Capcanele politice ale sociologiei interbelice:

$coala Gustiana fntre carlism oJilegionarism

'The Political Snares of Interwar Sociology:
The Gusti School between Carlism and Legionarism'

Reviewed by Roland Clark

University of Pittsburgh
In his thought-provoking

monograph, Capcanele politice ale sociologiei interbelice: Scoala

Gustiant'i fntre carlism ~i legionarism 'The Political Snares of Interwar Sociology: The Gusti
School between Car/ism and Legionarism,' Antonio Momoc demonstrates how deeply implicated
many of interwar Romania's most capable sociologists were in nationalist state-building projects.
The book focuses on the career of Dimitrie Gusti (1880-1955). A renowned sociologist, politician
and teacher, Gusti transformed his nascent academic discipline into an ambitious program for
social reform. Thanks to the SUppOltof Prince Carol - later King Carol II - and his own political
connections, Gusti used the Association for Social Studies and Reform, the Romanian Social
Institute and the Royal Cultural Foundations to promote literacy, medical and agricultural
education in the villages as well as to influence legislators on social issues. Gusti co-opted
students associated with the Bucharest Sociological School to serve first as volunteer researchers
and then as cultural workers. As researchers, they made detailed notes on issues such as rural
economies, farming practices, kinship organization, religious rituals, music, festivals and voting
patterns. The leaders of these student teams published their findings as a series of monographs or
in the journal Romanian Sociology (Sociologie romfineascii, 1936-1942). Their work produced a
number of valuable ethnographic

descriptions of Romanian peasant life, but perhaps more

importantly, the student teams shaped an impressive number of young researchers and civil
servants in Gusti's image.
Momoc's account is based on a solid grasp of the periodical, journalistic and specialist
literature of the period, as well as on memoir and oral history accounts of the Gusti school. Most
of these oral histories were collected by Zoltan Rostas, who originally supervised this project as
Momoc's doctoral dissertation. The book is heavily indebted to Rostas's earlier research and is the
latest addition to a growing body of Gusti studies patronized by Rostas. UnfOltunately, the book
lacks a developed introduction or conclusion, so the reader is expected to be familiar with the
existing historiography and to guess at the wider implications of the research. Momoc's story is
impOltant for showing how Eastern European scholars appropriated and adapted methodologies
developed in the West, how intellectuals

were incorporated

into fascist and authoritarian

Balkanistica 26 (2013)

movements and regimes during the interwar period, and for elucidating the relationship between
development policy and academic research institutes in rapidly industrializing countries. None of
this is made explicit in the introduction and the book is presented simply as the modest history of a
small group of sociologists in a poor country on the margins of European academia. Had Momoc
paid more attention to the non-Romanian historiography, it could have been much more than this.
Momoc begins by examining Gusti's own training. He shows that "Gusti appropriated the
rules of [Emile] Durkheim's

methodology, but German phenomenology - in particular the

psychologist [Wilhelm] Wundt - provided him with an intuitive approach to field observation that
was foreign to French positivism" (p. 73). In the process, Momoc asks what Gusti learned from
other prominent Western sociologists he studied with, including Ferdinand Tonnies, Frederic Le
Play, Gustav von Schmoller, Franz von Liszt, the political economist Karl Wielhelm Bucher and
the philosopher Friedrich Paulsen. He also emphasizes how heavily Auguste Comte's empiricism
and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon's socialism influenced the young Gusti to think of sociology as
a springboard for politics and social reform. Trends in French and German sociology had a
formative impact on Gusti, but he appropriated and moulded the approaches of his teachers in
creative and original ways. In another chapter, curiously situated at the very end of the book,
Momoc outlines Gusti's conception of the nation. As did many Romanians of this period, Gusti
thought of the nation as a social - not a political - entity defined by those cultural elements so
cherished by Johann Gottfried von Herder. In contrast to the other leading sociologist of Gusti's
generation, Petre Andrei (1891-1940), Gusti identified the Romanian nation with the peasantry.
For Gusti, national sovereignty meant giving power to Romanian peasants at the expense of other
social classes.
The most significant contribution ofMomoc's

monograph lies outside the history of ideas,

however. Chapters Two and Three show that from the moment he took up a chair in sociology at
the University of la~i, Gusti began working to establish extra-university institutions to influence
social policy decisions. In addition to the seminars and lectures that Gusti ran for politicians,
Momoc describes the Romanian Social Institute as an "incubator," first for future politicians and
later for transforming

specialists

into cultural activists.

By focusing on non-government

institutions such as the Romanian Social Institute, Momoc shows that the state shaped society
through a diffuse network of organizations that were not always directly responsible to the
government. Several of these organizations were patronized by Prince Carol from the early 1920s
onward, and they came increasingly under his control toward the end of the interwar period when,
as king, he abolished the democratic system and established himself as a dictator. Through the
Social Service Law that was introduced at Gusti's insistence in 1938, King Carol II mobilized
Gusti's students as cultural missionaries for his regime. Students no longer went into villages
simply as observers; now they went as representatives of the state to implement reforms and to run
social programs.
In chapters Four and Five, Momoc analyzes factionalism amongst Gusti's followers, many
of whom joined the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael. He locates their opinions within the

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26 (2013)

interwar political spectrum and then does short but useful analyses of the scholarly and political
views of seven of Gusti's proteg6es: Dumitru Cristian Amzar, Ernest Bernea, Traian Herseni,
Mircea Vulcanescu, Henri H. Stahl, Anton Golopen\ia and Octavian Neam\u. Even though many
of these men joined the Legion for personal reasons, Momoc emphasizes how Gusti's conviction
that sociology must be a political project shaped their fascist activism. Capcanele politiee ale
sociologiei interbelice: :)coala Gustiana intre carlism ~i legionarism is limited to the Gusti school
and largely ignores other important currents in interwar Romanian sociology such as those led by
Petre Andrei or Traian Braileanu. Nonetheless, Momoc's careful attention to the intersection of
ideas and action, institutions and propaganda makes it a valuable contribution to our understanding
of state-building, nationalism and intellectual life in interwar Romania.