Greater Romania Party - History and Ideology

History and Ideology

The party was founded in 1991 by Tudor and his literary mentor, the writer Eugen Barbu, one year after Tudor launched the România Mare weekly magazine, which remains the most important propaganda tool of the PRM. Tudor subsequently launched a companion daily newspaper called Tricolorul. The historical expression Greater Romania refers to the idea of recreating the former Kingdom of Romania which existed during the interwar period. Having been the largest entity to bear the name of Romania, the frontiers were marked with the intent of uniting most territories inhabited by ethnic Romanians into a single country; and it is now a rallying cry for Romanian nationalists. Due to internal conditions under Communism after World War II, the expression's use was forbidden in publications until 1990, after the 1989 Romanian Revolution.)

Both the ideology and the main political focus of the Greater Romania Party are reflected in frequently strongly nationalistic articles written by Tudor. For example, in his magazine there is a permanent column called simply Unguri ("Hungarians"), in which he fights alleged anti-Romanian conspiracies of the ethnic Hungarian party.

In 2003, Tudor said he would no longer engage in discourse against Jews and Judaism or deny the Holocaust (see Corneliu Vadim Tudor). He also said that he had become, in his own words, a "philo-Semite". In subsequent months he and some of his supporters traveled to Poland to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp; and, despite strong objections from the family of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and many Jewish organizations, Tudor illegally erected a statue in memory of Rabin in the city of Braşov (for which he was found guilty and fined). During this period, Tudor hired Nati Meir, a Jewish advisor, who ran and won as a PRM candidate for the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. Tudor also hired an Israeli public relations firm, Arad Communications, to run his campaign.