Mihail Manoilescu

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Mihail Manoilescu (1891—December 30, 1950) was a Romanian journalist, economist and politician, who served as Foreign Minister of Romania during the summer of 1940. His corporatist ideas on economics were very popular and applied in South America.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and politics

Born in Tecuci, he moved with his family to Iaşi after his father died when he was aged 9. Manoilescu wanted to study law, but because of the lowly condition of his family, he had to study engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in Bucharest, completing his training in 1915. In 1931, he began teaching Political economy at the Institute.

After World War I, he had a minor role in the National Liberal Party (PNL) governments, and afterwards joined the People's Party, a populist force led by General Alexandru Averescu, becoming undersecretary of state in the latter's first cabinet.[1] In 1926, while on a mission to Italy, where he was to negotiate a loan and pave the way for the friendship treaty signed between the two countries,[2] he met the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and became his admirer (calling the Fascist regime "a trully constructive political revolution, one that can only compare itself with the great French revolution in scale and novelty").[3] Subsequently, he was active in collaboration with the Comitati d'azione per l'universalità di Roma and other Italian-led projects of international cooperation.[4]

He was then an advocate of the crowning of Carol Caraiman as King of Romania (in the place of his underage son Mihai).[5] In the autumn of 1927 he was imprisoned for his subversive activities, but acquitted when tried in 1928.

After Carol returned to rule as Carol II, Manoilescu was a very influential person in the king's camarilla, being the Minister of Economy in the National Peasants' Party (PNŢ) cabinets of Iuliu Maniu and Gheorghe Mironescu (while he was a member of that party),[6] as well as under Nicolae Iorga (1930-1931).[7] In 1931, Manoilescu was governor of the National Bank of Romania.

At the time, Manoilescu became a staunch rival of his fellow PNŢ member Virgil Madgearu; according to Petre Pandrea's hostile account, Manoilescu purchased from the writers Sergiu Dan and Ion Vinea an allegedly stolen text which appeared to be entirely written by Madgearu, but had been heavily forged by the two to include criticism of the king; he attempted to use the document against its supposed author, but was exposed by Carol himself (who, according to Pandrea, was amused by the events).[8] The incident contributed to PNŢ inner-conflict that caused Manoilescu to leave the group.[9]

He began editing a magazine, Lumea Nouă, which was to become the main platform for his ideas, and, in 1932, created his own party — Liga Naţional-Corporatistă (National-Corporatist League).[10]

[edit] Political and economic theories

In Paris in 1929, he published the first version of his fundamental work, The theory of protectionism and international exchanges at the Giard publishing house (as part of the "Bibliothèque Économique Internationale" collection). His intense advocacy of industrialization formed the main theme of the book The role and destiny of Romania's bourgeoisie (1942), which was one of the main works dealing with the development of a local middle class, alongside those written by Ştefan Zeletin and Eugen Lovinescu (while sharing some perspectives with the essays of Emil Cioran);[11] the topic blended with his support for authoritarianism and the single-party system, as Manoilescu rejected democracy (which, in his view, encouraged the majority-forming peasantry to decide on matters that did not concern it).[12] The role and destiny... criticized the course of Romanian social development:

"[...] an oversized bourgeoisie which mimicks the boyars of yesteryear and has an over-bourgeois way of living, oversized in comparison with its means, creates a certain social instability and features a high percentage of individual failures.

That is why the Romanian bourgeoisie is not in fact a bourgeoisie in one of its most essential features; whereas the Occident focuses on accumulation, security and the future, our bourgeoisie will focus on spending, satisfaction and the present. Whereas the Western bourgeois work for their children, the Romanian bourgeois will often only work for themselves."[13]

Among others, Manoilescu adopted some of the Poporanist ideas on capital and its international circulation, as present in the works of Constantin Stere[14] (in turn influenced by the Marxist Werner Sombart).[15] He argued that a national economy could develop only if it minimized its contacts with the world market and relied instead on cultivating internal demand for a local industry.[16]

At the same time, his magazine supported a nationalist and racist approach, viewing corporatism as "the guarantee of Romanianization",[17] and proclaiming that "the racial basis of Romania is the same as that of Aryan Europe".[18] Manoilescu himself welcomed the anti-Semitic policies of the Alexandru Vaida-Voevod government.[19]

He also was active in theoretical economics, in Romania, as well as in Italy and Estado Novo Portugal. Manoilescu's corporatist and protectionist ideas began to be applied in Brazil, as the basis of that country's industrial development during its own Estado Novo regime.[20] His opinion that the engagement of productive forces in industry, seen as always more productive than agriculture and other raw materials, is a welcomed process constituted an influence on both Celso Furtado and Raúl Prebisch[21] (arguably, it also indirectly influenced the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean).[22] On the other hand, Manoilescu's advocacy of autarkic measures has been compared to the measures enforced by later Stalinist regimes, including that of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania,[23] who on at least one occasion described his works as a major contribution to the theory of underdevelopment.[24]

[edit] Iron Guard

Despite the increasingly tense relations between Carol and the fascist Iron Guard, Manoilescu was viewed with interest by the latter.[25] By the late 1930s, he was himself a supporter of the Guard (which he hoped to see turning into a corporatist movement — "an instrument to validate the goals of the [Guard's] national revolution"),[26] and donated part of his land to one of the latter's enterprises.[27] His new discourse was ridiculed by his former group, the National Peasants' Party, as "desperate attempts to exit from the [old generation of politicians] and sit among the new men".[28] In Februaury 1937, he began discreetly financing the Guard's newly-created paper, Buna Vestire (he was exposed as the man behind it by virtually all political commentators of the time).[29]

In 1938, he attempted to put into practice his economic and political ideas, as part of a Transylvanian experiment, but the attempt was contested by his political opponents, and Manoilescu himself suffered heavy financial losses. During the period, he also applied changes to his earlier vision on industry and self-sufficiency, calling for Romania to develop itself by supplying raw materials to the rising force that was Nazi Germany.[30]

[edit] 1940

In July 1940, Manoilescu was named foreign minister in the pro-fascist government headed by Ion Gigurtu. The cabinet was faced with eventually successful attempts by Hungary, backed by Italy and Nazi Germany, to revise its border with Romania and the Treaty of Trianon. Manoilescu, who was a supporter of the Axis alliance,[31] attempted in vain to make use of his influence with Italian authorities. In order to ensure less international adversity toward Romania, he also offered to cede Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria (although Germany had not included this revision in its demands toward the Romanian executive), an aproach eventually leading to the Treaty of Craiova.

As an official representative of the country, on August 30, Manoilescu signed the Second Vienna Award, which divided Transylvania between Hungary and Romania (see Northern Transylvania).[32] This responsability weighed heavily on him later in the following year, when the Iron Guard, revived by the leadership of Horia Sima, came to government and proclaimed the National Legionary State; it refused to appoint Manoilescu to any leadership position.[33] After the Iron Guard's 1941 Rebellion, he remained present on the political stage as a supporter of Ion Antonescu's dictatorship (see Romania during World War II).[34]

[edit] Imprisonment and death

In 1944, after the Soviet occupation began, Manoilescu was jailed without trial for 14 months. In 1946 and 1947 he agreed to support the new communist authorities, but he was once again jailed in 1948, apssing through the notorious prison of Ocnele Mari. While held there, Manoilescu became,together with the philosopher Petre Ţuţea, one of the most esteemed members of the "Underground Academy" (organized by inmates as a form of cultural resistance and survival).[35]

Manoilescu died in Sighet prison in 1950;[36] his body was buried in a common grave. The communists tried him in absentia, and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the pro-fascist views and policies. His family was told of his death only in 1958.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Hîncu, p.69; Ornea, p.265
  2. ^ Hîncu, p.69
  3. ^ Manoilescu, 1926, in Hîncu, p.69
  4. ^ Ornea, p.266; Veiga, p.253
  5. ^ Ornea, p.265
  6. ^ Ornea, p.273; Pandrea
  7. ^ Ornea, p.265; Veiga, p.127, 129, 213-214
  8. ^ Pandrea
  9. ^ Pandrea
  10. ^ Boatcă, p.23; Veiga, p.214
  11. ^ Ornea, p.48, 138, 266
  12. ^ Ornea, p.46, 268-269; Stahl
  13. ^ Manoilescu, in Scurtu et al. (Manoilescu's italics)
  14. ^ Boatcă,p.23; Love
  15. ^ Boatcă,p.17; Love
  16. ^ Chirot, p.250; Gallagher, p.33
  17. ^ Victor Munteanu, 1936, in Ornea, p.273
  18. ^ Al. Randa, 1941, in Ornea, p.108
  19. ^ Ornea, p.273-274
  20. ^ Love
  21. ^ Boatcă, p.23; Love
  22. ^ Love
  23. ^ Chirot, p.251; Gallagher, p.33
  24. ^ Gallagher, p.33
  25. ^ Ornea, p.270
  26. ^ Manoilescu, 1937, in Ornea, p.277
  27. ^ Ornea, p.270
  28. ^ Dreptatea, 1937, in Ornea, p.275
  29. ^ Ornea, p.275-276
  30. ^ Gallagher, p.33; Stahl
  31. ^ Ornea, p.270-272
  32. ^ Ornea, p.265
  33. ^ Ornea, p.280
  34. ^ Ornea, p.284-285
  35. ^ Popescu, p.80
  36. ^ Chirot, p.250; Gallagher, p.33

[edit] References

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