page_title: Sandu Tudor
section_title: Anti-fascism
hierarchical_section_title: Sandu Tudor / Biography / Anti-fascism
caption_attribution_description: English: Naşterea ("Birth"), Romanian fascist propaganda engraving. The image shows the Archangel Michael, patron saint of the Iron Guard, witnessing the birth of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Codreanu's birthday, 13 September 1899, is inscribed at the top of the image. At the bottom, the legend NASTEREA CAPITANULUI ("The Captain's birth").
context_page_description: Sandu Tudor was a Romanian poet, journalist, theologian and Orthodox monk. Having had an adventurous youth, he first became known in the late 1920s, when he contributed to the modern Orthodox revival, rallying with the journal Gândirea. Although a traditionalist and a critic of materialism, he was closely associated with the modernist scene, and generally supported left-wing causes. Tudor was also a scandal-prone journalist and newspaper owner, who faced accusations of slander and was avoided by his peers.
  From 1927, when he wrote his first akathist, Tudor made overtures toward Orthodox monasticism. Demanding universal penance, seeking to revive medieval hesychasm, he joined other mystics and writers in creating the "Burning Pyre" religious movement, and took orders in 1948. He was soon branded an enemy of the Romanian communist regime, and twice arrested for supposed political crimes. Tudor died at Aiud prison, a victim of torture and criminal neglect. His body was never recovered.
  Sandu Tudor is generally considered an unaccomplished writer, although his fusion of modernism and traditionalism has drawn critical interest.
context_section_description: During that interval, Nae Ionescu and his Cuvântul were moving to the far right, aligning themselves with the fascist Iron Guard. Enlisted in 1932 with the more moderate National Agrarian Party, Tudor criticized the Trăirists' sympathy for radical solutions, either fascist or communist, defending Romania's young democracy. In a December 1933 issue of Credința, he reacted: "We say that democracy is not the good thing for us, yet we have never even truly implemented it". Writing from a Christian perspective, Tudor accused Romania's revolutionary youth of "monkeying" foreign experiments in totalitarianism, describing Adolf Hitler as the Antichrist, and equating all revolutionary ideologies with the triumph of "animality". Tudor and Eliade were among the 31 Christian and Jewish Romanian intellectuals to have signed a protest against antisemitism in general and against Nazism in particular. Their appeal to ventilate Romania's "medieval atmosphere" was hotly condemned by the pro-Nazi Axa magazine.
  Also in December 1933, Credința hosted a plea in favor of anti-fascist political activism. Signed by Stahl, the opinion piece proposed that political involvement was a civic duty, citing fascism as the enemy of freedom, and also implying that "Bolshevik" communism was "left-wing fascism". Eliade supported that stance, in the name of non-racial "Romanianism", noting that both political extremes advanced "a dictatorship of the brute, of the imbecile, of the incompetent." Also in Credința, philosopher Constantin Noica spoke out against the advocates of cultural isolation and nativism. His articles of 1933 and 1934 noted that Romanian culture was eminently parochial, and openly criticized Gândirea traditionalism. Noica also rejected the political ambitions of his generation colleagues. During the 1933 election, he recommended passive resistance and abstention, rather than ideological combat, as methods of raising awareness at the top. Four years before his own conversion to fascism, Noica's Credința texts described Romanian youths as being "diseased with politics".
  Floarea de Foc was less categorical in its defense of the democratic state. According to cultural historian Zigu Ornea, who wrote an overview of Trăirism (published 1995), Tudor's other publication remained an "ideologically unaffiliated" magazine, and as such open to all sorts of political opinions. For Paul Costin Deleanu, the Orthodoxist columnist at Floarea de Foc, the legacy of Romanian liberalism was suspect, and Orthodox Romania existed outside the Western world. Deleanu's Floarea de Foc articles described modernization and secularism as a "betrayal" of "the Eastern cross." Eliade's contributions backed up such claims from an antihumanist point of view. He was suggesting that Romanian liberalism, an "abstract defense of Man", was a "dead, barren, inefficient formula", stifling "our nation's creative forces". Writing for Credința in February 1934, "Plăeșu" explained that he did not mean to defend either fascism, "Hitlerism", or "ridiculous" Marxism, since they trampled on religious freedoms; Eliade idealized direct action in support of "civic pride", "social justice" and "the courage to defend liberty".
  Early in 1934, after the Guard managed to assassinate Premier Ion G. Duca, the authorities shut down Cuvântul and prosecuted its editor, whereas Credința continued to appear. Young fascists took their revenge, attacking the editorial offices of left-wing periodicals. In December 1934, an unknown man surprised Tudor at his Credința office, and gave him a severe beating. However, in February 1935, Sandu Tudor was making his peace with Nae Ionescu, describing his teaching as the "nourishing bread", and Ionescu himself as an "awakener of consciences", "one of the greatest journalists alive." Credința also published an homage piece by a Glicon Monahul, who depicted Ionescu as a guardian of "The True Faith".
caption: Alexandru Bassarab's Nașterea ("Birth"), engraving inspired by the Iron Guard version of Orthodoxism. The Archangel Michael watching over the crib of future Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
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