Xenopoliana, X, 2002

ESCAPING GEOGRAPHY, EVADING HISTORY
- Mihai Chioveanu -

"What depressed me most was a map of the Ottoman Empire.
Looking at it, I understood our past and everything else."
Emil Cioran

In the 1980's 'Central Europe' represented a 'fashion' among intellectuals in this part of the continent, an anti-political farewell to an 'oppressive, Soviet controlled, Eastern Europe.' Moreover, after 1989 the concept gained a strong political connotation, followed by a new European pragmatic agenda, and the setting up of a new 'Iron Curtain' that gave birth to the 'Europe of excluded.' Since then, its very existence as a distinct region - not as a cultural construct - has been put under question, not only by intellectuals such as Timothy Garton Ash and George Schopfhlin but also by the revolutions of 1989, whom nobody was able to predict, revolutions that took place all over Eastern Europe1.
What was in 1989 more Western or Eastern in the deep structures of different countries within Eastern Europe, and how this was to reflect upon the character of the revolutions of annus mirabilis is rather hard to say. Yet some paradoxical interdependencies of history with those 'democratic opportunities' of the East European countries do exist. Differences occurred, as societies and regimes within the region were more or less prepared to accept a major, radical change. One can mention the 'velvet revolution' from Czechoslovakia and the bloody, violent revolution from Romania to emphasise fundamental differences. However it is still difficult to say if the transformations or revolutions were imposed from outside and not only came from within, if some countries experienced a 'revolution for above' and others 'a democratic revolution from below.' Nonetheless it is insufficient to operate with 'symbolic geographies' in order to understand such a complex phenomenon and the differences that occurred among cases. Local, national and even regional structures, religious differences, and the political experiences of the past, might tell the historian something but not everything.

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'Does anything follow from history? A lot follows from it…'2 Maria Todorova answered this otherwise rhetoric question of Szucs by saying that it finally depends only on what one is looking for, when, and for what purpose.
In his by now classic 'The Three Regions of Europe,' Jenö Szücs, when following Istvan Bibo's thoughts, is searching for '… fortune, potentially basic western patterns… that occurred in the history of Hungary… even at the time the country was under Turkish rule.' He 'runs' centuries back into history merely to extract as many as possible persistent similarities with Western Europe as well as differences that occurred in terms of 'valid structures in act' between Hungary and her Eastern neighbours, with the 'declared' aim of underlining the limits and possibilities in escaping the 'history of impasses,' namely '400 years of Eastern European evolution.'3 I will not consider here the historical arguments used by Szücs in shaping a favourable symbolic geography and placing Hungary within, and only stress that no conflicts and fractures along state and ideological lines transpire from his idea of Central Europe but discrete civilisations, as he only exploit the catchword of 'unchanging East' to reinvent an intermediate category with the West.4
A historical study, nonetheless an extremely sophisticated and stenic in its message ideological manifesto Szücs was addressing Hungarians in the 1980's and not Europe, as Kundera did , 'The three Regions of Europe' does not anticipate the break-up of Eastern Europe. While underlining deeply rooted divisions based on cultural distinction it was later for Jaques Rupnik to use confessional borders Szücs is not an avant la letree huntigtonian. Thus, not everything in the history of the Balkans - when not omitted but employed as a counterfactual argument - is unfortunate for him, especially when it comes to 'the paradoxical interdependence of history and democratic opportunities.'
Although in a sensible different manner, Peter Hanak, the other Hungarian historian mentioned by Todorova, stresses the belonging of Hungary to a 'distinct Europe' when emphasising the fundamental differences between the dual monarchy that was close to the parliamentary democracy of the West, and the autocratic East, meaning first of all Russia.5 In other words: 'not entirely western yet westernised enough, and definitely not Eastern;' represents the very essence of Central Europe, and Hungary, in Hanak's vision, an idea he sincerely believed in.
The problem in both cases presented above lies in the fact that the authors operate with classifications and reductions in order to uphold political ideas, and thus come to employ 'symbolic geographies' when they turn West and mere 'symbolic borders' when they turn East - not to say anything about the historical context they focus on, the way they disregard the inconvenient 'ugly' (recent) past in the history of Hungary and Central Europe. Their too contracted, simplified and prioritised, reduced to taxonomy 'cartography,' no matter how subtle and sophisticated the argumentation, is therefore oblivious to what is mutable and porous. In search for a 'Central European ontology,' and centuries old or more recent ties with Europa Occidens, both Szücs and Hanak approach Hungary as part of a civilisation centred framework, and even if they do not overstress the internal coherence of the region, they nevertheless downplay interregional connections when looking toward East and South-east. Thus, they only come to omit political, economic, cultural, and social exchanges as recent and relevant elements.
Before 1989, Central Europe was not the only response and alternative to 'a standardising, homogenous Eastern Europe.' Romanians preferred a different perspective and with quite few, though notable exceptions - Eugen Ionescu, who described Romania as 'about to leave Europe for good, which means leaving history,' and for whom Central Europe was the last chance and not the first choice - disregarded it.6
Not only did Kundera's 'kidnapped West' lack appeal but no common heritage with the former KUK space was accepted - not even in the case of Transylvania and Banat - while a 'traumatic memory' of Romania's short (interwar) Central European episode was often stressed. Instead, Romanian intellectuals, many of them historians, (re) discovered and emphasised 'Greater Romania' as the Golden Age, and political geography, of their history, and the perfect antithesis to the Soviet block.7 Not so much democracy came under scrutiny but the industrial development from the late 1930's, intellectuals such as Constantin Noica, famous at the time for his critiques toward the 'butter' civilisation of the west, and somewhat Antonescu who was retrieved unofficially for the first time as an anti-Soviet, national hero. This sudden return to an idealised recent past was profitable politically and geoculturally for the regime, as it allowed it to reinforce nationalism while 'escaping' harmful domestic difficulties, dependency, and 'the periphery of history.'8 However, the real concern and obsession for the centrally located Bucharest elite in the 1980's was Romania's inner (multi) regional nature and not so much its' belonging to Eastern, South Eastern or Central Europe.
One should bear in mind that in its' otherwise short history as a national state, Romania was consecutively rotating toward all those three regions, incorporating territories and communities with quite different social, cultural, religious, national and even political identities. That was only to make after 1918 the task of Bucharest double: stress clear cut, un-porous state borders, and completely eliminate inner symbolic ones and regionalism as vivid expressions of different former backgrounds.
It is rather inaccurate to say Romanians lacked geopolitical and geo-cultural imagination when needed.9 In time, Danube, Tisza, Dniester and the Black Sea were emphasised as symbols and natural borders of ancient Dacia - as it appears on 18th and early 19th century maps of Eastern Europe, many Russian maps as it was for the Tsar's cartographers to map the Romanian principalities before 1859 -, yet never the Carphatians, who were to represent not a natural existing barrier but 'the spinal column of the nation.' Placed between East and West, Europe and Orient, definitely striving for a strong Ex Occidente Lux from 1829 onward - France definitely constituted the model but without eliminating German, Russian, and Hungarian influences -,10 they were also rather relaxed, admitting, as Mihail Kogălniceanu did, that they should better represent 'the Europe of the Orient than the Orient of Europe.' The idea of an 'island of latinity in a Slav sea,' leaving the Hungarians apart or aiming at an alliance with them, became popular only in the late 19th century - nonetheless it was imported from Transylvanian elites and not created by the 'Moldo-Wallachians.' The matrix Romanians operated within at the time when they were shaping imaginary borders and national identity was rather dynamic, and included language, culture, historical claims and nonetheless ethnicity yet, except for a short anti-phanariot episode in the mid 18th century, not so much religion. It was only in the late 19th century for Iorga to include orthodoxy as a component of Byzance apres Byzance cultural heritage, and then in the 1920's and 1930's for Nichifor Crainic and Nae Ionescu to stress its role as 'the core' of the Romanian ethnic ontology. Before, it was inappropriate to employ it as it was never stressed by the enlightenment as a criteria - many liberals of the 1848 generation opposed the 'belfry nationalism' of those who were against the emancipation of Jews -, and it was also only to make the national distinction more difficult, nonetheless to offend the Greek-catholic church and the Transylvanian Romanian nationalists. Hence, beyond the implemented model - that of a central state able to impose frontiers while offering no role to frontier societies, accepting instead the arbitrary decisions of the Great Powers, whether favourable or not, - it was the 'overnight' timing for the fulfilling, after 1918, of the Românizare political and cultural project as part of the nationbuilding process11 that generated long term disturbances. One can better understand from this perspective why for many, including Romanians from the new provinces, the 'sun (was no longer to) rise from Bucharest.'
The 1980's and then the early 1990's retrieved and imposed different myths and metageographies in response to Eastern Europe. 'Central Europe' and 'Greater Romania' are two of them. Nothing but late and distorted echoes of the 18th century process of 'philosophical cartography,' and answers to the same old western provocation: discover, map, travel, study, and finally 'stamp' both The Other and Oneself,12 the two cultural constructs successfully exploit, although in significantly different ways and with different results, the ambiguous location of Eastern Europe, and the fact that it can be equated in terms of cultural recognition and not only development. Nonetheless they reflect the permanent obsession with identity of the elites in this part of Europe, and their attitude toward fate and destiny while equally blaming - and sometimes trying to 'escape' - history and geography.13
According to the standards of the enlightenment and due to the context both Hungary and Romania were viewed during the 18th century as parts of Eastern Europe not to say that for a not so short period as belonging to Ottoman Europe, sharing the same ambiguous location, 'semibarbarity' and 'stigma.' Shaped not in parallel with the discovery of the East by the West, but after and 'in mirror,' in a 19th century pedagogical process, with Easterners discovering the West and its standards, learning not only that the frontiers of their own states are unstable, that they have to eliminate the Ancient Regime, that being civilised means to look at and care about the peasants, but also how to label their neighbours, to classify them, how to operate with stigma and thus affirm their superiority, Central Europe as represented by Hungarians on one hand, and the geocultural bovarity of the Romanians on the other hand, are nothing but attempts to escape stain.

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Historians are concerned essentially with time - it is, generally speaking, periodization that makes the 'strong point' of their analysis - and less with space. Yet this tendency depends on perspectives, topics, and key issues, nonetheless political priorities. Many historians have realised for example that the national state does not always represent a 'convenient framework,' and often come to 'transgress' and 'problematize' its borders.14 Nonetheless some are also looking today for different means of 'timing' processes and phenomena, and pay less attention to 'classic' chronology. However misconceptions sometimes occur even in this case, and they often guide to limited viewpoints, stress isolation, and lead to prejudgement as well.

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In December 1989, the myth of an international plot endangering Romania's territorial sovereignty and borders was employed by both the communist government and the revolutionary National Salvation Front, although in quite different contexts, and worked yet not successfully enough.15 Instead, another resurrected myth, that of a 'revolutionary young generation' was to have a somewhat longer career. This myth - a local imprint of the French 19th century paradigm - has strong connotations in Romanian historical thought and political culture as the entire national history, from 1821 to 1944, is depicted as a successions of revolutions and achievements. Nevertheless, it was to help the scenario of 1989 fit perfect within people's minds.
A bloody revolution, headed by the young generation against the tyranny of the fossilised, and corrupt Ancient Regime, exactly 200 years after the paradigmatic French Revolution of 1789 was to retrieve national pride and purge the European nation of sins. Months later, as it was still not clear whether Romania experienced a democratic revolution 'from below' or a 'suspiciously stage-managed' revolution, young intellectuals and students - together with their elders - contested the 'new power,' who, they said, had confiscated 'the sovereignty of the people,' and came to 'threat' it during a marathon demonstration. Last but not least 'the hatred provinces' - the miners of Valea Jiului - were also there, ready to put down by violent means 'a capital in crisis.' Yet President Iliescu's political rhetoric discourse was not to include French references but Romanian ones. Anti-government demonstrators of University Square in Bucharest were labelled as vagabonds (golanii) and Legionari, and the army as well as the anti-fascist, by invented tradition in Romania, working class were called on to 'defend democracy' and state order against 'anarchic rebellious young.' Only months before Ceauşescu tried the same strategy calling the revolutionaries hooligans, and failed. Although completely wrong Iliescu proved 'intuitive' when appealed the legionari as part of his historical mythological schemata. The rebellion of the Iron Guardist from January 1941 was somewhat vivant and catchy in memory. However, one say that the events of June 1990, the discourses and the political logic of the government, resemble the attitude of the communists after 8th of November 1945.
The 'generation' of 1989 did not come into existence in post-communist Romania. Yet some marginal student movements that consider themselves, mutatis mutandis, heirs of the Iron Guard do exist. The impact of this myth due to the growing nostalgia for the interwar past nonetheless suggest the existence of 'fascism' as an unresolved moral problem within Romanian society.

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In 1934 R.W. Seton-Watson was still to believe that 'Two generations of peace and clean government might make of Romania an earthly paradise.'16 In the 1980's, when looking back across Romania's twentieth century history, Emil Cioran said: 'Some countries are blessed with a sort of grace: everything works for them, even their misfortunes and their catastrophes. There are others for whom nothing succeeds and whose very triumphs are but failures. When they try to assert themselves and take a step forward, some external fate intervenes to break their momentum and return them to their starting point.'17
Watson was referring to 'generations' in terms of 19th century French positivist paradigm. In contrast, Cioran, who in 1934 was in his early 30's and one of the 'mystical revolutionaries of Romania,' was 'addicted' to the idea of a generation defined by internal time and experiences, less quantifiable, and confined to the phenomenology of 'togetherness' that determine in advance the individual existence. He was one of the most representatives intellectuals of the 'generation' who leave us the impression that it was aware of Marx's judgement that 'The tradition of all dead generations weight like a nightmare on the brain of the living' - restricting their freedom to project social change. A 'generation' who brought to Romania the break with the tradition of European rationalism,18 and who, without being the exact Romanian counterpart - not Balkan19 - of the West European 'generation of 1914', nevertheless turned the generational idea, exactly as the former did, into one of the most negative items of the century.20 However, apart from their ambition and intellectual inadequacy as well as the way they tried to escape a failing, stalemated society, elements that were to bring them close to the Iron Guard, their 'symbolic geography,' the manner in which they blamed or on contrary praised history and geography is rather to differentiate them from the former. Codreanu's, a young 'borderland' teenager, not purely Romanian according to the ontology he was to plead in the 1920s, and by contagion Iron Guardists' symbolic love, fears, obsessions and paranoia, has nothing in common with the idea of recreation of a universal, more simple but united form of society with a fresh ethos, fanatical and non-materialist, and the quasi-religious 'New Man' some fascist leaders, and intellectuals, were striving for in the 1930's, and were to impress Julius Evola.21
Romanian Fascists always described themselves as the epitome of the 'young generation' of interwar Romania, while confiscating the idea - so did Ioan Moţa in 1934 talking about the '1922 young generation of nationalist students,' and Horia Sima after the second world war. Yet no clear continuity between the generation of 1922, fighting the internal political enemy who was to easy to forgot the sacrifice of thousand soldiers that fought in the trenches against the external enemy and for the accomplishment of the political union of the nation, and the fascist of the 1930, can be traced. Moreover, the 'Green shirts' were not the only to identify themselves with, and claim the 'paternity' of the idea of a new and distinct young generation. Instead, they were the only to back this idea while deliberately creating a political-paramilitary organisation with a specific purpose and consciously willed ties, at the same time adopting a inter-class position, and looking at a social whole.22 Between the guardists and the other 'young generation', the intellectuals of the Kriterion Group, stressing for distinction and different goals, nonetheless disregarding fascism, there was nothing but mutual contempt. While comparing the latest with the 'green youth', Radu Gyr described them as a dispersed, anarchic, disoriented group of young writers and intellectuals, liberals in politics, indifferent to the fate of the peasant and the idea of a revolutionary national state as the promise for 'The Day After Tomorrow', nonetheless accusing them for preaching Marxism, homo-sexualism, pornography, and labelling some as trashed moralist and decadents.23 They were striving for Romanianism but not xenophobia, from whom they dissociated, creativity and integration, Western European traditio-nalism, but without being addicted to the past, for a new culture and sociology, nonetheless sovereignty and non-dependency from foreign ideologies. Non-materialists and romantics, paying equal attention to Freud, Gide, Lenin, Mussolini, Chaplin, and Picasso, modern Romania and America, war and world crisis, they were not politically oriented. In fact the only uniformity in options was their hate for the dirty flags of electoral assertion in the absence of a missing passion to sacrifice in the name of one faith. As Lovinescu put it at the time they were suffering from a too much belated spiritual anxiety and mysticism, from contagion with the intellectual snobbery of the West: non-historicism, fatalist irrational spenglerianism, decadence. They were in 1930's Romania '... the generation of doing nothing… (except)… preserve youth and moral purity.'
In the early 1920`s Fascism emerged as a new contagious political phenomenon all over Europe. Yet it was not successful everywhere and definitely not at the same time. In Romania, the obsession of permanent synchronisation with Europe on the part of the intelligentsia included its mimetic importation. It was not just a fashion as long as the impact of Italian fascism on Romanian politics was large and the well-known Iron Guard was not the only and definitely not the first fascist party in Romania. If it was only for them to succeed in the 1930's, it is not only the international context, the preference of the Romanian intellectuals, with their permanent emphasis on 'national specificity', for the indigenous version of fascism, the charismatic nature of its leader, the existence of a peasant question, and the social rejuvenation and stratification of experiences of young city students, workers, peasants, sucked up in the vortex of social change, to explain it.
A regional, marginal student organisation in its eve Iron Guard has become a popular movement and than mass-party only after it sacrificed its romantic, traditionalist, and rural orientation, and also its purely Romanian conception. 'Late comers' into Romanian politics they were successful only when they managed to fill in the gap between traditional political parties and masses while addressing not only the nationalistic and evilminded but also the desperate. The convulsions produced by the rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, and the failure of both socialisation process and modernising project were to create the perfect mood. In rest, and apart from other cases, it was for Codreanu's constant refuse toward a conciliator attitude in relation to the traditional elites, and the shift to a increasingly revolutionary, radical program of no clear form - that was only to lead them to disaster - to explain the 'success,' and failure, of fascism in Romania. However what was to work in a specific way in the case of Romanian fascism as to make the idea of 'generational unit' valid, shape mental data with specific socialising effect, and nonetheless offer it a distinct character and direction it is still unclear. The same is to be stated with regard the road from casual slogan and isolated gesture to formative tendencies and integrative attitudes, and the way they expand successfully over a wider area.
Romania did not had a 1914 generation of intellectuals. A discussion on this issue would seem a non-sense if one takes into consideration the tremendous positive impact of the 1918 political Union and the social reforms that were to follow in the aftermath of World War I.24 Nae Ionescu, the 'binder' of the young generation of intellectuals who were drawn to the revivalist mysticism of Romania's fascists, and the most influential of the many interwar thinkers,25 was among the few who did not consider themselves as members of the 'generation of the Great Union'. Instead a 'generation' that resembles in its main features the Western 'generation of 1914' came into existence in 1927, and by contagion. This generation grew into the shadow of a great historical event that was supposed to stress a perfect cohesion, benefit from a 'grace of late birth' as they were unconditioned by the obsession of political geography and national ideal. Yet the influence of the swell of European generationalism that reached its peak between 1928-1933 was decisive in their case. After 1933, when the intellectuals of the European 'Generation of 1914', now in their 40's, were already disappointed by fascism, which proved to be a colossal failure, checking rather than advancing social change, the Romanian young Generation of 1928 was only to discover it as the great temptation, and unlike Ortega y Gasset, they were unable to reject its demagoguery, plebeian leadership, violence of method, vulgarity of propaganda. Their openness to radical political ideologies and scepticism toward 19th century, as well as their search for a party able to offer, "… civic pride, social justice, and defend liberty…" (Mircea Eliade), their critique of society and their culture of anti-necessity, as well as the idea of 'recreation through destruction' was only to push them - not all - into the position of thinkers, not doers, 'officers' not soldiers of Romanian fascism. Their permanent emphasis with the unhistorical sense of time as well as their anti-geography was, paradoxically, not to put them apart from Codreanu and his vision of a future Christian, spiritualised and mystical Romania. On contrary, their works were to feed and reshape the fascist ideology and utopia, legitimate Iron Guards' actions and bring new members within the organisation.

1 Vladimir Tismăneanu, ed., The Revolutions of 1989 (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 5-12.
2 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 232.
3 Jeno Szücs, "The Three Regions of Europe", Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 29 (2-4), 1983.
4 Jeno Szücs, "The Three Regions of Europe", p. 179.
5 Peter Hanak, "Central Europe", In Search for Central Europe, George Schopflin&Nancy Wood (eds.), (Totowa, NY: Barnes&Noble Books, 1989), pp. 57-69.
6 See Tony Judt, "Romania. Bottom of the Heap", New York Review of Books..., 2001.
7 Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation-Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. xiii-xv. See also Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania, (Berkley, University of California Press, 1991).
8 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 83.
9 Lucian Boia, Mit şi conştiinţă în istoriografia românească (Bucureşti: Humanitas, 1997), pp. 72-85.
10 From the French paradigm they took the idea of a centre that was to impose the process upon margin groups and peripheral regions, the idea of a linear rigid frontier along national lines, the way they looked in advance for natural frontiers and saw them as national before knowing what the nation will look like, and before including those territories. The comparison with the French originals was to work as well in the case of Bucharest, 'the Paris of the East,' culture, Latinate language, and the Napoleonic administration. Even the Romanian fascists took (some) of their cue from French (proto) fascism.
11 This timing is to explain why a 'happy, Cerdanya case' as described by Peter Sahlins, Boundaries The making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees, (University of California Press, 1979) was not possible throughout the region and not only Romania.
12 See Larry Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilisation on the mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 200-251.
13 Ibidem.
14 Martin W. Lewis&Karen E. Wigen, The Myths of Continents. A Critique of Metageography (University of Californian Press), pp. 124-125.
15 Cristina Panţâru, "Miturile revoluţiei din 1989," Sfera Politicii, (91-92), 2001.
16 R.W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Romanians (Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 554.
17 E.M. Cioran, "Petite Théorie du Destin" (from La Tentation d'Exister), Oeuvres, p. 850.
18 See Karl Manheim, "The Problem of Generations", Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, Paul Kecskemeti (ed.), (Routledge&Kegan Paul LTD, London), pp. 280-288.
19 Maria Todorova is right when saying that in fact there is nothing Balkan within Romanian fascism. Eugene Ionescu is labelling them as such, while ignoring that they were trying desperately to avoid any historical and geographical location.
20 Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979), p. 236. Beyond the fascist commitment of some of the members of this 'young generation' of Romania it is the spirit of the European age with its homogeneous driving impulse toward the fulfilment of historical tasks - as understood at the time - that fascinated them.
21 See Roger Eatwell, Fascism. A History (London: Vintage Press, 1995), p. 270.
22 Irina Livezeanu approaches this young generation without making any distinction between the nationalists of the 1922 and those of the 1927 or between them and the intellectuals who did or did not joint fascism. Dan Pavel and Leon Volovici admit the influence of some of the intellectuals on the political movement but fail to discuss the way in which their ideas transgress social bounds and shape, beyond physical proximity, the mental and spiritual unity of one generation. That is only to leave the reader the impression that Eliade and a peasant from the most remote village, who never so Codreanu or Bucharest, were to share the same values, anxieties, and frustrations. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism. The case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Pergamon Press, 1993) and Dan Pavel, "Doctrina Legionară", Doctrine Politice, Alina Mungiu Pippidi (ed.), (Polirom, Iaşi, 1995).
23 Zirgu Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right. The Nineteen Thirties, Columbia University Press (New York, 1999), pp. 139-150.
24 Some disillusion did existed, but they were mere products of the first years of peace, as the huge expectations on the part of the political elite were not completely fulfilled. A fall of class barriers did not occurred, a short term social harmony did not eradicate selfishness, the young lived with the same impression of old coming back and depriving them of their victory. As for the Versailles peace congress, it did brought territories but did not changed Romania's international status of a 'small boy.'
25 It was he who, in March 1935, neatly encapsulated contemporary Romanian cultural paranoia: 'A nation is defined by the friend-foe equation' and managed to become the 'Machiavellian mentor' of a generation who did not share his ideal of an Ethno-theocratic state.