Petre P. Carp - Legacy

Legacy

A few years after Carp's death, despite Marghiloman's revival attempts, the Conservative Party diminished and was absorbed into the eclectic People's Party, taking with it the legacy of 19th-century conservatism. According to Bulei, "a wave of indignation and oblivion" erased Carp's political precepts from Romanian public life. Writing in 2010, Bocancea suggested that Carp's disappearance was the loss of a political model, characterized by "conviction", "the refusal to compromise", and "civility". She notes: "Sadly, the political model that stood for did not generate as many followers as to form a critical mass that would dominate Romanian political life". Bocancea and Nemoianu also write that, once left vacant, the Conservatives' position was abusively taken up by the far right.

Carp is an incidental presence in various literary works. Very early examples include a fable by Junimea poet Anton Naum (where Carp is Jâgoranu, a variant of Reynard the Fox) and the invectives of poet-journalist N. T. Orăşanu. The subject of a similar debate over his Germanophile activities, Constantin Stere gave Carp a fictional portrayal in his 1930s novel În preajma revoluţiei ("On the Eve of the Revolution"), disguised under the name of T. T. Flor. Eugen Lovinescu (better known as literary historian and liberal theorist) also fictionalized Carp's encounters with Eminescu in the 1934 novel Mite. Outside this realm of literature and satire, Romanian cuisine preserves the statesman's memory in the "Petre Carp Mezelic", an assortment of passerine offal and pork rind.

As noted by Boia, Carp and his wartime attitude were prime targets for historical revisionism. This process began in the 1920s, when popular historian Constantin Kiriţescu described Carp, Marghiloman and most other Germanophiles in harsh terms, insisting that their platform was of marginal importance. Such interpretations were opposed by other authors, including the political history essays of Carpist Ioan C. Filitti and the apologetic Carp biography by C. Gane (both 1936), while Lovinescu rediscovered Carp the literary figure in his 1932 anthology on "occasional writers". Among the 1930s intellectual youth, some, including Lovinescu disciple Nicolae Steinhardt and political essayist Petre Pandrea, rediscovered Carp as a political and moral guide.

Carp's ideas regarding Russia and the need to defend eastern Romania were again invoked in conjunction with World War II. After the Soviet Union obtained the cession of Bessarabia (1940), it became apparent that, contrary to Carp's advice, Greater Romania had failed to conceive of any long-term strategy for territorial guarantees. This was notably acknowledged in the 1941 book P. P. Carp, critic literar şi literat ("P. P. Carp, the Literary Critic and Man of Letters"), by Lovinescu, the former Ententist supporter. Lovinescu noted that Carp's "never with Russia" was prophetic, and that it naturally applied to the spread of Bolshevism.

The Romanian communist regime, installed in 1948, simply dismissed Carp and all his generation as unfrequentable reactionaries, and viewed all sides of World War I as imperialistic. The Carp family was evicted from Ţibăneşti (nationalized in 1949), and some members were forced into internal exile. Beginning in the 1960s, national communism officially adopted a thinly revised version of Kiriţescu's stance, viewing Germanophila with a mixture of condemnation and embarrassment. Some new paths to interpreting Carp's policies were only made available after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Even then, Lucian Boia notes, historians tended to minimize or simply omit references to Carp's support for the Central Powers, which, to them, still contradicts standard patriotism. In tandem with its reevaluation by other scholars, Carp's historical role has been repeatedly invoked by conservative individuals, think tanks and political groups in post-revolutionary Romania. Others additionally assert that Romania's European integration, effected by 2007, implicitly confirmed, re-contextualized and avenged Carp's external policy.

As of 2006, Ţibăneşti hosts two busts in Carp's likeness, respectively donated by rival groups which claim his inspiration: the (post-2005) Conservative Party and the Democratic Party. Founded in 1867, the local primary school was renamed in his honor. Carp's manor, fallen into disrepair by 2008, was refurbished by architect Şerban Sturdza, then turned into a center of learning for traditional handicrafts. Sturdza is a descendant of Elsa Carp-Sturdza, and has successfully sued the state for the property rights. The Dorobanţi townhouse, another landmark closely associated with Carp, hosts Turkey's diplomatic mission to Romania.