Proletarianization and Working-Class Formation in Romania’s Chemical Industry (1959–1989)

Abstract The article investigates the formation of an industrial workforce in Săvinești, a major center of Romania’s socialist chemical industry. Based on archival sources and oral history interviews, it examines how proletarianization was not fully realized but instead developed as a deliberately maintained dual condition. Industrial employment was combined with long-term commuting, ties to subsistence agriculture, and uneven access to urban housing. Such arrangements reflected the socialist state’s efforts to expand production while managing limited infrastructure and demographic realities. By situating this case within wider debates on proletarianization under socialism, the study offers a more grounded account of class formation in Eastern Europe.