The Political Architecture of the First Single Party in the History of Romania: The Front of National Rebirth

Florin Grecu, Arhitectura politică a primului partid unic din istoria României: Frontul Renașterii Naționale, Editura Eikon, București, 2023, 542 pagini

Grant Thomas HARWARD

Over my Christmas break, I found time to finish reading Arhitectura politică a primului partidu unic din istoria României: Frontul Renaşterii Naţionale (The Political Architecture of the First Single Party in the History of Romania: The Front of National Rebirth) by Florin Grecu. I had been anxious to read this book since I learned of the publication of a new edition in 2023. The text analyzes the political structure created under the royal dictatorship of King Carol II of Romania from February 1938 to September 1940. In December 1938, after outlawing all other political parties nine months earlier, the monarch established the Front of National Rebirth. Until September 1940, Romania had its first experience with one-party rule. The short life of the Front of National Rebirth (renamed the Party of the Nation in June 1940) means that historians often skip over it. Therefore, Grecu’s book is an important contribution to the study of dictatorship in Romania during the twentieth century.

Grecu is a political scientist, so the book is less a history of the Front of National Rebirth than a political analysis of the party’s organization and functioning within the context of wider debates in totalitarian studies. The author uses the theories of Hannah Arendt, Ernst Nolte, and other noted scholars of totalitarianism to analyze this Romanian case. The detailed breakdown of party organization (including its paramilitary wing, the National Guard), ministerial oversight, electoral system, parliamentary procedures, paramilitary youth organizing, and other subjects provide a full understanding of the first one-party state in Romania. Overall, Grecu concludes that the Front of National Rebirth was an authoritarian system rather than a totalitarian one – although he sees a more radical turn toward the end of the royal dictatorship under the Party of the Nation. The party’s main purpose was to try to negate the success of the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael (also known as the Iron Guard) to buttress the monarchy and existing elite.

I really appreciated how much Grecu approached the Front of National Rebirth on its own terms. The party is so often described as just a poor copy of fascist parties elsewhere in Europe at the time. In contrast, this book grounds the creation of the one-party state as an organic development rooted in interwar liberal democracy in Romania. Declarations of martial law, using the state apparatus to swing election results, censorship of the press, and other such undemocratic practices were common throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. Thus, the Front of National Rebirth was built on a firm illiberal foundation. Nevertheless, the Carlist regime also cast about Europe for inspiration from fascist regimes, especially regarding corporatism. Grecu points out that more often than not Romanian authoritarianism imitated Italian Fascism rather than German Nazism. While the party promised “rebirth,” and adopted some trappings of fascism, it really propped up the traditional elites and did little to change the existing social-economic system in Romania.

Grecu’s book is a fine example of scholarship delving into Romania during the Second World War. It lays the groundwork for further study of the royal dictatorship and what followed. The militarization of the state under the king helps explain how dictator General Ion Antonescu later lead Romania without a party – following a brief collaboration with the Iron Guard – from January 1941 to August 1944. The Front of National Rebirth may have also provided a model for the Romanian Communist Party on how to run Romania as a one-party state after it seized power in 1948. This book convincingly demonstrates that the king and his party ought to be taken more seriously by historians.