Turn-of-the-century and post-1918 Romania faced a number of challenges on the political, social and mental tiers. The nation-building project had before it an increasing number of hurdles, such as foreign intervention and an ethnically incoherent hinterland. Thusly, Romanian self-images pictured themselves as being engaged in an unending struggle with a heterogeneous, outside force, which boiled down to modernity itself. While seeking to acquire adequate definitions for their national community, intellectuals started to experiment with innovative concepts, which seeped in from the outside. It is in this context that nationalism fused with scientific discourse to format notions. Such was the case of the idea of degeneration, which took on both a political, and a biological sense. This essay seeks to provide a short conceptual history of the themes of degeneration and palingenesis. They were all-too present in the Romanian intellectual production, which in turn served as basis for political engineering. For the purposes of this essay, I have isolated two social scientists, who will serve as case-studies to illustrate the diachronic phenotypical shifts within the Romanian
social-engineering discourse. Their philosophies of history reflected the same apprehension of modernity and utilized similar topoi. The ideas of decay and re-birth are also the pregnant themes around which the political-scientific gravitates.
In the turn-of-the century Austro-Hungarian intellectual debate, supra-national and national schemes confronted each other, in an attempt to impose their respective projects as the sole cure for the ailments of society. Into this classic right-left controversy, a third, alternative political option injected itself, attracting many supporters. It was this plan for the overhauling of the Monarchy which was most typical for the Austro-Hungarian political tradition. Its special character was made up of a combination of elements taken from regional patriotism, Kaisertreue, leftist-populism ( the possibility of the introduction of universal suffrage), catholic conservatism and flavored with novel elements, such as ethnic nationalism. It successfully espoused the nationality and social problems and demands, steering their energies toward a centralist solution. The most discussed and analyzed embodiment of this new centralist political avenue is the Great Austria movement. Concrete plans for the looming institutional and perhaps, administrative reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are few and far between. The only clear-cut, instrumentalized project of imperial reform in existence was that of Aurel C. Popovici. He is considered by many historians therefore to having been the closest as there ever was ( although from their correspondence, it is clear that Franz Ferdinand disagreed with several of his points) to an ideologue of the Great Austria camp1.
1 Kann, The Multinational Empire, vol.2., p. 197-198
Popovici’s importance is twofold. Primarily, as stated above, he offered a potential plan for the future revamping of the imperial superstructure. Secondly, he offered his Romanian constituency ( and to other nations as well) a fresh apprehension of the nation, one that imbued the idea of dynasticism with modern ideas of ethnicity. He was the lynchpin
which held together the disenfranchised nationalities and the Crown. It is through this conceptual binom his intellectual contribution is best understood and integrated in the larger scape of the turn-of-century debate.
In order to understand better the motivation lying behind his proposed plan, one must begin with a short overview of the latter. Popovici’s idea of the nation was based upon the respective nation’s ethnic character. In this respect, he can be included ( with some reserves) in the same school of thought as the above-described Hungarian intellectuals of neo-conservative lineage. His intellectual influences are a mosaic comprised of different notions of such scholars and political thinkers. Among these were Ludwig Gumplowicz, Houston Stewart Chamberlain ( of both he makes lengthy and lofty quotations in his works), and Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau; he made use of their ideas on ethnicity and race. Popovici also borrowed concepts to back up his argumentation from Edmund Burke, and Herbert Spencer, and from german and English utilitarianism. He was also under the sway of the Vienna circle of neo-conservative politicians and their greatest representative, Karl Lueger, especially after his forced exile. From 1893 to 1908 he lived in Vienna and took a stake in the ongoing debates concerning the future of the empire, siding with the conservatives. But he was far from being a conservative himself. Coming from a liberal background, he developed a sophisticated modernist critique of modernity of sorts. He combined the emerging, yet murky idea of race with a contestation against the liberal order, developing a future project of traditionalist social organization and ethnic differentiation. In his later life, he was an avid contributor to the populist-nationalist Romanian journal “Samanatorul” ( “The Sower”), lead by the nationalist historian Nicolae Iorga. In his second most important theoretical work, Nationalism sau Democratie ( Nationalism or Democracy), published in 1910, he advocates an elitist notion of the societal edifice2.
2 Turda, Aurel C. Popovici’s nationalism and its political representation, p. 54-55
Popovici made frequent use of “race” as the provider of the basis for the nation. He himself defines race as “nationality”, a loose grouping of such attributes as a common background of language, culture and heritage, but also, most significantly, a strong sense of belonging to a community. “Romanianness” was the self-conscious result of the cultivation of this national feeling, which resulted in the appearance ( and maintenance) of the Romanian nation. This integral definition of the nation brought together in one community all those who shared the same ethnic conscience. It was obligatory to translate this sentiment into political reality, in order to assure the continuity of those who spawned it3.
3 Ibidem., p. 58-59 4 Turda, The idea…, pp.144-148
All races, for this Romanian political thinker, had a particular set of distinguishable features which set them apart from others. The stereotypical ethnic repertoire which he operated with produced radical affirmations. For example, on numerous occasions in his oeuvre, he declares that Hungarians are “all the same” or are “animated by the same spirit”, while alluding to their ambiguous relationship with Jewry. The differences of race were a product of nature itself in Popovici’s opinion, and resulted in each ethnic group having rights and indeed, a necessity for a well-defined habitat. The struggle for these was also an organic competition, and the very force that pushed forward the evolution of society. Races were locked in a continuous fight for survival. Here, he mirrors the ideas of Gumplowicz ( the synegetic nature of race) , Spencer (organic evolution ) and Knox ( the superiority of race)4, but also of other contemporary thinkers, such as Gusztav Beksics, with who’s work he repeatedly engaged into polemics. But where he swerves off the thought of Beksics is the question of race dynamics. Where Beksics extols the value of combination and the ability to assimilate of a race as its greatest asset, Popovici considers the mixture of ethnicities to be the key to their downfall. The preservation of race and its qualities through autarchy is the cornerstone of Popovici’s thought. This is an element appropriated from Gobineau, and
tailored to fit the logic of his argument ( his concept of racial degeneration is dynamic, as opposed to Gobineau’s irreversible atrophy). The hybridized nature of the Hungarian race therefore would lead to its inevitable downfall, especially after its latest incorporation of a large number of Jews.
This ethnic underpinning of society, in Popovici’s Weltanschauung, would be transposed into concrete form in his magnum opus, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Gross-Osterreich ( The United States of Great Austria), appeared in 1906. He put forth a plan which linked together federalist and centralist tendencies, all the while jealously safeguarding his beloved concept of ethnic separatism. Although at first appearance, the project seemed to belong to a by-gone era, it was not rooted in traditional politics. Popovici, as did his whole generation, broke with the idea of the historically-based federalist makeup of the Habsburg Monarchy. The reinstatement of the pre-1867 Transylvania would not have resulted in an ameliorated state for Romanians. Hungarians dominated even before that, and the lesson was not lost on them. What was needed instead, Popovici claimed, in the spirit of equity, was an ethnically-based reconfiguration of the imperial crown lands. Accordingly, he developed a federal structure, composed of 15 provinces, each circumscribed to a more or less well defined ethnic dominance. This construct would be governed by a federal government, which would exercise total power in matters relating to civil and criminal legislation, foreign policy, customs and currency, health, and justice. The legislature’s lower house was to be elected on the basis of universal male suffrage ( ideas of mass politics began to seep somewhat into Popovici’s scheme as well). The upper house would bring together the elites of the nations of the Empire, appointed upon a quota basis, and corporatism5. Besides Popovici’s scheme being socially orthodox, he allowed very little space to maneuver to all nationalities, including his own. Solving the nationality conflict seemed to hold the candle to all other issues, as far as the
5 R. A. Kann, The Multinational Empire, vol .2., p. 202
Romanian politician was concerned. But even in this matter, his plan was not ideologically uniform. His Romanian nationalism lead him to conceive a maximalist plan for autonomous Transylvania, including many ethnically mixed regions. He also seems to have favored German domination in some regions, and in some respect, over the whole empire. German would have become the Reichssprache and Vienna the capital. He also exhibited a fairly unambiguous contempt for Slavs, and considered them a danger because of their vulnerability to Russian Pan-Slav propaganda. Thusly, he carved up many new provinces to favor Germans, Italians or his fellow Romanians rather than Slavs. These double standards did not bring him much popularity among nationality politicians. The other problem in which Popovici did not fully live up to his own standards was assimilation. His views are somewhat duplicitous when small enclaves of nationalities in his newly-crafted counties are concerned. Theoretically, he sketches for them a certain amount of rights and protection, mainly in the cultural and educational field. Each of the Crown Lands would, in this respect, draft a Law similar to that of Eotvos’ 1868 one6. But, in many places in his United States of Great Austria and other works, he openly admitted that the fate of these small units is to be swallowed up by the larger ones, as a natural process. By this statement, he temporarily circumvents his own advocacy of the Gobineau-inspired degeneration theory. The assimilatory tactics so abhorred in Magyar hands, seemed acceptable, once the tables had been turned.
6 Popovici, Stat si Natiune, p. 258 and infra.
Despite its shortcomings, the plan gained a significant amount of notoriety, and remained until the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, one of the most important schemes for its renovation. At a more abstract, and perhaps compelling, level, Popovici’s thought is interesting because of the interplay of two grand themes: decay and rebirth ( in his case, of races). Though not wholly original, as I have already explicated, his political schemes claimed a “scientific” validity, and furthermore, he provided plans for their application. His
1910 volume, Nationalism or Democracy, further builds upon his themes exhorted in his previous book. He insists on the idea of humanity being constituted of races, and these components being, according to his motley social Darwinist scheme, in mortal competition with one another. He writes sardonically: “Races? But who speaks of races? Weren’t all men to be created equal?7”, and continues “in order to understand the importance of race…one should simply take a trip to the horse races…are the breeds there the result of some blind folly? Of miscalculated promiscuity?…the stable hands would laugh at us if we spoke to them about the unimportance of race”. Popovici goes on to quote lofty passages from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, arguing that the mixing of strong races with weaker ones leads to the downfall of the former. Only through rigorous selection, separation and the weeding out of “improper seeds” can a race rid itself of “bastardization” and ensure its blossoming. The isolation from outside interference can, through a purification of-sorts, lead to a rebirth of a community. Popovici brings up as examples the ancient Greeks, Romans, Moors, Spaniards8. The Roman example is particularly useful for understanding the mindset of the Romanian political scientist. He argues that Rome owed its success to its pure qualities, and faltered “because its seed had been spent…there had been no real Romans left by the third century…Rome had descended into a Cloaca Gentium Maxima9”. The maximum potential of an ethnicity, of a nation, and of humankind on the ultimate level, could only be reached via careful selection. He proposed a “school of characters” in which future generations would be instructed in order to preserve the successful qualities and discard those ascribable to amalgamation. The safeguarding of ancient rites would be pivotal for the insurance of survival; but the weeding out of bad elements ( and to illustrate this, Popovici again and again returns to biological examples) is also as important, if not more. This conceptual binom formers the kernel of his teleological construct. Man should hone his qualities continuously,
7 Popovici, Nationalism sau Democratie, p. 429 8 Popovici, Stat…, p. 82 9 Popovici, Nationalism…, p. 432-433
through biological means, as breeders strive to obtain a horse that runs faster. Mutant elements only slow down or defeat the process of evolution, and should therefore be discarded along the path to greatness. This was, in addition, no mere conjecture: it was law. Biology, and its appendix, history, proved thoroughly10. It seems that man is not powerful enough to escape his own destiny. The legacy of Popovici did not die or fade away with the Old Kingdom. It was carried into the interwar years of Greater Romania, and applied to the new sets of problems set before the society of the time. The social scientis who isolated and underlined the thopoi of degeneration and palingenesis best was Dimitrie Gusti, in his later works. Gusti was a noted scientist of the interwar period, a public figure, and considered today to be the founder of sociology and anthropology in Romania. He established the Faculty of Sociology at the University level in Iasi, founded and headed a number of Romanian scientific institutes, and served in various positions in the Ministry of Education, even as its minister in 1938. It was at this late stage of his career, already an established scholar of an impressive reputation, that he gave himself to short political pamphleteering. These short essays show in true synthetic fashion his political and social conceptions. In two of them, 1937’s The Science of the Nation, and its 1941 follow-up, The Science and Pedagogy of the Nation, degradation and palingenesis of the national community are the governing concepts of his political language.
10 Popovici, Stat…, p.85
Gusti lists his intellectual influences in the beginning of the essay. Besides the “usual” godfathers of sociology, such as Spencer, there are a few other curios additions. The prehistory of his ideas is somewhat similar to Popovici’s, whom he undoubtedly read as well. He speaks highly of Wilhelm Wundt and Karl Lamprecht, but also of Henry Thomas Buckle and Ratzel, from whom be borrows ideas of symbolic and antropo-geography. Gustave Le
Bon is another of his inspirers, showing a strong kinship with his predecessor’s intellectual filament.
From the outset of his two programmatic essays, Gusti exhorts the pedagogical nature of science in general, and sociology in particular, stating that it helps in “shaping the physiological and psychological nature of the community”11. He derives from sociology and ethnology a number of odd sub-disciplines, off-shoots such as ethno-psychology, ethno-sociology, ethno-pedagogy and most curiously, ethno-biology. Society and its governing laws can be objectively observed, according to him, with the use of empirical methods. Therefore, science can also be utilized as a toolkit for the ordering of society according to “scientific” laws and arrangements. Gusti concluded that society was made up of nations, the “single unit which suffices for itself12”. This ethnic autarchy of nations is a notion present already in the works of Popovici, but is taken further here. The science of the nation can be decanted from the wholesale empirical data gathered from investigations into the subject-matters every characteristic and peculiarity. In this understanding, Gusti does not differ much from many of his more moderate contemporaries. The importance given to science, and the amalgamation of scientific and political jargon, however provides the key factor. The Romanian sociologist argues that after sifting through the gathered data and establishing laws for its functioning, science takes the center stage. The national science will keep the nation in existence, governing it with rational rigor13. Science will gain primacy, and actively format, transform and order the members of society according to its own inner logic. The means with which this revolutionary shift will be realized is “the seizure of the cultural sphere14”. This will translate toward the masses into a “national-scientific” pedagogy. Any attempt to divert this course of events will inevitably lead to decay and downfall.
11 Dimitrie Gusti, Stiinta si Pedagogia Natiunii, p.1 12 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.2 13 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.7 14 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.8
The agents of this novel transfiguration were given the murky designation by Gusti of “elites”. It is unclear what exactly he was referring to, but undoubtedly he imagined these elites as intellectual and scientific first and foremost, and secondly, as comprising all the virtuous qualities of his times. The existence of elites implies that the society of the future, as envisioned by Gusti, will necessarily be a hierarchical one. He comments:”…the creation of the elites was the main preoccupation of the German regime after 1933 and Italy after 1922, alongside France after the collapse ( i.e. Pétain’s regime)15”. He argues that in any society, and even in nature, due to functional necessities, the leaders-followers dichotomy must exist16. This does not negate the strongly unified nature of society. Moreover, he champions the idea of voluntarism. His concept of voluntarism must be understood in a corporativist fashion, though. Each member of the societal edifice must voluntarily and whole-heartedly accept his socially designated place, and work for the betterment of the “Nation”17. This quality should be one of the main components of the character of what Gusti dubbed “the New Man (Omul Nou)18”. This concept would go on to have a long history in the post-1945 period of communist experimentation with human nature, but not surprisingly, it had a prehistory, being a notion launched by Dimitrie Gusti.
15 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.8 16 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.9 17 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.9-10 18 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.10
The “new leadership elites ( noile elite de conducere)” will be created after a strenuous process of selection. Criteria of discrimination would be sex, social background, and age, alongside the fuzzy concept of “national necessity”. The “new Romanian” would be the end-result of a long procedure of pedagogical programming directed from above, for the author wished to make use of the educational system to push his plans. Science was again underlined as the factor which could provide salvation for a nation engaged in competition with outsiders. If denied, only decay would follow, for this was the order of things. School was
meant to draft the best, to separate the wheat from the chaff. It would be adapted to ethnic needs and take on an organic form19, to emulate the immediate necessities of the community which it was meant to service.
19 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.13 20 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.13 21 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.15 22 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.21 23 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.21 24 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.24
The educational system would order men and women into future, strict (for, as we have seen social mobility would be near-impossible, and indeed, illogical, in a scientifically ordered society) social categories20. Children would undergo continuous “personality evaluations”21, in order to accurately gauge their “value”. The author goes on to describe a systematic method of weeding out those with lesser value. The youth, especially young prospective intellectuals should undergo a stage of working in villages, as both an anthropologic and transcendental exercise. It would bind them inextricably to the ethnic realities existent there. Gusti praises Italy, Germany and Vichy France for their “youth policies22” in conducting similar experiences. He states that the principle that should bind youth together is “to serve23”. “Serve the villages, science and the nation”; he makes lofty quotations from Maurras to bolster his position, and makes references to Volk-study institutes established in Germany between 1933 and 1938.
His educational scheme would not stop at youth or at the urban environment. Gusti’s plan was an universal one. He made provisions for a “cultural home (camin cultural)” to be established in every village, in order to cement the bonds of the community and to diffuse the message of the core (this idea is another one which would have a long history, after being appropriated post-1945)24.
The complex and all-encompassing nature of Dimitrie Gusti’s blueprint for a future society, nevertheless, rested firmly on a few key concepts. The most important of these were
apprehensions of decay and that of palingenesis. His “New Man” would be created out of the ashes of the old, and harnessed all the positive qualities vested into him by science and reason.
The political language of the two political thinkers detailed above gravitated around the manipulation of these two key concepts, onto which a scientific-political hybridized discourse was bolted. It combined elements of philosophy of history, sociology and biology in order to firmly ground itself in a pseudo-scientific basis. The infusion of science and politics at the level of topicality produced a highly compelling teleological superstructure that viewed human nature itself as subject to change, even if it did not have clear idea of direction. This ability to evolve and regenerate was viewed as the main quality that made human character human, but also the quality which had the potential to devour itself, to further change human nature into something unrecognizable.
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