Conservative-Democratic Party Partidul Conservator-Democrat | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Leader | Take Ionescu |
Founded | 3 February 1908 |
Dissolved | 21 November 1922 |
Split from | Conservative Party |
Merged into | Romanian National Party |
Newspaper | Ordinea Acțiunea Evenimentul Românimea |
Ideology | Liberal conservatism |
Political position | Centre-right |
The Conservative-Democratic Party (Romanian : Partidul Conservator-Democrat, PCD) was a political party in Romania. Over the years, it had the following names: the Democratic Party, the Nationalist Conservative Party, or the Unionist Conservative Party.
The Conservative-Democratic Party was established on November 21, 1908, by the separation of a wing from the Conservative Party led by Take Ionescu, having the goal of creating the third ruling party, meant to interrupt the cycle of "governmental rotation" between conservatives and liberals. The electoral base of the party was made up of representatives of the small bourgeoisie (traders, small and medium-sized real estate and movable property owners, industrialists, wealthy peasants, etc.) and liberal professions (lawyers, teachers and doctors. Another important party's supporters led by Take Ionescu was the state officials and the "urban intellectual proletariat" – high school graduates who could not be absorbed by an insufficiently developed labor market.
The core of the new party's political program was, as its only president, Take Ionescu, said, "putting conservative ideas on the democratic ground of the country." In practice, this political vision materialized in the adoption of contextual solutions, oscillating between conservative and liberal ideas. The party's political program, adopted at the congress held in 1908, was revised several times: in 1910, and then, in 1913 when the Liberals' proposal to revise the constitution was accepted, including the expropriation and extension of the right to vote, and in 1919 when it was adapted to the new post-war political realities.
The party was indissolubly linked to its leader Take Ionescu, who led it throughout his life. First, the party progressed very fast, when it succeeded to win the vast majority of the partial elections held between 1908 and 1910, ahead of the detached Conservative Party from which it split. However, King Carol I refused to recognize this new political reality and abandon the system of liberal-conservative alternative at the government, and thus, never entrusted the task of forming the government to the Conservative-Democratic Party.
In 1912–1914, the party has participated in the government, within the coalition governments, together with the conservatives, and in 1916–1918 with the liberals, and in 1919–1920, with the League of Nations. The only time when the Conservative Democratic Party been a lone in the government was December 17, 1921 – January 19, 1922, when the presidency of the Council of Ministers was ensured by Take Ionescu.
The death of Take Ionescu on June 21, 1922, led to the party disappearance, which at that time was rather a group of friends than a true political formation. On November 21, 1922, the party officially ceased its activity when its merging by absorption, with the National Party led by Iuliu Maniu was announced.
The most important leaders of the party were Take Ionescu, Nicolae Titulescu, Alexandru Bădărău, Constantin Dissescu, Toma Cămărăşescu, Gheorghe Derussi, Stelian Popescu, Gheorghe Mironescu, Mihail Vladescu, Mihail Oromolu, Nicolae Xenopol or Constantin Xeni. The Conservative-Democratic Party has also attracted leading intellectuals such as Professor Thoma Ionescu or writer Ion Luca Caragiale.
Over the years, the party had following publications: "Order" (January 27, 1908 – January 30, 1913), "The Action" (31 January 1913 – 14 November 1916), "The Event" November 1916 – December 1, 1918) and "Romania mea" (December 2, 1918 – June 22, 1922).
The party was established on 3 February 1908 by Take Ionescu.
In the 1920 elections it won 17 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and four seats in the Senate. [1] However, it was reduced to just three Chamber seats in the 1922 elections, which also saw it lose representation in the Senate. [2]
Ionescu's death in June 1922 led to the collapse of the party, and it subsequently merged into the Romanian National Party on 21 November.
The electorate consisted mainly of lawyers, professors, officials, traders, doctors, small and medium-sized real estate and movable property owners, wealthy peasants. The party's internal structure consisted of regional club organizations with a different number of members, with committees whose headquarters were in the county seat towns, and with the central club located in Bucharest. The leadership of the party was provided by an Executive Committee. The discipline was less strong than that in the Conservative or Liberal Party, local organizations having a significant autonomy.
In the political and social economic history of the country, it can be rightly said that the great riot of the peasants in 1907 played a special role, which places it beside the crucial moments in the history of the Romanian people. Since these days of the riot, in fact, the break-up from the Conservative Party of the fraction that then followed Take Ionescu and become the Conservative Democratic Party. [3] : p. 223
Take Ionescu a charismatic and influential leader of the Conservative Party's bourgeois environment. In early 1908, P.P. Carp carried out some actions to deprive him of the power.
Thus, on January 9, 1908, he called the conservative leaders to elect a new conservative committee, knowing that Take Ionescu was not in the country. Despite the Ionescu's sent by the telegraph requests to postpone the meeting for a later date, P.P. Carp, organized the meeting at the date set, and changed composition of conservative leadership so that, of the 20 members of the committee, only two were the Ionescu's supporters. [4] : p. 354
although apparently it was a new party, in fact, the Conservative Democratic Party under the leadership of Mr. Take Ionescu became nothing more than the old Conservative Party, made up of the great and immortal Lascar Catargiu, ... in its modern evolutionary form, enlarged and fortified by the new generation of youth. [3] : pp 224–225
The P.C.D. was established because of disagreements inside of the Conservative Party. It was more a mere dissension of the Conservative Party. His whole activity was carried out and was practically led by Take Ionescu, who wanted to create a third ruling party. The initial electoral successes of P.C.D. were spectacular, winning between 1908 and 1910 almost all partial parliamentary elections. King Carol I, however, brought to power Conservative Party, and had no wish to change the existing bipartite system until then. At the elections held in February 1911, although he was in the coalition with the liberals, P.C.D. obtained only 20 mandates. Always in alliance with the Liberals, brought more difficulties to the Conservative Party, forcing it on 14 October 1912 to share the power with P.C.D. On this occasion, Take Ionescu, C. Dissescu, Al. Bădărău and N. Xenopol formed the government headed by Titu Maiorescu (the Peace Government of Bucharest). Within it, the Democratic conservatives became known by the endeavor to bring back a political atmosphere of mutual trust in the Balkans.
In years of neutrality, P.C.D. was next to the conservative group of N. Filipescu, who was driving force for the country entering into the war alongside the Entente. During this collaboration, the two conservative branches approached more and on May 22, 1916, a period that would lead to the highlight of more people, merged. After the death of N. Filipescu, Take Ionescu took over by himself the ruling of the merged party (called the Conservative Party until 1918, coexisting with the other party, of Al Marghiloman, who also called the Conservative). National-Conservatism was later represented by the political formation of Nicolae Iorga.
On December 11, 1916, Take Ionescu's party entered the war government through four representatives, and Nicolae Titulescu joined in July 1917. In June 1918, Take Ionescu arrived in Paris, where he headed the National Council of Romanian Unity.
After the Unification, the party (first called as Conservative Democratic, then Democrat, after that became Nationalist Conservative or Unionist Conservative) experienced the crisis due to the new state of mind of the population demanding radical reforms and because Take Ionescu remained in Paris, by October 1919, and the other leaders did not take up the re-shape the program and organization of the party, at a time when the universal vote regime required the mobilization of the electoral body. Being in the alliance with the People's League, did not participate in the parliamentary elections of November 1919, and in 1920 obtained only 17 seats. In June 1920, Take Ionescu, D. Grecianu and N. Titulescu entered the Averescu government, more as political figures than the representatives of their own party. First of all, the Romanian post war external policy personnel was appointed, being, among others, the main creator of the Little Entente. In his turn, N. Titulescu made the first large Romanian budget and introduced a new tax system, based on progressivity and global income. After the fall of the Averescu government, the power gap that was created on December 17, 1921, Take Ionescu took over the government, called an ephemeral government, which by the votes of the members of the Assembly was resigned a month later. This government was represented by the most important conservative-democratic leaders of that time: I. Cămărăşescu, Gh. Derussi, Stelian Popescu, Gh. Mironescu, M. Vlădescu, M. Oromolu, C. Xeni and others.
On June 21, 1922, Take Ionescu died, and his party, which became mainly a group of political friends, died with him, and nowadays, some of the ideas were taken over by the DAC Paty. Archived 2016-07-17 at the Wayback Machine On November 21, 1922, merging of the Conservative-Democratic Party with the National Party (Iuliu Maniu) was proclaimed. The only party that took over the ideas of economic autonomy and conservative-political democracy was the Dacians autonomous conservative party.
"Putting conservative ideas on the democratic ground of the country" – after Take Ionescu's expression – was understood, in the practice of political life, in the adoption of oscillatory solutions between the liberal and the conservative. The entire program was subordinated to the political context, suffering many changes and nuances. The first time the program was formulated at the Congress of P.C.D. on 3 February 1908, and then, on 24 November 1910.
On 14 November 1913, when the liberals proposed the revision of the Constitution, P.C.D. has accepted the widening of the electoral body but within two colleges, has called for the strengthening of the Senate and proportional representation. The party representatives agreed with the expropriation, understood it as a "purchase", based on "the previous and fair" benefits. In September 1914, the P.C.D. gave up all his reserves and Take Ionescu concluded an alliance with the N. Filipescu by subordinating the issue of internal reforms to solving the issue of Romanian political unity, anticipating universal vote, expropriation in state-guaranteed titles, and so on. Externally, he firmly supported Romania's entry into war with the Entente. In June 1917, P.C.D. voted in the Parliament to revise the constitution by granting the universal vote of a large expropriation following Take Ionescu's deal with Ion I.C. Bratianu.
In the first post-war program (October 22, 1919), the Democratic conservatives provided "a sincere alliance without reluctance" with France and the United Kingdom, an ever-closer union with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Greece. In domestic politics, he supported the unification of state life, equal treatment for national minorities, equality of religious confessions, essential rights for workers, appealing to foreign capital to restore the economy and balancing its balance of payments.
Election | Votes | % | Assembly | Senate | Position |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1911 | PNL-PCD alliance | 10 / 183 | 11 / 112 | 2nd | |
1912 | 84 / 183 | 40 / 110 | 1st | ||
1914 | 18 / 188 | 13 / 125 | 3rd | ||
1918 | |||||
1919 | 0 / 216 | ||||
1920 | 17 / 366 | 4 / 166 | 7th | ||
1922 | 3 / 372 | 0 / 148 | 9th |
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party (PNL), he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social conservative expressing support for several progressive and nationalist tenets. Ionescu is generally viewed as embodying the rise of middle-class politics inside the early 20th century Kingdom of Romania, and, throughout the period, promoted a project of Balkan alliances while calling for measures to incorporate the Romanian-inhabited Austro-Hungarian regions of Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina. Representing his own faction inside the Conservative Party, he clashed with the group's leadership in 1907–1908, and consequently created and led his own Conservative-Democratic Party.
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist party in Romania. The successor to the pro-Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave an ideological endorsement to a communist revolution that would replace the social system of the Kingdom of Romania. After being outlawed in 1924, the PCR remained a minor and illegal grouping for much of the interwar period and submitted to direct Comintern control. During the 1920s and the 1930s, most of its activists were imprisoned or took refuge in the Soviet Union, which led to the creation of competing factions that sometimes came into open conflict. That did not prevent the party from participating in the political life of the country through various front organizations, most notably the Peasant Workers' Bloc. During the mid-1930s, due to the purges against the Iron Guard, the party was on the road to achieving power, but the dictatorship of king Carol II crushed this. In 1934–1936, PCR reformed itself in the mainland of Romania properly, with foreign observers predicting a possible communist takeover in Romania. The party emerged as a powerful actor on the Romanian political scene in August 1944, when it became involved in the royal coup that toppled the pro-Nazi government of Ion Antonescu. With support from Soviet occupational forces, the PCR pressured King Michael I into abdicating, and it established the Romanian People's Republic in December 1947.
Gheorghe G. Mironescu, commonly known as G. G. Mironescu, was a Romanian politician, member of the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), who served as Prime Minister of Romania for two terms.
The Conservative Party was between 1880 and 1918 one of Romania's two most important parties, the other one being the Liberal Party. The party was the party of government for a total of 14 years, more than a third of its existence.
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder of the literary magazine Viața Românească. One of the central figures of the Bessarabian intelligentsia at the time, Stere was a key actor during the Union of Bessarabia with Romania in 1918, and is associated with its legacy.
Grigore Iunian was a Romanian left-wing politician and lawyer. A member of the National Liberal Party (PNL) during the 1910s, he rallied with the Peasants' Party (PȚ) after World War I, and followed it into the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), before leaving in 1933 to create the Radical Peasants' Party (PȚR), over which he presided until his death.
Constantin C. Arion was a Romanian politician, affiliated with the National Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and, after 1918, the People's Party. He served two terms as Minister of Religion and Public Instruction, one term as Minister of Agriculture, and another one as Interior Minister before World War I. His career peaked in 1918, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Nicolae Fleva was a Wallachian, later Romanian politician, political journalist and lawyer. Known especially for his involvement in political incidents, and for a stated patriotism bordering on demagogy, he tested all political formulas that Romania's two-party system would allow. His activity in the public sphere brought a decades-long presence in the Assembly of Deputies and a mandate as Mayor of Bucharest between 1884 and 1886.
Nicolae Dimitrie Xenopol was a Romanian politician, diplomat, economist and writer, the younger brother of historian Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol and, like him, a member of Junimea society. Initially inspired by Junimea leader Titu Maiorescu, he was later a dissident of Junimism, a Positivist and a supporter of literary realism. Politically, Xenopol also moved away from conservatism and was embraced by the liberal current, serving as editor of two liberal newspapers: Românul and Voința Națională. He had a successful career in electoral politics, which began within the National Liberal Party and later saw him joining the Conservative-Democratic Party. In 1912, he was Minister of Commerce, and helped create an Academy of Economic Studies.
Nicolae Filipescu was a Romanian politician.
The People's Party, originally People's League, was an eclectic, essentially populist, mass movement in Romania. Created by World War I hero Alexandru Averescu, it identified itself with the new politics of "Greater Romania" period, and existed for almost as long as Greater Romania did. The PP broke with the antiquated two-party system, creating a wide coalition of lobbies, and advertised itself as the new challenge to the National Liberal Party (PNL). The group was held together by Averescu's charisma, and was popularly known as partidul averescan, "the Averescan party".
The Democratic Nationalist Party or Nationalist Democratic Party was a political party in Romania, established by historian Nicolae Iorga and jurist A. C. Cuza. Its support base was in the lower reaches of the Romanian middle class, and, especially through Cuza's ideology, it reflected the xenophobia, economic antisemitism, and producerism of that particular environment. The PND was a weak challenge to the mainstream political forces, either conservative or liberal, failing in its bid to become Romania's third-strongest party. By 1916, it was effectively split between Iorga's moderates and Cuza's radicals, suspending its activity for the remainder of World War I.
The Vlad Țepeș League, later Conservative Party, was a political party in Romania, founded and presided upon by Grigore Filipescu. A "right-wing conservative" movement, it emerged around Filipescu's Epoca newspaper, and gave political expression to his journalistic quarrels. Primarily, the party supported the return of Prince Carol as King of Romania, rejecting the Romanian Regency regime, and questioning democracy itself. Filipescu stirred public controversy with his critique of democracy, drawing suspicions that he was creating a localized fascism. In its original form, the LVȚ idealized efficient government by dictatorial means, and allowed its fringes to be joined by ultra-nationalists and fascists. One of these was the youth-wing organizer, Gheorghe Beza, expelled from the group in 1930, after his assassination attempt on minister Constantin Angelescu.
Grigore N. Filipescu was a Romanian politician, journalist and engineer, the chief editor of Epoca daily between 1918 and 1938. He was the scion of an aristocratic conservative family, son of the statesman Nicolae Filipescu and a collateral descendant of Alexandru II Ghica. During the early stages of World War I, he and his father led a pro-Allied dissident wing of the Conservative Party. After serving on the front, and behind the lines to 1918, as aide to General Alexandru Averescu, Filipescu Jr. became his political adviser. He had a stint in the Labor Party, merged into Averescu's own People's Party. Filipescu served as the latter group's tactician and campaigner, but had irreconcilable differences with Averescu.
General elections were held in the Kingdom of Romania from March 1 to March 14, 1911, confirming a majority for the Conservative Party (PC) under Petre P. Carp. The united opposition was constituted of the National Liberal (PNL) and Conservative-Democratic (PCD) parties, with Ion I. C. Brătianu and Take Ionescu as the leaders. The PCD, founded in 1908 from a middle-class Conservative splinter group, was making its first appearance nationally. A quickly rising third-party, its alliance with the PNL helped the latter survive and consolidate. The elections were also contested by two other new political actors: the right-wing Democratic Nationalist Party, and the left-wing Social Democratic Party. Both failed to win any seats.
The Free and Independent Faction or Free and Independent Fraction was a nationalist and national liberal party in Romania, regionally centered on Western Moldavia. Originally informal, and defined by its adversaries, the Faction mainly comprised pupils and followers of the philosopher Simion Bărnuțiu. During most of its existence, it had as its recognized leader the academic and polemicist Nicolae Ionescu.
Elections for the ad hoc Divan were held in Wallachia in September 1857. They restored a liberalizing trend that had been repressed following the 1848 revolution, also giving expression to the national awakening that was taking part among the Romanians. The toppling of the conservative Regulamentul Organic regime in both Danubian Principalities made them possible: following the 1856 Treaty of Paris, Wallachia and Moldavia functioned as a protectorates of the European powers; both were also clients of the Ottoman Empire. Excluding the spontaneous rallies of 1848, this was the first public consultation to be held in eleven years. It ran in conjunction with the Moldavian Divan elections, and, like them, had unusually lax criteria for participation, allowing peasants and guilds to vote by indirect suffrage.
Ion Cămărășescu was a Romanian politician.
The first cabinet of Titu Maiorescu was the government of Romania from 14 October 1912 to 31 December 1913.