The communist party seized power in Romania on March
\n6th, 1945, with the help of the Soviet Union and immediately started
\nthe transformation of society based on the Soviet model. The 1948 reform of the
\neducation system made possible the emergence of an unusual form of higher
\neducation: the workers’ faculty. Universities were considered by communist
\nideology as a manifestation of capitalist exploitation. As workers were now the
\nfocus of the communist regime, university was meant to transform man educated
\nin a proletarian spirit into a new type of man. One of the purposes of the
\nworkers’ faculty was to create new cadres able to replace the former ones. The
\nworkers’ faculty was also a means of gaining and exerting control over the
\nyoung people. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
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Andrei Banc was a radio and TV journalist who went to
\nuniversity in the mid-1950s, at a time when the workers’ faculty system was
\nflourishing. In a 2002 interview to Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre, Andrei
\nBanc described how young people could join the workers’ faculty:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
When I went to university in 1955, the communist
\nregime had only been in power for 10 years, actually just 9 years if we start
\ncounting from the 1946 elections. In these nine years, the communists had
\ncreated an entire state apparatus. This is how many workers, that is people
\nwith an acceptable background and a healthy social origin, ended up in
\nleadership positions although some of them had not even finished high school.
\nSo they were offered the chance to fast-track high school and study for another
\ntwo years at the workers’ faculty. The two-year long workers’ faculty replaced
\nthe fact high school education, because many who attended hadn’t even graduated
\nfrom secondary school. So, basically they finished high school in two years,
\nwhich was not as bad as it would seem today. My generation also finished high
\nschool in two years, after the Russian model. More than one third of my
\ncolleagues came from the workers’ faculty and were much older than the rest of
\nus. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The students of the worker’s faculty were adults who
\nhad adhered to the communist ideology and supported the new regime. One of
\ntheir responsibilities was to provide guidance to the younger generation.
\nAndrei Banc explains:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
When they finish high school today, young people are
\n19 or 20 years old. At this age, most of my female colleagues had already been
\nmarried. Some of them had even given birth. Many got married to people with an
\nofficial residence in Bucharest, which meant they would be secured a job in
\nBucharest. Some of our colleagues from the workers’ faculty were twice our age.
\nToday, when I am in my 60s and they are in their 70s and 80s this age
\ndifference doesn’t matter any more. But it mattered when I was 16 and they were
\n32, they were twice my age. They were married people, with children, many also
\nwith a job. They were people with responsibilities and couldn’t afford doing
\nall the crazy things you do when you are young. They were under pressure, not
\nonly because they were party members, but also because they came from working
\nclass families, so they couldn’t do anything reckless that would cost them
\ntheir jobs and their faculty place, they had families to support. It was not
\nthat simple for them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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<\/p>\n
The students from the workers’ faculty occupied the
\nleadership positions in all students’ organisations. Andrei Banc once again: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In a way, they were the arm of the Communist Party
\nin universities, whether the philosophy faculty or the law school. The party
\nsecretaries in each faculty were chosen from among the students of the worker’s
\nfaculty. This was also the case with my faculty’s party secretary, who was, in
\nfact, an admirable man. These people were not necessarily narrow-minded
\nindividuals. This guy, for example, who was twice my age, was a journalist for
\nthe Munca newspaper. The members of the Workers’ Youth Bureau were
\nelected democratically, while the party secretary was in fact appointed and he
\nwould be an older student of the workers’ faculty. Another type of workers’
\nfaculty student was someone who already had a very important job and who
\nwouldn’t show up for classes, only for exams. One such man was Dumitru Aninoiu.
\nI was part of a study group with Aninoiu and some other students, preparing for
\nour exams. They had no notes, and knew absolutely nothing. There were 10 or 12
\nof us in the study group: we, the regular students, who were younger and
\ngenerally better prepared, and a few students from the workers’ faculty, who
\nwere a bit slower learners. Aninoiu, who had no education whatsoever, was a
\ndirector in the Press Directorate. So, there was us, the younger students and
\nthe workers’ group full of serious people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\nThe
\nworkers’ faculty was a parasitical entity feeding on Romania’s higher education
\nsystem. It was a structure the communist regime needed to create its own
\ncadres. In the 1960s, it formed the basis of the ideological education system. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The communist party seized power in Romania on March 6th, 1945, with the help of the Soviet Union and immediately started the transformation of society based on the Soviet model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":129544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[32441,19347,42644],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-communism","tag-romania","tag-workers-faculty"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n