The Recipe for Fascism – The social background of fascism in South-Eastern Europe

Upon hearing the term “fascism”, the lay reader’s normative reaction is to associate it with its main outward forms of manifestation in interwar Germany, and Italy, respectively. However, the latter were not the only incarnations of this phenomenon. They had significant contemporary off-shoots in almost all of Europe, whether be it the Falange in Spain or the Action Française. The region of Europe east of the Austrian Alps, nowadays identified as Central and South-Eastern Europe witnessed the birth and violent demise of two of the most significant sub-variants of fascist political movements, the ArrowCross Party and The Iron Guard. The two movements occupied, at the height of their popularity, in 1937, and 1940, respectively, the third place as Europe’s most powerful parties of their kind . Yet, in the surrounding countries, while ultra-nationalism was at an all-time high in the period, very weak incarnations of fascism appeared upon the political stage. The social and political conditions being somewhat similar, one is left to wonder as to what was the key for the success of fascist parties in Hungary and Romania. This essay will show that by drawing a parallel between certain socio-political trends and ideological blueprints, which were locked in a complex interplay in the two states, one can ascertain some general conclusions toward the reasons behind the fortitude of fascist movements in the two countries.

As the reader could already learn from the introduction above, the two main case-studies chosen are to be found in Hungary and Romania. The two manifest archetypical mental and social trends, for what has become consecrated in the historical jargon as “nation-building”, in the Central and South Eastern European areas. In spite of this, they manifest certain peculiarities, borne out of their respective mental and political self-formatting. Therefore, a third point of reference is needed, in order to successfully conduct a comparative study with consequences to the entire region. I have chosen to make references to Bulgaria, and occasionally, to Yugoslavia, so as to successfully argue my case. For my theoretical background, I shall lie heavily upon the conclusions drawn by the American sociologist and political scientist, Andrew C. Janos , although in a modified fashion, for I will also take into consideration aspects of political language and ideology. Main trends in ideology of nation-building, reaching back to the mid-19th century, and resulting in a certain social stratification and mental mapping, will be analyzed and rendered, in order to decipher the deep roots of the phenomena.

There are many common trends that can be ascertained from all the upward-mentioned case-studies, upon making even the most sweeping analysis. As nascent nation-states, they found themselves facing more or less the same internal challenges, from their birth in the latter part of the 19th century, through the years of the First World War and the interwar period. For an adequate understanding of the phenomena occurring in the countries, I shall introduce the concept of the “developmental state” . This term was put forward by the American-Hungarian political scientist Andrew C. Janos, in order to explain just such situations. The developmental state is identified by a superstructure of stately apparatus and codification, borne out of very little preceding internal causes, mostly out of the interplay of diplomatic bargaining of the Great Powers and an ambitious “national” elite .

The developmental state in the Central and South Eastern regions of Europe in the late 19th century was an all-but encompassing occurrence. Very few states had an uninterrupted governance and at least, internal autonomy, so as to fall back upon when faced with the issues of modernity. Hungary and Romania were no exceptions, although Hungary had, to a certain extent, access to a far-removed past of medieval codexes of rights and privileges, which it would later instrumentalize in order to fashion a legal apparatus. In addition, the core-areas of both of them had a certain amount of autonomy within their respective imperial frameworks. In the age of nation-states, the elites of the developing states of the area attempted, via aggressive campaigning in the Occident and political coups at home ( see the revolutions of 1848-49), to emulate the patterns put forward by the West . The conclusion is that most of the stately constructs in the area came not as the result of complex internal processes and factors of internal development and organic political upgrowth. Instead, they were the fruits of the political engineering of a politically-minded think-tank, composed of intellectuals, mostly educated abroad, who wished to reproduce the model seen there. Romania’s generation of 1848 or the exponents of the later Liberal Party, or Hungary’s Kossuths, Deaks and Tiszas are clear-cut examples of state- and nation-building elites at work.

The chimera of 1848’s France dangling in front of their eyes, the elites of the newly-established nation-states proceeded to construct the infrastructure needed for a successful emulation. The means at their disposal, in order to achieve these grandiose ends, were few and far between. The aggressive mobilization of resources and people was chosen in order to quickly “catch-up” to the community of European powers to which these states felt they naturally belonged to. The mental mechanism of nationalist dialectic can be clearly seen to be at work. The Romanians used the term “burning of stages” (“arderea de etape”) for this process, rightly so, since the area attempted to leap forward several hundreds of years in terms of technology, legal and institutional framework, et cetera. The instruments with which to achieve these results were political; the political field worked actively in order to format, in a top-down manner, the society and the economy . The vice-versa of the phenomenon that occurred in the West was put in place. The elites created from scratch a complex legal framework, often borrowing wholesale from occidental counterparts ( see the Romanian Constitution of 1866, which was copied from its Belgian counterpart). Other measures, that would prove to be key in the long run, were the creation of core institutions such as the army and administration. The bourgeoning elite, often numbering a mere fraction of the entire population, needed a solid social basis, upon which to ground its power-structure, besides requiring a system of political control .

The elements of the newly-built infrastructure came about, as we have already seen, as a byproduct of nationalist posturing, legitimate needs for a system of control and standardization, and the need for the production of elites. This last necessity was particularly close to the natural interest of the ruling few, since it wanted to reproduce and propagate its reign and its value-system. The institutional framework was to fuel the growth of an autochthonous elite, which, at the time, was more or less equal with the body of the “nation”. The result of this process was the creation of a very strong bureaucracy and political-military class, motivated by an equally potent esprit de corps. This social category sought and succeeded in monopolizing the reins of power for the entire period under question. Only slight episodes of dissent appeared, mostly in the interwar period ( the reasons of which will be treated in the latter part of this essay). The ideology of this class was that of liberal nationalism, with a very mild emphasis on the liberal element, and its main purpose, that of nation-building. The political climate was that of temperate pluralism, with a fair amount of freedom of speech and of the press ( within certain boundaries). However, the political-electoral process within these constitutional arrangements, precisely because of their lack of adaptation to autochthonous conditions, was fraught with half-measures. The real centers of decision vis-à-vis forming a government or a parliamentary majority laid not with the electorate ( even after the introduction of measures such as universal male suffrage in Romania in 1923), but with obscure power-nodes such as the king, the powerful heads of the major political parties, or financial tycoons . Factors such as provisions for the interests of the bureaucracy and the army were also to be taken into account. The fledgling bureaucracy or political class ( I shall refer to it by using these two terms) concentrated all its efforts toward a syne-genetic process, which was to spiral out of control in the interwar period.

The social and economic policy of this nation-building political class was also particular to the area. Its two main characteristics are protectionism and dirigisme. Since the most influential ideologues in the field of economic thought of the time were the likes of Friedrich List and Karl Marx, industry was identified as the key to the well-being of any nation. Therefore, protectionist measures were introduced in order to develop indigenous manufactures and industries, as well as infrastructure ( out of which railroads seem to be the most important, at least from a financial and mental impact-standpoint). The results varied, but in all-but a few cases the initial products were not able to gain a competitive edge over foreign imports, and mainly produced for the internal market. This financial effort, grafted upon the support for an already increasingly overbearing bureaucracy, led to numerous bankruptcies and dependence on foreign loans. Budgetary deficits and mounting foreign debt were a steadfast characteristic for the governments in the area. The resulting situation left the primary sector of economy, and those engaged in it, hard-pressed, and without a coherent political voice. External factors, such as the dropping prices for wheat (due to competition with and overproduction of American wheat) , did not help alleviate the strained relationship between the administration and the agricultural sector.

Another consequential factor in the internal dynamics which contributed to the rise of contestation in the area was an especially relevant facet of social policy: educational and cultural politics. We have already established that a major part of the nation-building process consisted in conscious elite-building; another aspect was the desired nationalization of the masses. In order to accomplish just such results, a complex and uniform system of schooling was developed over the years, which sought to encompass all of the citizenry. The reforms of Spiru Haret in Romania or Trefort Ágoston in Hungary followed the same pattern. Consequently, in all states of the area, especially Hungary and Romania, there is a noticeable spike in the levels of literacy and school attendance . The number of persons receiving higher education, domestically, also increased exponentially. Press and other means of information and communication followed suit.

The concrete results of this vector of development were twofold. Firstly, by the turn of the century, and towards the eve of the World War, this schooling-system had produced a large amount of people cognizant of the inner workings of the political system. This increasingly large category of citizenry found itself inadequately represented politically, and, surged toward the extremes of the political specter. I am talking here about the appearance of a politically-activated intelligentsia, which could not integrate via the existing channels. Due to the over bloated nature of the bureaucratic system, many could not find jobs adequate to their level of training, or at all. These people quickly became critical of the system in its entirety. Their criticism struck a chord with the already strained relationship between the bureaucracy and the primary sector. The conjugation of the two social categories found political expression in an unified, radical form.  This process was already well in place by 1914. It was halted somewhat by the turmoil of the war, but reaffirmed its strength in the late 1920’s, stimulated by the worsening of the internal situation .
The second consequence is less politico-economic in nature, and pertains to the inner ideological nature of the educational-cultural framework which set apart Romania and Hungary from the rest of the area, allowing for the development of peculiarly strong subspecies of fascism. The motivation and subject-matter taught in the educational system, at all levels, from the elementary up to the auditoriums of the universities, were imbibed with a strong nationalistic overtone . Thusly, whole generations of youths were brought up in accordance with the nationalist canon. The generational conflict which arose  from the problems already shown above (the lack of social mobility), was fought under the guise of competing nationalisms.

This fact in itself did not lead to a generalized ultra-nationalistic public discourse in most countries of the area. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia serve as counterparts to Romania in Hungary in this sense, and provide us with adequate examples to conduct a simplified asymmetric comparison. The main emphasis falls upon the political-ideological traits of public life, which set apart Romania and Hungary from the others. In Romania, the weakness or, as some historians argue, the complete lack of any historical tradition of the political Left (understood here as socialism and its many sub-variants), can be identified as a cause of the veer to the right. Romanian socialists had been particularly weak during the second half of the 19th century, culminating with the episode dubbed as “the Betrayal of the Generous”, during which prominent members of the Romanian Socialist Party joined Bratianu’s Liberals . Anti-semitism was also notoriously strong in the Romanian lands (Romania being the last country to emancipate its sizeable Jewish population in 1918) , and socialism took plenty of flak because of its internationalist stance. Later, socialism and its purveyors came to be seen as (due to the proximity of Russia) traitors and aliens, seeking to pollute the body of the nation. Any person with a leftist tinge was portrayed as working in collusion with the Soviet Union. The stance adopted by the Romanian Communist Party, upon the directive of the Third International, to declare Romania as an imperialist power, did much to discredit the Left ( it was subsequently banned). Other directions of a critical political attitude, such as the National Peasant Party, were lost along the way. On the one hand, they looked back on a rich heritage of radical nationalist political activity themselves (being formed from the remains of the Romanian National Party of Transylvania). On the other, the party found itself entangled in the intestine struggles around the economic crisis and the return of King Carol the Second. These two events cost the party dearly in public support and credibility. The nationalist rhetoric conquered and firmly held in its grasp the field of political language.

The Hungarian Left, theoretically, looked back upon a fairly solid historical tradition, as did the Peasantist undercurrent. The Hungarian Socialists were highly popular among the urban proletariat and could commandeer large masses of demonstrators, insomuch as mayday celebrations became a cause for alarm around the turn of the century Budapest. The moderate Left, or Civic Radicals, provided the best intellectual support for the movement, with men as those gathered around Oszkár Jászi’s Sociological Society or Ady Endre’s Nyugat ( West) literary circle. The ideological streams favoring peasant and smallholder interests coagulated around András Áchim’s party. This promising outlook toward political normalcy was ruined by the events in the aftermath of the First World War. The surge and failure of both democratic and then Bolshevik-lead revolutions, in which both elites were highly involved, the staggering territorial losses and the ensuing chaos directed the field of public discourse toward radical nationalism. Much of the value-system of the Ancien Regime, tolerance and liberalism, were repudiated, in favor of revanchard slogans . The power-structure which embedded itself in the vacuum left by the events of 1918-19, however, was little changed. It encapsulated the negative tendencies of the previous regime, including dirigisme, an overbearing bureaucracy, and intellectual overproduction, and combined it with other nocent traits such as the lack of upward social mobility and adequate political representation. An aura of internal pluralism was maintained. However, there existed very little political alternatives to the Egységes Párt (The Unified Party, or as it was later known the Party of National Union). The communists were banned, and the socialists kept under strict supervision, their activity curtailed to the point of discontinuation. The Smallholder Party, which emerged under the previous regime, fell victim to its own nationalist tendencies and political inexperience. It merged with the Christian National Union (KNEP) and various other political splinter-groups to form the already mentioned Unified Government Party, which ruled Hungary for the next decade. In the course of this participation to power, it lost most of its real support among its target-electorate.

The dynamics of the elements described above came together in a very-specific, but yet comparable fashion in the two countries chosen as case-studies in this essay, Romania and Hungary. The developmental strategies of the elites of these states lead to the development of a strata of population which had become available for political mobilization, but was unable to do so, because of the very nature of the power-relationships themselves. The obvious conclusion is that the issues that lie at the core of the problem identify it not as the byproduct of some sort of historical aberration, but as being systemic. From the outset, the premises of the new system were political and not organic; the elite-generating mechanism, once put in motion, spiraled out of control. It churned out generation after generation of individuals suited toward engaging in the affairs of the state, and very little of those able to engage in economically productive sectors. The mentality which it produced also expected the solution to the systemic problem to be gained from the system itself. The state was identified as the repository of all solutions, and therefore, statist solutions to issues generated by the state were favored. The mobilization of scarce resources, initially to keep up with the standard of living in the core states, was again proposed in a radical fashion in the interwar period, in order to ensure social peace. Here, the schema proposed by the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen can be used to study the phenomenon. He uses the concept of a “leisure class” in order to render the occurrence when a ruling elite borrows customs and needs ( often expressed in commodities known as “Veblen goods”) from other social settings, in order to affirm its authority ( the concept of “international demonstration” is also used by some sociologists to describe this process) .  The mission civilizatrice  of the political classes of these states can be understood in this fashion, modernization as an attempt at self-legitimation in a changing world. However, when the superstructure had already been built and adequately staffed, the new elites were caught in the dichotomy of the promises and the lack of delivery. The concept invented by critical Romanian literary scholars Junimea (Titu Maiorescu), ”forme fără fond” (forms without substance), seem fitting to describe the end-result. This upwardly mobile strata was affected by the phenomenon identified as relative deprivation by the American sociologist Ted Gurr. He theorizes that a potentially revolutionary or otherwise politically charged atmosphere can appear in situations when the system finds itself in structural change. When the pace of this metamorphosis slows down or even grinds to a halt, there is a noticeable difference at psychological level between what men expect ( what they have been promised) and what they can actually achieve . I hypothesize that the situation in late interwar Romania and Hungary can be understood using this theoretical apparatus.

The solutions provided by fascism to the problems of society were highly tempting. The first reason was: fascism was a highly composite and often heterogenous ideology, encapsulating ideas both from the extreme right and left. This extreme right-wing element of it proved to be the key to its success in societies which turned their back to the political left as provider of valid solutions to the country’s ailments. We can see in our asymmetric case-studies that very weak, if any, fascism existed in states in which the peasantist and communist forces were strong. Second, it appealed to society wholesale, pandering to the traditions, as well as allowing for social mobility. What scanty evidence of the social bases of fascism in Romania and Hungary we have , identify it as having a strong basis between youth and workers, but otherwise being a Volkspartei ( a catch-all party). Fascism also fit in the desired formulae of statist solutions, aggressively seeking to mobilize resources toward a greater end. The conclusion which can be drawn from the theorizing above is that fascism was an ideology perfectly tailored for the particular needs of society in late interwar Romania and Hungary, and occurred as a byproduct of a larger, systemic crisis.