Romanian rural systematization program

The legal framework for this program was established as early as 1974, but it only began in earnest in March 1988, after the Romanian authorities renounced most favoured nation status and the American human rights scrutiny which came with it.

The declared aim of this program was to eliminate the differences between urban and rural, by the means of razing half of Romania's 13,000 villages and moving their residents into hundreds of new "agro-industrial centers" by 2000.

The program gained notoriety in Europe, with protests from multiple countries – chiefly Hungary – as well as a Belgian-led initiative to save the Romanian villages by "adopting" them.

Although cut short by the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, at least three more rural settlements in an advanced state of systematization were, ultimately, transformed into towns as well.

[2] The 1974 law for urban and rural territorial reorganization provided for the development of the countryside by focusing on the more viable villages while the rest would be gradually starved of investment.

[4] According to a statement by the regime, by the year 2000, Romania expected "to eradicate basic differences between villages and cities and to ensure the harmonious development of all sections of the country".

He thought that by gathering people together into apartment buildings so that "the community fully dominates and controls the individual", systematization would produce Romania's "new socialist man".

Although aspects of the program were absolutely necessary (improvement of services, diversification and stabilization of the workforce), it allowed little scope for local consultation and its implementation timespan was far too short (hence compulsory resettlement) with no realistic compensation for the required expropriation.

Shortly after his "cocky" gesture on MFN, Ceaușescu announced the most sweeping and ominous plan of his regime up to that point, involving the liquidation of up to 8,000 villages.

[19] On 3 March 1988, speaking at an official conference, Ceaușescu announced: by the year 2000, 7,000 - 8,000 of Romania's 13,123 villages would be "modernized", as in transformed into 558 "agro-industrial" centers.

[20] The Ilfov Agricultural Sector around Bucharest was chosen by Ceaușescu as a showpiece (to be completed by 1992-1993), as a model for emulation by the rest of the country.

[21][22] According to the Wall Street Journal: "In the countryside, smashed hamlets and villages are making way for the same prefabricated housing blocks of Orwellian Bucharest.".

The director of the Miercurea Ciuc County Savings Bank resigned in protest over pressure to designate his native village of Păuleni-Ciuc a street of the nearby town of Frumoasa.

[48] Two hundred dump trucks were required to carry the rubble resulted from the demolition of many private houses in Otopeni, Dimieni and Odăile.

[54] In June 1988, 50,000 people protested in Budapest because the thousands of villages proposed for destruction by the Romanian Government included 1,500 ethnic Hungarian ones.

[57] To address these issues, and to comply with Mikhail Gorbachev's request, Károly Grósz met with Ceaușescu in Arad on 28 August 1988.