Ploughmen's Front

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The Ploughmen's Front (Romanian: Frontul Plugarilor) was a Romanian left-wing agrarian-inspired political organisation of ploughmen, founded at Deva in 1933 and led by Petru Groza.

[edit] History

Begun in Hunedoara County, it quickly spread into the Banat, and then into the other regions of Romania. Groza, who had been a minister in Alexandru Averescu's People's Party cabinet (1926), aimed to improve the situation of the peasantry (which he believed betrayed by the main agrarian group, the National Peasants' Party),<ref>Hitchins, p.390</ref> calling for a social security program in the countryside and a tax reform favourable to small lodgings.<ref>Hitchins, p.390-391</ref>

In 1935, the organisation aligned itself with the outlawed Romanian Communist Party (PCR), an agreement inspired by the Stalinist Popular Front doctrine and signed in Ţebea (after negotiations overseen by Scarlat Callimachi).<ref>Frunză, p.115</ref>

During the period, the Ploughmen's Front never obtained more than 0.30% of the vote.<ref>Hitchins, p.391</ref> Outlawed together with all parties in 1938, through a law passed by the authoritarian regime of King Carol II, it remained active in clandestinity during the dictatorial rule of Ion Antonescu, and surfaced after its fall in 1944 (see Romania during World War II).

In October of that year, it joined other the PCR-led National Democratic Front (FND), alongside the Union of Patriots, the Union of Hungarian Workers, the Socialist Peasants' Party, and the Romanian Social Democratic Party. In February 1945, although represented inside the Nicolae Rădescu cabinet (as it had been in the Constantin Sănătescu one) it took part in incidents that led to its fall.<ref>Hitchins, p.507-508</ref>

Groza led the third cabinet after the fall of Antonescu (formed on March 6, 1945); while it was dominated by the PCR, the Ploughmen's Front did hold the Ministry of Agriculture and Royal Domains, which was assigned to Romulus Zăroni.

The party ran on a single platform with the PCR during the 1946 general election, which the Groza cabinet won through large-scale electoral fraud,<ref>Frunză, p.287-292; Hitchins, p.517; Tismăneanu, p.288</ref> and had PCR activists such as Constantin Agiu<ref>Frunză, p.117</ref> and Mihail Roller<ref>Frunză, p.377</ref> among its members. It thus played an active part in the proceedings leading to the creation of Communist Romania. However, during its first congress (July 1945), it had called for the preservation of small privately-owned agricultural plots and cooperative instead of the collective farming advocated by the PCR.<ref>Hitchins, p.511</ref> In 1948, it absorbed Anton Alexandrescu's faction (a splinter group of the National Peasants' Party).<ref>Videnie, p.46</ref>

The Ploughmen's Front ceased to exist when it dissolved itself in 1953.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România ("History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
Keith Hitchins, România, 1866-1947, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1998 (translation of the English-language edition Rumania, 1866-1947, Oxford University Press, USA, 1994)
Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-52-023747-1
Nicolae Videnie, "«Alegerile» din martie 1948: epilogul listelor electorale alternative. Obsesia unanimităţii — primii paşi" ("The «Elections» of March 1948: an Epilogue to Alternative Electoral Lists. Unanimity Obsession — The First Steps Taken"), in Dosarele Istoriei, 11/V, 2000