Vlad Țepeș League

Vlad Țepeș League
Conservative Party
Liga Vlad Țepeș
Partidul Conservator
President Grigore Filipescu
Founded June 1929
Dissolved August 1938
Newspaper Epoca
Ideology Anti-democracy
Conservatism
Monarchism
Economic liberalism
National conservatism (minority)
Fascism (minority)
Political position Center-right to Far-right

The Vlad Țepeș League (Romanian: Liga Vlad Țepeș, LVȚ), later Conservative Party (Partidul Conservator, PC), was a political party in Romania, founded and presided upon by Grigore Filipescu. A "right-wing conservative" movement,[1] it emerged around Filipescu's Epoca newspaper, and gave political expression to his journalistic quarrels. Primarily, the party supported the return of Price Carol as King of the Romanians, rejecting the Romanian Regency regime. It achieved this goal in 1930, but failed to capitalize on the gains. LVȚ and PC monarchism was generally moderate and within the classical political spectrum, reclaiming the legacy of the old-regime Conservative Party; however, the League idealized efficient government by dictatorial means, and its fringes grouped ultra-nationalists and fascists.

Always a minor force, the PC relied on support from larger parties: the Democratic Nationalist Party (PND), the People's Party (PP), and eventually the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ). While its more radical members left to join the Iron Guard, Filipescu stated his opposition to fascism, and, eventually, to the authoritarian tendencies of King Carol, who ultimately banned all political parties but the National Renaissance Front. Filipescu's death in August 1938 put an end to the PC's activities.

History

Radical beginnings

LVȚ was founded in June 1929[2] by Filipescu, a former politician of the pre-World War I Conservative Party. He had later helped establish the right-wing PP, but expelled by Alexandru Averescu, allegedly for insubordination and factionalism.[3] Fluctuating between several parties and trying to revive the conservative movement, he had been affiliated with the PNȚ, ultimately returning to the PP in early 1927.[4] This was the period of a Regency regime, which looked after public affairs for the minor King Michael I, and which Filipescu resented. He revived the old Bucharest Conservative daily Epoca, directing it against establishment politicians and, in particular, against Barbu Știrbey, his lover Queen Marie, and the domineering National Liberal Party (PNL).[5]

Although widely tipped as a PP front-runner, Filipescu left the party when Averescu asked him to stop attacking Știrbey.[6] The League was centered on Epoca, but also put out two political newspapers in the provinces: Timpul (Râmnicu Sărat) and Tribuna Liberă (Râmnicu Vâlcea).[7] Founded to appeal to centrist conservatives and monarchists, it grouped some members of the old landowning class,[8] together with industrialists such as the Armenian-Romanian Alfred Cerchez.[9] The League was nevertheless an eclectic movement: existing alongside "a plethora of 'leagues' and 'guards', more or less secretive, more or less prone to violence",[10] it also hosted national conservatives and fascist sympathizers, including Amos Frâncu and Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul.[11] The former had previously organized the ultra-nationalist and antisemitic Cross Brotherhood of Transylvania.[12]

With its choice of name, the group honored the ruthless medieval prince, Vlad the Impaler. As noted in 1932 by the review Le Monde Slave, this reference condensed the League's own "political romanticism": "it wants to purify public life using strong measures, if need be through blood and iron, that is to say by dictatorial means." Its violence was "a verbal violence, within the limits of legality."[13] Its demand for a ban on political parties was particularly controversial, and caused the League to be seen as a "fascist element" in Romanian society.[14] However, Filipescu's anti-democratic idealization, deplored by Le Monde Slave, did not go as far as to demand a putsch. He noted that dictatorship was an ideal for later on, and that the LVȚ only hoped to prepare the terrain for its application.[15] Despite becoming known abroad as Romania's "Baby Fascist", he openly rejected Italian fascism, which he often derided in his Epoca articles.[16]

An instrumental purpose of the LVȚ was redirecting support for the exiled Prince Carol, who wished to return to Romania and depose his son. Filipescu was seen as the prince's "most devoted friend"[15] and "one of [his] confidants".[14] As acknowledged by Cerchez, the League had the Carlist agenda for a primary objective.[9] Carol returned triumphantly in June 1930, after a months-long national press campaign in which Epoca represented the moderate side. Throughout the interval, Filipescu debated with the more radical Carlist Nae Ionescu, who had been harshly critical of the Romanian Regency regime.[17] According to Le Monde Slave, the similarities between Filipescu and Ionescu ended where Filipescu became anti-theoretical, "honest and trenchant", "one of the last examples of Romanian conservatives."[18]

Mainstream conservatism

The League contested the 1931 general election as part of the National Union alliance, which was headed by Nicolae Iorga, the incumbent Prime Minister, and his PND.[19] According to La Revue Slave, Epoca had an important part to play in the agitation leading up to the elections, supporting Iorga's ideal of government by technocrats.[20] The Union won 289 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, of which the LVȚ took five,[21] propelling Filipescu to Senate.[22] At a League congress in November, Filipescu announced that the LVȚ was primarily a conservative movement indebted to Britain's Conservative and Unionist Party, and also a direct successor to the defunct Romanian Conservative Party.[14]

On March 10, 1932,[23] Filipescu took his party out of the alliance, censuring Iorga's fiscal policies in the wake of the Great Depression. In particular, it rejected its debt relief project as an attack on economic liberalism.[24] Also that day, Filipescu reformed the LVȚ, formally reclaiming for the title of "Conservative Party" (PC).[23] It used as its logo "two triangles formed by two lines crossing" (⋈).[25] In the recall elections of July 1932 the PC ran alone, winning just 0.62 of the vote nationally, and thus failing to meet the electoral threshold.[26] The Conservatives then formed a cartel with the PP during the 1933 election, but registered dismal results.[27]

By then, the party lost some of its supporters on the right, including Cantacuzino. They were either attracted into the more successful Iron Guard, or tried to reestablish the old LVȚ with support from the anti-Carlist General Ion Antonescu.[28] For his part, Filipescu was a staunch critic of the Guard's fascism, particularly alarmed by the possibility of an alliance between Romania and Nazi Germany.[29] A PC representative, Alexandru Periețeanu, participated in the civic movement for the Little Entente and against Hungarian irredentism, alongside figures from the PNȚ, PNL, and National Agrarian Party.[30]

As noted by Georges Oudard, the PC never stood a chance to regain power, but became noted for advocating "the sanity of economic and financial orthodoxy against the temptations of a coming world".[31] By 1934, when Filipescu tried to win himself a seat in the by-elections of Ilfov County,[32] the party was moving closer to the democratic opposition movement formed by the PNȚ against King Carol. He and PNȚ leader Iuliu Maniu agreed that Carol was an autocrat.[33] In August 1934, Filipescu hosted in Bucharest a grand reception in honor of Maniu.[34] Eventually, as running mates in the elections of December 1937, Filipescu's Conservatives closely followed the Maniu party line, which brought them into a "non-aggression pact" with the Guard.[35] The party was effectively banned in early 1938 by Carol's National Renaissance Front, which absorbed politicians from the PP, the PNL, and many other parties;[36] its activities were cut short in August, when Filipescu died after failed surgery to treat his heart condition.[37]

Notes

  1. ↑ Heinen, p. 153
  2. ↑ Heinen, pp. 175, 475
  3. ↑ (Romanian) Gheorghe I. Florescu, "Alexandru Averescu, omul politic (I)", in Convorbiri Literare, May 2009
  4. ↑ (Romanian) Gheorghe I. Florescu, "Alexandru Averescu, omul politic (V)", in Convorbiri Literare, September 2009; Popescu, p. 28
  5. ↑ "Où va la Roumanie?", pp. 14–15; Popescu, pp. 20, 29
  6. ↑ Popescu, p. 29
  7. ↑ Ileana-Stanca Desa, Dulciu Morărescu, Ioana Patriche, Cornelia Luminița Radu, Adriana Raliade, Iliana Sulică, Publicațiile periodice românești (ziare, gazete, reviste). Vol. IV: Catalog alfabetic 1925-1930, pp. 360, 947–948, 961. Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 2003. ISBN 973-27-0980-4
  8. ↑ Heinen, p. 376
  9. 1 2 (Romanian) "Armenii în masoneria românească(III)", in Ararat, Nr. 9/2007, p. 3
  10. ↑ "Où va la Roumanie?", p. 18
  11. ↑ Heinen, pp. 175, 255, 370, 376
  12. ↑ Roland Clark, Sfîntă tinerețe legionară. Activismul fascist în România interbelică, Polirom, Iași, 2015, pp. 35–36. ISBN 978-973-46-5357-7; Heinen, pp. 98, 99
  13. ↑ "Où va la Roumanie?", p. 14
  14. 1 2 3 Bulletin Périodique..., p. 6
  15. 1 2 "Où va la Roumanie?", p. 15
  16. ↑ Popescu, pp. 21, 40
  17. ↑ Romina Surugiu, "Cuvântul și campania de presă pentru revenirea în țară a principelui Carol, 1929–1930", in Revista Română de Jurnalism și Comunicare, Nr. 4/2006, p. 62
  18. ↑ "Où va la Roumanie?", pp. 14–15
  19. ↑ Heinen, pp. 153–154
  20. ↑ "Où va la Roumanie?", pp. 14–16, 19–20
  21. ↑ Dieter Nohlen, Philip Stöver, Elections in Europe: A Data Handbook. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010, p. 1610. ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
  22. ↑ (Romanian) Elvira Sorohan, "Nevoia de elocință", in România Literară, Nr. 44/2005
  23. 1 2 Heinen, p. 175
  24. ↑ Bulletin Périodique..., pp. 9, 12; Heinen, p. 175
  25. ↑ Sorin Radu, "Semnele electorale ale partidelor politice în perioada interbelică", in Anuarul Apulum, Vol. XXXIX, 2002, p. 578. For a visual representation, see "Haosul electoral", in Realitatea Ilustrată, Nr. 285, July 1935, p. 28
  26. ↑ Heinen, pp. 153, 197, 465
  27. ↑ Gheorghe I. Florescu, "Alexandru Averescu, omul politic (VIII)", in Convorbiri Literare, December 2009; Heinen, pp. 153, 465
  28. ↑ Heinen, pp. 175, 255, 334, 370, 376
  29. ↑ Popescu, pp. 30
  30. ↑ Livia Dandara, "Considerații privind fondarea Ligii antirevizioniste române", in Memoria Antiquitatis (Acta Musei Petrodavensis), Vols. XV–XVII, 1987, pp. 209–211
  31. ↑ Georges Oudard, "La situation politique en Roumanie", in Revue de Paris, Vol. VI, November–December 1935, p. 618
  32. ↑ "Alegerile parlamentare în Săptămâna Patimilor", in Unirea Poporului, Nr. 14–16/1934, p. 6
  33. ↑ (Romanian) Bogdan Vârșan, "Guvernul Tătărescu. Ultimul liberal sau primul carlist?", in Historia, August 2011
  34. ↑ (Romanian) Marin Pop, "Înființarea și activitatea gărzilor Iuliu Maniu (1934)", in Caiete Silvane, Nr. 3/2011
  35. ↑ Constantin I. Stan, "Pactul de neagresiune electorală: Iuliu Maniu – Corneliu Zelea Codreanu – Gheorghe Brătianu (25 noiembrie 1937) și consecințele lui", in Doru Sinaci, Emil Arbonie (eds.), 90 de ani de administrație românească în Arad: culegere de studii și comunicări. 90 de ani de administrație și învățământ de stat românesc în Transilvania, p. 272. Arad: Vasile Goldiș University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-973-664-392-7
  36. ↑ Adrian Webb, The Routledge Companion to Central and Eastern Europe since 1919. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008, pp. 152–153. ISBN 0-203-92817-2
  37. ↑ Popescu, pp. 40–41

References

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