A deep economic crisis hit the whole world between
\n1929-1933. Also known as the Great economic Crash, the crisis, among other
\nthings, translated into violence, an increasingly poor living standard, strikes
\nand protest rallies. Romania was also marred by this crisis, having its dismal share
\nof the aftermath and the ensuing social unrest. Strikes and protest rallies
\nflared up countrywide, especially in the industrial regions. Illustrative of such
\na situation was the 1929 miners’ strike in Lupeni. Back then workers were
\nprotesting against the so-called sacrifice curbs, meaning salary cuts and price
\nhikes. During the aforementioned four-year span, another strong protest
\nmovement was the strike staged over January-February 1933 by the railway
\nworkers employed by Bucharest’s Grivita Repair workshops. However, the strike
\nwas equally politicized by the communist regime that held Romania under its
\ngrip between 1945 and 1989. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If we take some time to examine documents of that
\ntime, we can detect two stages in the unfolding of events. The first stage was
\nthe legitimate strike staged by the railway workers’ unions, who negotiated
\nsome of the claims employers even complied with. Over January 31st
\nand February 2nd, 1922, the Grivita trade unions obtained an increase
\nin wages as well as other benefits, for their members. The second stage unfolded
\nafter the communist and Comintern-controlled unions were a lot more focused on their political claims. We
\nrecall the Comintern used any form of social unrest to cause instability. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Negotiations were brought to a standstill
\nfor a couple of days, while immediately afterwards, on the morning of February
\n16, 1933, the government took forceful action against the 4,000 workers who had
\nbarricaded themselves on the premises of the repair workshops. The gendarmes’
\nintervention claimed the lives of seven workers, while 15 others were wounded. 160 workers were arrested. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The communist regime that was instated in Romania after
\n1945 had been constantly using that strike as a propaganda tool and for the particular
\nreason whereby communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej had been employed by
\nGrivita, where he was one of the instigators and where he was imprisoned. Notwithstanding,
\nafter 1989, archive research and the interviewing of the very few surviving
\nwitnesses have revealed a different kind of reality. In 1998, Radio Romania’s Oral
\nHistory Centre interviewed engineer Constantin
\nNegrea, who in 1927 was a young employee with the Romanian Railway Repair Workshops.
\nNegrea reminisced the 1931 protest rallies he joined himself with the 800
\nworkers, and which claimed the lives of two people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Constantin Negrea:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In 1931, certain
\nproblems occurred. We had been threatened with the sacrifice curb. And we, on
\nJanuary 29, 1931, we staged a protest rally against the implementation of the
\nsacrifice curb. We were deprived of our dues, bit by bit. And then, we took to the
\nstreets after 4 pm, heading towards the Grant Bridge, to the Repair workshops,
\nwe wanted to get there. We also had a couple of sergeants in tow, they were
\naccompanying us. We were shouting we did not want the sacrifice curb. When
\nwe hit the Grant Bridge, we got shot at! One man, Craciun, died, he was a carpenter,
\nand a Jew, Schwartz, who came from
\nOradea to get married. So there were two people dead! <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Two years later, the 1933 strikes began with staging
\nprotest rallies, just like their predecessors, yet they changed the tactics, so
\ntheir voice could be better heard.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Instead of moving about and shouting in the street we
\ndidn’t want the sacrifice curb, we replaced that with the activation of the siren
\nevery thirty minutes, many times. We replaced taking to the streets in protest
\nrallies. We began to organize ourselves in union groups and everyone knew on
\nthe day of 15 we were supposed to rally, all of us, even though the frost was
\nso harsh. We intended to get out in the repair workshops’ courtyard where there
\nwas some kind of a little park set up on the premises. Constructions works for
\nthe park were not completed, so a couple of sand loads had been unloaded, and
\nthere was a sand bank there. Well, several cauldrons were brought there, 5,
\nmaybe 6, where we warmed ourselves lighting a fire. After that, a plank
\nbarricade was erected at the back entrance of the Locomotives Division, it was
\nan entrance there and there also was a roof. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite strikers’ radicalism, among
\nthem there were people who were talking sense and the fears they voiced turned out
\nto be real, in the long run.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Evening set in and,
\nlogically, the people there, there was a one Mogos who worked at the plant and there
\nwas another one, they stepped aside, they kind of dodged, and said: We get
\nfired and we won’t be able to earn our keep anymore! They were older, more sensible,
\nmore well-advised, quite unlike us, who were younger. The last time we rallied
\nwas around 5 pm, at five past I’d already made for the siren, and in ten
\nminutes I walked back to the gates. At 5.45am sharp, live rounds were fired. They
\nshot on sight and six people died, that’s how many were shot dead. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The dead and the communist
\norganizers, who were sentenced to prison, saw their worst when the strike of
\nFebruary 1933 ended. The events in Grivita that happened 90 years ago were the events
\nof a generation that firmly opposed the deterioration of their lives. Sadly,
\nthe February 1933 strikes were partially hijacked by the radical communists, the advocates of
\na criminal regime.(EN)<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Social upheaval and its political implications<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":131624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42972,42973,29420,31077,29090],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-131623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-curb","tag-employer","tag-fire","tag-rally","tag-strike"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n