Conservatorismul politic românesc (secolele XIX-XX): Scurtă istorie a cuvintelor, ideilor şi partidelor

Abstract

This study consists in an analysis of the modern Romanian conservatism’s evolution. Starting with the semantic definition of the term „conservative”, the author sketches the circumstances of its use in the Romanian political language in the middle of the 19thcentury and later in political practice. The author highlights that in the 50’s and the 60’s decades of the 19th century there was a great interest in a precise definition of the term in the political vocabulary. It was the time when „conservative” together with its antonym „liberal” were two political terms just entering the political language. Also in Romania, the conservatism defined its identity from the ideas of natural progress, organic evolution, order and legality in the spirit of the ideas of E. Burke, already common in the political imagology of the European conservatism. At the beginning of the 20th century Romanian conservatives continued to use the specific vocabulary and ideas of the former century, trying to unveil the consequences of the forced modernisation of the country, so that later, after the First World War, to disappear as a party from the political stage; conservative doctrine persisted in a fragmentary form in the interwar period.