03071022.2015.1014177

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Prototypes for modern living: planning,sociology and the model village ininter-war RomaniaRaluca Muataa St Mary's University Twickenham, LondonPublished online: 23 Apr 2015.

To cite this article: Raluca Muat (2015) Prototypes for modern living: planning,sociology and the model village in inter-war Romania, Social History, 40:2, 157-184, DOI:10.1080/03071022.2015.1014177

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Raluca Mus,at

Prototypes for modern living:planning, sociology and the model

village in inter-war Romania

ABSTRACT: This article reassesses the concept of the model village in the contextof inter-war debates about rural development in Romania and in Europe more widelythrough the story of Dios,ti, a small locality in south-western Romania that wasreconstructed as a model village after a great fire in 1938. Imagined by Dimitrie Gusti,the founding father of Romanian sociology, and realized under the auspices of theauthoritarian King Carol II, Dios,ti was the outcome of a longer process of imagining amodel of rural modernization for Romania that was tightly connected to andinfluenced by international agendas of reforming and improving rural livingconditions. This project offers an opportunity to examine the interplay between thelocal, national and international levels of rural modernization as they were shaped bythe disciplines of architecture, rural planning and sociology. Finally, the article alsoengages with the concept of the model itself, asking how and why models of ruralliving were used to produce or manage social change.

KEYWORDS: development; inter-war; model village; modernization; peasantry;planning; Romania; sociology

On 1April 1938, in theRomanian village ofDios,ti, a child accidentally set fire to a haystack.The fire spread and, by the nextmorning,most of the village had burnt down. Aweek later,much to the locals surprise, King Carol II, who had recently dissolved parliament,establishing a personal dictatorship, visited Dios,ti and announced his plans to fund itsreconstruction as a model village.1The national press reported the details of the visit: an oldman whose house had burnt down fell to his knees shouting: Long live our father, hisMajesty the King, our saviour! Deeply moved, [His Majesty] promised he would turnDios,ti into a model village.

2 On visiting Dios,ti in June the same year, the sociologistDimitrie Gusti, who had been given the task of commissioning this project, told the press:The reconstruction of this village represents the construction of New Romania.3

Dios,ti is situated in the south-western Romanian province of Oltenia, about fifteenkilometres from the nearest town of Caracal, capital of the Romanat,i country, twohundred kilometres west of Bucharest and two hundred kilometres north of the Bulgarian

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

1Timpul [The Time ], 8 April 1938, 3.2Curentul [Current Affairs ], 8 April 1938, 9.

3Timpul, 29 June 1938, 7.

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border.4 In the year of the fire, the village had approximately 1800 inhabitants occupying 335households and owning 8126 pogoane (approximately 4000 hectares) of land.5 Thepopulation was ethnically Romanian, apart from ten Roma, one Hungarian and oneGerman. In the 1930s, Dios,ti was a typical village on the Oltenian plain. This was one ofthe countrys most important agricultural regions, renowned for its grain production sincethe nineteenth century. Themain occupation in the village was agriculture, wheat being themain product cultivated in the village and sold in the nearby town of Caracal. Landconstituted the main economic asset of the locals, who had been free peasants (mos,neni) sincethe establishment of the locality, except for a short period, during the time ofMihai Viteazul(15931601). This long history of economic independence, combined with the richness ofthe land itself, had contributed to the relative wealth of the Dios,teni, who, unlike peasants inother parts of the Romanian countryside, had invested in agricultural machinery andinnovated their labour techniques.6 This increased the locals wealth and allowed many ofthemtobuymore land, and send their children to school and to town.Byascending the socialladder, the sons of the Dios,teni created a solid network of connections that played animportant role in the transformation of Dios,ti into a model village in 1938. The villagehad two schools and two churches, a fact that indicated the existence of a significant localintellectual elite.Thiswas also reflected in relatively high levels of literacy (around80per centfor men, although only 50 per cent for women); the national average was 5060 per cent.The appearance of the village architecture before the fire reflected an organic process ofmodernization that consisted of the gradual replacement of the traditional semi-subterraneanhouses (bordeie) with urban-influenced brick and wattle-and-daub houses.7 The fire of 1938destroyed nearly half the houses and caused damage worth around 60 million lei.

The main project of rebuilding Dios,ti as a model village lasted only two years. Duringthis short time, the structure of the village was redesigned according to modern principlesof architecture, planning and sociology. The new section that was added to the existingpart of the village, which had not been damaged by the fire, consisted of a civic centre, anew road with model houses and several other public buildings. The project was stalledby the outbreak of the Second World War. Afterwards, the village lost its model statusand its life took on a new direction during the communist and post-communist periods.

Today, walking along the elegant boulevard that connects the main road to the inter-war civic centre, one is still seduced by a design in which a modern geometry of sveltearches and sharp angles meets traditional elements such as wooden carved pillars and

4Recent work on Dios,ti includes VeselinaUrucu, Dios,ti un sat din Campia Romanat,ilor[Dios,ti, a Village on the Romanian Plain ](Craiova, 2008) and A. Ciobanu, Monografiacomunei Dios,ti [The Monograph of the Village ofDios,ti ] (Dios,ti, 1973). In the village library,there is also a collection of documentstranscribed by the local historian MihaiBalaianu: M. Balaianu, Dios,tii. Pagini de istorie[Dios,ti. Pages from History ] (Dios,ti, 1985).5G. Focs,a, Raport general asupra situat,ieiactuale a satului Dios,ti (judet,ul Romanat,i) s,iasupra lucrarilor necesare pentru transformarea

lui in sat model [General report regarding thecurrent situation of the village of Dios,ti(Romanat,i county) and regarding thenecessary works for its transformation into amodel village] in Dios,tii. Pagini de Istorie VII B(Dios,ti, 1985), 419. For the demographicevolution of Dios,ti, see Urucu, Dios,ti un sat,op. cit., 4960.6M. Balaianu, Dios,tii, op. cit., 1778.7A bordei is a semi-subterranean building madeof mud and covered with straw that survived inRomania until the beginning of the twentiethcentury.

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impressive gates. The model section is only part of the village, contrasting with the olderside that remained untouched by the fire. Crossing from one side to the other is likewalking through time. In the old part, the architecture is mixed and the roads offer noperspective, ending abruptly where the fields begin. The contrasts and contradictions stillvisible in todays Dios,ti speak to the short-lived nature of artificial models and awidespread drive to integrate the countryside into modernity.

The importance of the rural world in wider processes of modernization is now widelyaccepted.8 In the period between the two world wars, the interest in the countryside wasmanifested both on a national level, especially in countries with significant peasantpopulations, and on an international level, where social reformers exchanged ideasabout rural development in forums such as the League of Nations and the RockefellerFoundation.9 A consequence of this was the mushrooming of projects of ruraltransformation, including model villages, in countries with very different social andpolitical contexts. The story of Dios,ti reveals many unexpected connections that place theRomanian case in a much wider context, showing striking similarities with better knowncases of rural reconstruction elsewhere and the way international agendas were translatedat the local level.

From the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, model villages multipliedacross Europe, reflecting growing concerns to improve the living conditions of workersand peasants and to counteract the disruptive effects of the Industrial Revolution.10 Theconcept of the model village was a popular one, frequently displayed at world fairs andexhibitions and publicized in specialized national and international forums of socialreform, affording its spread to many parts of the world.11 After the First World War,many model villages were built in south-eastern Europe in particular, both as solutions to

8Some of the more recent discussions on thisare: J. Burchardt, Editorial: Rurality,modernity and national identity between thewars, Rural History, 21, 2 (2010), 14350;A. Ballantyne and G. Ince, Rural and urbanmillieux in A. Ballantyne (ed.), Rural andUrban: Architecture between Two Cultures(Abingdon, 2010), 128; J. C. Scott andN. Bhatt (eds), Agrarian Studies. SyntheticWork at the Cutting Edge (New Haven andLondon, 2001). The approach taken in thisarticle is also inspired by S. C. Rogers, Goodto think: the peasant in contemporaryFrance, Anthropological Quarterly, 60, 2 (April1987), 5683; T. Shanin, The Awkward Class:Political Sociology of Peasantry in a DevelopingSociety, Russia 19101925 (Oxford, 1972); andE. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (London,1979). On Romania, see the introduction toA. Mungiu-Pippidi, A Tale of Two Villages:Coerced Modernization in the East EuropeanCountryside (Budapest, 2010).9On the importance of the peasant questionafter the First WorldWar in eastern Europe, see

D. Mitrany,Marx against the Peasant: A Study inSocial Dogmatism (London, 1951); H. Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 19181941, 3rd edn (New York and London, 1962).For recent accounts of the importance of therural world to the inter-war vision ofmodernity, see I. Borowy, Coming to Termswith World Health (Frankfurt am Main, 2009);L. Murard, Designs within disorder:international conferences on rural health careand the art of the local, 19311939 in S. G.Solomon, L. Murard and P. Zylberman (eds),Shifting Boundaries of Public Health. Europe in theTwentieth Century (Rochester, 2008), 14174.10On model villages in Britain see G. Darley,Villages of Vision (London, 1975);M. Havinden, The model village in G. E.Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside(London, 1981), vol. II, 41427.11For a compendium of such villages, seeB. Meakin, Model Factories and Model Villages.Ideal Conditions of Labour and Housing (London,1904).

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the extensive population transfers, and as part of state-building initiatives that ofteninvolved the re-ordering and modernization of peasant societies. In international forums,model villages were proposed as solutions to concerns about health, hygiene and housing,especially in rural areas.12

This article looks at how model villages were used as tools for transforming rural lifeand as prototypes of modernity. This is done through piecing together several momentsin the development of social scientific debates concerned with rural transformation inRomania, following the idea of the model village as it moved from the domain ofarchitecture to that of sociology, and following its trajectory from research, to exhibition,and to the construction site. My approach is inspired by Paul Rabinows analysis ofFrench modernity, where he described the construction of norms and the search forforms adequate to understand and to regulate what came to be known as modernsociety.13 In the inter-war period, the creation of a modern Romanian state involved theattempt to integrate the peasantry into an expanded vision of society. Despite thedifferences between the Romanian and the French cases, Rabinows theoretical stanceprovides a useful starting point in analysing the roles played by architecture and sociologyas producers of norms and forms of rural living.14 Tracing the ideas behind thebuilding of Dios,ti, this article engages with the concept of the model itself, examining itseducational role, aesthetics and political function. This is therefore an attempt tounderstand how and why models of rural living were used to produce or manage socialchange.

RURAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE IDEA OF THE MODEL VILLAGE

AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR

With work starting just before the outbreak of the Second World War, thereconstruction of Dios,ti was the outcome of a long series of debates, projects and plans forrural transformation that began shortly after the 1918 Unification and continuedthroughout the following decade.15 In Romania, as in most of eastern Europe, the end ofthe First WorldWar led to significant changes in the status of the peasantry, altering theirsocial, economic and political roles and their place in the debates about national statemodernization. The collapse of empires in the region and the formation of independentstates based on the principles of national self-determination made the economic mode ofproduction known as neo-serfdom untenable across most of the region. The Romaniansocialist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea coined the term neo-serfdom. According tohim, the late penetration of capitalism in less developed regions, like Romania, combinedwith existing practices of exploitation, resulted in a re-enserfing of peasant labourers. Thecohabitation of old economic relations and malpractices with the demands of thecapitalist markets produced a new kind of neo-feudal social relations. Ghereas term hasbeen widely used by historians to analyse the processes of economic, political and social

12Borowy, op. cit., 3259.13P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Formsof the Social Environment (Chicago, 1995), 9.14ibid., 911.

15The greater Romanian state was formed in1918 through the unification of the OldKingdom with the provinces of Transylvania,Bukovina and Bessarabia.


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modernization in eastern Europe.16 In Romania, the end of neo-serfdom had widespreadconsequences that led to a reconfiguration of all debates about state modernization. In thepolitical area, the main change was the demise of the Conservative Party (PartidulConservator) representing the landowners and the rise of the National Peasant Party(Partidul Nat,ional T, aranesc) as the new opponent of the existing Liberal Party (PartidulLiberal).17 This was an important factor that made rural modernization a matter ofnational importance, although it did not lead to a direct representation of the peasantry inRomanian politics.18 In the early 1920s, two major legal reforms radically transformedthe situation of peasants in Romania: a major land redistribution sought to make thepeasant smallholders the basis of Romanian agriculture, while the new constitution gave,for the first time, the entire male rural population the right to vote.19 Despite theirlimited and problematic effects, these legal transformations set in motion a process ofsocial change that a new wave of reformers and scholars sought to inform and manage.

The importance of social reform was justified by the actual state of rural livingconditions. In lobbying for scientific knowledge to become a new basis for moderngovernance, social reformers from a wide range of academic fields (such as sociology,psychology, social medicine and urban planning) brought attention to peasant life as animportant area in need of intervention, highlighting such well-known ills of thecountryside as malnutrition, infant mortality, so-called social diseases (tuberculosis,typhus, malaria, pellagra, syphilis) and poor living conditions.20 Alongside thisheightened awareness of peasant social problems came the argument that peasants lackednot only the means for a better life, but also the practical knowledge necessary toimprove themselves and their environment. Embodying the idea that cultural changewas essential to any economic or political reform, model villages were first proposed aspedagogical tools in solving the post-war rural housing problem.

Rural housing came to the attention of social reformers and state institutions as a resultof the destruction caused by the war, and the demographic transformations that followedRomanias territorial expansion and land reform. Architects proposed model houses asways of guiding the rural owner (gospodar) to build his house according to the rules ofhygiene and for a more comfortable life style.21 Building several model households ineach village designed to house a family of industrious locals would provide examples of

16C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Neoiobagia. Studiueconomic-sociologic al problemei noastre agrare[Neo-serfdom. Economic and Social Study on ourAgrarian Problem ] (Bucharest, 1910).17K. Hitchins, Rumania: 18661947 (Oxford,1994), chap. 10. For a recent overview of theinter-war political scene, see S. S, erban, Elite,partide s,i spectrul politic n Romania interbelica[Elites, Parties and the Political Spectrum in Inter-war Romania ] (Bucharest, 2006).18I. Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in GreaterRomania: Regionalism, Nation Building andEthnic Struggle, 19181930 (Cornell, 1995), 8.19For an overview of these debates, see H. L.Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of anAgrarian State (Yale and London, 1951);

Hitchins, op. cit.; D. Mitrany, The Land andthe Peasant in Rumania: The War and AgrarianReform (191721) (New Haven and London,1930).20Founded in Ias,i in 1919, the Association forSocial Study and Reform (Asociat,ia pentruReforma s,i S, tiint,a Sociala), later renamed theRomanian Social Institute (Institutul SocialRoman) was an important social reformforum. Its main publication was Arhiva pentrureforma s,i s,tiint,a sociala [The Archive fore SocialScience and Reform], published between 1919and 1943.21E. Prager, Problema locuint,elor [Thehousing problem], Arhiva pentru s,tiint,a s,ireforma sociala, III, nos 14 (1921, 1922), 289.


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good practice for other locals to imitate, becoming the stimuli for cultural change in thecountryside.22

The first state institution to tackle the problem of rural housing was the Ministry ofAgriculture (Ministerul Agriculturii s,i Domeniilor), in charge of enforcing the land reformand managing the relocation of rural populations to new areas that required agriculturalworkers, a process generally known as internal colonization.23 In 1919, the Ministrycommissioned a group of architects working in the newly founded Section for RuralEngineering (Sect,ia Geniului Rural) to undertake a study of the vernacular styles ofarchitecture in the recently acquired territories as a first step in producing plans for futurerural settlements. This first serious systematic study of Romanias architectural heritagewas important in creating prototypes for model villages. Moreover, it also contributed toraising awareness of the transformations affecting the countryside and its builtenvironment. As the engineer Alexandru Nasta noted in the paper he presented at theRomanian Social Institute conference The Village and the City in 1927, housingreflected the socio-economic transformations affecting peasants lives after the war:

Two major events have recently affected the life of our villages: the war and theland reform. The war made our villagers aware of the lifestyles of allRomanians and other nationalities inhabiting our country. New habits, newneeds . . . have awakened in their souls new desires, especially for a better andmore plentiful lifestyle. The agrarian reform, securing ownership of a plot ofland for almost all villagers has given them the material means necessary tosatisfy, at least in part, their new desires. A wave of optimism, based on a visibleimprovement of their material state, has been unleashed and has enflamed thesoul of our peasantry. One of the symptoms of this state of affairs is themushrooming of thousands and thousands of new households across the entirecountry. . . . The village is changing its appearance. It starts to despise its oldone, which suited it fine, and takes on a foreign appearance that does not fit it atall.24

The hybridization of architectural styles and the adoption of foreign models of housingwere seen not only as damaging to the aesthetics of the countryside, but also asendangering the moral order of village life itself. By transforming his house, Nastanoted, the peasant will also be transforming a great part of his way of living, of thinking,and of feeling.25 Replacing such damaging models therefore became essential forpreserving both the cultural heritage and the moral order of rural communities. Theauthor applauded the Ministry of Agricultures plans for model villages as a means ofachieving progress for village life while remaining true to the unique nature oftraditional village culture.26 Nastas paper reinforced the belief that villagers needed

22ibid., 28990.23N. Lascu, Lespace rural et larchitecturemode`rne durant lentre-deux-guerres inC. Popescu and I. Teodorescu (eds), Geniusloci: national et regional en architecture entre histoireet pratique (Bucharest, 2002), 16873;MinisterulAgriculturii s,i Domeniilor. Istoric. Organizare.

Realizari. Perspective [The Minister of Agricultureand Lands ] (Bucharest, 1937).24A. Nasta, Satul Model (I) [The modelvillage (I)], Arhiva pentru s,tiint,a s,i reformasociala, VII, nos 12 (1927), 5886.25ibid., 60.26ibid.


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guidance from specialists in negotiating their entry into the modern world and thatcultural change had to be carefully managed to secure both the continuity of tradition andthe adaptation to modern standards of living.

This mixed agenda of change was best seen in the designs for model houses producedand published by the architect Florea Stanculescu, a member of the study teammentionedabove, in a practical textbook intended to teach peasants how to build their own homes.27

Inspired by the vernacular, yet designed to fit the requirements of modern economicaland functional housing, these new architectural designs sought to convince locals toprotect and further replicate traditional aesthetics and to manage the transformation ofthe rural built environment through planning and professional architectural design. Thisstudy marked the beginning of Stanculescus important contribution to the establishmentof rural housing as a field of professional architecture. As Carmen Popescu argued, he wasalso perhaps the most successful in integrating lessons from folklore in the modernistagenda prevalent in his time.28

BUILDING THE SOCIAL IDEAL: SOCIOLOGY AND THE MODEL VILLAGE

While architects and engineers started their discussions of social reform from theperspective of the problem of rural housing, only later to discover the social and culturalcomplexity of this issue, by the 1930s sociologists started to embrace the model village as aholistic solution to the reform of peasant life. The main representative of this newdiscipline in Romanian academia, Dimitrie Gusti, was a multi-talented character whosegreat gift was in facilitating the exchange of ideas among different disciplines andbetween the academic, political and public realms, seizing new ideas and weaving theminto his comprehensive vision of social reform.29

Gusti took Romanian sociology from the margins to the centre of intellectual life,transforming it into an important source of knowledge about the rural world and into apowerful vision of modernization. Gusti completed his doctoral studies at the Universityof Leipzig, under Wilhelm Wundt, Karl Lamprecht and Karl Buchers supervision.In this period, sociology was still a new and developing discipline in western Europe.Gusti met or studied with some of its best-known representatives of the time, includingEmile Durkheim, with whom he studied in Paris for a year.30 In 1910, in the introductorylecture to his course on the History of Philosophy, Ethics and Sociology, he presentedsociology as the science of social reality, able to produce an understanding of the present

27F. Stanculescu, Case s,i gospodarii la t,ara[Houses and Homesteads in the Countryside ](Bucharest, 1927).28C. Popescu, Rurality as a locus ofmodernity: Romanian inter-war architecturein Ballantyne, Rural and Urban, op. cit., 14559,here 154.29On Gustis work and career, see D. Gusti,Opere [Works ] (Bucharest, 1968); A. Momoc,Capcanele politice ale sociologiei interbelice. S, coalaGustiana ntre Carlism s,i Legionarism [The

Political Traps of Inter-war Sociology. The GustiSchool between Carlism and Legionarism ](Bucharest, 2012); and in English,V. Mihailescu, The Monographic School ofDimitrie Gusti. How is a sociology of thenation possible?, Ethnologia Balkanica, 2(1998), 4755.30O. Badina, Studiu introductiv[Introductory study] in Dimitrie Gusti Opere, vol. 1 (Bucharest, 1968), 5200.


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and a plan for future reform.31 At the end of the First World War, he joined forces withother scholars interested in contributing their expertise to the building of the modernstate, becoming one of the founders of the Romanian Social Institute. Like many othersocial reformers at the Institute, Gusti believed that Romanias modernization depended,to a large degree, on understanding its social realities, both urban and rural, and on theimprovement of the lives of its citizens. In the mid-1920s, at a time of great social ferment,he engaged students and scholars from cognate disciplines in collective projects of fieldresearch, known as monographic expeditions. The success of this direct study of rurallife led to the establishment of the Bucharest School of Sociology, a group formed byGusti and a few of his former students and collaborators.32 By the early 1930s theactivities and research of the School made rural issues a matter of public debate,spotlighting the Romanian peasantry and its transformations.

Although Gusti first envisaged sociologys role in social reform in the early 1920s, therise of what he called sociologia militans (militant sociology) occurred only later, as anon-linear process that included the development of the discipline from research toreformism, its dialogues and co-operation with other academic fields, involvement in therepresentation of the rural world in an international arena and, last but not least, the newsocio-political context provided by King Carol IIs regime.33 The idea of the model villagegrew out of these different roots and was shaped mainly by sociologys exhibitions of rurallife and by the new project of cultural work initiated by Gusti after his appointment in1934 as director of the Prince Carol Royal Cultural Foundation (Fundat,ia Culturala RegalaPrincipele Carol).34 Finally, the main catalyst in the practical realization of the sociologicalmodel village was the exhibition on rural housing at the 1937 Paris World Fair organizedby the League of Nations Health Organization, to which Romania was invited toparticipate. The exhibition was to reflect the current state of the countryside and to includeproposals for its improvement, in particular through plans for model villages.35 As Gusti

31D. Gusti, Introducere n cursul de instoriafilosofiei greces,ti, etica s,i sociologie[Introduction to the history of philosophy ofAncient Greece, ethics and sociology course] inD. Gusti, Sociologia militans [Militant Sociology ](Bucharest, 1946), 3047.32On the Bucharest School of Sociology, seeH. H. Stahl, S, coala monografiei sociologice[The School of Monographic Sociology],Arhiva pentru s,tiint,a s,i reforma sociala, XIV(1936), 113065; H. H. Stahl,Amintiri s,i ganduri[Memories and Thoughts ] (Bucharest, 1981). Fora contemporary analysis of the School, seeZ. Rostas, Atelierul Gustian [The GustianWorkshop ] (Bucharest, 2005); the 2011 specialissue of the French review Les Etudes Socialesdedicated to the Bucharest School ofSociology; and R. Mus,at Sociologists andthe Transformation of the Peasantry inRomania 19251940 (Ph.D., UniversityCollege London, 2011).

33Gusti, Sociologia militans, op. cit.; R. Mus,atTo Cure, Uplift and Ennoble the Village:Militant Sociology in the Romaniancountryside, 19341938, East European Politicsand Societies, 27, 3 (2013), 35375.34D. Gusti, Les Fondations Culturelles Royales dela Roumanie (Bucharest, 1937); Z. Rostas,Fundat,ia Culturala Regala . . . sau mis,careaechipelor regale student,es,ti voluntare [TheRoyal Cultural Foundation or the voluntarystudent teams movement] in Strada Latina nr.8.Monografis,ti s,i echipieri la/ Fundat,ia CulturalaRegala Principele Carol [Strada Latina no. 8.Monographists and Team Members at the PrinceCarol Royal Cultural Foundation ] (Bucharest,2009), 1123.35F. Buca, Raport asupra materialului existentn legatura cu . . . locuint,a rurala. Propuneri nlegatura cu expozit,ia [Report concerning theexisting material relating to the rural dwelling](Bucharest, 1936). Florin Buca was the architectinvolved in the planning of Dios,ti.


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and his collaborators were directly involved in the organization of this pavilion, theyresponded to this invitation by projecting their own small-scale variant of a model village.Since all these strands (exhibiting, activism and rural politics) met in the reconstruction ofDios,ti, they will be described in more detail below.

Romanian sociologists became involved in collecting and exhibiting rural life from theirearliest field trips. These resulted not only in written reports, but also in a multitude of othermaterials such asmusic, photographs, several films andmanyobjects. Such exhibitions beganwith two mini-displays of the materials collected in the trips to Fundul Moldovei (1928)andDragus, (1929) arranged in the seminar rooms of theUniversity of Bucharest. Helped byGustis prestige within international scholarly and cultural networks, these displays travelledoutside Romania to the Barcelona International Exhibition (1929) and the InternationalHygiene Exhibition in Dresden (1930). These provided different wider contexts andways of seeingRomanian village interiors, both as part of an interest in local specificities, butalso as part of international concerns with health, hygiene and living standards.36

Following his appointment, in 1934, as director of the Prince Carol Royal CulturalFoundation, an institution funded directly by King Carol II for the promotion of cultureamong the rural masses, Gusti was able to develop a second strand of his sociological systemby applying the idea of militant sociology to the transformation of peasant life inRomania.37The Foundations projects of cultural work (19348) and the subsequent SocialService programme (19389) sought to use the energy, knowledge and skills of universitystudents and of young professionals in the great battle to cure, uplift and ennoble thevillage.38 In practice, this involved sending students from all professions seen as vital tothe improvement of peasant life (human and veterinary medicine, agronomy, physicaleducation, domestic science and theology) into the countryside to study local conditions andhelp communitiesmodernize certain aspects of their liveswhile preserving their customs andtraditions. The goalwas to find a perfect balance between the old and the new, the traditionaland the modern, by preserving the old order of village life while improving its standards.

This shift in the focus of the sociological enterprise from research to activism was onlypossible due to the kings support and funding. After his peregrinations and his return asking of Romania, Carol II proceeded to revitalize the Foundation he had set up in theprevious decade by appointing the competent and experienced social scientist and formerMinister of Education (19323) as their new director. Gusti seized this opportunity to puthis fully formed vision of rural reform into practice, drawing inspiration from theexperience of the monographic research teams and from the many similar initiatives inother countries (including Yugoslavia, Turkey, Italy, Bulgaria and Austria).39On the one

36Stahl, S, coala monografiei sociologice, op.cit., 1150; Romania la o expozit,ie de Igiena Dresda, Boabe de grau, 1, 7 (September 1930),43941.37Gusti, Sociologia militans, op. cit. For a detailedaccount of the programme, see Mus,at ToCure, Uplift , op. cit.38Indrumator al muncii culturale la sate: 1936[Textbook for Cultural Work in the Village: 1936 ](Bucharest, 1936), 29.

39D. Gusti, Politica culturii s,i statul cultural[The politics of culture and the cultural state]in Politica Culturii. 30 de prelegeri s,i comunicariorganizate de Institutul Social Roman [The Politicsof Culture, 30 lectures and papers organized by theRomanian Social Institute ] (Bucharest, 1933),47386.


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hand, Gusti therefore offered the monarch a scientific and practical method to realize hisambitions for rural modernization and, on the other, it responded to the monarchs desireto counter the rising influence of the fascist organization, the Legion of the ArchangelMichael, among villagers and the student population.40 Last but not least, the RoyalStudent Teams, deployed to villages to spread the royal message, fitted the public imagethe monarch wanted to project as the Maecenas of Romanian culture, as socialmodernizer and, most importantly, as the King of the Peasantry.41

There was a great affinity between Carol IIs and Gustis visions for the enlightenmentof the peasantry, both incorporating a trust in the value of culture as a factor of socialtransformation and a certain degree of paternalism. This was the ethos of the Foundationset up by the then Prince Carol in 1922 that was designed to help the peasant massesimprove their standard of living and to widen their horizons by bringing the light ofculture into the village. After becoming king in 1930, Carol revived his interest in themodernization of rural Romania not only for the benefit of the masses, but also as apolitical means for creating consent.42

Gustis ideas about cultural politics were understandably more complex, since he had avast knowledge and experience of many different initiatives of rural modernization in othercountries. His position sought tomarry a self-help vision of social reformwith a paternalisticreliance on the elites as themain driving force behindmodernization. This was similar to thevision of the National Peasant Party, with whomGusti had a clear affinity, although he wasnever a member. His loose connection to a political party meant that Gusti could easilywork for an authoritarian regime just as well or even better than for a democratic one.43 ForGusti, the peasants had a right to receive the benefits of modern civilization, whereas theintellectuals had a duty to fulfil this right, by imparting their practical knowledge and skillsto the rural masses.44 This was the ultimate goal of the Social Service that made culturalwork compulsory for all university students and civil servants in Romania in 1938.

Zoltan Rostas has compared the relationship between Gusti and the king to thatbetween an enlightened monarch and an educated mandarin . . . based on personal trust,not on rules and regulations.45 This gave Gusti a great degree of freedom and unlimited

40The best monograph on the activities of thishome-grown fascist organization is A. Heinen,Legiunea Arhanghelul Mihai [The Legion of theArchangel Michael ] (Bucharest, 2006). Also seeR. Carstocea, The Role of Anti-Semitism inthe Ideology of the Legion of the ArchangelMichael (19271938) (Ph.D., UniversityCollege London, 2011). For a clarification ofthe competition between the king and theLegion, see Mus,at To Cure, Uplift, op. cit.41Carol II, Cuvantarea Majestat,ii Sale Regalet,inuta la inaugurarea expozit,iei echipelor regalestudent,es,ti, la 16 noiembrie 1934, n localulFundat,iei Culturale Principele Carol [Thespeech of H.R.M. held for the inauguration ofthe exhibition of the Royal Student Teams, atthe headquarters of the Prince Carol RoyalCultural Foundation] in Echipe student,es,ti la

sate : program de lucru s,i rezultate : ntaiul an 1934[Royal Student Teams in the Villages: WorkSchedule and Results: The First Year, 1934 ](Bucharest, 1934), 910.42The term politics of consent was employedby Victoria De Grazia with reference toMussolinis rural politics. These had aconsiderable influence in Romania, whichwas strengthening its cultural ties with Italy inthis period. V. De Grazia,The Politics of Leisure:The Dopolavoro and the Organization of WorkersSpare Time in Fascist Italy, 19221939(Cambridge, 1981).43Momoc, Capcanele politice, op. cit., 13756.44D. Gusti, Idei calauzitoare [Guidingprinciples] in Indrumator (Bucharest, 1936), 29.45Rostas, Atelierul Gustian, op. cit., 57.


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funding to implement his ideas, at the same time protecting him from the uncertainties ofthe constantly changing political scene. A note in Carols diary referring to the proposedSocial Service Law revealed the trust he had in the professors vision: If this [the SocialService] succeeds, and it has to succeed, this will be the salvation of the villages and therebirth of Romania.46

Cultural work turned the countryside into a site of intervention, formulating a logicof improvement according to which peasants and their culture were to be thoroughlytransformed.47 This new goal thinned down the sociological study of local communitiesto lists of problems and solutions and to models of institutions, practices and behaviourthat could be offered as examples and reproduced further. The use of models becamecentral to the Royal Student Teams efforts to educate the rural masses. First, studentsthemselves were meant to act as models of action and conduct for the locals; second, theywere to encourage competition and to stimulate positive behaviour by designatingmodel institutions, such as schools or model village halls.48 Finally, the exhibitionsorganized by the student teams at the end of each campaign publicized the projectsresults and predictions for the future through recognizable images and formulas. Varioustypes of physical exercise, work routines, cooking recipes, lists of books, and hygienepractices which the specialists demonstrated and the locals had to replicate and adopt,provided the goals of cultural work, indicating the effort to create model rural citizens.49

Alongside its educational and cultural roles, the project also continued the collection ofmaterials and objects from the countryside, displaying them on national and internationalstages. For the creators of Dios,ti, these exhibitions put the final touch to the idea of themodel village. In 1935, the student teams were given the task of identifying houses andobjects for a permanent museum of village life that was to be erected in the newlydesigned Park Herastrau during the following years Month of Bucharest (LunaBucures,tilor), a festival celebrating the Romanian capital. Inaugurated in May 1936, thenew open-air museum re-created a real village in the heart of the city, including housesand farmsteads from all of Romanias historic regions.50 As Gusti explained, this was tobecome a school cultivating love for the village and, at the same time, a laboratory forsocial reform.51 Plans to extend the Village Museum with a model village section,launched later that year, reflected the ethos behind this institution which did not presentthe village as a thing of the past, but as a present and future component of modernRomanian culture and society. In the summer of 1936, Gusti called for the studentvolunteers to start collecting documents from the villages . . . where [they were]

46Carol al II lea, Intre datorie s,i pasiune. Insemnarizilnice, vol. 1 [Between Duty and Passion. DailyNotes, vol. 1] (Bucharest, 1995), 266.47I use Scotts term logic of improvement torefer to the set of conscious, rational, andscientific criteria of social engineering thatsocial reformers sought to use in order tomanage the transformation of their societies.Scott, op. cit., 93.48Indrumator 1936, op. cit.49Muzeul Satului Romanesc, A III-a expozit,ie aechipelor regale student,es,ti inaugurata luni 22 martie

1937, in prezent,a M.S. Regelui Carol II. Catalog[The Third Exhibition of the Royal Student Teamsinaugurated Monday, 22 March 1937, in thePresence of H.M. King Carol II. Catalogue ](Bucharest, n.d.).50For a recent history of the museum, seeI. Godea, Gheorghe Focs,a (19031995)(Bucharest, 1997).51D. Gusti, Muzeul Satului Romanesc [TheRomanian village museum], SociologieRomaneasca, 1, 5 (May 1936), 17.


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working. They were to study and photograph the architecture of both the oldest and ofthe newest house, as well as the materials used for them and afterwards to make somesuggestions regarding what [they thought] both the individual and collective buildings inthe village should be like.52 He also reminded students that:

The model village is . . . the village we all desire and for which we have all beenworking and fighting for the last three years. The model village cannot be anideal of abstract perfection, it cannot be universally valid, and thus indifferent oftime and space. Instead, we are talking of a Romanian model village, of aRomanian ideal village, in sociological and ethical terms.53

The model village was therefore both a national and a sociological project. As anextension of a social museum, it represented a new way of conceptualizing the rural andits transformation.54 Gustis phrase social museum highlighted the difference betweenthe Bucharest museum and other open-air museums, and its close allegiance to the FrenchMusee Social, an institution set up by LePlays followers at the end of the nineteenthcentury. Like this, the Bucharest Village Museum was a modern institution vested withan educational and civic mission, where people would not see a display of curiosities, butwhere they could instead learn about the reality they inhabited and how to improve it.55

The educational role of the museum was to be extended through the model village,where the best and most representative houses, objects and people would serve asauthentic models for the aesthetic and moral improvement of local communities.

This vision of the rural as part of modernity as well as the means of expressing it wasnot unique to Romania. The 1937 Paris World Fair showed this wider paradigm mostclearly. This was an important celebration of rural life that recast the image of theFrench peasant for city dwellers and for farmers themselves, showing the modernizing[French] farmer . . . proceeding courageously, patiently and methodically toward theconstruction of a new world.56 Model villages were present everywhere at the fair: fromthe main French Rural Centre to Le Corbusiers model farm and to the many plans at thespecial Exhibition on Rural Housing organized by the League of Nations HealthOrganization (LNHO) at Porte Maillot.57 The latter brought specialists from manycountries together to share ideas about the current state of the countryside and to discussplans for the improvement of rural living conditions and of housing more specifically.58

Co-ordinated by Gusti, the Romanian pavilions presented a vision of King Carol IIsmodern Romania that was greatly shaped by sociology.59 The pavilion at Porte Maillotshowed the results of the field trips undertaken by the Bucharest School of Sociology

52Dimitrie Gusti, Despre Muzeul SatulModel Romanesc [On the museum of theRomanian model village], Curierul EchipelorStudent,es,ti, 2, 5 (August 1936), 1.53ibid.54Gusti, Muzeul Satului Romanesc, op. cit.,23.55J. R. Horne, A Social Laboratory for ModernFrance (Durham and London, 2002), 80.

56S. Peer, France on Display: Peasants,Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 ParisWorlds Fair (New York, 1998), 134.57Murard, Designs within disorder, op. cit.58Borowy, op. cit., 3446; Murard, Designswithin disorder, op. cit.59Laurent,iu Vlad, Imagini ale identitatii nationale.Romania s,i Expozitiile Universale de la Paris,18671937 [Images of National Identity. Romaniaand the Paris World Fairs, 18671937 ] (Ias,i,2007), 179225.


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alongside the achievements of the newer cultural work project. The centrepiece of theexhibition, though, was a maquette of the open-air Village Museum of Bucharestfeaturing the projected model village, with planned housing organized around a civiccentre. This reflected the connection between the study of social reality, the collection andexhibition of material culture, and finally the new drive towards rural planning,education and cultural reform. The museum and the World Fair therefore offered areason, an infrastructure and a means to imagine the model village as a plannedcommunity built as an exemplary vision of the future.

FROM PARIS TO DIOSTI: THE POLITICS OF THE MODEL VILLAGE

Although planned and displayed in the Schools publications and at the 1937 Paris WorldFair, the building of the model village might not have happened without a politicalcontext that brought together local and global concerns about rural development andKing Carol IIs authoritarian regime.

From the early 1930s, when the damaging effects of the world economic crisis werefelt in eastern Europe, Romanias young system of parliamentary democracy began tounravel. After his coronation in 1930, King Carol II played his part in this process byconstantly undermining the power and legitimacy of the mainstream political parties(the Liberal Party and the National Peasant Party). The 1937 elections struck a fatalblow against the democratic system. The elections, which revealed the alarmingpopularity of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, compromised the major partiesand gave free hand for the king to dissolve parliament and to institute his personalauthoritarian regime.60

The new regime, which sought to replace politicking with a rational, technocraticand direct form of governance, was not only meant to restore social order, but also torealize the monarchs own vision of Romanias future. This was reflected in an importantadministrative reform and an even bolder programme of rural modernization. Theadministrative reform not only re-organized the countrys territory into ten largerregions (t,inuturi), but also introduced planning as a tool for governance, administrationand development. The new constitution, which abolished the multi-party system ofgovernment, also sought to revitalize the link between royal power and the divine in theeyes of the peasant majority.

In the immediate aftermath of King Carols takeover, propaganda aimed at thepeasantry increased. The weather that spring, when a widespread drought caused manyfires across the countryside, offered the monarch an opportunity to express a suddeninterest and generosity towards the countryside. The king visited many villages affectedby natural disasters, met his peasant subjects and distributed aid. Although it was one ofseveral villages to go up in flames in the early months of the royal dictatorship, it wasDios,ti that received a royal visit in the wake of the fire. The event was recorded andpublicized as an act of divine mercy, whereas the idea of the building of a model village inDios,ti was presented as a royal dream. In fact, only a few days before the fire, the

60Heinen, op. cit.


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Interior Minister Armand Calinescu had mentioned to the king that a model village couldbe a useful tool in the new programme of pro-royal propaganda.

The regeneration of Dios,ti and its representation in the press showed the nature ofpower that lay at its foundation, also placing it in a larger category of similardevelopment schemes planned or implemented in Romania and elsewhere. LikeMussolinis land reclamation scheme near Rome, the regeneration of Dios,ti representedthe intent to tame nature, thereby symbolizing the power of an enlightened modernruler.61 The Romanian project, however, was also meant to revive a traditionalrelationship between the merciful monarch and his peasant subjects. Apart from itsideological role, Dios,ti was part of a greater attempt to re-organize Romanias territorysystematically, through urban and rural planning. The Planning Commission of theBucegi region, for example, also drew up several projects for model villages. However,Dios,ti was different from other such projects because it was not the product of this law, asit circumvented its Jiu (Olt) regional administration, to whom the area belonged, insteadbeing entrusted by the king directly to the Foundation. This exceptional status markedDios,ti as an accomplishment of militant sociology and of royal propaganda rather than ofthe bureaucratization of rural planning. Although the Foundation was in charge of theproject, the Ministry of the Interior (Ministerul de Interne) provided the funding thatamounted to over 58 million lei, a high cost that aroused much criticism at the time.62

The reconstruction of Dios,ti started in 1938 and involved two main phases: theresearch and planning of a new section of the village and its actual construction,comprising a civic centre, a complex of model houses, and many other facilities meantto improve the living standards of the entire village. Unlike the proposed extension of theVillage Museum, which was going to be built on cleared ground, the Dios,ti projectinvolved the reconstruction of an existing locality by adding a new model quarter to thepart of the village that had survived the fire. The Royal Cultural Foundation was placedin charge of this project and a team was created under the leadership of the cultural workinspector Gheorghe Focs,a. Focs,a had worked with the Bucharest sociologists since 1930,when he participated in one of their field expeditions. He had also published a few articleson rural mentalities and spiritual life. From 1934 to 1942, he worked at the Foundation aspart of the cultural work project, first as team leader and later as inspector of the teams.His role as co-ordinator of the reconstruction works at Dios,ti involved communicatinghis findings to the team of architects, planners and engineers in Bucharest and supervisingthe works on the ground.63 For Focs,a, the appointment came as a surprise, as he laterrecalled:

[Gusti] called me, among that army of inspectors, all older than me, and said:Go to Dios,ti, stay there two, three days or more, as long as you need, study thepossibility of making a model village there and come back with a report.

61On the Italian case, see F. Caprotti,Destructive creation: Fascist urban planning,architecture and the New Towns in the PontineMarshes, Journal of Historical Geography, 33(2007), 65179.

62G. Focs,a, Satul Model Dios,ti [The ModelVillage Dios,ti ] (Bucharest, 1941), 267.63Godea, Gheorghe Focs,a, op. cit.; G. Focs,a andZ. Rostas, Noi, cu echipa s,i cu satul [We,the team and the village] Gheorghe Focs,a,Strada Latina, 8 (2009), 2457.


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I went, I stayed there, I met with the local community, I talked to them and gotan enthusiastic response, I took some notes, came back, typed a twenty-pagereport and delivered it. The Professor read it, called me and said: Now go anddo it! There was no way to say no, so I had to accept.64

His general report provided a diagnosis of the state of Dios,ti before the fire, alsoexplaining the reasons for turning it into a model village. According to Focs,a, Dios,ti hada healthy community with people who maintained a good social rapport with each otherand believed in the value of education. Local history stood as proof of this: after a periodof serfdom, the village had bought its freedom in the seventeenth century. Its boyar past,he noted, was still visible in in its big urbanized houses, rich dependencies with newagricultural tools and machinery. However, despite its socio-economic situation, thephysical appearance, spatial organization of the village and living conditions of itsinhabitants were deemed inappropriate for the twentieth century. The old Dios,ti used tolie horizontally at a distance from and parallel to the main regional road. The village wasmade up of three main parallel roads with houses on either side, with very few narrowpathways cutting across, useful only for two to three households. These arteries werenarrow and insufficient and the the houses were placed at irregular distances from theroad. Moreover, Focs,a saw the village as slightly disorderly, with houses that, apart fromthe fifteen bordeie, had almost no authentic Oltenian architectural features.65 Inconclusion, although the village was relatively wealthy and had fairly high educationstandards, its physical appearance required a structural re-organization. Focs,a believedthat the community could thrive and progress in a new, modernized and improvedenvironment, also setting an example for other neighbouring localities.

Focs,as report translated the idea of the model village according to Gustis sociologicaltheory and his ambition for a holistic and organic transformation of village life. Its role increating social order and harmony was also clearly stated:

In this perfect unit of social life [the model village], all aspects of humanexistence and all the factors it depends on are in perfect harmony to improve lifeitself, to strengthen its creative powers and ennoble its moral aspirations. . . .The model village is a social unit equipped with all the institutions,organizations, edifices and installations . . . which stimulate and deepen thecuriosity of the mind, defend and reinforce bodily health, develop physicalstrength and human vital energy, ease and complement manual labour,multiplying its fruits.66

In this, the sociological principles underlying the project were highly visible. Focs,adescribed the model village as a social unit. This was also the main object of sociologicalstudy in Gustis theoretical system which believed society was too large and vague to bestudied as a whole and therefore could only be approached through its self-contained sub-divisions (village, town, nation, etc.).67 Villages constituted small-scale social units thatwere studied by the sociological teams as experiential wholes, to use Talal Asads term,

64Focs,a and Rostas, G. Focs,a, op. cit., 43.65ibid., 421.66ibid., 429.

67Mihailescu, The Monographic School, 501; Mus,at To Cure, Uplift, op. cit.


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from a great variety of disciplinary angles.68 The activist teams also replicated thisapproach to social units, working in individual villages for several months and employinga variety of professional angles to study and transform peasant life. As a new social unit,constructed according to sociological rules derived from reality and carefully plannedaccording to the principles of health and hygiene, the model village was also anexperiential whole, created to enlighten peasants as to their own future.

Education was key to this plan of social reform, as Focs,a pointed out later, in a bookpublished after the project was partially completed:

The model village appears as a didactic tool, necessary in guiding villagestowards superior forms of social life and in preparing the youth for the nationalreconstruction work that has to start with our peoples most common form ofhuman organization: the village.69

The model village offered locals a way of learning through experience by fulfilling afunction akin to that of role models in the improvement of social groups, as the authorexplained:

[To achieve] ones own perfection, a model is necessary: the friend, the parent,the primary school teacher . . . that is the person who is more than completemorally, intellectually or in their will embodies the concrete and immediateexample for the life we aspire to.70

Following this idea, the author explained that the only available way to guide socialtransformations effectively is through more perfect and ideal forms. The model villageoffered locals such a concrete social ideal to aspire to and was therefore meant to have adynamic function in social life. Furthermore, its educational mission was to give localsaccess to universal principles that they could integrate into their lives. As Focs,a noted,the true goal of education is to help the general elements of science and of universalculture . . . to enter the soul. Finally, building the model village was a social lesson initself.71 Its realization, which involved specialists but also young students and volunteersworking alongside locals, represented an example of social co-operation and solidaritythat could be further replicated in many other fields of action.

In order to transform Dios,ti into a model village, Focs,a and his collaborators sought tore-organize village life around the norms and moral values contained in the principles ofcultural work.72 These included aspects from all four domains of cultural work (the body,work, the mind and the soul), combining efforts to improve health and hygiene, makework organization and practices more efficient, and provide for the educational andspiritual needs of the community. As in cultural work, the drive towards modernizationwas combined with the desire to preserve the social order and existing hierarchies. Thisinvolved reinforcing the leading role of local intellectuals who were seen as the maindrivers of modernization within the community.73 These values found their

68T. Asad, Ethnographic representation,statistics and modern power, Social Research,61, 1 (Spring 1994), 61.69Focs,a, Satul model Dios,ti, op. cit., 57.70ibid., 59.

71ibid., 63.72Indrumator 1936; Indrumator al muncii culturalela sate: 1939 (Bucharest, 1939).73Momoc, Capcanele politice, op. cit., 147.


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materialization both in the overall plan for Dios,ti and in the architectural or technicaldetails of individual buildings.

As a result of Focs,as diagnosis, the map of the village was totally redesigned, startingwith its public areas and moving deeper into its intimate spaces. The restructuring processinvolved two main directions: the re-ordering of public life by means of a new civiccentre and new education and leisure facilities and the re-organization of private lifethough new houses and outbuildings. The plans were realized by the Foundationsarchitectural team, including S, tefan Peterneli and the younger architect Florin Buca whosigned many of the plans.

All the changes to the villages infrastructure and public spaces showed the desire tointegrate it into Romanian economic and political life by connecting it physically tothe city and symbolically to the state and its institutions. To this end, the plannersadded a new road that connected the old village to the main transport route, theBucharestCraiova road, thus shortening the fifteen kilometres that separated it from thenearest town of Caracal. The road entered the old village through a new civic centre thatlinked the old and new sections of the village and re-oriented the entire locality aroundwhat used to be one of its peripheries, expanding it across the field to meet the main road(see Figure 1). The new road and the civic centre represented two important principles ofsystematization in planning theory introduced by the 1938 administrative reform, asother similar initiatives from the Bucegi region indicated.74

The civic centre was a miniature version of a modern town centre, in whicharchitectural forms articulated the relations of power between the citizens and the state orlocal authorities. The new long straight street leading from the main road to the publicsquare opened a perspective on to this new pulsating heart of the village. This gatewayalso placed old Dios,ti backstage, obscuring its eclectic architecture and irregular streets.In the central square, at the core of village life and visible from all angles, stood the camincultural, an imposing multi-functional building and the largest of all the publicinstitutions. Facing it, on either side towards the north stood the matching VillageCouncil and the gendarmerie (police station), much smaller in size. Flanking the caminwerethe new church to the east and the school to the south.75 The new church was in fact thethird one in this fairly small village, but was probably deemed necessary as part of theblueprint for a civic centre. However, its place to one side of the camin cultural symbolizedthe subordination of religion in this holistic vision of a modern rural life. In contrast tosecular visions of modernity (such as in the Soviet Union or Turkey), this version soughtto rationalize religion and use it as a source of morality underpinning social order.76

Apart from the public buildings constructed around the main square, many of whichwere new additions to rural life, the planners organized other spaces for the use of theentire community. New squares were added in front of the two pre-existing churches anda stadium was built near the school. Like the public buildings, these social spaces weremeant to encourage the locals to take up new leisure and cultural practices. In this way,the planners sought to regulate and rationalize the communitys social activities by means

74n.a., Un an de aplicare. See also Raut,a op. cit.,4353.75Focs,a, Raport general, op. cit.

76See Bozdogan, Modernism and NationBuilding, op. cit., 1034.


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of a new public space. The architecture and landscaping of the civic centre translated thesesocial ideals into physical form. As Focs,a stated:

Architecturally, [the buildings] would, on the one hand, have to meet theirpractical goal in village life in an ideal way and allow the most rational andsystematic development of social activities and, on the other hand, give thevillage a grand and monumental appearance. . . . Although in proportion andharmony with the size of the village and the surrounding households, all thesepublic buildings should form an architectural ensemble in a unitary Romanianstyle that should grow and inspire a feeling of their eternal service to thevillage.77

The aesthetics of the public buildings, which integrated elements of vernaculararchitecture like the pitched roof, the loggia and carved wooden pillars into modernistshapes and volumes, reinforced the planners double agenda of preserving whiletransforming peasant life.

As with its counterparts abroad, such as the British village hall, German and AustrianVolksheim, the Turkish Halkevleri, the American rural civic centre and the Frenchmaison pour tous, the camin cultural had a key role in the modernization of the

Figure 1. Plan of Dioti with the model section indicating the new perpendicular street, with modelhouses leading to the new civic centre and connecting to the old village in the south. Source: RomanianNational Archives (RNA), Fundaiile Culturale Regle Centrala (FCR-C), 21, 1939, 18.

77Focs,a, Raport general, op. cit., 438.


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countryside.78 The cultural work textbook proclaimed its goal to be that of uniting theentire community in order to awaken the village from its current lethargy and to recruitall the villagers as workers towards their own cultural enlightenment.79 With theintroduction of the Social Service in 1939, the project for the camine became even moreambitious, aiming to found one in every Romanian village and town.80 Often housed innew multifunctional buildings, these rural centres were designed to serve a wide range ofsocial, economic and cultural activities. Moreover, the architectural style of these newbuildings was meant to communicate the importance, progressive spirit and culturalroots of this institution. Most of the projects for camin culturale show a faith in a modernfunctional style with traditional and classical additions.

The camin cultural in Dios,ti was an imposing two-storey U-shaped building comprisingfour main sections (see Figure 2). Occupying the front section of the ground floor was theconcert hall (sala de festivitat,i) where various community and cultural events were organized(concerts, conferences, film showings). The east and west wings were designatedrespectively for economic and health purposes. The first included twoworkshops, a kitchenand bakery, a shop and storerooms. The second comprised showers with changing rooms, aroom for delousing, three doctors and nurses consultation rooms and a doctors office.Finally, the first floor was devoted to the villages museum and library. The building wasfifty metres long on each side, occupying a total area of about 30003300 square metres.81

In addition to the new civic centre and to other public facilities, the project included anew quarter consisting of a long street with housing meant to accommodate the locals

Figure 2. Sketch of the house of culture (camin cultural) in Dioti. Arh. Florin Buca. Source: RNA,FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 49.

78Rabinow, French Modern, op. cit., 3379.On the role of village halls in Britain, seeJ. Burchardt, Reconstructing the ruralcommunity: village halls and the NationalCouncil of Social Service, 191939, RuralHistory, 10, 2 (October 1999), 193216. Thesame type of institution existed in Turkey, asthe Halkevleri, and in Italy, as la casa del fascio.Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building,

op. cit., 93; De Grazia, Politics of Leisure, op.cit., 69.79Indrumator 1939, 24.80Caminul cultural. Intocmire s,i funct,ionare [TheHouse of Culture. Organization and Function ](Bucharest, 1939), 7.81V. Urucu, Satul-model Dios,ti dupa s,asedecenii [The model village Dios,ti after sixdecades], Revista romana de sociologie. Serienoua, 9, 34 (1998), 277.


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whose households had been destroyed by fire. The model houses were meant to set higherstandards of living, also introducing a sense of aesthetic unity and order and, it was hoped,a revived taste for the vernacular.

In his report, Focs,a criticized the old village for not having retained the traditionaltraits specific to the region present in the old bordeie, although he thought these were nolonger appropriate for a modern lifestyle.82 From the second half of the nineteenthcentury to the fire of 1938 the appearance of the village had been under continuoustransformation, marked by a shift from the bordei to newer types of housing. Serbianmigrant builders had brought the first brick houses to Dios,ti in the mid-nineteenthcentury, introducing a new architectural style that copied the urban petty bourgeoisarchitecture of the nearby town of Caracal. After the Great War, a third type of houseappeared in the village, illustrating a new type of social mobility. Also inspired by urbanarchitecture, the wattle-and-daub house was better and more modern than the bordei, butcheaper to make than the brick house, offering the best compromise for the less well off.The planners responded to this situation by introducing a new design inspired by thevernacular style specific to the mountain part of the Oltenia region. This contrasted withthe variety of architectural styles present in old Dios,ti, offering new houses that weremodern in their standardization, in the layout of the interior, and in the external annexes,but revived a regional vernacular in their overall decoration.

The new quarter consisted of two rows of standardized detached houses with smallstylistic variations, similar in many ways to private and social housing projects in otherwestern European countries and elsewhere. The twenty-eight model houses that werebuilt by 1940 occupied generous plots (between 3000 and 3300 square metres), including afront flower garden, a yard for outbuildings and another garden with a vegetable patchand small orchard to the rear. The large plots and outbuildings meant that each householdwas designed as an efficient agricultural unit.83

Despite their standardization, the design of the houses respected existing socialdifferences in the locality. The architects produced three categories of houses, with two(type 1), three (type 2), and four bedrooms (type 3) respectively, a kitchen with a pantryand a cellar. These were distributed to the locals according to social status (land owned),family size, and value of the fire damage (see Figures 3 and 4). This showed that theplanners wanted to introduce new standards of health and hygiene for all villagers,irrespective of their wealth, without changing the existing material differences betweenvillagers. All three options were variations of a square house with a pitched tile roof, aporch ( prispa) on one or two sides of the house, and a cellar. Unlike the brick houses in oldDios,ti, with their columns and friezes, ornamentation on the model houses was limited tothe carved timber columns supporting the porch and the arched doors of the cellar. Theserestored a rustic appearance by their use of natural materials and traditional crafts. Inside,the model houses proposed a simple and functional distribution of space, unlike either thebordeie and the brick houses. They had between three and five almost equally sized mainrooms (a kitchen and bedrooms), with connecting doors (see Figures 5 and 6). As on the

82Focs,a, Raport general, op. cit., 41920. 83Various architectural plans including plansfor the model village Dios,ti, R.N.A, Fundat,iileCulturale Regale Centrala, 21 (1936), 3949.


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outside, the interior was designed to remain functional for the traditional peasant lifestyleand culture. In keeping with the communal use of the peasant living space, which was notseparated into different spheres of life, the same room being used for multiple activities(cooking, sleeping, working), the planners did not allocate specific functions to any roomsapart from the kitchen, designed as the main living space for the family. By providing agenerous number and size of rooms that allowed more privacy and space for each familymember, the planners sought to tackle the problem of rural overcrowding and associated

Figure 3. Sketch of a type 1 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. II, 3.

Figure 4. Interior of a type 1 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 131.


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health and hygiene issues. The design of the interior and the assignment of roomscorresponded to international guidelines for rural housing, addressing issues shared acrossEurope and following the health and hygiene agenda of the Foundation. The houses hadnumerous windows, one or two stoves catering for all the rooms, terracotta floors in thekitchen and wooden ones in the bedrooms, and outdoor hygienic toilets.84

Figure 5. Sketch of a type 3 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. II, 3.

Figure 6. Interior of a type 3 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 131.

84M.M. Vignerot, European Conference on RuralLife 1939. General Technical Documentation.Rural Housing and Planning (Geneva, 1939).


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The model housing of Dios,ti reflected the planners aspirations to transform village lifeby modernizing, ordering and re-ruralizing the peasant home. The standardized regionalstyle based on traditional sources of inspiration was a response to the hybrid architecturalstyles brought about by the unruly influences of modernity. It represented a clear attemptto take control of the processes of change through modern reason and moral order.85

The planning of private space in the model houses was a statement about the importanceof the normal stable smallholding peasant family as the basis of the economic and socialideal of the Romanian countryside in this period, and of private property as a source ofboth individual pride and social solidarity and co-operation.

LAND, RESISTANCE AND CO-OPERATION

The aesthetic transformation and re-organization of space in Dios,ti required apreliminary re-organization of land. Land was the defining feature of the peasanteconomy and the most sensitive, and its re-allocation, necessary to create space for thenew street and civic centre, proved complex and difficult. The initial small-scale re-allocation of land required the expropriation of some plots with generous compensationand the re-housing of some locals from bordeie to new model houses.86 Although thevillage elite had been consulted and had wholeheartedly agreed to the terms of thereconstruction, many villagers remained sceptical and reluctant to co-operate withthe Foundations team. This turned to straightforward resistance when some were askedto surrender their house or land on the promise of getting a new house that was yet to bebuilt.87 Focs,a and his collaborators had the difficult task of clearing the building site,expropriating all remaining residents and then re-allocating the model houses to theirnew owners. Focs,a recounted a telling example of the locals unpredictable reactions.During the 1944 bombing of Bucharest, he took his wife and children and left the city forDios,ti, where he was hosted by one of the model villagers, a certain Iordan. Comingfrom a poor background, this man had worked hard and acquired a small plot of landwhere he had built a house for his family. He was then faced with the official demand toexchange his possessions for a new model house and, despite some resistance, appeared tobe working hard on his new home. Yet, five years later, he confessed to Focs,a that

when he saw that they were going to take his land and his house and he had noway out, he plotted with one of his fellows to kill the inspector of theFoundation (i.e. Focs,a). He confessed his plan to his wife, who had been toupper school for a few years and was thus more educated. She listened to himand then asked: Did this man come of his own accord? He said: No, theFoundation sent him, as he had an order from his Majesty. Then Ill tell youwhat will happen. You will kill this one, you will go to jail and then anotherone will come and continue building the village. And this confused him,disarmed him, and he dropped his plans.88

85G. Focs,a, Dios,tii sat model II, CaminulCultural, 6, 91011 (November 1940), 120.86M. Balaianu, Diosti, op. cit., 4047.

87Focs,a and Rostas, G. Focs,a, op. cit., 49.88ibid.


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This story shows the tensions between a peasant mindset and modern bureaucraticmechanisms that were impossible to grasp and whose intrusion, even in a good cause,was difficult for the rural community to handle. At the same time, it is representative ofthe complex process of negotiation that characterized the entire project. Like mostrural development projects, or any others requiring legislation regarding property(either seizure or redistribution of land), the success of the Dios,ti project depended on theco-operation of the local community.

One of the ways in which the planners tried to overcome peasant resistance and gettheir co-operation was to involve them in the building of the model houses.89 Theprinciples of this involvement were clearly stated by Focs,a:

building for the village but without the [villagers help], not using its latentenergy that it can only develop through action . . . would be a great error.A constructive work programme, executed with difficulties and sacrifices fromall participant parties, is better even if it is imperfect and realized with a certaindelay. . . . This is the way in which great and real efforts have to be made inthe villages of Romania, directly in the field. No other method can acceleratethe rhythm of the villages for a systematic transformation towards socialprogress.90

This showed an effort to marry self-help with philanthropy and social aid in an attempt toreproduce the pride one takes in the product of ones own work. In reality, the resultswere mixed: some people overcame their distrust and co-operated in the building of themodel houses, their own and those of their neighbours. Others, especially those who hadnot been affected by the fire, remained indifferent to the rebuilding of the village andproved unwilling to change the way they worked their own land. As one commentatorlamented:

It is sad that those whose houses have burnt down are not helping out with thebuilding of their own houses. Apart from four people everybody else refuses tohelp out. It is a strange situation. After having been given a house andoutbuildings with all the necessary comforts, the peasant cannot be bothered tojoin in digging the foundations or to place a brick in the wall of the house he haschosen for himself!91

These shortcomings showed the limits of this elite, state-driven initiative with twocontradictory aims: a fast, radical and therefore superficial transformation of the localityand the inculcation of a spirit of self-help and co-operation among the local community.

The rationalization of landholdings, another important aim of the model villageplanners, remained only a dream, as the SecondWorld War brought the entire project toa halt. In the past, Dios,ti had had a system of land tenure typical for most agriculturalfree-peasants villages organized in parallel strips of land each descending from a commonancestor (mos,). This had determined the organization of rural housing, with roads cutting

89Focs,a, Satul Model Dios,ti, op. cit., 1926.90ibid., 21.

91A. Barcanescu, La Dios,ti [In Dios,ti] in Sates,i echipe [Villages and Teams ] (Bucharest, 1939),20.


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across these parallel strips, allowing each landowner to place his house on his strip. In theperiod before the fire, the village had been greatly affected by the process of landfragmentation, with the strips being further subdivided, creating a criss-cross of smallplots owned by different locals.92 The planners saw an irrational and inefficientorganization of plots and sought to amalgamate all individual plots and set up a co-operative to undertake all agricultural labour.

The planners envisaged Dios,ti as the most advanced agricultural centre in the region,equipped with all the machinery, tools and raw products necessary for the modernizationand rationalization of agriculture. This conformed to a vision for the future of theRomanian peasant economy, echoed in discussions about rural development at theLeague of Nations Health Organization, in which co-operation would revive agricultureby consolidating landholdings and introducing progressive methods of production. Thissought to adapt the system of ownership and production to the demands of the marketeconomy.93 For various reasons the locals suspected and resented these initiatives and theplanners had neither the time nor the means to implement them in full.94 Although mostof the infrastructure and buildings planned for Dios,ti were completed between 1938 and1940, the plans to amalgamate land plots were first postponed and later completelyabandoned due to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The problem of land in Dios,ti indicates the projects priorities as well as its limitations.The project offered a cultural and aesthetic vision in which agriculture, althoughimportant, was only secondary. In Gustis ideas, for example, economic transformationwas subsumed under the culture of work; this implied that change had to happen freelyand slowly, with the co-operation of locals and under the guidance of experts. In Dios,ti,as the project was suspended, this meant no change at all. This could reinforce theargument made at the time by one important critic of model villages, Mihai Pop, whosaw them as an anachronism and a way to oppose the natural course of things, of goingforward, by using a kind of illusory toys, just for the sake of preserving forms of villagelife that we have grown to love out of an outdated and sometimes dangerousromanticism.95 Pop was one of Gustis collaborators and epigones, but he saw thedisaggregation of the old peasant way of life as a natural and unavoidable process.He also saw the problem of land as the most urgent and model villages as ways to avoidfacing the processes of change that had already started to take shape inside village culture the fragmentation of the small plots and the consolidation of large-scale property.Both were processes through which the rural world was adapting to the moderneconomic system yet both, he thought, had serious social consequences of nationalimportance, which could not be solved with palliative solutions.96

92See Urucu, Dios,ti, op. cit., 6571.93C. Constantin Ciulei, Comasareaproprietat,ilor agricole [The consolidation ofagricultural property], Sociologie Romaneasca,2, 23 (1937), 1025.94L. Popescu, Pe s,antierele satului modelDios,ti [On the building site of the modelvillage Dios,ti] in Sate s,i echipe (Bucharest,1939), 1819. Barcanescu, op. cit., 534.

95Mihai Pop, Iluzia satului model [Theillusion of the model village] in Vreau sa fiu s,ieu revizuit. Publicistica din anii 19371940.Antologie de Zoltan Rostas [I also want to berevised. Journalism from 19371940. Anthology byZoltan Rostas ] (Bucharest, 2010), 3636.96Pop, op. cit., 3656.


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CONCLUSIONS

In the introduction of his book Realist Vision, Peter Brooks asks: Why do we takepleasure in imitations and reproductions of things of our world? Why do we fromchildhood like to play with toys that reproduce in miniature objects amid which we live?His answer is:

the pleasure human beings take in scale models . . . must have something to dowith the sense these provide of being able to play with and therefore to masterthe real world. The scale model, the mode`le reduit as the French call it allows usto get both our fingers and our minds around objects otherwise alien andimposing. Models give us a way to bind and to organize the complex and attimes overwhelming energies of the world around us.97

This argument is relevant for the story of the model village recounted above. Theproduction of models is an important step in the process of understanding the world.Models, however, are not only miniatures of reality, but schematic visions of how realitycould be improved or transformed, ones that seem easy to copy and to replicate further.However, the special nature of the model, unlike that of the plan, is that, apart from theirvisible exterior, models need to be internalized in order to be reproduced. This is theireducational function, allowing their makers vision to be internalized by their consumers.

The idea of the model village in inter-war Romania represented the drive tounderstand, organize and control the rural world that charact

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