Anarchism in Romania developed in the 1880s within the larger Romanian socialist movement and it had a small following throughout all the existence of the Kingdom of Romania. Social anarchism was initially propagated by the Revista Ideei during the time of the Old Kingdom, but following the rise of Bolshevism, socialist tendencies were sidelined in favor of individualism and vegetarianism, which were the predominant anarchist tendencies in Romania during the 1920s and 1930s.[1]
After the Romanian Communist Party takeover in 1947, no other alternative political movement was allowed, so the anarchist movement faded away. Since the Romanian Revolution, a number of small anarchist organizations were created, but anarchism is still less visible than in Western Europe.
Forerunners
Romanian anarchist Zamfir Arbore, 1914 portrait by his daughter
Another forerunner of Romanian anarchism was Paraskev Stoyanov, of Bulgarian origin, born in 1871 (or 1874) in Giurgiu, where his father, an active campaigner for national liberation, had fled Turkish persecution. Stoyanov had a solid education and became a surgeon. After primary school in Bucharest, he adhered to socialist ideas through high school, then to anarchism after reading Peter Kropotkin's pamphlet "An Appeal To The Young". Thus, in high school, he founded book clubs for students studying socialism and anarchism and began to spread anarchism among the workers in Romania, coming to be considered the "father" of anarchism in the country. He translated Errico Malatesta's numerous pamphlets into Romanian, including "For The Voters", "Between Peasants " and "Anarchy".[7]
Social anarchism in the Old Kingdom
According to the German historian Max Nettlau, the Romanian socialist movement, which emerged following the establishment of the Romanian Old Kingdom in 1881, itself had anarchist origins.[8] Anarchism developed as a specific tendency in the Wallachian capital of Bucharest, where the socialist movement was more radical than its counterpart in the Moldavian capital of Iași.[9] By 1884, most of the books in the Bucharest socialist library were anarchist works, from the likes of Mikhail Bakunin, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, Jean Grave, Peter Kropotkin, Élisée Reclus.[10] Between 1884 and 1890, the Human Rights Social Studies Circle organized reading groups in Bucharest, influenced by the ideas of Bakunin, Reclus and Kropotkin, which had been brought to Romania by people who studied in Western Europe. But by the 1890s, the reformist tendency led by Ioan Nădejde[ro] had reorganized the Circle into the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Romania (PSDMR), defeating the anarchist tendencies within the organization and eventually distancing itself entirely from the anarchist movement due to the rise of "propaganda of the deed".[9] This move towards social democracy was decisively influenced by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, who published a series of articles critiquing the libertarian and revolutionary tendencies within socialism.[11] Dobrogeanu-Gherea's works directly contributed to the association of anarchism with violence and chaos, which became popularized in many sections of Romanian society.[12] He considered anarchism to be a "social disease" which would inevitably attracted criminal elements of society, concurring with the work of his contemporary, the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso.[13]
Panait Muşoiu, leader of the Romanian anarchist movement from 1890 to 1912.
Among the anarchists that Nădejde purged from the organization was Panait Muşoiu, who subsequently left Bucharest for Galați, but he would be expelled from the local socialist club in that city as well. Upon his return to Bucharest, Muşoiu became the leading figure in the Romanian anarchist movement, overseeing it until the outbreak of the Balkan Wars.[14] After a split in the PSDMR in 1899, the now-scattered social-democratic tendencies gave way for anarchism to return to prominence.[15] The following year, Panait Muşoiu and Panait Zosin[ro] founded the Revista Ideei (Idea's Magazine),[16] which published Romanian language translations of works by social anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, as well as individualist anarchists such as Max Stirner, Han Ryner and Henry David Thoreau. The Romanian authorities reported a particular rise in anarchist activity in the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution. Apart from the circle which met at Mușoiu's house in the capital, anarchists circles were also established in Piața Amzei and Ploiești.[15] Preeminent figures of Romanian literature, such as Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești and Panait Istrati, were also attracted towards anarchism during this period.[6]
While in the middle of a sustained wave of immigration by Italian anarchists to Romania, rumors began to circulate about an alleged anarchist plot to carry out a terrorist attack in Romania. Anarchism began to concern the Siguranța, the country's secret police, which began monitoring the anarchist movement. The Romanian government itself was signatory to an anti-anarchist treaty, which set up a system for sharing information on the anarchist movement with other European states. By 1907, the Securitatea had compiled two lists of anarchists: first was a list of 20 anarchist activists and second, a list of 50 public servants who were subscribed to Revista Ideei. A report of the secret police argued that anarchist propaganda contributed to the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt. As example is given a certain village teacher, Nicolăescu-Cranta, a friend of Mușoiu, who contributed to the start of the revolts through the speeches he gave to the peasants.[17] As antisemitism and political repression began to spread throughout Romania, a number of Romanian Jewish anarchists fled into exile, with Joseph Ishill and Marcus Graham both becoming prominent figures in the American anarchist movement.[6]
Even after an anarchist railroad worker attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu in 1909, the anarchist movement continued to grow rapidly, with numerous libertarian circles being established in cities throughout Romania.[18] But the outbreak of World War I had the effect of demobilizing the socialist movement, including the anarchists. Within years, anarchism was supplanted as the dominant socialist tendency by Bolshevism, following the success of the Russian Revolution.[18] By the early 1920s, the national liberal politician Nicolae Petrescu declared that a "proper movement of militant anarchism or anarchist theorists" no longer existed in Romania.[19]
Individualist anarchism in Interbellum Romania
Eugen Relgis, the anarcho-pacifist founder of the Humanitarian Movement and a leading figure of Romanian anarchism during the interbellum era.
In 1923, the Romanian pacifist Eugen Relgis founded the Mișcarea Umanitaristă (English: Humanitarian Movement), a non-doctrinal anti-militarist organization which brought together several anarchists, including Panait Muşoiu. In 1928, the movement established a newspaper Umanitaristul (English: Humanitarianism), which had obvious libertarian influences, publishing the works of Han Ryner and Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. It received a donation from the French individualist Émile Armand, and Relgis translated one of Armand's works. During the late 1920s, the movement established 24 branches throughout Romania.[20] In 1932, Relgis shelved Umanitaristul and began contributing to Ion Ionescu-Căpăţână's newspaper Vegetarismul (English: Vegetarianism), which advocated for vegetarianism, citing social, economic, medical and even religious motivations. Over time, it began to draw heavily from individualist anarchism, inspired by the works of Max Stirner and Émile Armand.[21]
While the Romanian individualists idealized the state of nature, they did not nostalgize the past, instead conceiving the rejection of contemporary mores as an affirmation of freedom.[25] They considered the greatest barrier to freedom to be the work day and wage labor, which interfered with their desired individualist lifestyles. It was their critique of work that particularly developed their political oritentation towards social anarchism, drawing from the works of Peter Kropotkin, Élisée Reclus and Henry David Thoreau. One Valeriu Buja, who was particularly inspired by Thoreau, wrote a passionate defense of anti-statism from an individualist perspective:[26]
“By what right am I bound between borders, between laws, when I want to be a brother to all men? [...] In itself, state organization is selfish and immoral. By what right does someone declare me to be a Romanian citizen, when I do not want to be a Romanian citizen, nor a French citizen, nor of any other nationality, but a man, a brother of everyone?”
The development of individualist anarchism in Romania culminated in proposals to establish an intentional community, which was to be organized according to Kropotkin's model of anarcho-communism and theory of mutual aid, but this project was stillborn due to a lack of volunteers. Vegetarismul also found itself unable to meet the at least 500 subscribers necessary to continue publication, leading to the newspaper ceasing publication in 1934. The following year, Ion Ionescu-Căpăţână emigrated to France, where he organized support for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.[27] In his French exile, Ionescu-Căpăţână collaborated with Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers on the magazine Aristocracy and announced that he was working on a history of the Romanian anarchist movement, although this would never be published, as Ionescu-Căpăţână died in 1942.[28] By this time, anarchism had ceased to be a major force in Romania, instead existing mostly in the upper classes' fears of terrorism. While visiting Max Nettlau in Vienna, Eugen Relgis commented that:[29]
"In our country, the anarchist is a scarecrow. For bourgeois and children, he must have a fierce face, tousled hair, sometimes lavalier knotted like a noose, but always a bomb or at least a dagger in his pocket."
Repression and exile
Following the rise of fascism in Romania, anarchist works were among the books that were burned by the National Legionary State.[30] Panait Mușoiu died a few months after the overthrow of the fascist regime and,[27] following the proclamation of the Romanian People's Republic in 1947, Eugen Relgis fled into exile in Uruguay, bringing an end to the second period of anarchism in Romania.[31] Unlike in neighboring countries, there had been no active anarchist resistance to the rise of authoritarianism in Romania, which ultimately gave way to the institution of Marxism–Leninism. While the new socialist government undertook the suppression of the remaining anarchist movement, it also rehabilitated a number of Romanian social anarchists, including Panait Mușoiu, whose anti-authoritarian views were downplayed.[32]
In 1952, Relgis published the first comprehensive history of the Romanian anarchist movement in the French magazine À contre-courant, in which he publicly declared his own affinity for anti-authoritarianism for the first time.[33] Now openly identifying with anarchism, Relgis also published a work on his own philosophy of "Libertarian Humanism", which synthesized libertarian and humanitarian ideals.[34] Relgis considered it important to develop an indigenous expression of Romanian anarchism, one that was equally capable of surviving repression by the new socialist regime, opposing the rise of reactionary elements and resisting recuperation in the case of a potential democratic restoration.[32] During the 1970s, the Spanish anarchist Vladimiro Muñoz began collecting together texts about the Romanian anarchist movement, creating an anthology that included biographies of Panait Mușoiu, Joseph Ishill, Zamfir Arbure, as well as various other materials provided to him by Relgis.[35]
Following the rise to power of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a number of histories about the old socialist movement were published by historians such as Zigu Ornea. During this period, a number of monographs were published about anarchists such as Panait Mușoiu and Eugen Relgis, although these downplayed their libertarian tendencies, often failing to even mention "anarchism" by name.[36]
During the 2000s, a number of anarchists began organizing in Romania for the first time after the revolution. The anarchists occupied several squats, they organized a "Food Not Bombs" campaign (distributing free vegetarian food in poor neighbourhoods), they spread fliers against fast-food and ripped Neo-Nazi posters from public places. In a few instances (in Bucharest and Timișoara), there have been fights with the Noua Dreaptă Neo-Nazis, who had gone into their underground clubs during concerts.[38]
In November 2006, a number of 100 anarchists participated in the first anti-fascist march in Bucharest, holding red and black banners. In June 2007, a group of 20 anarchists showed up at a march against homosexuality organized the Neo-Nazi organization Noua Dreaptă, but they were arrested by the gendarmes for holding an unauthorized protest.[38]
Anarchists are one of the groups that are monitored by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), including on online forums.[39] One report by the SRI declared that anarchism had been imported into Romania by "foreigners involved in drug trafficking and the dissemination of hard pornography."[37]
During the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit, the government prepared a repression of anarchists who might have protested against NATO and militarism. Six German anarchists were disallowed to enter Romania.[40] Anti-globalization activists rented an industrial hall where they intended to spray paint banners which they wanted to use in the protests against NATO. The police arrested 56 anti-globalization activists who were later released without charges. Some of the arrested people complained that they were beaten up by the police.[41]
While anarchist activism had been revived, academic interest in the Romanian anarchist movement was largely non-existent, in part due to the rise of anti-communism, which viewed even libertarian socialism with suspicion.[42] It was only in the 2010s that a comprehensive historiography of the Romanian anarchist movement emerged, with the publication of Vlad Brătuleanu's Anarhismul în România, the first historical study of anarchism in Romania since the 1940s.[43] Brătuleanu identified a number of key periods in the classical Romanian anarchist movement: the forerunners (1866-1881), the socialist period (1881-1918) and the individualist period (1918-1947), although the historiographer Adrian Tătăran considered this strict chronology to be a weakness of the study.[44] The German historian Martin Veith also contributed to this history with biographies on Panait Muşoiu and Ștefan Gheorghiu, which took a restorative approach to highlighting their libertarian tendencies, after this had been neglected by the studies of the 1970s.[45]
Contemporary groups
Currently, in Romania there are several anarchist organizations, including:
Ravna ("Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative ") based in Constanța[46]
Biblioteca Alternativă din București ("Alternative Library of Bucharest"), a cultural centre promoting anarchist ideas[46]
Grupul pentru Acțiune Socială ("The Group for Social Action") based in Cluj.[46]
Related Research Articles
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including governments, nation states, and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems. Although usually contrasted to social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Some anarcho-capitalists claim anarcho-capitalism is part of the individualist anarchist tradition, while others disagree and claim individualist anarchism is only part of the socialist movement and part of the libertarian socialist tradition. Mutualism, an economic theory sometimes considered a synthesis of communism and property, has been considered individualist anarchism and other times part of social anarchism. Many anarcho-communists regard themselves as radical individualists, seeing anarcho-communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists of the 19th century advocated mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that violates the entitlement theory of justice, that is, gives privilege due to unjust acquisition or exchange, and thus is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital, — that is, of property" by mutual credit.
Anarchist communism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retains personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
The Conquest of Bread, also known colloquially as The Bread Book, is an 1892 book by the Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin. Originally written in French, it first appeared as a series of articles in the anarchist journal Le Révolté. It was first published in Paris with a preface by Élisée Reclus, who also suggested the title. Between 1892 and 1894, it was serialized in part in the London journal Freedom, of which Kropotkin was a co-founder.
The history of anarchism is ambiguous, primarily due to the ambiguity of anarchism itself. Scholars find it hard to define or agree on what anarchism means, which makes outlining its history difficult. There is a range of views on anarchism and its history. Some feel anarchism is a distinct, well-defined 19th and 20th century movement while others identify anarchist traits long before first civilisations existed.
Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economic activity within the political philosophy of anarchism. Many anarchists are anti-authoritarian anti-capitalists, with anarchism usually referred to as a form of libertarian socialism, i.e. a stateless system of socialism. Anarchists support personal property and oppose capital concentration, interest, monopoly, private ownership of productive property such as the means of production, profit, rent, usury and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to capitalism.
The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.
Anarchists have traditionally been skeptical of or vehemently opposed to organized religion. Nevertheless, some anarchists have provided religious interpretations and approaches to anarchism, including the idea that the glorification of the state is a form of sinful idolatry.
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and economic theory that advocates a socialist society based on free markets and usufructs, i.e. occupation and use property norms. One implementation of this system involves the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration. Mutualism is based on a version of the labor theory of value that it uses as its basis for determining economic value. According to mutualist theory, when a worker sells the product of their labor, they ought to receive money, goods, or services in exchange that are equal in economic value, embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". The product of the worker's labour factors the amount of both mental and physical labour into the price of their product.
The Jura Federation represented the anarchist, Bakuninist faction of the First International during the anti-statist split from the organization. Jura, a Swiss area, was known for its watchmaker artisans in La Chaux-de-Fonds, who shared anti-state, egalitarian views on work and social emancipation. The Jura Federation formed between international socialist congresses in 1869 and 1871. When the First International's General Council, led by Marxists, suppressed the Bakuninists, the Jura Federation organized an international of the disaffected federations at the 1872 St. Imier Congress. The congress disavowed the General Council's authoritarian consolidation of power and planning as an affront to the International's loose, federalist founding to support workers' emancipation. Members of the First International agreed and even statists joined the anti-statists' resulting Anti-authoritarian International, but by 1876, the alliance had mostly dissolved. While in decline, the Jura Federation remained the home of Bakuninists whose figures engaged on a two-decade debate on the merits of propaganda of the deed. The egalitarian relations of the Jura Federation had played an important role in Peter Kropotkin's adoption of anarchism, who became the anarchist standard-bearer after Bakunin.
Anarchism in France can trace its roots to thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration and was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. According to journalist Brian Doherty, "The number of people who subscribed to the anarchist movement's many publications was in the tens of thousands in France alone."
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as anarchists, advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. While anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, opposition to the state is not its central or sole definition. Anarchism can entail opposing authority or hierarchy in the conduct of all human relations.
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Benjamin Tucker, Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert Spencer and Henry David Thoreau. Other important individualist anarchists in the United States were Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Batchelder Greene, Ezra Heywood, M. E. Lazarus, John Beverley Robinson, James L. Walker, Joseph Labadie, Steven Byington and Laurance Labadie.
Anarchism in Russia has its roots in the early mutual aid systems of the medieval republics and later in the popular resistance to the Tsarist autocracy and serfdom. Through the history of radicalism during the early 19th-century, anarchism developed out of the populist and nihilist movements' dissatisfaction with the government reforms of the time.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anarchism, generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as anarchists, advocate stateless societies or non-hierarchical voluntary associations.
Types of socialism include a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and organizational self-management of enterprises as well as the political theories and movements associated with socialism. Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity in which surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole. There are many varieties of socialism and no single definition encapsulates all of them, but social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary, how far society should intervene, and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.
Panait Mușoiu was a Romanian anarchist and socialist activist, the author of the first Romanian translation of The Communist Manifesto. He was one of the main figures of anarchism in Romania and the founder of several left-wing magazines in which he published articles on political and social issues.
Social anarchism, also known as left-wing anarchism or socialist anarchism, is the branch of anarchism that sees liberty and social equality as interrelated.
Collectivist anarchism, also called anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production. In their place, it envisions both the collective ownership of the means of production and the entitlement of workers to the fruits of their own labour, which would be ensured by a societal pact between individuals and collectives. Collectivists considered trade unions to be the means through which to bring about collectivism through a social revolution, where they would form the nucleus for a post-capitalist society.
Anarchism in Switzerland appeared, as a political current, within the Jura Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), under the influence of Mikhail Bakunin and Swiss libertarian activists such as James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel. Swiss anarchism subsequently evolved alongside the nascent social democratic movement and participated in the local opposition to fascism during the interwar period. The contemporary Swiss anarchist movement then grew into a number of militant groups, libertarian socialist organizations and squats.
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