Andrei Pleșu, Dilema.ro: The left, the right, and the Romanians

There is an opinion that Romania has solid right-wing traditions and a serious deficiency on the left side of the political spectrum. To illustrate, great interwar figures are invoked and explanations are sought: agrarian mentality, orthodoxy, the village. But not all the great interwar figures invoked (Eliade, Cioran, Noica) were, at the time, really that great (and, obviously, not all of the right was extreme right). On the other hand, we forget a multitude of "enlightened" left-wing figures. Surely we cannot oppose, in terms of weight, Alexandru Sahia to Nae Ionescu. But the series Gherea-Stere-Ibrăileanu-Zeletin-Ralea is not just from here or there. Then there were also Eugen Ionescu, Eugen Lovinescu, Sebastian, and quite a few others to balance the landscape. Not to mention that it would not make sense to identify the existence of the right if we did not have a correlating reference. In other words, you cannot be "the right" unless faced with something that is more to the left. Let us also mention the disappearance of the conservative right after the First World War or the leftist positioning of the peasantists.

As far as I am concerned, I believe rather that Romanians, and especially the Romanian intellectuality, do not allow themselves to be strictly framed in this dichotomy. Left and right do not constitute a defining alternative for the native spirit, inclined either towards comfortable neutrality or towards opportunistic accommodation. Până and Nae Ionescu, when asked how he positions himself in the political geometry of the moment, preferred to say: "I am neither right nor left, I am intelligent!" Sandu Tudor could be found alongside Sahia in the pages of the same publication. Rădulescu-Motru was traditionalist in 1904 and progressive in 1922. Characteristic figures of the Romanian cultural environment, "classics" of it (Lovinescu, Petrovici, Vianu, Călinescu, Blaga, P.P. Negulescu and even Mircea Vulcănescu – despite some ignorant suspicions), have a political "face" that is hard to systematize. They are, predominantly, free spirits, whose judgments reserve the right to formulate outside of any possible "pre-oppositional" ideological frameworks. More than engaging in a homogeneous camp, they are interested in the autonomy of their own thinking, avoiding any form of regimentation. I believe we can speak of a Romanian apoliticism of substratum, born from a traditional constellation of specific insights: relativism, irony, superficiality... For Mitică, left and right are whims. You cannot ask him to seriously choose, "for life", between one and the other. It’s like asking him to definitively choose between beer and wine. Mitică knows very well that both are good. Sometimes he craves beer, other times wine. Depending on the circumstances. And the adjacent trifles...

I always hear politicians anticipating in a conspiratorial manner the electoral horizon: Romanians will have to choose between having a left-wing government or a right-wing one. The subtext is clear: we will have to decide whether we want a caring, popular, "one of us" government, or one indifferent to the sufferings of the many, "elitist", arrogant, serving only itself. This language is, in my opinion, inadequate. For the local electorate, left and right are not functional concepts. The internal debate of the native voter does not take place in these terms. Mitică (from the town) and Gheorghe (from the countryside) are summoned to decide between beer (plebeian) and wine (aristocratic). They, oh! Mitică and Gheorghe never drink what they are told, except if they are already drunk. They will glance at the snacks and decide at the moment. For beer. Or maybe for wine. Or maybe better for a țuică.

https://www.dilema.ro/situatiunea/stinga-dreapta-si-romanii