The fact is that four months after the phenomenal electoral success of the Legionary movement, its head found himself sentenced to ten years at hard labor, and five months after that he was executed— events that reconfirmed my belief that our generation did not have a political destiny. Probably Corneliu Codreanu would not have contradicted me. For him, the Legionary movement did not constitute a political phenomenon but was, in its essence, ethical and religious. He repeated time and again that he was not interested in the acquisition of power but in the creation of a “new man.” He had known for a long time that the king was planning to kill him, and had he wished he could have saved himself by fleeing to Italy or Germany. But Codreanu believed in the necessity of sacrifice; he considered that every new persecution could only purify and strengthen the Legionary movement, and he believed, furthermore, in his own destiny and in the protection of the Archangel Michael.
In 1937-38 the most popular theme among the Legionaries was death. The deaths of Mota and Marin constituted the exemplary model.* The words of Mota: “The most powerful dynamite is your own ashes,” had become like a Gospel text. A good part of the Legionary activity consisted in worship services, offices for the dead, strict fasts, and prayers. And the most pathetic irony of that spring of 1938 was that the crushing of the only Romanian political movement which took seriously Christianity and the church was begun under the administration of the Patriarch Miron.
I don’t know what Codreanu thought when he realized that in a few hours he would be executed. I am not thinking of his faith, but of his political destiny. He had assured Armand Calinescu through numerous circulars that the Legionaries would not react, even if hung by their feet and tortured. He had given strict orders for nonviolence, even for renunciation of passive resistance, and he had even dissolved the party, Totul pentru Tard (all for country). Calinescu’s tactics succeeded: all the Legionaries had let themselves be trapped and were now in cages, waiting, like rats, to be drowned alive. Probably Codreanu, like so many other Legionaries, died convinced that his sacrifice would hasten the victory of the movement. But I wonder if some of them didn’t see in their imminent death, not necessarily a sacrifice, but the fatal consequence of a catastrophic error in political tactics. [know only that Mihail Polihroniade, who was one of the very few leaders concerned with political victory rather than with the salvation of souls, said once to his wife in the prison at Ramnicul Sarat, after the execution of Codreanu: “See what all our liturgies and offices for the dead have gotten us!” In less than a year he too would be executed—he who did not even have the consolation of liturgies and requiems. But he died no less serenely than the others, the believers. He asked for a cigarette, lit it, and walked smiling to the wall where the machine guns waited.
In the summer of 1938, to be a Legionary or a Legionary “sympathizer” entailed the risk of losing everything: job, freedom, and perhaps, ultimately, life. It is easy to see why, for someone like me who did not believe in the political destiny of our generation (or in Codreanu’s star), a declaration of dissociation from the Legionary movement seemed not only unacceptable but downright absurd. I could not conceive of dissociating myself from my generation in the midst of its oppression, when people were being prosecuted and persecuted unjustly.” Thus it was that, by refusing to sign the declaration, after about three weeks of detention at Security headquarters, I was sent to the camp at Miercurea Ciucului.
* Translator’s note: Ion Mota and Vasile Marin were two Legionary leaders who were killed in January 1937 in Spain, where they had gone as volunteers for Franco in the Civil War. Eliade was acquainted personally with both men, who were about the same age as he.
from the book Autobiography, Volume 2 1937-1960, Exiles Odyssey (Mircea Eliade, Mac Linscott Ricketts (trans.)
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