page_title: National Agrarian Party
section_title: Conservatism, radicalism, agrarianism
hierarchical_section_title: National Agrarian Party / History / Platform / Conservatism, radicalism, agrarianism
caption_attribution_description: English: Mustul care fierbe ("The Frothing Must"), political cartoon mocking the Romanian nationalist politico Octavian Goga. Titled after, and jokingly misquoting, Goga's political pamphlet of the same name, it was published just prior to the December 1933 parliamentary election. Goga is in the foreground; the other figure is an unnamed journalist interviewing him.Journalist to Goga: Am impresia că asist la preludiile unei mari agitaţii... ("I feel as if I am witnessing the preludes of a great agitation..."); Goga: Ce vrei, dragă? După atîta vreme mi s'a făcut iarăşi poftă de must! ("What can I tell you, dear? After all this time [i.e.: out of the spotlight] I still get thirsty for must!")
context_page_description: The National Agrarian Party was a right-wing agrarian party active in Romania during the early 1930s. Established and led by poet Octavian Goga, it was originally a schism from the more moderate People's Party, espousing national conservatism, monarchism, agrarianism, antisemitism, and Germanophilia; Goga was also positively impressed by fascism, but there is disagreement in the scholarly community as to whether the PNA was itself fascist. Its antisemitic rhetoric was also contrasted by the PNA's acceptance of some Jewish members, including Tudor Vianu and Henric Streitman. The group was generally suspicious of Romania's other ethnic minorities, but in practice accepted members and external collaborators of many ethnic backgrounds, including the Romani Gheorghe A. Lăzăreanu-Lăzurică.
  The PNA existed as a venue for supporting the authoritarian King, Carol II, whose political program it partly enacted. The National Agrarianist economic and social proposals included the protection of smallholders, with echoes of dirigisme and promises of debt relief.
context_section_description: As Heinen notes, the PNA was one of several groups channeling popular discontent following the Great Depression; it was also the most authentic, and a "remarkable force." Historian Stanley G. Payne describes the splinter group as authoritarian nationalist and "rightist", or "rather more overtly right radical" than Mihail Manoilescu's own dissident faction. The issue of its labeling has caused some disputes in the community of experts. Nicholas Nagy-Talavera viewed Goga as a "bourgeois fascist", but his assessment was challenged by Heinen, according to whom the PNA's "radical nationalism" was "entirely devoid of that revolutionary pathos which set apart all the fascist parties." Overall, "too many PNA members were still tied to the People's Party directives in both manners and ideas of political combat." Researcher Ion Mezarescu likewise viewed the PNA ideology as "within the coordinates of interwar bourgeois democracy". However, according to scholar Irina Livezeanu, Goga was in the process of migrating "across the conservative-radical divide".
  While reaching out to the far-right, the PNA remained staunchly monarchist—according to Heinen, Goga was a "national conservative" among the "Carlists". The National Agrarians adopted Dumnezeu, Patrie, Rege ("God, Fatherland, King") as their slogan, a rallying cry already associated with Goga before the party's formation. The group's rejection of democracy had its roots in Goga's 1927 book, Mustul care fierbe ("The Frothing Must"), which argued that the masses needed a "moral eminence" to "inspire in them tranquility and safety." The PNA suggested modifying Romania's Constitution of 1923, reducing Parliament to an "orderly and useful instrument", reformed around a corporative representation. Simultaneously, the party campaigned for widening the suffrage, primarily by allowing women to vote; to this end, the wives of PNA eminences created their own "women circles", which also took up the task of promoting social hygiene in rural areas.
  In time, the PNA adopted another slogan: Rod mult, bun și cu preț ("More, better, valuable bearings"). This notion reflected its commitment to an agrarian economy, which Goga identified as the core of Romania's potential for export, in tandem with the Romanianization of labor and capital. Its leadership promised to suspend payments on Romania's external debt; in exchange, it promised a tax reform that would benefit both local and foreign investors. Goga's agrarianism rested on the notion that peasants were a unifying factor, their shared culture transcending regional divisions. In 1935, Valjean similarly proclaimed that all classes were "subordinate to the plowmen". His PNA intended to make the smallholders key players in Romania's economy, encouraging credit unions and land purchase, as well as describing a future in which labor and its product would be more expensive; it also promised to enact agricultural dirigisme, with tools such as a state plan for developing agriculture, pomology, sericulture, and handicrafts.
  In parallel, Goga's intellectual debt to corporatism took form as promises to enact class collaboration, or "harmonious solidarity between workers, peasants and all other productive forces". Historian Oltea Rășcanu Gramaticu, who focused on the politics of Tutova County, noted that the PNA enjoyed "some popularity", due to its "radical solutions for revitalizing small plots owned by the peasants". However, as argued by researchers Cornel Popescu and George Daniel Ungureanu, the PNA was agrarian "in name", and had a mostly right-wing program.
  While seeking ways to improve the peasants' economic status, the party pledged itself to administrative reform and a full clampdown on corruption. By October 1932, its deputies were engaged in a public confrontation with the PNȚ cabinet, headed by Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, over the issue of debt relief. Goga wanted most of the small- and mid-sized plots to be cleared of debt with state support, and wanted to extend that principle to public debt held by urban localities. He also wanted communes to exerci
caption: Goga acknowledging his thirst for "frothing must", as the prelude to a "great agitation", in an imaginary interview. Cartoon published by the left-wing review Viața Românească in 1933
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