Gynecology Guide

During the 1930s, following his stint as head of Adevărul, a leftist newspaper owned by Jewish entrepreneurs, Sadoveanu was targeted by right-wing voices, who claimed that he had chosen to abandon his nationalist credentials.[183] Thus, Sadoveanu became the target of a press campaign in the antisemitic and fascist press, and in particular in Nichifor Crainic’s Sfarmă-Piatră and the journals connected with the Iron Guard. The former publication deplored his supposed “betrayal” of the nationalist cause. In it, Ovidiu Papadima portrayed Sadoveanu as the victim of Jewish manipulation, and equated his affiliation to the Freemasonry with devil worship, and mocked his obesity, while Crainic himself compared the writer to his own character, the treacherous Ieremia Golia.[184] Porunca Vremii often referred to him as Jidoveanu (from jidov, a dismissive term for “Jew”), depicted him as an agent of “Judaeo-communism” motivated by “perversity”, and called on the public to harass the writer and beat him with stones.[185] It also protested when the public authorities in Fălticeni refused to withdraw Sadoveanu the title of honorary citizen, and again when the University of Iaşi made him a doctor honoris causa, and, through the voice of novelist N. Crevedia, even suggested that the writer should use his hunting rifle to commit suicide.[186] In 1937, Porunca Vremii congratulated ultra-nationalists who had organized public burnings of Sadoveanu’s works in Southern Dobruja and in Hunedoara, as well as non-identified people who sent the writer packages containing shredded copies of his own volumes.[187]

However, George Călinescu claims, the writer himself had not actually revised his nationalist outlook, that he continued to believe that minorities and foreigners were a risky presence in Greater Romania, and that his Humanism was “a light tincture”.[145] In one of his columns, Sadoveanu replied to those organizing the acts of vandalism, indicating that, had they actually read the novels they were destroying, they would have found “a burning faith in this nation, for so long mistreated by cunning men”.[188] Elsewhere, stating that he was not going to take his detractors into consideration, Sadoveanu defined himself as an adversary of both Nazi Germany and any form of advocacy for a “National-Socialist regime in our country”.[189] In April 1937, the campaign was met with the indignation of various public figures, who issued an “Appeal of the Intellectuals”, signed by Liviu Rebreanu, Eugen Lovinescu, Petru Groza, Victor Eftimiu, George Topîrceanu, Zaharia Stancu, Demostene Botez, Alexandru Al. Philippide, Constantin Balmuş and others.[189] Denouncing the campaign as a “moral assassination”, it referred to Sadoveanu as the author of “the most Romanian [works] in our literature.”[189]

During the Ion Antonescu dictatorship, Sadoveanu kept a low profile and was apolitical. However, Cioroianu writes, he supported the invasion of the Soviet Union and Romania’s cooperation with the Axis Powers on the Eastern Front, seeing in this a chance to recover Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina (lost to the 1940 Soviet occupation).[67] In spring 1944, months before the King Michael Coup toppled the regime, he was approached by the clandestine Romanian Communist Party and its sympathizers in academia to sign an open letter condemning Romania’s alliance to Nazi Germany. According to the communist activist Belu Zilber, who took part in this action, Sadoveanu, like his fellow intellectuals Dimitrie Gusti, Simion Stoilow and Horia Hulubei, refused to sign the document.[190] Also according to Zilber, Sadoveanu motivated his refusal by stating that the letter needed to be addressed not to Antonescu, but to King Michael I.[190]