ABSTRACT
During the 1930s almost all the ruling oligarchies in Eastern Europe sought authoritarian nationalist and quasi-fascist means of resolving or containing the acute tensions, political pressures and military challenges engendered by the 1930s Depression and the growing power and territorial/hegemonic ambitions of Fascist Italy and (after 1933) Nazi Germany. The growth of protectionism, exchange controls, import and export licensing arrangements, etatist import-substituting industrialization, debt remission and agricultural price support schemes greatly increased state control over the East European economies. As if introverted and illiberal political and economic nationalism were not enough, most of these states sought additional ideological and geopolitical support and justification for such policies by developing closer economic and political relations with Italy and (from as early as 1932 onwards) Germany. They also began to emulate some of the trappings, style, rhetoric, institutions, cultural policies, political violence, intimidation and ‘mass mobilization’ techniques of first the Fascist and later the Nazi regimes. Indeed, these were often at least in part defensive tactics or a type of insurance policy, adopted in the (vain) hope of fending off potential external political interference, military threats and/or territorial encroachments by submitting to the economic wishes and political tutelage of the emerging fascist powers.
