Mihai Dumitru Ralea (also known as Mihail Ralea, Michel Raléa, or Mihai Rale;Straje, p. 586 May 1, 1896 – August 17, 1964) was a Romanian social scientist, cultural journalist, and political figure. He debuted as an affiliate of Poporanism, the left-wing agrarian movement, which he infused with influences from corporatism and Marxism. A distinguished product of French academia, Ralea rejected traditionalism and welcomed cultural modernization, outlining the program for a secular and democratic "peasant state". Mentored by critic Garabet Ibrăileanu, he objected to the Poporanists' cultural conservatism, prioritizing instead Westernization and Francophilia; however, Ralea also mocked the extremes of modernist literature, from a position which advocated "national specificity". This ideology blended into his scholarly work, with noted contributions to political sociology, the sociology of culture, and social and national psychology. He viewed Romanians as naturally skeptical and easy-going, and was himself perceived as flippant; though he was nominally active in experimental psychology, he questioned its scientific assumptions, and preferred an interdisciplinary system guided by intuition and analogies.
Ralea was a professor at the University of Iași and, from 1938, the University of Bucharest. By 1935, he had become a doctrinaire of the National Peasants' Party, managing Viața Românească review and Dreptatea daily. He had publicized polemics with the far-right circles and fascist Iron Guard, which he denounced as alien to the Romanian ethos; Ralea approximated a Poporanist, leftist, take on Romanian nationalism, which he opposed to both fascism and communism. He later drifted apart from the party's centrist leadership and his own democratic ideology, setting up a Socialist Peasants' Party, then embracing authoritarian politics. He was a founding member and Labor Minister of the dictatorial National Renaissance Front, representing its corporatist left-wing. Seeing himself as a social reformer whose talents had been channelled by the Front, Ralea founded the leisure service Muncă și Voe Bună, and later served as the Front's regional leader in Ținutul Mării. He fell from power in 1940, finding himself harassed by successive fascist regimes, and became a "fellow traveler" of the underground Communist Party.
Ralea willingly cooperated with the communists and the Ploughmen's Front before and after their arrival to power, serving as Minister of Arts, Ambassador to the United States, and vice president of the Great National Assembly. His missions coincided with the inauguration of a Romanian communist regime, whose policies he privately feared and resented. His diplomatic mission, tinged in scandal, was cut short by Foreign Minister Ana Pauker; Securitate operatives regarded him as a suspicious opportunist and contact for the Freemasonry, keeping him under close surveillance upon his return. He was sidelined, then recovered, and, as a Marxist humanist, was one of the regime's leading cultural ambassadors by 1960. Heavily controlled by communist censorship, his work gave scientific credentials to the communist rulers' anti-American propaganda, though Ralea also used his position to protect some of those persecuted by the authorities.
Ralea's final contributions assisted in the re-professionalization of Romanian psychology and education, with the retention of a more liberal, de-Stalinized, communist doctrine. A personal friend of the Communist General Secretary, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and to secondary figures such as Ion Gheorghe Maurer, he endorsed the regime's transition into national communism. Always an avid traveler and raconteur, he became completely uninterested in scholarly ventures around the age of sixty. He died abroad, while on mission to the UNESCO, and was posthumously diagnosed with a neurological disease. He endures in cultural memory as a controversial figure: celebrated for his sociological and critical insights, he is also reprehended for his nepotism, his political choices, and his literary compromises. He was survived by two daughters, one of whom was Catinca Ralea, who achieved literary fame as a translator of Western literature.
Biography
Early life and Poporanist beginnings A native of Huși, Fălciu County (currently in Vaslui County), Ralea was the son of a Dumitru Ralea, a local magistrate, and Ecaterina Botezatu-Ralea.Călinescu, p. 912 The couple also had daughters, one of whom married the Gagauz politician Dumitru Topciu in 1944;Ivan Duminică, "К вопросу о болгарах и гагаузах в Сфатул Цэрий", in Ivan Duminică et al. (eds.), Буджак: от прошлого к настоящему. Сборник статей к 80-летию Ивана Федоровича Грека, p. 307. Chișinău: Lexon-Prim, 2019. another one, Eliza, married Hagi Anton, worked at the Radio Broadcasting Company.Covaci, p. 16 According to historian Camelia Zavarache, Ralea's ethnic background was non-Romanian: on his father's side, he was a Bulgarian, while his mother was Jewish.Zavarache, pp. 196–197. See also Moldovan, p. 115 The family was relatively wealthy, and Dumitru had served as Fălciu representative in the Senate of Romania.Zavarache, p. 187 His son was always spiritually attached to his native region and, later in life, bought himself a vineyard on Dobrina Hill, just outside Huși, building himself a vacation home.Nastasă (2007), p. 125; (2010), p. 385; Zavarache, p. 189 He completed his primary education at Huși (Târgul Făinii) School No 2,S. Dima, "...dacă n-aveți apă, beți vin! Reportaj mai mult sau mai puțin bahic de pe meleagurile Hușului", in Flacăra, Vol. XX, Issue 856, October 1971, p. 18 before he moved on to the urban center of Iași, where he enlisted at the Boarding High School, studying the classics. He was colleagues with another future sociologist, D. I. Suchianu, with whom he made visits to the café-chantant and planned to write his first book (a French-language study of human intelligence); both men took top honors in their respective class.Dorin Tudoran, "Biografia debuturilor. Invitatul nostru, D. I. Suchianu. 'Bătrînețea, acel lucru care nu li se intimplă decît altora!'", in Luceafărul, Vol. XVII, Issue 46, November 1974, p. 7 The two remained personal and political friends for the rest of their lives.D. I. Suchianu, "In memoriam", in Luceafărul, Vol. VII, Issue 18, August 1964, p. 4Nastasă (2010), p. 129 Another enduring friendship was formed on school grounds between Ralea and historian Petre Constantinescu-Iași, who became Ralea's main connection to the revolutionary left.Zavarache, pp. 197–198, 199, 238
According to Suchianu, they were avid readers, who quickly went through the popular collections put out by Flammarion, and ended up discovering Marxist literature—mainly through the introductions put out by Charles Gide and Gabriel Deville. Ralea went on to attend the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, under Constantin Rădulescu-Motru (who shortlisted and prepared Ralea for academic tenure).Nastasă (2007), pp. 191–192, 293, 344 He made his debut in publishing during 1916, with an essay in Rădulescu-Motru's Revista de Filozofie,Vianu, p. 144 and with Convorbiri Literare articles that he usually signed with the initials M. R. (an alternative signature he would use for the rest of his career).Straje, pp. 406, 586 Ralea was university colleagues with philosophers Tudor Vianu and Nicolae Bagdasar, who also joined his circle of intimate friends.Nastasă (2007), p. 283. See also Vianu, p. 143 Their studies were interrupted by the Romanian Campaign of World War I: Ralea went to a preparatory school of the Romanian Land Forces, in Botoșani, where he was colleagues with Suchianu and Vianu, as well as with novelist Ionel Teodoreanu and poet Mihai Moșandrei.Adrian Săvoiu, introductory note to Mihai Moșandrei, "Pe scurt, autobiografia mea", in Memoria. Revista Gândirii Arestate, Issue 54, 2006, p. 63 Relocated to Iași, he served in the same artillery battery as Suchianu.
Ralea took his final examination in Law and Letters at the University of Iași, in 1918. His professors included the culture critic Garabet Ibrăileanu, who became Ralea's mentor.Zavarache, pp. 187–188 Ralea recalled that his first encounter with Ibrăileanu was "my life's greatest intellectual event".Vianu, p. 145 Described by Vianu as a "young luminary" with "new and original ideas", "always surrounded by a sizable pack of students",Vianu, p. 143 Ralea returned to cultural journalism in postwar Greater Romania. From February 1919, he was a contributor to the Iași-based review Însemnări Literare, which stood in for the temporarily disestablished Viața Românească.Crohmălniceanu, p. 114; Nicolescu, p. 131. See also Desa et al. (1987), pp. 508–509 The magazine was managed by the novelist Mihail Sadoveanu and heavily influenced by Ibrăileanu. Their friendship sealed Ralea's affiliation to prewar Poporanism, a leftist current which promoted agrarianism, "national specificity", and art with a social mission. The Însemnări Literare group also recognized that Poporanism was made inadequate by the social promises of land reform and universal male suffrage. These policies, Ibrăileanu acknowledged, "settled a debt" with the peasantry.Nicolescu, p. 132 Poporanism was generally pro-Westernization, with a noted reserve; taken separately, Ralea was the most pro-Western, socialist, and least culturally conservative thinker of this category.Balázs Trencsényi, "Conceptualizarea caracterului național în tradiția intelectuală românească", in Neumann & Heinen, pp. 353–354; Verdery, pp. 50–51, 53, 328
Also in 1919, Ralea and his new friend, Andrei Oțetea, earned state scholarships to complete his doctorate in Paris.Nastasă (2007), pp. 190–192, 250, 284 Ralea entered the École Normale Supérieure as a disciple of Lucien Herr, simultaneously registering for doctoral programs in letters and politics, with interests in sociology and psychology. He studied under the functionalist Célestin Bouglé, then under Paul Fauconnet and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, and later, at the Collège de France, under Pierre Janet.Nastasă (2007), pp. 191–192, 293 As he himself recounted, he became a passionate follower of the French Left, a reader of Jean Jaurès, and a guest of Léon Blum's.Stanomir, p. 28 Young Ralea defined himself as a rationalist, heir to the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and was ostensibly an atheist.Nastasă (2010), p. 422
Ralea's later friend and disciple psycholinguist, Tatiana Slama-Cazacu, suggests that he was a "salon socialist" who came to rely on his anti-socialist father's fortune so as to maintain his Parisian lifestyle.Slama-Cazacu, p. 13 For a while, he also managed a Romanian restaurant owned by the banker Aristide Blank.Nastasă (2010), p. 32 His secular agenda was underscored when he joined the Romanian Freemasonry, which, historian Lucian Nastasă writes, implied a commitment to freethought and religious toleration.Nastasă (2007), p. 102 By 1946, he was an 18° in the Chapter of Rose Croix.Mandache, p. 50 He was part of a tight cell of Romanian students in letters or history, which also included Oțetea, Gheorghe Brătianu, and Alexandru Rosetti, who remained close friends over the decades.Nastasă (2007), pp. 250, 284, 293, 345–347 Suchianu and his sister Ioana, who were also studying in Paris, lived in the same boarding house as Ralea.Nastasă (2010), p. 129; Slama-Cazacu, p. 13
Debut as theoretician