The main economical and commercial consequences of the agrarian reform performed until 1989

Abstract

The social agrarian structure of the Romanian people at the end of the XVIII century was: on the top of the social pyramid were the boyars – who owned almost all the land of the country, then followed the serfs and a relatively small number of free peasants. The Rural Law stated that those peasants that did not receive land had to be put in possession by taking land from the State estates, which did not happen for more than 12 years. The same Rural Law had however a major disadvantage when it came to its implementation, because it lacked the topographic engineers to measure the area to be received by each peasant. Thuds, the peasant received the land as a whole.The ideological background of the 1921 agrarian reform began with the burst of the 1907 major peasant revolt. The democratic bourgeois revolution fought, on agricultural plan, for the division of the large estates considered as units of production for peasants’ exploitation, and on political plan for the elimination of large properties. At the end of the Second World War Romania still had a backward economy, with many feudal reminiscences, in spite of a rapid development of capitalism between 1918 and 1945. The industry belonged mainly to foreign capital which held almost 91,9% from the oil industry, 95% from gas and electricity industry, 74% from metallurgy, 72% from chemical industry and 70% from wood industry