Partidul Conservator din România interbelică
The Conservative Party in Interwar Romania

Summary/Abstract: After several failed projects to restore a conservative party in the 20s, Grigore Filipescu (son of Nicholas Filipescu) took a first step in this direction in 1929, when he established the „Vlad the Impaler” League. This group was transformed in 1932 into the Conservative Party. The first action by the new party was the boycotting of the agricultural debt conversion law, arguing that it attacks the right to property, which was sacred and inviolable. The new Conservative Party led by Grigore Filipescu has not played an important role in the political life of Greater Romania. In the 1932 election, the only one in which the party din not participate in an alliance, Filipescu's group obtained 0.62% of the votes, obtaining only 15th place. The party was involved, along with the People's Party and the Gheorghe Brătianu wing of the National Liberal Party, in the campaign against the palace camarilla and for the preservation of the constitution. Some members of the Conservative Party, aware that in the current situation the grouo could not play an important role in the political life, tried to form a large right-wing party, that would include the legionnaires and would be led by General Ion Antonescu. The project was a failure. Grigore Filipescu approached increasingly towards the National Peasant Party, and signed an alliance with them, so most of the party colleagues abandoned him. During this period the National Peasant Party was supported by the left-wing organizations, which were mostly camouflaged communist groups. So, the remains of the Conservative Party came to collaborate with the Communists, organizing various joint actions. The Conservative Party is dissolved in 1938 and in the same year Grigore Filipescu dies and and his newspaper „Epoca” is suspended. The group has, throughout its existence, a tiny party, which didnʼt play an important role in the Romanian political scene. The reasons for this failure were multiple. First of all, beeing a party that is based solely on its leader, its image has suffered due to the negative image that the group leader had. Public opinion was confused by Filipescuʼs attitude, an inconstant character, who supported dictatorship one day and the next day fought it, one day criticized Maniu and the next day organized a banquet in his honor, one day had an anti-communists attitude and the next day collaborated with them and so on.

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