially meet: our economical activity does not fully adapt to our physical environment; the goal achieving condition is not met due to unprofitable labor organization; the requirement of integration also registers failures (because of deficiencies in internal coordination), while in regards to the retention criterion, issues could be resolved through the already mentioned synthetic strategy – uniting the local base of functional social habits to efficient exterior patterns. Among measures to be taken as to bring together the requirements imposed by the E.U. and the immediate reality of the Romanian rural context, with special emphasis upon the Region,: - To increase labor productivity by creating associative agriculture forms, which include membership of the same family or other people - all owners and partakers out of own initiative. - Purchase