UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Classen, Justin
Dept./Program:
History
Year:
2007
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's very name has come to equate with terms like religious fundamentalism, political atavism, militant cultural chauvinism, and, overwhelmingly, a stringent and overbearing anti-Western bias. Significant scholarship has been devoted to exploring how Khomeini - an aged, exiled seminarian - was able to draw upon Shi'ite religious traditions and terminology to justify the establishment of a clerically dominated republic in Iran. What historians have traditionally marginalized, however, is the question of what exactly Khomeini was attempting to accomplish with the establishment of the Islamic Republic, and how he was able to justify his revolutionary doctrine to the conventionally quietist Iranian clerical establishment. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, on the other hand, has been virtually forgotten by modern historiography. However, he and the Legionary movement he founded emerged as one of the most powerful forces in Romania during the interwar years, and the radical blend of Orthodox Christianity and romantic nationalism expressed in Legionary ideology made the group one of the most controversial - and poorly understood - in Europe. Described by contemporary critics and many scholars alike as a crude imitator of Hitler or Mussolini, the animating principles of one of interwar Europe's most powerful and polarizing nationalist organizations have been given, at best, cursory examination.
This thesis aims to accomplish three goals, all inter-related, which provide a new approach to understanding both the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Romanian Legionary Movement. First, the thesis explores the particular conditions in both contemporary Romania and Iran, arguing that the ideas driving each movement should be accepted first and foremost on their own merit. Second, the thesis argues that although expressed in culturally specific terms, both of these programs were ultimately attempting to solve the same, or at the very least similar, problems; although the radical sentiment of both movements was expressed within specific cultural and social contexts, the thesis suggests that they were articulated in response to similar developments in both interwar Romania and Pahlavi Iran. Finally, the mechanism of comparison applied to their mature revolutionary projects outlines not only similar doctrinal elements between Khomeinist Shi'ism and Romanian Legionarism, but further illuminates how the ideology of both Codreanu and Khomeini was centrally important to their movements' strategy, goals, and organization.
This thesis aims to accomplish three goals, all inter-related, which provide a new approach to understanding both the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Romanian Legionary Movement. First, the thesis explores the particular conditions in both contemporary Romania and Iran, arguing that the ideas driving each movement should be accepted first and foremost on their own merit. Second, the thesis argues that although expressed in culturally specific terms, both of these programs were ultimately attempting to solve the same, or at the very least similar, problems; although the radical sentiment of both movements was expressed within specific cultural and social contexts, the thesis suggests that they were articulated in response to similar developments in both interwar Romania and Pahlavi Iran. Finally, the mechanism of comparison applied to their mature revolutionary projects outlines not only similar doctrinal elements between Khomeinist Shi'ism and Romanian Legionarism, but further illuminates how the ideology of both Codreanu and Khomeini was centrally important to their movements' strategy, goals, and organization.