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Paper short abstract:

In 1988, the Romanian communist leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, started a pharaonic project, by which he intended to "modernize" the rural area. The project was far from feasible. It meant displacement of a population, the demolition of a European rural heritage and the erasure of a historical past.

Paper long abstract:

In general, political dictatorship have the ”advantage” of having the power to implement utopian experiments, on a national scale, with the aim of imposing a new world, and a different type of human being, called in this case "the new man”.

In 1988, the Romanian communist leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, started a pharaonic project, by which he intended to move the peasant to the block and thus recover all the land for agriculture, in order to obtain higher agricultural productions. It referred to the land under the villager’s houses, gardens, and even some roads and vacant lots. A population of approximately 3 million people was be transmuted from their traditional houses (which were to be demolished!) into blocks of flats. The new localities specially built were called “agro-industrial centers”, i.e. localities that ensured a lifestyle located between urban and rural. But the new blocks for villagers had many issues: they had no central heating, no running water – a way of life the regime insisted on calling “modernization”. The project was far from feasible, especially since there were riots of people who thus lost not only their house and garden, but also a lifestyle. It was about a displacement of a population, the demolition of a European rural heritage and the erasure of a historical past. The Soviet-inspired project had a political goal (not economic), that of gaining control over land and population. The fall of the regime in December 1989, would halt the project, which would have had catastrophic consequences.