Purifying the Nation: Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania (review)

This thoroughly researched and well executed study contends that Romanian ethnic purification efforts during World War II were not only the product of a preoccupation with such matters at the highest levels of the Romanian wartime regime—that is, Ion Antonescu and his (mostly military) henchmen—but were also the result of three developments in pre-war Romanian culture: the emergence in the 1930s of a radical racialist consensus in Romanian nationalist circles (Chapter 1), abetted by the success of the Romanian eugenics movement (Chapter 4), and implemented by the statist, social engineering proclivities of Romanian social scientists, particularly sociologists and demographers (Chapter 5). Both eugenics and social engineering, ironically, reflected mainstream trends in modernity, modern "science," and management. At the same time, Solonari is careful to relate these developments, policies, and actors to international, regional, and internal contexts, showing how this affected the apparent tergiversations of Romanian policy makers. The book combines both intentionalist and functionalist approaches; in the end, however, the author gives full weight to individual behaviors and motivations, explaining but not excusing the actions and/or inaction of people at all levels of society in the face of crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing.

In 1918, Transylvania, Bucovina, and Basarabia had been unified with the pre-war Romanian kingdom, fulfilling the dream of nineteenth-century nationalists. However, achievement of the national ideal had created a myriad of problems, especially in a supposedly national unitary state that was only 72 percent ethnic Romanian by 1930. The story starts with the Romanian attempt to assimilate their newly-acquired territories by reversing the Magyarization, Germanization and Ruthenization, and Russification carried out prior to 1918. The state was seen as the principal agency in this process, as it was in most other aspects of Romanian life. This was based on the nearly universal Romanian acceptance of the equation "nation=the ethnos=the state." The reality was that "[d]efending the superior interests of the Romanian nation" trumped everything else and explains the ease with which Romanian policy makers could "adjust" to whatever the circumstances were. Thus, "[i]n a world dominated by democracies, tolerance was in order . . . in a world under Nazi domination, discipline, ruthlessness, and narrow-minded nationalism were signs of 'vitality' and commanded respect" (p. 336).

The Romanian eugenics movement and the advocates of social engineering were bureaucracy-based and were able to gain traction with proposals for "solving" what had come to be seen as a vexing national problem, despite the oddity of a Romanian racism without an actual Romanian race. They shaped an environment that made extremist policies viable in the 1940s, and many leading eugenicists and population planners were on the whole enthusiastic contributors to a regime that carried out crimes against humanity in the name of national affirmation and defense. They were also partly responsible for the indifference to the victims of these crimes shown by both the general Romanian population and the Romanian elite (there were honorable exceptions), even when they were not adherents of racialist views.

In 1940, Romanian policy was reoriented to an alliance with Nazi Germany (which of course further radicalized Romanian racialist views and modeled even more extreme "solutions"). Until 1942, Ion Antonescu and his collaborators believed that Romania had arrived at a "historic moment" in which scores could be settled and ethnic purification could be achieved vis-à-vis Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities. However, this new dream "was dashed by the realities of the changing international situation, military developments, and the imperatives of the national economy." When the war appeared lost, the policies were moderated or suspended, but as the author shows by detailing monstrous population exchange and resettlement schemes put forth in 1942- 1944, the eugenicist/social engineering convictions of Romania's leaders and elite remained constant. The "vision itself was never discarded and its basic premises never questioned" (pp. 333-334...