Dinu, Radu Harald. Faschismus, Religion und Gewalt in Südosteuropa: Die Legion Erzengel Michael und die Ustaa im historischen Vergleich (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 383 Dinu, Radu Harald. Faschismus, Religion und Gewalt in Südosteuropa: Die Legion Erzengel Michael und die Ustaša im historischen Vergleich. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2013. 283 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. €49.00 (paperback). Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael (1927–41) and the Ustaša Croatian Revolutionary Movement (1929–45) are two of the most infamous fascist movements of the interwar period. In part because of a historiographical tradition from the 1960s that Orientalized both movements and depicted them as exotic, pseudo-fascist cults, scholars of comparative fascism frequently refer to the Legion and the Ustaša as examples of macabre violence and terrorism, characterizing them as clerical fascisms or political religions. As stereotypical cases of ‘primitive’ violence, it makes sense to juxtapose them in a comparative analysis of fascist religion and violence. Both fought against their respective governments during the interwar period, both came to power and carried out extreme violence against ethnic minorities during World War Two, and both were decisively crushed by the time the war ended. Both also cultivated religious rhetoric, cults of the dead, and sought ties with state churches. According to Radu Harald Dinu, however, the similarities end there. A close examination of these two movements that takes into account the most recent research, Dinu’s book shows that very few of the stereotypes about the role of either religion or violence in southeastern European fascisms are supported by the evidence. Dinu’s comparative methodology follows the lead of historians such as Michael Mann and Sven Reichardt, who focus on the practice of fascism rather than on creating ideal types (Sven Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde: Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im Italienischen Squadrismus und in der Deutschen SA, Köln, 2002; Michael Mann, Fascists, Cambridge, 2004; Sven Reichardt and Armin Nolzen [eds], Faschismus in Italien und Deutschland: Studien zu Transfer und Vergleich, Göttingen, 2005). Like many recent historians of fascism, Dinu is not really interested in explaining why these groups were successful or not, and he limits himself to commenting that corrupt and dysfunctional political systems combined with the Hungarian takeover of Northern Transylvania and the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia catapulted these groups into power. Instead, Dinu’s ‘theory of practice’ tries to explain why fascists behaved as they did. ‘Moving the dynamic of violent actions to the center of analysis, without ignoring structural or cultural factors’, he explains, should tell us something new about the sociology of fascist movements (p. 10). Dinu studies the relationship between violence and fascism, but he is careful to remind us that the Russian Bolsheviks also relied on ‘violence, camaraderie, and a paramilitary habitus’ so we should not imagine that violence in itself SEER, 93, 2, APRIL 2015 384 defines fascism (p. 14). After finding fault with comparativists who look for ‘ideal types’, Dinu concludes that the important thing is not to define fascism, but to interpret it. Dinu begins his study of the Legion in the 1920s, arguing that the legionary movement evolved out of antisemitic political organizing and student violence that had captured headlines for at least five years before Corneliu Zelea Codreanu founded the Legion in 1927. ‘The fascist model’ from Germany and Italy was simply ‘a confirmation of their own political ambitions,’ he writes, implying that fascism emerged independently out of the Romanian context and was not a foreign import (p. 46). One could argue that the antisemitic movements of the early 1920s were already influenced by similar phenomena abroad well before they became ‘fascist’, but while his descriptions are frustratingly brief and specialists may quibble with Dinu’s interpretations and causal arguments, few of the core elements of his story are debatable. He has a firm grasp of the sources in their original languages and confidently builds upon reliable secondary studies. When he turns to Yugoslavia, Dinu describes the rise of fascism in similar terms. Preexisting ethnic tensions, chauvinistic nationalism, an unpopular and dysfunctional political system combined with a growing ‘paramilitary subculture’ to catalyse extremist movements such as the Ustaša. He documents a consistent pattern of popular violence in both countries during the 1920s, and argues that ‘the everyday political violence that characterized fascism’ helped establish both groups’ popularity (p. 67...