Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the 'Archangel Michael' in Inter-War Romania by Constantin Iordachi (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 357 yielded smallsuccessin the face of the inertiaof Turkmencustom. Education, Edgar comments, proved a more important factor in the emancipation of women. Socialismin Turkmenistanremained socialismwith a Turkmenface. One misses, in this valuable book, a full consideration of the role of Islam in Turkmenistan,in particularof that of the Sufi brotherhoods,and the termination of the study in the late I930S does not allow for more than a modest examination of the effect of the great purge of I937. But Dr Edgar's workdoes enable us to understandmore clearlyhow a heterogeneousgroupof clansand tribescame to be transformedinto the fiercelyproud, autocraticand nationalisticstate of today. London M. E. YAPP lordachi, Constantin. Charisma, Politicsand Violence: TheLegion of the 'Archangel Michael'in Inter-war Romania. Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies, I5. Trondheim, Norway, 2004. I90 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography.Appendices. NOK 92: f8.oo (paperback). IN inter-war Romania idealism was scorned and those who searched for it, the young, were driven to the sole partieswhich seemed to have any on offer, those of the extreme Right. Although a radical land reform had been introduced soon after the FirstWorld War, many peasants were unable to afford the loans necessary to buy agriculturalmachinery. The economic recession of the I930S ushered in a decade of instabilityin which the xenophobia of the impoverishedpeasantrywas exploited by extreme right-wingmovements, principallyby the Legion of the ArchangelMichael also known as the Iron Guard and directed againsttheJews. Disillusionwith the failureof parliamentary government -represented principallyby the National Liberal and National Peasant parties to solve economic problems fuelled support for the Guard, with its promise of spiritualregeneration and its programme of combatting'JewishBolshevism'.Combatting'JewishCommunism'was one of the slogansproducedby the Guard,a movement createdand dominated,even after his death, by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. It was Codreanu who inspired the Guard with his invectives against what he saw as 'theJudeo-Bolshevik' threat, against the drive for modernization through imitation of Western political and economic institutions,and againsta corruptruling elite. This study is essential reading for all students of Fascism. As the author points out in his introduction,the Guard in inter-warRomania is seen as one of the most complex and unusualvarietiesof Fascismin Europeforthe following reasons. First,it originatedindependentlyof Italian Fascismand German National Socialism. Second, it was among the few movements of the extreme right in CentralEurope along with the Ustasha Movement in Croatiaand the ArrowCrossin Hungary to acquirea masscharacter.Third, the Guard was the only mass Fascist movement in an Orthodox country. In 1937, it claimed some 270,000 members,it polled 478,ooo votes in the December 1937 parliamentaryelections i6 per cent of the electorate winning sixty-six seats in parliament. Finally, the Guard combined Fascistcharacteristicswith particularideological featuressuch as religiousfaith and mysticism. 358 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 In the words of Maurice Pearton, the theories of Corneliu Codreanu 'were derived from the Book of Revelation'. Codreanu made a practice of going up in the mountains to pray, something that Hitler and Mussolini were not known to have done. Codreanu conceived the Guard'sprogrammelike a monastic order.It was endowed with a spiritualmissionto change Romanians by creating 'the new man', one bent on socialjustice. There was no place for the bourgeoisie.Codreanu'soppositionto democracywas expressedin a virulent anti-Semitism.The Guard'sarticlesof faithdictateda pathologicalhatred ofJews whom Codreanu saw as the fount of Communism. lordachi ascribesthe Guard'sappeal to Codreanu'scharisma.The genesis of that charisma was a vision that Codreanu had on 8 November 1923 whilst in prison for organizing a plot to shoot politicianswho had supported an amendment to the Romanian constitutiongrantingJews the right to citizenship . He claimed that the ArchangelMichael had appearedto him, urging him to dedicate his life to God. The particular inspiration for Codreanu's charismatic revelation seems to have been an icon of Saint Michael in a Bucharestmonasteryin which the archangelis depicted in a punitiveposture, wieldinga swordin one hand, and holding scalesofjustice in the other. It was in this mould that St Michael became the object of a fanaticcult. Proclaiming the archangel as patron and symbol, Codreanu founded, in July I927, the Legion of the ArchangelMichael. Michael'ssaint'sday 8 November was the officialcelebrationof the Legion. lordachi constructsa convincing theoretical frameworkin which to place an...