CONSTANTIN IORDACHI Aristocracy, Fascism, and the Social Origins of Mass Politics in Romania

CONSTANTIN IORDACHI Aristocracy, Fascism, and the Social Origins of Mass Politics in Romania in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 201–232 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 12 Aristocracy, Fascism, and the Social Origins of Mass Politics in Romania 1* CONSTANTIN IORDACHI In October 1937 an impressive funeral ceremony took place in Bucharest. General Gheorghe Cantacuzino (1869-1937), a re- nowned war hero but controversial politician, was buried with national honours and a large public presence. A descendant of the prestigious Cantacuzino princely family (branch Prince of Wallachia ~erban Cantacuzino, 1678-88), which had roots in the Byzantine Empire, the General found glory in Romania's military campaigns during the Second Balkan War (1913) and the First World War (1916-18), and had been decorated with the highest military medal, Michael the Brave. Yet the last years of the General's life spurred much controversy in Romania's politics. In 1933, dissatisfied with traditional parties, the old conservative politician linked his political fortune to that of the fascist Legion of 'Archangel Michael', (alternatively known as the Iron Guard), and its charismatic leader, 'the Captain', Comeliu Zelea Codreanu. Cantacuzino's subsequent activities were central to the development of the Legion, paving this organization's way to political prominence. The General's burial, heavily exploited by Legionary propaganda, gave a final electoral boost to the party All for the Fatherland, which he had founded in 1935 and led on behalf of Codreanu----just before the national parliamentary elections. In December 1937, carried also by the general's prestige, All for the Fatherland obtained a stunning 16 per cent of the total vote, sending sixty-six deputies to what was to be Romania's last freely elected parliament in over fifty years (1937--go). In this essay I use the terms 'liberal' and 'conseivative' to refer to the members of the two leading factions (later parties) in Romanian political life, without wanting to imply that their views were necessarily compatible with 'classical' liberalism or conservatism. 202 CONSTANTIN IORDACHI Although the most prominent, General Cantacuzino was but one of a plethora of Romanian aristocrats who collaborated with the Legion. What can account for this 'unholy' alliance between leading aristocrats and fascism? In order to answer this question, we will explore the wide variety of strategies of adaptation to mass politics practised by Romanian aristocrats between the wars. It is argued that the Romanian aristocracy traditionally pursued a conservative domestic social policy, but favoured tolerance towards ethnic minorities and an inclusive immigration policy. This attitude changed to some extent in the interwar period when, following the social upheaval generated by the First World War and the intro- duction of universal male suffrage, the Romanian aristocracy expe- rienced a dramatic decline in social and political influence. Even though most aristocrats joined new mass political parties or collaborated with the monarchy, a few prominent aristocrats joined the anti-establishment Iron Guard in the hope of regaining political visibility. Their participation had important symbolic connotations, aristocracy being assigned an important role in the Legion's ideology of national regeneration. Based on case studies of members of two famous aristocratic families associated with the Legion, the Cantacuzinos and the Sturdzas, we underline the fusion between the fascist charismatic elite and revolutionary ultra-nationalist political ideology on the one hand, and the 'traditional' legitimacy claimed by aristocrats in the movement on the other. These two streams blended to produce a new type of 'charismatic aristocracy' concomitantly promoting a 'regressive' and 'futurist' political utopia based on the glorification of the Middle Ages but embody- ing the new men. I Aristocrary and the Social Origins ef Mass Politics Aristocracy's link with fascism raises the more general question of the social origins of political regimes in the era of mass politics. In a pioneering study, Barrington Moore explores the social factors and conditions that shaped the evolution of modem political regimes in six major societies-those of Britain, France, the United States, China, India, andJapan. 1 Moore identifies four main paths 1 Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democrocy: I.md and Peasant in the Making of the Modrrn World (London, 1966). The Romanian Aristocracy 203 in the transition from pre-industrial to modem industrial society: bourgeois revolution based on 'the combination of capitalist and Western democracy', as exemplified by Britain, France, and the United States; capitalist reaction which 'culminated during the twentieth century in fascism', as exemplified by Japan (and also by Germany, a case that Moore does not analyse in detail); Communism, as exemplified by China (and also by Russia); and a fourth path, specific only to India, where the weak impulse towards modernization meant that neither capitalism nor Com- munism was the end result. In his view, these outcomes were shaped by 'the ways in which the landed upper classes and the peasants reacted to the challenge of commercial agriculture'. 2 Moore's analysis does not include the small countries of Eastern and Northern Europe, South-East Asia, or the Middle East on the grounds that 'smaller countries depend economically and politi- cally on big and powerful ones', so that 'the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their own boundaries'. 3 Despite this controversial claim, Moore's interpretative model has been creatively applied to explaining political developments in other parts of the world.4 Pointing out that 'in a fundamental way large countries and small countries do not differ in the era of transformation', the American historian Gale Stokes provides a comprehensive account of the social origins of modem politics in Eastern Europe. 5 Stokes argues that an uneven combination of similar exogenous factors and local social configurations produced markedly different political outcomes in the region, namely, 'functioning democracy in Czechoslovakia, vigorous peasant political parties in Serbia and Bulgaria, aristocratic bureaucratism in Hungary, and authoritar- ian governments in Poland and elsewhere'.6 Romania's political regime qualifies as a mixed case within Stokes's typology. Although its social structure shared many features in common with that of Hungary-namely, a massive concentration of landed property, the emergence of a group of 2 Ibid. p. xiv. 3 Ibid. p. x. 4 For an attempt to explain the social origins of politics in the Middle East in terms of Moore's model, see Heim Gerber, The Social Origins ef the Modern Middle East (London, 1987). 5 Gale Stokes, 'The Social Origins of East European Politics', in Daniel Chirot (ed)., The Origins ef Backwardness in Eastern Europe: Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages until the Ear?,, Twentieth Century (Berkeley, 1989), 210-52. 6 Ibid. 226. 204 CONSTANTIN IORDACHI liberal reformers originating from the gentry, a tendency towards converting cattle production into a trade in grain, and the impor- tance of the role played by Jews in commerce, banking, and industry-the political outcome was quite different. 7 Whereas in Hungary the political system was dominated by the nobility, in Romania the economic and political preponderance of the landed aristocracy was broken by the king and the central government bureaucracy. As a result, Romanian politics was dominated by national-liberal politicians emerging mainly from the lower and middling aristocracy, and not from among the large landowners. Committed to an agenda of transforming the urban population through industrialization and expansion of the bureaucracy, the liberals relied mainly on the support of the emergent ethnic Romanian middle class. Unlike in Hungary, after an early attempt at conditional emancipation, Romanian liberals opposed the emancipation of theJews and their assimila- tion into the native middle class, and were in favour of restricting their economic activities, thus preventing their potential alliance with large landlords: 'The complete lack of desire of the liberals to work out a compromise with the Jewish middle class, and the conservatives' inability to do so, left the Romanian body politic splintered and made it impossible for the landlords to control the development of social forces to the same extent as in Hungary.'8 Another significant difference between the two countries was the strong political role played by the king in Romania, as compared to the relative political autonomy enjoyed by the Hungarian aristocracy:

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