"Noi nu dadeam nastere acum unei

miscari, ci aveam gata o miscare pe care

trebuia s’o încadram, s’o disciplinam, s’o

îndoctrinam si s’o conducem în lupta."

 

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu "Pentru Legionari"

 

Modernity is the great, original invention of Western Europe, which starts with the Age of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Modernity was born as a new, challenging way of life, opposed to tradition. Its main features are the modern state, the capitalist economy, the individualistic society, the culture of diversity and tolerance and peace as a normal state of being. The embodiment of these principles is liberal democracy.

Since the 16th century, there have been many reactions against modernity, as defined here, but we can classify them into two major categories: traditional conservatism and 20th century totalitarianism. The traditional conservative movements imagined different solutions able to deal with the crisis produced by modernity: religious renewal movements, strengthening of monarchical authority, and reactionary politics. All of them were oriented toward the past, that is to say toward a previous "Golden Age" which was thought to be the age of human happiness, opposed to an age of increasing decay. Gradually, this conservative tendency moderated itself and by doing so succeeded in, at least partially, integrating itself into modernity (19th–20th centuries). The totalitarian movements that appeared in Europe as a consequence of the First World War, represent the most radical anti-modern reaction ever known. They developed as two different versions (Communism and fascism) of the same type of movement, but they both have a common nature, being animated by a teleological political ideology. They were future-oriented, aimed to create ‘the Perfect Society’, and ‘the New Man’, who was to be better than the traditional or modern man.

Both Communists and fascists believed in the existence of historical or natural laws, which govern human destiny, laws that they knew and controlled. They took a holistic social approach, aiming at the same time to create social purity of class or of race. They conceived of war and violent conflict as the normal state of life, at the national and international level. They promoted a culture of intolerance, exclusion, and uniformity. Political power was to be held in totality by the state, that is to say, by those who control it. The justification for holding total power and for using terror as prevalent political tools was offered by the ideological claim of the achievement of a utopian Perfect Society. This radical critique of modernity, which the totalitarian discourse represents, spread to the whole of Europe during the inter-war period.

After the World War I, Romania found itself in the same situation as the other European states. The impact of the war, the politicization of the masses, and the weakness of liberal democracy created the proper conditions for the emergence of the totalitarian discourse in both forms: Communist and fascist. The Communist Romanian inter-war experience was short-lived. It succeeded initially in structuring a Communist Political Party (1921). However, after three years of existence the Party was declared unconstitutional and legally suppressed, because it agitated for the ideas of the Communist Internationalism, which was under the direction of the Bolsheviks. More importantly, the Communists had no public support within a nationalist Romania, which had not fully achieved its national unity and felt threatened by traditional Russian expansionism. As a consequence, during the inter-war period Communism was a marginal political movement, with no significant impact on Romanian politics or society.

The present study is an attempt to design the sociological profile of the Legionary movement at the confluence of three highly controversial concepts, such as modernity, fascism and totalitarianism. The political use and abuse of these ideal-type concepts, which are never to be found in a pure state in the real world, created a semantic inflation and a loss of conceptual precision. Nevertheless, this author believes that they can be successfully used as theoretical reference points and serve as heuristic and taxonomic devices within the human sciences. Of course, not all of the Communist or fascist regimes have been totalitarian, but they all shared a common theoretical complicity with the concept of totalitarianism, which, depending on the historical context, can be sublimated in close-to-the-model historical totalitarian regimes (as for example Russia under Lenin and Stalin and Germany under Hitler). Consequently, these concepts will be used as theoretical tools in order for us to better understand the Legionary movement.

What creates the peculiarity of the Iron Guard in the context of the abortive fascist movements, is the way it reacts to modernity. It combines the two main currents of the anti-modern discourses identified before: conservative-traditional and totalitarian. On the one hand, the discourse recovers two traditional ideas, deeply rooted in the Romanian mentality: national unity and Orthodoxy. On the other hand, the political solutions offered by the Iron Guard as a remedy for modern decay are of totalitarian inspiration. Its heterogeneous message (especially the insistence on the Christian Orthodox credo) offers it somehow a unique place in the landscape of European fascism.

The basic idea of this study is that the Iron Guard was a political movement and not a sort of political mystical sect. It was an abortive fascist movement, with a unique religious touch, but nevertheless ideologically related to the common political family of European fascism. With this, the Iron Guard structured the first significant Romanian political discourse inspired by the totalitarian ideology of the 20th century.

In 1918 Romanians lived their best moment of national happiness. One century of national struggle and a fortunate international balance of power brought into existence one state for all Romanians (or almost all). But the moment of joy was short lived. Romanians were afraid not to lose Greater Romania. The newly born State was weak and powerless. It was confronted with new kinds of challenges. From the outside, it was the internationalist Communist hydra that seemed to gain power (Bolshevik Russia to the East and the short-lived Socialist Republic of Bela Kuhn in Hungary to the West). However, more dangerously, Communism infiltrated inside the country! The Romanian army liquidated the Communist experience in Hungary and the police cleared away the local Communist Party. Another problem was the rise of the number of national and/or confessional minorities within the state’s borders. Among these, the most dangerous seemed to be the Hungarians (revisionists) and especially the Jews, both of whom represented the most numerous ethnic minorities. In the political imagination of the time they became the scapegoats of Romanian misfortunes. This kind of threat seemed more dangerous, because it came from inside the state.

When the official political establishment failed to find solutions to the Romanian economic and political crisis, Romanians lost confidence in their leaders and the political system they claimed to represent. In the 20s, with the confusion of the Liberal Party, Romanians lost their confidence in liberal ideals. With the failure of the National-Peasant government to resolve the economic crisis, Romanians lost their confidence in democratic ideals. The ‘official Romania’, which promised to continue the modernization of the country in order to offer prosperity, democracy and national cohesion, was discredited. So salvation could come only from outside the official political system, from a political force able to propose different solutions. The best candidate was Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail.

Its success came not from its capacity to solve the concrete problems Romania faced, but from its ability to use the language of ultra-nationalism and Orthodoxy. The Iron Guard’s discourse succeeded in convincing, for different reasons, specific strata of society. The peasantry, recently brought into politics, with little or no political education, was very sensitive to this new type of political discourse, which referred to the only values and concepts they were familiar with. The working class, with little civic experience, was in fact composed of rural people or half-urbanized peasants. As a consequence, they formed an audience that was sensitive to the same types of ideas. More interesting is the case of the intellectuals who were highly intrigued by this new message. What was the reason for this? Romanian intellectuals were connected to the flow of ideas in Western Europe, where they went to study. Europe, of course, was in the center of the battle against materialism, either capitalist materialism or historical materialism. European culture prized the virtues of religion, irrationality and nationality. The Iron Guard praised the same ideas and claimed to be the spiritual successor of poporanism and samanatorism. The same discourse applied to different social audiences.

Rediscovery of the myth. The process of modernization dislocated Romanian society. The safety of the protective, predictable traditional authority, enveloped by the founding myths, traditions and customs disappeared. Modern society created insecurity and permanent change. Man faced the tyranny of history with its traumatizing experiences (World War I, the Great Depression). The ancient familiar order was replaced by the chaos of an unknown world.

The Legionary movement imposed a new kind of discourse opposed to the discourse of the other politicians. It insisted on the importance of the traditional values, especially religion, in the making and survival of a nation. Through this appeal to traditional values, the tried to reorder the world. They assumed the function of kosmokrators, who reinstall religion as the guiding Axis Mundi. Through the incessant appeal to the cult of the ancestors, of the dead and of sacrifice, they resuscitated the founding myths of modern Romanian culture. Death was seen by the Legionari not as the ultimate threatening experience, but as a duty and an honor. It was called metaphorically "the engagement with eternity," following the example of the legendary shepherd from Miorita. The sacrifice, as a heroic act necessary to the reconstruction of the Romanian nation, has its representation in the popular legend of Mesterul Manole. All this mystical and religious language had a broad audience, willing to understand it tale quale. In a Romanian society where the lay tradition was weak, the religious discourse awakened the intellectuals and the bourgeoisie to Orthodoxy, which had only been forgotten rather than violently denied and abandoned, and strengthened the Orthodox convictions of the peasantry.

The Iron Guard was unwilling to accept the modern democratic definition of the nation, as being a political artifact based on the principle of jus civilize and having a contractual nature. The only definition accepted was based on the principle of jus sanguinis and had at its core the idea of ethnic and cultural identity. Those who were aliens because of their blood or of their religious belief could not legitimately claim any affiliation to the nation and to the corpus of public rights.

The Legionari had the feeling of treason, of living in a ‘besieged fortress’ (this fortress being at the same time not only the whole of Romania, but also the Iron Guard itself). However, who attacked whom? The very Legionari were those who attacked, along with the other anti-democratic forces, the fragile foundation of the constitutional and democratic political order of Romania. Despite the others, they formed a distinct voice: that of the totalitarian discourse.

Romania was in a deep crisis (economic, political and moral) and exposed to the dangers of disunity. What could be the solution to surpass this critical situation? The institutions of liberal democracy seemed incapable of dealing with the complex problems Romania faced after 1918. The return to an elite, enlightened government was inconceivable in the age of universal male suffrage. Romanians fought for the right of political participation during World War I. This was a good political reform, which revealed that Romanians had reached political maturity, and therefore this measure should never be abolished. It seemed that the solution should come from a completely new political movement, able to control this flow of the masses into politics. Furthermore, it should be inspired and lead by a providential man, able to identify the problems and to solve them.

The ideology. This new party was armed with an all-embracing political ideology, pretending to explain and organize every detail for the good of the whole of human history and human activity. It was based on the belief in the existence of natural laws, which govern human life. Human nature was obedient to the law of natural selection of species. Therefore, in politics as well, the strongest, that is to say the more disciplined and united, would win.

This project did not materialize for many reasons. At the time when the Iron Guard came to power, it had already lost its ‘shepherd’. The movement was no longer unitary, and came into power under the control of General I. Antonescu. Even during his life, Codreanu did not accept the idea of a coup d’etat, being convinced that the movement will surely come into power after the completion of the moral revolution, which would create ‘the New Man’. The crisis of mysticism of Codreanu during the last period of his life and the lack of decision and of revolutionary will allowed the Iron Guard to lose its favorable momentum to set up power. In practice, the Legionary movement is a failed totalitarianism (manqué).

The Iron Guard represents an abortive fascist movement, the most radical anti-modern experience in inter-war Romania. Its heterogeneous character was due to the fact that it combined two different types of anti-modern discourses. The first one is inspired by the traditional critique of modernity and has within its core the ideas of Orthodoxy and ultra-nationalism. The other represents the totalitarian discourse. This duality of the discourse gives to the Iron Guard its double character of a mystic sect and of a totalitarian political movement. Paradoxically, this strange combination of totalitarian ideology and orthodox fundamentalism and chauvinism helped it to be popular in Romania and to successfully challenge the already established political parties, but prevented it from becoming a coherent, efficient and effective political party, able to repeat in Romania the success in Germany of Hitler’s N.S.D.A.P.

From the ambiguity of the discourse result the ambiguity and indecision of the public manifestations of the Iron Guard. Due to its high degree of centralization and discipline, and because of its strong dependence on its leader, the movement was decisively influenced by the evolution of the leader’s personal disposition (and dispositions). At the end of his life, Codreanu had the firm conviction that Romania had not yet realized the phase of the moral revolution, the prerequisite for political change. At the same time, he was convinced by the inevitability of this evolution in the immediate future. These convictions, along with the mystical crisis toward the end of his life, imposed political passiveness on the movement. The revolution was expected to come, and it had a spiritual nature.

The Iron Guard’s political thought was not animated by Romania’s past experiments, but by the then contemporary totalitarianism. Consequently, the true nature of the legionary political project is not Orthodox and nationalist, but totalitarian. The Legionari were convinced chauvinists and religious fundamentalists willing to fight their own war by violent means. In their main propaganda texts ("Pentru Legionari", "Carticica Sefului de Cuib", "Circulari si Manifeste") and journals, they are the supporters of a totalitarian state where the power should be held totally by a charismatic leader. This state should be national (that is to say ethnically based) and embodying the idea of a ‘Perfect Society’ made up by ‘New Men’ (young orthodox Romanians).

Even if the governing experience of the Iron Guard was of short duration, its influence on Romanian society was important. It was at the "legionary school" that Romanians first became comfortable with the violence and intolerance of totalitarian discourse and with the institutionalization of political murder. When the Communist takeover occurred in 1948, political discourse and practice created the impression of déjà vu. The scenario was not new. Sometimes, even the actors were the same.