CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Sciarrino, Blasco |
|---|---|
| Title | Allegiance in Exchange for Rewards: Italian and Romanian First World War Veterans' Movements in Comparison, 1918-1945 |
| Summary | In Italy and Romania, between 1918 and 1945, nationalist First World War veterans gave rise to powerful social movements, underpinned by former fighters’ associations, which adopted a variety of political stances, alternatively collaborating with democracy or with authoritarianism. To ascertain the reasons these former militaries’ organizations accepted or rejected pluralist and anti-liberal trends, this dissertation explores the ways parties and institutions secured the endorsement of patriotic ex-servicemen by satisfying their claims to material, symbolic and political privileges through specific social and cultural policies and the financial and organizational assistance they afforded to ex-enlistees’ groups. This work demonstrates that, in both countries, the majority of the movements’ memberships’ loyalties were prominently affected by their wish to attain a special socio-economic status and a public role as educators of and diplomats for their nation, goals that led them to back parties and regimes that accorded them said recompenses. To prove that a desire for a special place within politics and society considerably influenced most associated ex-soldiers’ public attitudes, this dissertation undertakes a set of synchronic comparisons between the political conduct of the Italian and Romanian movements for the considered period. The first comparison, focusing on the period 1918- 1928, highlights that the Italian and Romanian parliamentary democracies were respectively rejected and tolerated by most associated nationalist ex-combatants, due to the different degrees they were able to cater to demobilized soldiers’ demands for benefits. It also indicates that Italian organized ex-soldiers in most cases buttressed the budding Fascist dictatorship to obtain the benefits they believed they had been denied under the liberal system of government. The second and third comparisons, looking respectively at the years 1929-1938 and 1939-1945, reveal that nationalist veterans’ sense of entitlement continued to impact many of these ex-combatants’ political leanings significantly, showing that the latter cooperated with the various regimes in power in Italy and Romania, within this time span, mainly as a way of ensuring such polities would satisfy their claims to rights. To further corroborate its thesis, the dissertation investigates some of the transnational connections that involved Italian and Romanian former fighters in the interwar era. In doing so, it highlights that, by providing numerous veterans with the status and role they wished for, Mussolini’s autocracy and the Romanian parliamentary system prevented foreign anti-status quo ideals and practices from gaining widespread popularity among the ex-combatants they ruled over. This analysis contributes to historical debates on the radicalizing processes that European ex-servicemen underwent in the post-1918 era, suggesting that one of the main catalysts for said processes consisted in democratic political players’ failure to cater to war survivors’ needs and aspirations, and, conversely, in far-right organizations’ success in acknowledging such demands. To examine these topics, the dissertation employs a wealth of hitherto under-investigated primary sources, including secret police reports, transcripts of meetings of veterans’ representatives, written exchanges between the latter and state authorities, and ex-enlistees’ periodicals. |
| Supervisor | Iordachi, Constantin |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/sciarrino_blasco.pdf |
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