Ion Cristoiu: The mouth of the class enemy speaks the truth!

• Ion Cristoiu: About the weaknesses typical of Romania from 1947-1953, hidden irresponsibly but under the accusation of sabotage, many pages, sketches, short stories, plays were written during that period.
• Ion Cristoiu: Collected on April 2, 1951, the well-known author’s novel, Dustless Road, mainly addresses the action of the class enemy on the construction site that began in the summer of 1949.
• Ion Cristoiu: The novel mainly addresses what the era called the machinations of the class enemy, machinations which, in the end, were detected and exposed by honest working people, led by the communists.

In the spring of 1951, the State Publishing House for Literature and Art sent to bookstores a 660-page, medium-sized book under the title Road without dust and signed by Petru Dumitriu.

The chronicles printed in a short time and breathing from one end to the other perfect enthusiasm want to mention that the editorial production is dedicated to a construction site in full activity:

That of the Danube-Black Sea Canal.

About this work, different from the one undertaken during the Ceauşescu years, the history of contemporary Romania says the following:

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PMR on May 25, 1949 decided to start work on a gigantic construction, shocking if we think about the economic situation of the country:

The Danube-Black Sea Canal.

On the same day, May 25, 1949, the Council of Ministers adopted Decision no. 505 regarding the construction of the Danube-Black Sea Canal, seen as a means of direct water transport and the flourishing of agriculture in a hostile land from the point of view of Nature.

For the execution of Design, studies and construction-assembly operations, the General Directorate of Works of the Danube-Black Sea Canal is established, directly subordinated to the Council of Ministers.

The works actually started in the summer of 1949 with what is called site organization: the construction of barracks, traffic arteries, changes to railways. The workforce is provided by workers brought or coming from all over the country, conscripted soldiers and prisoners (including politicians).

A norm of proletarianism in full swing in 1951 demanded that literature and art reflect the socialist construction with the promptness typically typical of journalism and eventually journalism. To respond to this order, literati are quick to publish poems and literary reports about what the propaganda of the era called the construction sites of the new life. Being indisputable and, above all, ongoing realities, the prose writers and playwrights were not in a hurry to address these subjects in sketches and short stories.

Road without dustwritten by the one who will be the author of the masterpiece in a few years Family chroniclebrought with it a huge surprise.

The 666 pages did not make up a volume of newspaper articles, not even a literary reportage, but a novel.

Although the setting belonged to journalistic reality – the Danube-Black Sea Canal construction site – with few exceptions, Gh. Dej, for example, the characters and events belonged to fiction.

About the weaknesses typical of Romania from 1947-1953, hidden irresponsibly but under the accusation of sabotage, many pages, sketches, short stories, plays were written during that era.

Petru Dumitriu achieves the extraordinary feat of writing and publishing a novel of 666 pages, in large format.

Collected on April 2, 1951, the novel by the well-known author, road without dust, mainly addresses the action of the class enemy on the construction site that began in the summer of 1949.

Taking into account the documentation, the young prose writer only needed one year to write the book.

Another surprise of the book referred to the subject.

Without neglecting the well-known reflection of the enthusiasm with which the working people dug at the Canal, the novel mainly addressed what the era called the machinations of the class enemy, machinations which, in the end, were detected and exposed by the honest working people, led by the communists .

Following a norm from those years, the machinations of the class enemy take various and, above all, treacherous forms, forcing working people (in no case the Militia or the Security) to efforts of an indisputable police nature to detect them.

One of these consists in spreading the rumor that the work is doomed to failure.

Professor Lăzărescu, portrayed by Petre Dumitriu as left at the chair “despite his old ties with German banks and bourgeois parties”typical of the class enemy, therefore, says to the young engineer Pangrati, placed in Romanian as a prototype of the new type of intellectual:

“- It can’t be done! No, come on, I know what you’re going to say. You will repeat what I have already heard. That they made some tunnels, some railways. I know; but that still doesn’t mean anything. The channel is completely different; it is a work like no other in Russia, in Germany, and then the big ones, Suez, Panama. It is beyond the possibilities of our economy. It is excluded! It won’t be done! You are going to work on something utopian, absurd, started by some unconscious people who have no idea of ​​the problems of such a construction – geological, hydraulic, equipment, organizational, communications problems, in a word, possibilities that exceed them of our economy! Krause, who taught at Charlottenburg…

And he smiled slightly, coldly, looking out of the window, at the memory of a great professor with a high, scrofulous collar and gold glasses.

— … almost forty years ago… He once told me that it’s a principle: there are certain works, typical of big capitalism after 1850, that cannot be undertaken by small states. You have to ask which: railways, large canals, heavy industry…”

(Petre Dumitriu, Road without powder, ESPLA, Bucharest 1951, pg. 106-107).

Mihai Pangrati, a former student of the teacher, does not know that Lăzărescu is a class enemy. If he knew (in other words, if he was a worker and not an intellectual), he would expose him. Since he sincerely believes the teacher, he sets out to contradict him.

The prose writer imagines the following scene:

“— The war…

Mihai Pangrati stands up and says:

— But we are in 1949, and if we were to believe the communists, in a country that is building socialism… And we are not limited to the possibilities of our economy… We have the Russian economy behind us. She is huge and will support us.

Professor Lăzărescu thrust his lower jaw forward; he made a sort of brutal and disgruntled grin. Ask:

“Are you sure?”

Mihai Pangrati shrugs his shoulders:

– I’m not sure… but I hope… In any case, do you know that we made the designs on the advice of Russian specialists? We learned from them to boldly deal with problems that you gave us as theoretical examples. They are used to huge constructions! They taught us too. There’s something, can’t you find it?

The other took out his rimmed glasses from his bag and wiped them looking out the window at the sunset over the Cotrocens. His yellowish baldness shone. Blinking his tired eyes, he said:

– I don’t know the problem… No… I don’t know it…

Cough.

– No, I am no longer aware of the problems.

He put on his glasses and muttered:

– The Russians are good imitators of the West…”.

(Petru Dumitriu, Road without powder, idem, page 107)

In 1951, in the midst of works on the Canal, Petru Dumitriu’s novel, diligently fulfilling a norm of the era, claims that the impossibility of doing such a work is a thesis of the class enemy.

But what does History tell us?

Despite all the huge sums invested, the works went awry. Perfectly explainable thing.

The Danube-Black Sea Canal was beyond the economic and organizational powers of Romania at that time.

The Soviet aid, which was bet on, did not reach the required proportions.

In order to find a scapegoat, on September 1, 1952, the Bucharest Territorial Military Court handed down five death sentences, five sentences varying between 20 years and hard labor for life on the charge of sabotage.

On September 10, 1952, another trial resulted in sentences for 15 people.

The disaster was not caused by sabotage.

Even admitting that they were, it was hard to assume that a work of such importance could be a failure because of saboteurs.

The Party leadership itself notices organizational weaknesses.

After Stalin’s death, the Canal was one of the first pharaonic works to be abandoned.

On July 17, 1953, by Decision of the Council of Ministers, the construction works officially ceased.

The abuse that was the Canal Saboteurs Trial is the subject of denunciation through the works of the PCR Commission established to analyze the activity of the Ministry of the Interior.

The Commission establishes that the persons were unjustly convicted.

The Party and state leadership themselves come to the conclusion that undertaking such a work was an impossible adventure, the end of which could only be failure.

Well, that’s what the class enemy says in the 1951 novel.

The mouth of the class enemy speaks the truth!

NOTE: This editorial is taken in its entirety from cristoiublog.ro

Source: www.mediafax.ro