The Extreme Right in Bessarabia 1918-1944

The dissertational project deals with extreme-right wing groups and parties in Bessarabia 1918-1944. It focuses on the two biggest of these movements: the Legionary Movement and the National-Christian Movement or Party. The composition of the members of these organisations will be examined, thus investigating the question of their anchorage in the rural region. In this sense the development of the Legionary Movement from a mainly academic- and university-anchored youth movement to a mass movement aiming at broad layers of society will be studied. Forms of propaganda and mobilisation of the Legion but also of the other right-wing movements are of interest and will be compared and contrasted.

So far no profound research exists on the L.A.N.C., the predecessor movement of the Legionary “Iron Guard”. Existing studies on the Iron Guard focus almost exclusively on its intellectual and political leading cadres as well as on the history of ideas of this movement. Furthermore, for the most part they are limited to Bucharest and a few smaller centers like Cluj and Iaşi. The present study, by contrast, decisively follows the concept of regional history. Thus it wants to contribute to the scientific exploration of regional contemporary history of the Romanian state and its society in the interwar period.

The main primary sources for this dissertation are documents in the state archives of Chişinău, Bucharest, Iaşi, Ismail, Chernovtsy (and maybe Moscow). A lot of relevant material has been conserved, especially in the archives of the former Soviet Union where, furthermore, archival laws today are interpreted in a generous manner. This material consists of situational reports of the prefectures, the secret police, the gendarmerie and other civil or military offices on the inner state of affairs, files monitoring the activity of parties and movements, personal dossiers, and also newspaper articles. Abundant material of surveillance of the Legionary Movement dating from the period 1941-1944 which so far has not been accessible for researchers proved it reasonable to extend the dissertation project, which originally was planned to exclusively deal with the interwar period.