Miron Cristea’S Administrative Reform As Prime Minister (11 February 1938 – March 6, 1939)

The authoritarian monarchy represented the antechamber of the dictatorships of the 20th century Romania. King Charles II had destroyed the basis of the democratic regime justifying a coup d ' état against the legionnaire movement that had been rapidly developped at the end of the fourth decade of the last century and represented a threat to the national statehood, in the context of international frailty around the triggering World War II. The sovereign has used the first patriarch of Romania in order to justify the regime and to distract youth and clergy from legionarism ideas. As an original fact that took place on the political scene, the patriarch has left himself out in the draft of the King, apparently being a proponent of nationalism and a critic of the democratic system, as he had been in the interwar period. The image of the patriarch, becoming president of the Council of Ministers, was shadowed by the mechanisms og the Carlist repression and by the position he took in the problem of nationalities. He led three cabinets, with several changes in personnel, which were necessary given the political changes from 1938. His anti-Semite speech, though not an exclussivistic one, put him in a delicate position. Nevertheless, Miron Cristea’s subordinates have had positive results in the administrative reform, in the modernization of the educational system, in the implementation of social and legal policies and also, the economic policies, which continued the previous legislation, have made 1938, one of the most important years from the economic history.