Despre românul perfect. Disecând epoci istorice și politici extreme

About the perfect Romanian: Analyzing historical epochs and radical policies

Abstract

Alina Bako presents Marius Turda's 2024 book, “În căutarea românului perfect: Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă” [In search of the perfect Romanian: National specificity, racial degeneration, and social selection in modern Romania] (published by Polirom), as a landmark and indispensable synthesis in the field of Romanian cultural and intellectual history studies. Marius Turda, a professor at Oxford Brookes University (UK) and a leading international expert on eugenics, racism, and biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe, delivers a rigorous, evidence-based demythologization of modern Romanian history. At the core of his argument lies a stark conclusion: the notion of a “perfect Romanian” -  an idealized, biologically and culturally pure national archetype - has never truly existed and was always a constructed fantasy rooted in anxiety, exclusion, and pseudoscientific ambition. Instead, Turda advocates for a healthier alternative: a tolerant, civic-oriented form of patriotism grounded in inclusion, democratic values, and critical self-reflection rather than ethnic or racial essentialism. The book meticulously brings together two dominant yet conflicting visions of Romanian identity that emerged in the 19th and especially the 20th centuries. On one side, romantic and literary discourses - prominent in the works of writers, poets, and cultural critics - celebrated the Romanian peasant as the embodiment of authentic national virtues: simplicity, moral purity, and deep connection to the land and traditions. On the other side, emerging medical, anthropological, and eugenic discourses expressed profound alarm over perceived "racial degeneration," demographic decline, and biological “weakness” among the population. Medicine was increasingly reframed not merely as a healing profession but as a “national science” tasked with engineering biological improvement through selective reproduction, social hygiene policies, and interventions aimed at strengthening the Romanian “race”.

Turda examines these ideas with scholarly impartiality and nuance, situating Romania firmly within broader European trends. He shows how interwar eugenics, scientific racism, and antisemitism were not marginal or uniquely Romanian phenomena but part of a continent-wide intellectual current embraced by scientists, politicians, and cultural figures. In Romania, this manifested in exclusionary policies and rhetoric targeting Jews, Roma communities, people with disabilities, and other groups deemed “undesirable" or “degenerative”. Eugenic nationalism gained particular momentum after the creation of Greater Romania in 1918, finding enthusiastic support among prominent intellectuals such as Mihai Eminescu (in his proto-nationalist writings), Octavian Goga, Emil Cioran (in his early, controversial phase), and numerous physicians, biologists, and anthropologists who promoted ideas of racial purification and social selection. The analysis does not stop at the interwar period. Turda traces the persistence and adaptation of these discriminatory logics into the post-World War II era, including under communist rule, where certain biopolitical concerns were reframed in ideological terms while discriminatory practices against minorities and “socially unfit” individuals continued in different forms.

By placing Romanian debates in transnational context, the book demonstrates how local ideas about national specificity and racial improvement circulated within - and were influenced by European networks of eugenic thought, from German Rassenhygiene to Anglo-American sterilization movements and French degeneration theories.

Ultimately, În căutarea românului perfect functions as both a scholarly contribution and a vital educational and civic tool. It urges Romanian society to confront uncomfortable aspects of its past, dismantle lingering national obsessions with ethnic purity and biological exceptionalism, and prevent the repetition of historical abuses rooted in exclusion and pseudoscience.

The book's significance has been widely recognized: in 2025, it was awarded the prestigious Observator Cultural Prize in the Essay/Publicistics category, affirming its impact on contemporary Romanian intellectual discourse. Through this meticulously researched and courageously honest volume, Marius Turda invites readers into an open, unflinching dialogue about the making (and unmaking) of modern Romania.