The Romanian Front (, FR) was a moderate fascist party created in Romania in 1935. Led by former Prime Minister Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, it originated as a right-wing splinter group from the mainstream National Peasants' Party (PNȚ). While in power, Vaida had an ambiguous approach to the Iron Guard, and constructed his own radical ideology; the FR had a generally xenophobic program of positive discrimination, being implicitly (and eventually explicitly) antisemitic. It was subsumed to the policies of King Carol II, maneuvering between the mainstream National Liberals, the PNȚ's left-wing, and the more radically fascist Guardists. Vaida tried to compete with the former two and appease the latter, assuming fascist trappings such as the black-shirted uniform. Like the Guard, he supported aligning Romania with the Axis powers, though he also hoped to obtain their guarantees for Greater Romania's borders. The FR's lower echelons included Viorel Tilea and other opponents of Vaida's approach, who believed in Romania's attachments to the League of Nations and the Little Entente.
Albeit invested with the king's trust and counting experienced politicians among its cadres, the FR was always a minor force in Romanian politics, and was habitually defeated in by-elections. Its peak influence was recorded during the local elections of June 1937, when it emerged as the second most popular party in Ilfov County. Early on, it was courted by other radical groups, narrowly failing to absorb the National Agrarian Party. It came to depend on the more powerful National Christian Party, with which it formed a political alliance in 1935. Called "National Bloc", it too failed to produce a full merger between its components, as Vaida had qualms about the unchecked Germanophilia of his partners; his Romanianization project was also regarded as too mild by National Christian standards. In later years, the FR made several sustained efforts to reunite with, or to absorb, the "centrist" wing of the PNȚ.
The FR's hostility toward successive National Liberal governments gave way to cooperation after the latter also embraced ethnic discrimination. This rapprochement eventually resulted in a cartel, formed by the two parties during the 1937 general election. This controversial move bled the FR of members and supporters, including a massive defection by D. R. Ioanițescu and his supporters. After the country witnessed a descent into political violence with clashes between monarch and the Guardists, the Front allowed itself to be absorbed into Carol's sole legal party, the National Renaissance Front in 1938. From 1940, Vaida served as the Front's Chairman.
History
Origins
The Front had its roots in the second and third governments of Vaida-Voevod (1932 and 1933), which were characterized by growing levels of antisemitism and discussions regarding the possibility of barring Jews from a number of public posts (Jewish quotas). As an ideologue shaped by the Transylvanian school of nationalism, Vaida-Voevod found inspiration in the work of economic antisemites and authoritarians such as Karl Lueger and Aurel Popovici. In the late 1920s, his views were shaped by eugenics and biopolitics, leading him to demand the state-managed preservation of a pure peasant stock, against "biological competition". The antisemitic measures were taken to the background of agitation by another homegrown fascist movement, the Iron Guard, which Vaida-Voevod had initially protected and supported in his terms as Interior Minister (from 1928). Specifically against the Guard and other violent organizations, Vaida-Voevod passed laws limiting political freedoms and establishing curfews (although he allowed the Transylvanian Saxons to form Sturmabteilung units which targeted Jews).
Vaida was in turn attacked by the Guardist press as a "Freemason", even though, Vaida claimed, his attachment to the Lodge was purely formal and instrumental. This issue had been highlighted during the 1920s by A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League (LANC). According to its manifestos, "the Freemason Vaida" had acquiesced to the Minority Treaties, which "delivered us, arms tied, legs tied, to the Kikes". Another accusation brought up against Vaida was his partnership in Jewish-owned businesses, in particular the Marmorosch Blank Bank. In defending himself and reclaiming a similar discourse, Vaida argued that his brief experience with the Lodge had cemented in him the belief that Masons were "Jewified".