The ideological dimension of aryanization politics in interwar Romania (original) (raw)

The socio-political order emerging after World War I triggered some unprecedented radical phenomena which led to a genuine primacy of totalitarian ideologies in most European countries. Romania prematurely experiences the rising pressure of both internally and externally motivated political extremism. The democratic values were therefore altered and the multiethnic national profile became a major challenge, in terms of governance potential, for the political elites of that time. This paper attempts to investigate and highlight the major role played by the Romanian integral nationalism in the process of shaping and implementing the so-called aryanization measures especially in the regions having a significant Jewish minority. Given the fact that such particular instances of Romanian anti-Semitism were insufficiently analyzed, both in Romanian and European historiography, it is scientifically relevant to proper investigate the emergence and development of aryanization by taking into account its regional manifestations.