Despite several decades of intensive research, the study of fascism as a major political phenomenon of the twentieth century is still far from reaching its endpoint. While the literature on paradigmatic cases such as the Italian or the German one is abundant, ‘peripheral', yet salient cases, such as Romanian fascism remain ess researched. The current research focuses on the nature and manifestations of Romanian fascism, by positioning it in the history of regenerative, evolutionary projects that matured in the interwar period as an alternative to what was considered the decaying system of fin-de-siècle liberalism, while xamining how they were rooted in the intellectual milieu around 1900.

The starting research hypothesis assesses fascism as a ‘coherent body of thought', a ‘form of political modernism in its own right', which presented itself as a revolutionary deology, that put forward the necessity to reshape the ‘national self' and regenerate ‘the decay' of the national body by bringing about a ‘new man' and  ‘new temporal order'. Analysing fascism from within, and considering it as a solid ideological construct, the project expects to better understand the diverse intellectual and social support it garnered, and the mass appeal that assured its political success in various contexts.

The primary focus of the research is an indepth look at what I have termed ‘the other green intellectuals', who sympathised with, and in some cases even joined, the Iron Guard (the most important fascist movement in interwar Romania) and had a genuine impact on its development. The project looks at their radical response to he temporal crisis that interwar Romania had to face, how that time horizon shaped their political views, and their ideas for an alternative extreme right-wing revolutionary ay towards modernity.

The path that the study intends to pursue is an analysis of the public stands these intellectuals took in relation to Romania's past, present and future, and how they envisaged the interplay between modernity and historicity. The kind of stand may be tracked down in some underexplored primary sources, such as the legionary and pro-legionary press and pamphlets from late 1920s to early 1940s.

The project also looks into the external intellectual influences that marked the discourse of this cohort, given the fact that, with few exceptions, most of them
were trained by, or were in close contact with academic institutions based especially in Germany, Italy, and France. By adding the analysis of their interaction in certain groups such as the ‘Axa' group, the ‘Criterion group, or the ‘Rânduiala' group, the research hopes to develop their comprehensive intellectual biographies while mapping their common views of the role of historicity in the debate focused on modernity and nation building.