Ilariu Dobridor

Ilariu or Ilarie Dobridor, pen name of Constantin Iliescu Cioroianu; 31 October 1908 – January 1968), was a Romanian poet, essayist, and political figure. Born into the Romanian Kingdom's peasant class, he obtained academic recognition while studying philosophy at the University of Bucharest. He debuted as a poet, then turned to political journalism and literary criticism; integrated within the disputatious and economically disadvantaged intellectual youth of the 1930s, he took part in its large-scale debates. At that early stage, Dobridor was inspired stylistically and politically by Tudor Arghezi, whom his own poetry closely echoed. Committed to a passionate version of Romanian nationalism, he had clashes with the country's left-wingers, but also with those conservatives whom he viewed as impostors. By 1934, he was affiliated with the National Peasants' Party, serving briefly as editor of Dreptatea and leader of the Bucharest youth section. He became opposed to the group's leftist factions, on which subject he quarrelled with the national chairman, Ion Mihalache; expelled in April 1937, he and his disciples joined the far-right National Christian Party in February 1938. He was by then also affiliated with Nichifor Crainic's Gândirea, and contributing to newspapers put out by the Iron Guard.

All parties were suspended days after his National Christian recruitment, and King Carol II introduced his authoritarian constitution. Dobridor folded back on cultural journalism, founding the weekly Presa, but also joined Carol's sole legal party, the National Renaissance Front. As Romania entered World War II as part of the Axis powers, he became a regular soldier and press correspondent on the Eastern Front, sending back reports of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union, as well as glimpses of retaliatory murders by anti-communists. He also published a racially antisemitic tract, discussing Jewishness as a trait related to moral and cultural decadence. Returning to Bucharest in late 1941, he was employed by Ion Antonescu's dictatorial regime as a functionary of the Romanianization office, tasked with purging Romanian Jews from public life. Dobridor also began publishing his own newspaper, Poporul, as well as biographical works detailing the lives of peasant intellectuals. A successful anti-fascist coup in 1944 resulted in his banishment from the press; in 1954, the communist regime had him imprisoned, and he was only freed ten years later. He remained brazen in his anti-communism down to his mysterious and violent death in January 1968.