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Jew and Peasant in Interwar Romania*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen Fischer-Galati
Stephen Fischer-Galati*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado (USA)
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Abstract

Common historical wisdom has it that the Peasant Revolt of 1907 and the elections of December 1937 reflected the profound anti-Semitism of the Romanian peasantry. And since the events of 1907 and 1937 have also been looked upon as decisive in determining the course of the history of the peasantry, if not of Romania as such, it seems only proper to assess the accuracy of these contentions.

The revolt of 1907 was indeed a social movement directed against the exploitation of the impoverished Moldavian and Wallachian peasantry by Romanian landlords and Jewish “arendaşi” (Leaseholders). After 1907, and throughout the interwar years, Romanian historiography and political propaganda stressed the anti-Semitic character of the uprising in an effort to exonerate the absentee, and other, Romanian landowners and to emphasize the exploitative nature of Jews and Jewish capitalism. The Jewish question was organically connected with the peasant question in a variety of ways, all condemnatory of Jewish and Judaizing capitalism.

As none of the major political parties of pro-World War I Romania—or, for that matter, few of interwar Romania as well—paid more than lip service to the economic and social plight of the peasants, it was convenient to regard the Jew as the root cause of all the evils affecting the peasantry. Before World War I, populists and, paradoxically, socialists enunciated political theories regarding “neoserfdom,” which, however different in origin, converged in demands for radical land reform. The reform came not because of such demands but because of the Bolshevik Revolution and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Officially, it was unrelated to any political ideology, certainly separated from the Jewish question which, in theory, was resolved concurrently with the peasant question through the granting of citizenship and extension of political rights to the Jews of Romania. Following the countrywide agrarian reform in Greater Romania the peasant and the Jewish questions were in fact severed as Jews and Jewish capitalism had virtually no connections with the land.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Fall 1988 , pp. 201 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe 

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References

Notes

1. The most comprehensive study is by Eidelberg, Philip G., The Great Rumanian Peasant Revolt of 1907 (Leiden, 1974).Google Scholar

2. See Fischer-Galati, Stephen, “Fascism, Communism, and the Jewish Question in Romania,” in Béla Vágo and G.L. Mosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe (New York, 1974), pp. 158–160. Also, Marea rǎscolǎ a ţǎranilor din 1907 (Bucureşti, 1967), passim.Google Scholar

3. See pertinent documents, particularly those related to Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and his concept of “neoserfdom,” in Institutul de studii istorice si social politice de pe linga C.C. al P.C.R., Documente din istoria mişcǎrii munsitoreşti din România 1900-1909 (Bucureşti, 1975).Google Scholar

4. Fischer-Galati, , op.cit., pp. 157 ff.Google Scholar

5. The most explicit summary statement is by Hâciu, Anastase N., Evreii in tǎrile româneşti (Bucureşti, 1943). For a contrary opinion see Wilhelm Filderman, Adevǎrul asupra problemei evreeşti din România (Bucureşti, 1925).Google Scholar

6. For an analysis of the election of December 1937, it is essential to consult the detailed results published in the official gazette of the Romanian government, Monitorul Oficial, for December 1937-January 1938, as well as the various newspapers published by the “right” and the “left” in the few weeks antedating and following the election. Much of the following discussion is based on data derived from these sources.Google Scholar

7. See especially Conte, Francis, Chrisian Rakovski, 1973-1941 (Lille, 1975), vol. I, pp. 198–201, and Nicholas Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina: The Soviet-Romanian Territorial Dispute (Boulder, 1982), pp. 19 ff.Google Scholar

8. The most comprehensive and intelligent analysis of political anti-Semitism and of fascism in Romania is by Weber, Eugen, “Romania,” in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, eds., The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley, 1966), pp. 501–574.Google Scholar

9. See the important study by Barbu, Zeev, “Psycho-Historical and Sociological Perspectives on the Iron Guard, the Fascist Movement of Romania,” in Stein Ugelvik Larsen et al., eds., Who Where the Fascists: Social Roots of European Fascism (Bergen, 1980), pp. 382 ff.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., pp. 387 ff.Google Scholar

11. The Guardist philosophy is expressed, in an nutshell, by its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in Pentru Legionari (Bucureşti, 1937), pp. 385–387 and 396-398.Google Scholar

12. Ibid. Google Scholar

13. Weber, , op.cit. and Lucreţiu Pǎtrǎşcanu, Sous trois dictatures (Paris, 1946), pp. 227–326.Google Scholar

14. An admirable analysis of the National Peasant Party and of its policies will be found in Roberts, Henry L., Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven, 1951), pp. 130–169.Google Scholar

15. Supra, note 6.Google Scholar

16. Ibid. Google Scholar

17. See Fischer-Galati, Stephen, “Smokescreen and Iron Curtain: A Reassessment of Territorial Revisionism Vis-à-Vis Romania Since World War I,” East European Quarterly, XXII/No.4, (1988), pp. 44 ff.Google Scholar