George Diamandy
George Ion Diamandy or Diamandi, first name also Gheorghe or Georges, was a Romanian politician, dramatist, social scientist, and archeologist. Although a rich landowner of aristocratic background, he was one of the pioneers of revolutionary socialism in France and Romania, obtaining international fame as founder of L'Ère Nouvelle magazine. He was an early affiliate of the Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, but grew disenchanted with its radical policies, and, as a member of its "generous youth" faction, played a major part in dissolving it. With other members of this reformist group, he joined the National Liberal Party, serving as one of its representatives in Chamber.
Affected by heart disease from childhood, Diamandy had to maintain a low profile in politics, but was a vocal marginal within the National Liberal establishment. From 1910, he invested his energy in literature and cultural activism, chairing the National Theatre Bucharest and later the Romanian Writers' Society. He was pushed back to the forefront during the early stages World War I, when he supported an alliance with the Entente Powers. He advised Premier Ion I. C. Brătianu on the matter and was sent on diplomatic missions to the West, helping to cement France's trust for Romania. He fought in the ill-fated campaign of 1916, and withdrew to Iași, retaking his seat in Chamber.
During his final years, Diamandy became an advocate of democratic socialism, founding the Iași-based Labor Party and seeking the friendship of Russian Esers. The October Revolution caught him in Russia, but he escaped by way of Arkhangelsk, and died at sea while attempting to reach France.
George Diamandy was the brother and collaborator of diplomat Constantin I. Diamandy, and the posthumous grandfather of writer Oana Orlea. He is largely forgotten as a dramatist, but endures in cultural memory for his controversial politics and his overall eccentricity.
Biography
Early life
George Diamandy, the son of landowner Ion "Iancu" Diamandy and Cleopatra Catargiu, was born in Idrici, Vaslui County, or, by his own admission, in Bârlad. Several sources, including Diamandy's own account, give his birth date as February 27, 1867. His brother, Constantin "Costică", was born in 1870. Constantin and George also had a sister, Margareta, later married Popovici-Tașcă.The Diamandys, of Greek origins, had made a slow climb into the aristocracy of Moldavia and, later, the Kingdom of Romania. One branch of the family, who used the name variant Emandi, produced diplomat Theodor Emandi. Iancu rose to high office, serving in Parliament and as Prefect of Tutova County. His wife Cleopatra belonged to the higher realms of the boyar aristocracy, and according to politician-memoirist Constantin Argetoianu, had passed her "pride" and "airs" to both her sons.
George, who always spoke Romanian with a thick and archaic Moldavian accent, was first enlisted in school at Bârlad. However, having been infected with malaria, he had to spend much of his childhood taking seaside cures in France. He then returned to study at the United Institutes High School in Iași, where he notably put out a clandestine student magazine, Culbecul. As noted by Călinescu, he was "absent-minded and rebellious." According to his own account, he was "mediocre", but "read extensively outside the curriculum". He disliked the school and claimed that it gave him rheumatism and heart problems.
His life course was changed by his discovery of socialism and proletarian internationalism, and he soon became their avid promoter. His brother had entirely different opinions in this respect, calling socialism "a farce". George and his best friend Arthur Gorovei founded their own Socialist Club, which only lasted a few days. Diamandy also published political articles in the review Contemporanul, following up with similar contributions to Munca and Raicu Ionescu-Rion's Critica Socială. He neglected his schoolwork and, in his own words, passed his Baccalaureate "more than anything because the professors were generous".
Diamandy also developed a passion for archeology, enjoying in particular the books of Gabriel de Mortillet and Theodor Mommsen. He camped out with Nicolae Beldiceanu in Cucuteni, where he helped on the inventory of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture. Diamandy was also a member of the Bârlad National Romanian Committee, which gathered funds and artifacts for the Romanian delegation to the 1889 Exposition Universelle. He was working on a novel in the manner of Émile Zola, which, according to Gorovei, was over-detailed and boring.
Upon graduation, Diamandy volunteered for service in the Romanian Land Forces, spending a year and a half as an artillery man. Disliked because of his pranks, he was moved to the 7th Artillery Regiment in Călărași, and, because once there he complained about the mistreatment of regulars by the officers, spent several months in the disciplinary barracks. He notes: "Just as I was ending my term as a volunteer, the captain, having learned that I had donned a civilian's outfit for a private party, ordered me in lockdown.—Lockdown meant no stove and no windows, so that's how I ended up with pneumonia."
''L'Ère Nouvelle''
Diamandy went on to study Law at the University of Paris, but did very poorly, and was only granted half of his license; he completed the rest at Caen University. He pursued other scholarly interests, becoming a corresponding member of the Société Anthropologique. He published notices on Cucuteni, as well as studies on Bulgarian handicrafts and a sketch of Romanian anthropological criminology. He also completed, in 1891, the historical demography tract Dépopulation et repeuplement de la France. In parallel, he resumed his work in political journalism, with articles published in Le Journal, La Petite République, La Justice, Le Socialiste, and L'Art Social.Taking over for the Romanian "revolutionary socialist" cell founded by Mircea and Vintilă Rosetti, he joined the "internationalist revolutionary student group" of the Latin Quarter, presided upon by Alexandre Zévaès. He was one of its delegates to the 1891 International Socialist Labor Congress in Brussels. According to his own account, he presided over the Congress proceedings. In December of that year, Diamandy sided with Zévaès' moderate leadership against the radical revolutionary minority. The next year, in May, having been elected President of the student group, he was also delegated to the socialist feminist congress, where he obtained a nominal submission of socialist women to the program of a future internationalist party. He and fellow Romanian expatriate Emil Racoviță were present at the Socialist and Labor Congress, convened at Zürich in 1893.
On July 1, 1893, Diamandy published the first issue of a "monthly for scientific socialism", L'Ère Nouvelle. It viewed itself as both a literary and a sociological review: dedicated to promoting literary naturalism and historical materialism, openly provoking the reading public to explore the work of Zola, it attacked the "reactionary" critics. It also proudly called itself "eclectic". L'Ère Nouvelle hosted articles by Marxist thinkers from the various countries of Europe: primarily Friedrich Engels and Paul Lafargue, but also Georgi Plekhanov, Clara Zetkin, Karl Kautsky, Jean Jaurès, Gabriel Deville, and Jules Guesde. Its regular contributors included Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, the Romanian Marxist doyen, Duc-Quercy, the French strike organizer, with the additional presence of Racoviță, Zévaès, Victor Jaclard, Alexandre Millerand, Adolphe Tabarant, Ilya Rubanovich, and Ioan Nădejde; Leó Frankel was the editorial secretary.
Also featured in the review, Georges Sorel was a senior syndicalist with Marxist leanings, not affiliated with either Guesde's French Workers' Party or Millerand's smaller socialist circle. Diamandy and Lafargue encouraged him to extend his forays into critical social history. According to Sorel's own claim, his presence there was only made possible when non-revolutionary French socialists like Millerand had decided to boycott L'Ère Nouvelle.
Diamandy's magazine was poorly reviewed by the sociological establishment: writing for the Revue Internationale de Sociologie, André Voisin censured its "violence" and its "quite glaring partiality", but noted that some of the sociological pieces were "at the very least moderate in form". Sorel himself recalled: "G. Diamandy was at the time a ferociously orthodox Marxist . He spent more time in the taverns of Montmartre than at University. He was a jolly good chap, entirely unreliable. I kept seeing him after that time, he was still in Mortmartre, and seemingly heading toward alcoholism." Reportedly, Diamandy was pulling pranks and farces on his socialist colleagues, even during their public functions.
However, the publication itself had a significant, if indirect, impact on the French Left. Diamandy proudly noted that it was "France's first Marxist magazine". As historian Leslie Derfler writes, it was "the first theoretical journal in France" and an answer to Die Neue Zeit; for Sorel's disciples, it also signified a turn toward a "more authentic" and "Latin" Marxism. As Sorel himself indicated a while after, this meant a split with orthodox Marxism, for the sake of "renewal". Diamandy unwittingly enticed the conflicts between Sorel and the POF when he wrote in L'Ère Nouvelle that, according to Guesde, one need not have read Marx to become a Marxist.
PSDMR
L'Ère Nouvelle only survived for a few months, publishing its final issue in November 1894, before closing down in early 1895. According to Sorel, Diamandy simply "disappeared, leaving his magazine stranded". Still, Diamandy managed to exert his direct influence over many other Romanian socialist students in France, from Racoviță and Nădejde to Alexandru Radovici, Constantin Garoflid, Deodat Țăranu, Dimitrie Voinov, and Ioan Cantacuzino. Diamandy was part of a new magazine, Le Devenir social.Diamandy personally sponsored the emerging socialist movement in the Kingdom of Romania. On his trips back to the country, he was welcomed as a celebrity at the socialist-run Sotir Hall, Bucharest, before affiliating with the Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party. This Marxist group was supportive of the mainstream National Liberal Party, as the latter had promised the introduction of universal male suffrage. At the 2nd PSDMR Congress in April 1894, Diamandy and Vasile Morțun had successfully campaigned for the introduction of such electoral demands into the party statute. When the PNL came to power and refused to follow through with its promise, a PSDMR faction agitated in favor of the opposition Conservative Party, even though the latter was explicitly right-wing. Writing for Munca, Diamandy endorsed this view, suggesting that references to the PNL's progressivism be dropped from PSDMR's statute.
File:IDEAL SOTIR, Lumea Vechĭe, 15 mai 1896.JPG|thumb|270px|The "Sotir Hall Ideal", satirized by the antisemitic press : socialists and Jewish Romanians milking a cow stamped "Romania", which is fed by an overworked peasant
In partnership with Garabet Ibrăileanu, Diamandy edited for a while the PSDMR organ, Lumea Nouă, exploring the possibility of returning to his home country. At Lumea Nouă, he put out a brochure on Doctrina și tactica socialistă. Involved with the PSDMR chapter in Brăila, he presented himself as a candidate in the parliamentary election of 1895, but lost. In 1898, he submitted to Romanian authorities the project of a "Romanian anthropological exhibition" at the 1900 Exposition Universelle.
Following his father's death in 1898, Diamandy made his definitive return to Romania. By this time, the PSDMR was already showing the signs of a split into reformist, agrarian, and orthodox-Marxist camps. Diamandy was present at secretive meetings between PSDMR founders and the agrarian group of Ion Th. Banghereanu. Also present was Constantin Stere, the PSDMR's link with a left-leaning faction of the PNL, under Ion I. C. Brătianu. The reformists, distrustful of Banghereanu's sustained effort to spread socialism in rural areas, pushed for a schism: Morțun, Radovici, and, after a while, Diamandy himself, proposed that the entire PSDMR leadership leave the party and become PNL members.
As Diamandy notes, the conflict became a "grave disagreement", and led him to suspend himself from the party and return to Paris. It deepened when the PNL Premier, Dimitrie Sturdza, ordered Banghereanu's arrest on charges of sedition. Socialism was also threatened from within by disputes over Jewish emancipation, which polarized the PSDMR between antisemitism and Jewish nationalism. Diamandy witnessed a violent dispute in Iași, where, he claimed, the Jewish Romanian affiliates had been heard shouting "Down with the Romanians!" The antisemitic campaign was allegedly stoked by the PNL government, which sought to prove that the peasant agitation was a Jewish affair.