National Peasants' Party (Romania)
국민농민당 (루마니아)
A Romanian party formed in 1926 by the merger of Iuliu Maniu’s Romanian National Party and Ion Mihalache’s Peasants’ Party. Between the wars it was the governing alternative to the National Liberal Party and a force defending constitutional democracy, and it led the government in 1928–1933. Outlawed under the royal dictatorship in 1938, it was legalised again in 1944 and became the main opposition to Soviet occupation and communisation, until the communist-led government dissolved it in 1947.
In depth
According to the Romanian source, the two parties agreed in 1923 to cooperate against the National Liberal Party and signed a merger agreement in 1924, which failed over Constantin Stere’s place in the leadership. In September 1926 Maniu and Mihalache concluded a new merger agreement, and on 10 October the congresses of both parties simultaneously approved it, creating the National Peasants’ Party. Nicolae Iorga, who opposed the merger, left the National Party.
On 6 May 1928 the party held a rally of about 100,000 people at Alba Iulia demanding the Liberal government’s resignation. In November 1928 Maniu was asked to form a government, and in the December election the party won 77.76% and 348 seats. The government stabilised the leu with foreign loans and passed laws on administrative decentralisation, cooperatives and agricultural credit, but during the Great Depression it faced social conflict, including the bloody suppression of the Lupeni strike. After Carol II returned and took the throne in 1930, a lasting enmity began between Maniu and the court. After the 1932 Vaida-Voevod government Maniu became prime minister again but stepped down in 1933, and the Vaida-Voevod government then crushed the Grivița railway workshops strike by force.
Mihalache became party president in November 1933, and Vaida-Voevod left in 1935 to found the Romanian Front. Maniu became president again in 1937 and in November concluded a controversial electoral non-aggression pact with the National Liberal Party (Gheorghe Brătianu) and the Iron Guard. After King Carol II established his royal dictatorship in February 1938, a decree-law of 30 March dissolved all political parties, but the party kept an internal organisation and conveyed its positions to the king and to Antonescu in memoranda.
On 31 August 1944 the 1923 constitution was partly restored and the party resumed legal activity, opposing the Soviet-backed government of Petru Groza. Corneliu Coposu testified that the party had 2,125,000 members in 1945. The November 1946 election was declared a victory for the communist-led Bloc of Democratic Parties, but most historians regard the results as falsified. On 14 July 1947 Mihalache and other leaders were arrested at Tămădău while trying to leave the country, and on 29 July the government dissolved the party. Maniu and Mihalache were sentenced to life imprisonment. After the 1989 revolution Coposu and others re-founded the party as the Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party.