ABSTRACT
The relationship between fascist and conservative tendencies in interwar Romania was a dynamic and complex one. On the one hand, the ideological line between the two was blurred by a common nationalism which received an enormous impetus from Romania’s territorial expansion in the aftermath of the First World War. On the other hand, the two tendencies engaged in bitter conflicts which also contributed to the radicalization of nationalist discourse. The fascists-and their precursors in the nationalist student movement, with whom this chapter is largely concerned-used terrorist methods against mainstream politicians whom they charged with corruption and insufficient nationalism. While the National Liberal authorities arrested, tortured and, in the late 1930s, executed right-wing nationalist radicals, the latter emerged from their literal and figurative trials as popular heroes, legitimized by the nationalism which they and the Liberals shared. Radical nationalist goals, such as the limitation of national minorities in professional elites and educational institutions, paralleled those of mainstream nationalists preoccupied with completing Greater Romania’s national consolidation. Electoral alliances between fascist and mainstream parties, such as that in 1937 involving the Iron Guard and the National Peasants, and the migration across the conservative-radical divide of leading political personalities like Octavian Goga or Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, further indicate the fluid and dynamic nature of the fascist-conservative relationship.
