It came on the heels of the secularization of monastery estates, achieved in December 1863 on Mihail Kogălniceanu's initiative and taking over a quarter of the country's area away from the Orthodox Church.
The question of land reform was an essential point of Cuza's political programme, and he and Kogălniceanu had wider aims: the abolition of compulsory labour and the establishment of private small holdings.
[4] Thus, for 15 years,[8] in order to defray the cost of their no longer performing the corvée and the other feudal duties, peasants were required to pay into an indemnity fund that issued bonds redeemable in instalments an annual fee of 51–133 lei, depending on their category and region; this was a heavy burden for the majority and ruined the poorest.
[10] The reform also gave rise to political clash: the Liberals saw it as a starting point for dynamic, reasoned change, while the majority of Conservatives tried to use the 1864 law to defend their property against further expropriation, believing the social question had been resolved.
He undertook this commitment as a way of repaying the soldiers and their families for sacrifices made, but also sought to mobilise them to hold the front and avoid revolution–the announcement came just weeks after the February Revolution toppled Russia's tsar.
[26] The PNR government of Alexandru Vaida-Voevod had a fully comprehensive land reform programme, but on 13 March 1920 the King dismissed this cabinet despite its backing by a substantial parliamentary majority, a clear sign that the Bucharest-based elite would try and govern the enlarged state by traditional methods;[27] in 1922, Ion Mihalache of the PŢ (who as agriculture minister had drafted the first proposal) blasted the ensuing reform as a "kind of safety valve" whereby "the ruling class made only such concessions as were necessary to assure its own existence".
[28] As adopted, the reform was a Liberal-Conservative bargain, decided upon in private by Ion Brătianu and Take Ionescu, who persuaded the former to abandon his intention of expropriating the soil.
Many conservatives hoped efficiency and productivity would improve; liberals backed the measure on principle but also desired that agriculture served the needs of industry; and agrarianists dreamt of creating a peasant state on the basis of these changes.
The total area of expropriated land came to 5,804,837.83 hectares (22,000 sq mi), of which some 3.7 million ha were arable, while 1,393,383 peasants received property (648,843 in the Old Kingdom, 310,583 in Transylvania, 357,016 in Bessarabia and 76,941 in Bukovina).
[39] Hungarians and Saxons reacted loudly against the measures, their leaders persistently denouncing what they saw as shady and sometimes openly corrupt methods whereby land reform was used to modify the area's ethnic makeup.
[42] The reform managed to subdivide private property into small pieces and create a certain equilibrium between former and new owners, leading to increased social stability, but the land's productivity did not experience substantial growth due to the rudimentary farming methods still employed.
Ignorance, overpopulation, lack of farm implements and draft animals, too few rural credit institutions and excessive land fragmentation, exacerbated as the population grew, kept many peasants in poverty and yields inferior.
[43] The 1945 land reform was the first important political and economic act after the coup of 23 August 1944, achieved by the new Petru Groza government on the basis of decree-law nr.
The Romanian Communist Party (PCR) planned and applied the reform, also exploiting it for propaganda purposes in an attempt to form a popular base on the Soviet model (there too, collectivisation was preceded by land distribution).
[44][dubious – discuss] After the reform was announced, people who owned over 50 ha (120 acres) suffered the most, being subjected to intense pressure from the authorities and from Communist agitators, who from the end of 1944 had begun instigating peasants to occupy domains by force.
Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians were indiscriminately targeted, destroying many communities, but monastery, church, and rural cooperative holdings, as well as those belonging to cultural and charitable organisations, escaped expropriation: the struggle for power was still ongoing and the Communists dared not alienate peasants, clergy and hostile intellectuals.
[47] Completed in spring 1948, the reform did not significantly alter the structure of agriculture: holdings remained as fragmented as before, production of non-grain crops and animals declined, the co-operative movement was neglected, and the amount of land received by families was so small that their economic and social status hardly changed.
Amidst an anti-Communist public mood of 1990–91, the restored interwar parties (PNL and PNȚCD) loudly called for restitution; initially, the governing ex-Communist National Salvation Front resisted the demand and sought to grant all rural residents 0.5 ha (1.2 acres), but in a bid to capture the rural vote, it gave in to pressure to dismantle the collectives, although capping the size of restored properties to 10 ha (25 acres).
)[49][50] In addition to righting a perceived historical injustice, the reform also pleased Romanian farmers, who have a long tradition of working their own land and are tied to it not only for subsistence needs but also out of sentiment (for instance because their ancestors retained it through fighting in wars).
[51] As well, given the relatively egalitarian land structure prevailing in 1949, historical justice (emphasised by the opposition) coincided with the social equity considerations that preoccupied the government.