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ABSTRACT
This article examines the interrelations between age and gender in the Romanian Legionary Movement. The Legionary Movement, also known as Iron Guard, was an ultranationalist and antisemitic movement founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in 1927. The movement was one of the major protagonists on the Romanian interwar political scene. Its political development followed a complex path marked by extraordinary successes and dramatic crises. Several works have explored the Legionary Movement’s history, but a systematic analysis from the standpoint of gender relations and women’s participation is still at an incipient stage. This article wants to contribute to this analysis by following the development of the legionary women’s section during the movement’s political history. Gender is used as a category of analysis in its interaction with age, in particular by exploring the concept of youth and its practical consequences for women’s participation. After the introduction, the first section analyses the concept of youth and its importance in the construction of legionary ideology. The second section will explore the foundation and development of the women’s section through the lenses of youth and gender. Women’s participation and political activity was often the result of the gendered elements constitutive of the concept of youth. From the ideological standpoint, the construction of women’s youthfulness interacted with and was limited by marriage and motherhood; at the same time, however, in the movement’s political practices these limits proved to be more flexible and reshaped by experience.
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Notes
1. Prietena Studentă, “Scrisoare, unei surioare,” Pământul strămoşesc, 15 September 1927, I, 4, 11.
2. The use of the name ‘Legionary Movement’ instead of ‘Iron Guard’ has become increasingly prevalent in the most recent literature. However, the designation ‘Iron Guard’, as well as ‘the Legion’ (implicitly referring to the movement’s first name, ‘the Legion of the Archangel Michael’), are still used interchangeably by scholars in the field. The different names were originally related to different periods of the movement’s political life, but they tended to be conflated and used indistinctly from the second half of the 1930s.
3. Clark, Holy Legionary Youth, 1.
4. Among the first works devoted to the Legionary Movement, see Weber, “Romania”; and Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and the Others.
5. Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, in particular chapter 5.
6. Among the works on the Legionary Movement to date, the most extensively used in the elaboration of this article comprise: Heinen, Legiunea ‘Arhanghelul Mihail’; Sandu, Un fascisme roumain; Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence; Clark, Holy Legionary Youth; and Jens Schmitt, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. For a discussion of several works on the Legionary Movement published before 1989, see Sandu, “Introduction,” 7–28.
7. Bucur, “Romania,” 57–78.
8. Corneliu Z. Codreanu, “E ceasul vostru: Veniţi!” Pământul strămoşesc, 1 August 1927, I, 1, 5.
9. Gillis, Youth and History, 37–184.
10. The literature on this topic is extensive. A brief selection also with a broader geographical scope comprises: Kater, Hitler Youth; Ponzio, Shaping the New Man; Miljan, Croatia and the Rise of Fascism; Saez Marin, El Frente de Juventudes; Clark, Holy Legionary Youth; and Mazgaj, Imagining Fascism.
11. On music in Fascist Italy, see Sachs, Music in Fascist Italy. Music and anthems had a central role in the Legionary Movement as well. To youth was devoted one of the most famous legionary songs, ‘Sfânta Tinereţe Legionară’ (‘Holy Legionary Youth’). On music in the Legionary Movement, see Clark, “Collective Singing in Romanian Fascism,” 251–71. For an analysis of the movie Olympia, see Daniel Wildmann, “Desired Bodies,” 60–81. On the depiction of youth in Nazi cinema, see also Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, 53–70.
12. Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, 94.
13. Ibid., 95.
14. Mintz, “Reflections on Age as a Category of Historical Analysis,” 91–4.
15. Shepard and Walker (eds.), Gender and Change.
16. Kelly, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?”
17. An exhaustive overview of this ever-growing field of research is beyond the scope of a single footnote. A short list of pathbreaking works on women, gender and fascism comprise: Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland; de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women; Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism; and Passmore (ed.), Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919–1945.
18. Traian Brăileanu, “Inţelepciunea inimii,” Cuvântul Studenţesc, 8 November 1940, XX, 1, 3.
19. Codreanu, “E ceasul vostru: Veniţi!” 6.
20. ”Către intelectualii tineri la suflet,” Pământul strămoşesc, 15 October 1927, I, 6, 5-7.
21. For a detailed account of the Legionary Movement’s activity in these years and especially in Bucharest, see Sandu, Un fascisme roumain, 261–79; Clark, Holy Legionary Youth, 95–150, 162–4, 168–74.
22. Ornea, Anii treizeci; Laignel-Lavastine, Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco; Petreu, An Infamous Past; and Turcanu, Mircea Eliade. For the concept of ‘new generation’ in Romanian history, especially in relation to cultural production and nationalism, see Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence, 57–63.
23. The most recent reconstruction of the cultural activity of this circle during the 1930s can be found in Bejan, Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania.
24. Purhonen, “Generation on Paper,” 102.
25. Ibid., 107 (emphasis in the original).
26. Moţa, “La icoană!” Pământul strămoşesc, 1 August 1927, I, 1, 9.
27. ‘Politicianism’ was descried at the beginning of the twentieth century as ‘that type of political activity – or better, an elaborate abuse of political rights – through which some citizens of a state try and sometimes succeed in transforming public institutions and services … into means for promoting their personal interests’, Rădulescu-Motru, Cultura română şi politicianismul, 3, quoted in Clark, European Fascists and Local Activists, 61. See also Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, 134.
28. Petreu, An Infamous Past, 12–14.
29. Ibid., 8–11.
30. Cantacuzino, Cum Suntem, 6 and 11.
31. Woolf, Three Guineas, 109.
32. For a concise and illuminating summary of this argument, see Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next, 60–4 and relative notes.
33. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 14.
34. Among the first systematic works devoted to gender, sexuality and nationalism, see Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality; and Parker, Russo, Sommer, and Yaeger (eds.), Nationalisms and Sexualities.
35. Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation, in particular Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
36. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 25/1927, f. 169.
37. See Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, 245–96.
38. AN – Iaşi, Fond Universitatea A.I. Cuza, Rectorat, dosar 1000/1922, f. 284; dosar 1078/1924, f. 17-22, 34; dosar 1164/1927, f. 104-111, 116.
39. AN – Iaşi, Fond Universitatea A.I. Cuza, Rectorat, dosar 1155/1925, f. 120.
40. Georgescu, “Dupa cinci ani,” Pământul Strămoşesc, 15 November 1927, I, 8, 7.
41. C. Z. Codreanu, I. Moţa, I. Gârneaţă, C. Georgescu, R. Mironovici, “Organizarea Legiunii ‘Arhanghelul Mihail’,” Pământul strămoşesc, 15 September 1927, I, 4, 3. Emphasis in the original.
42. Ibid.
43. Codreanu, “Organizarea Legiunii,” 3. Emphasis in the original.
44. Ibid., 4. Emphasis in the original.
45. Ibid.
46. “Informaţiuni,” Pământul strămoşesc, 15 March 1928, II, 6, 14–15. The distinction between ‘ladies’ and ‘young women’ is, in the original, expressed by the words ‘doamne’ and ‘domnişoare,’ which are the equivalents of the titles ‘Mrs.’ and ‘Misses’ and, as for the titles in English, they specifically indicate a difference in marital status while suggesting, at the same time, also a potential difference in age.
47. “O cetăţuie a surorii Legiunii la Galaţi,” Pământul strămoşesc, 1 April 1928, II, 7, 8.
48. Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence, 86.
49. Codreanu, “E ceasul vostru: Veniţi!,” 5.
50. The concept of ‘disorder’ is borrowed from the work of Carole Pateman. The expression ‘the disorder of women’ is taken from Rousseau’s Politics and the Arts: A Letter to M. d’Alembert on the Theatre (1758): ‘never has a people perished from an excess of wine; all perish from the disorder of women’, quoted in Pateman, “The Disorder of Women,” 20–34.
51. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 7/1933, f. 2.
52. ANIC, Fond MI-D, dosar 17/1933, ff. 84–85.
53. Ibid., f. 84.
54. Ibid., f. 81.
55. Ibid., ff. 83, 85.
56. Ibid., f. 81.
57. Ibid., f. 82.
58. On Mihai (spelled also as Mihail) Stelescu, his withdrawal, and his subsequent assassination in 1936 as a ‘punishment’ for having ‘betrayed’ the movement, see Clark, Holy Legionary Youth, 108–9.
59. ANIC, Fond MI-D, dosar 17/1933, f. 78.
60. AN-Cluj, Fond IP, dosar 208/1934, f. 87; ANIC, Fond MI-D, dosar 17 vol. I/1934, f. 14.
61. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 102/1933, f. 228.
62. AN-Cluj, Fond IP, dosar 208/1934, f. 87; see also, Jens Schmitt, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Ascensiunea şi căderea ‘Căpitanului’, 205–6.
63. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 102/1933, f. 269.
64. Ibid., f. 271.
65. Ibid., f. 272.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., f. 270, 272.
68. For the development of the Legionary Movement in this period, and in particular on the strategies to expand its following among different social strata, see Clark, Holy Legionary Youth, 77–94, 106–18, 122–35.
69. Ibid., f. 269.
70. On the organization and functions of the legionary work camps, see Haynes, “Work Camps, Commerce, and the Education of the ‘New Man’,” 943–67.
71. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 102/1933, f. 268.
72. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 232, vol. I/1935, f. 42.
73. Ibid.
74. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 9/1937, ff. 226–227.
75. In 1940, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, underlined how his movement ‘has been largely built up by the fanaticism of women’, quoted in Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism, 43 (emphasis of the author). Gottlieb also observes how the shift in meaning of the term ‘fanaticism’, which is used by Mosley with a positive connotation, is part of the new language of the European far right in the interwar period. As George L. Mosse has argued: ‘The word fanatic, which had a negative connotation earlier, was now used as an adjective to signify heroism and the willingness to fight’, in Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 178. The term, however, despite its ‘positive’ connotations, retains a gendered nuance. In the way it is described by Codreanu, it emerges like an ambiguous quality when applied to women, generating at the same time admiration and concern. Thus, it is a ‘disposition’ that requires limits and control (usually by the male leadership of the Movement, who could channel and use this ‘force’ according to its needs).
76. Elshtain, Women and War, 173.
77. ANIC, Fond DGP, dosar 263/1940, f. 26.
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Anca Diana Axinia
Anca Diana Axinia received her Ph.D. in history from the European University Institute in Florence in 2022. Her dissertation Women and Politics in the Romanian Legionary Movement is the first systematic study of women’s participation and gender relations in the Romanian Legionary Movement. Her research interests include fascist studies, gender studies, feminist theory and Eastern European history. She is currently working on her first publications and preparing a new research project on the relationships between fascism, gender and the Holocaust in the Romanian context.