page_title: National Peasants' Party
section_title: Main currents
hierarchical_section_title: National Peasants' Party / Ideology / Nationalism / Main currents
caption_attribution_description: English: Yiddish poster canvassing Jewish support for the Romanian National Peasants' Party list in Satu Mare; Iuliu (Juliu) Maniu advertised as the top candidate, with Mihai Popovici and Andrei Doboși on less eligible positions.
context_page_description: The National Peasants' Party was an agrarian political party in the Kingdom of Romania. It was formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party, a conservative-regionalist group centered on Transylvania, and the Peasants' Party, which had coalesced the left-leaning agrarian movement in the Old Kingdom and Bessarabia. The definitive PNR–PȚ merger came after a decade-long rapprochement, producing a credible contender to the dominant National Liberal Party. National Peasantists agreed on the concept of a "peasant state", which defended smallholding against state capitalism or state socialism, proposing voluntary cooperative farming as the basis for economic policy. Peasants were seen as the first defense of Romanian nationalism and of the country's monarchic system, sometimes within a system of social corporatism. Regionally, the party expressed sympathy for Balkan federalism and rallied with the International Agrarian Bureau; internally, it championed administrative decentralization and respect for minority rights, as well as, briefly, republicanism. It remained factionalized on mainly ideological grounds, leading to a series of defections.
context_section_description: National Peasantism understood cultural nationalism as being compatible with democracy. Especially through its Transylvanian core, which had overseen the union process, the party saw Greater Romania as the product of democratic consultation. According to Maniu, Trianon "did not create, but merely acknowledged for an international public, a union between Transylvania and the Romanian Kingdom." As seen by Maniu, popular sovereignty was always ensured and verified through mass gatherings, replicating Great Union Day 1918—though he remained skeptical of revolutionary masses. His unusually strict commitment to the democratic process was ridiculed by adversaries as "legalistic frenzy".
  Maniu and many other PNR leaders belonged to a religious minority, namely the Greek Catholic Church. Sometimes chided by its bishops for favoring the predominant Eastern Orthodoxy, the PNȚ was still described by missionary priest Rafael Friedrich as "closest to the Catholic Church". The party mainstream stood by the promise of corporate rights for ethnic minorities, all of which would have found their place in the agrarianist state. As noted by Harre, this goal, "as well as the demand for a democratization and decentralization of the country might have calmed down many ethnic conflicts during the interwar period." In addition to sealing pacts with the minority parties, the PNȚ ran openly non-Romanian candidates on its lists; examples include Jews Tivadar Fischer, Mayer Ebner and Salomon Kinsbrunner, as well as Constantin Krakalia and Volodymyr Zalozetsky-Sas, who were Ukrainian. A Jewish steel magnate, Max Auschnitt, financed PNȚ projects both in interwar Romania and in exile.
  The PNȚ's governments, with Aurel Vlad as Minister of Arts, were criticized by the Union of Romanian Jews for tolerating discrimination, in particular against Jews and Judaism; Vlad also informed minority leaders that decentralization had been postponed indefinitely. Shortly before the Lupeni debacle of 1929, regional representatives, including Augustin Popa, spoke out in favor of restoring economic nationalism. German Romanians, who had been especially enthusiastic about the PNȚ-ist promise to decentralize Romania, switched to supporting the Nazified German People's Party. Connections between PNȚ-ists and minorities were reactivated after World War II, when the PNȚ registered mass enlistments by non-Romanian anti-communists, including Swabians in Lugoj and Jews in Târgu Neamț.
  Cosmopolitanism was supported by the various doctrinaires, including, in the mid 1930s, Ralea and Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. Both argued for non-xenophobic, secular, and conciliatory nationalism in polemics with one-time PNȚ associates such as Nae Ionescu and Nichifor Crainic. In 1937, Madgearu spoke about "Romanianization" as a goal of National Peasantist policies, but argued that this could only be achieved through price controls. A year after, Mihalache made reference to the "Jewish Question" and described the PNȚ as "equally nationalist" to all other parties, but still rejected "negative" antisemitism. The party's Transylvanian circles criticized fascism from a moderate nationalist position: Iuliu Moldovan's "biopolitics" and scientific racism had numerous points of contact with far-right antisemitism, but always remained more democratic than similar programs advanced by Romanian fascists. Ionel Pop argued in 1936 that vandalizing Jewish property was a cowardly act and a deflection, hinting that "Christian parties" would have done better to focus on chasing out an "evil spirit" that lurked in the corridors of power.
  Maniu's own anti-fascism was rendered inconsistent his overtures toward the Iron Guard. During his conflict with Elena Lupescu, he emphasized her Jewish origin in what appeared to be an attempt at gaining support from the antisemitic caucus. Albeit limited in impact, Maniu's arrangements for 1937 are seen as a "tactical error", made possible by his "blind hatred" toward Carol. They "stifled the cause of democracy at a time when it was struggling for air", "rendering more respectabil
caption: Yiddish electoral poster for the 1928 election, advertising Maniu's candidacy at Satu Mare
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