"For Friendship and Peace": Socialist Romania's International Pioneer Camps in the Aftermath of War (1949-1959)

Abstract

Situated at the intersection of studies of socialist internationalism and youth, this paper explores the origins and character of Romania’s international pioneer camps and youth exchanges in the immediate postwar decade, from 1949 through the late 1950s. It examines the role played by the Soviet model of socialist internationalism in the development of Romania’s camps and youth exchanges as well as the diplomatic, pedagogical, and medical aims international pioneer camps were expected to fulfill for Romania’s fledgling regime of popular democracy. The few existing works on the evolution of mass youth organizations and the reforms of education in Romania assume the existence of an all-powerful regime and party, who enforced these measures from above, having centralized state power and nationalized property and economic resources. Through an examination of the first international camps organized on the Black Sea Coast and in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, this study nuances such views, suggesting that the newly created youth and children’s organizations – The Workers’ Youth Union and the Pioneer Organization – were precarious party structures, which lacked politically trustworthy and ideologically trained cadres as well as material and administrative resources to assume full control of the country’s youth in the immediate postwar years