Since its rise as a scientific discipline in the late nineteenth century, eugenics has both fascinated and repelled generations of biologists, doctors, social reformers, politicians, and historians. Much has been reported and debated on this controversial subject, from Hitler's Germany to
The Bell Curve, yet studies have generally neglected Eastern Europeans' interest in eugenics. Between 1918 and 1948, a growing group of professionals-prominent physicians, academicians, scientists, and sociologists-set out to transform Romanian health care, society, and the state according to the gospel of eugenics.
Maria Bucur sheds new light on eugenics in Eastern Europe by focusing on Romania during the period between World Wars I and II. She demonstrates how Romanian eugenicists helped change the concepts of social organization and reform, of public health and education, of the role of science in generating social reform, of women's roles, and of the state's responsibility for social welfare. Bucur also illustrates their role in generating important public health legislation, from the broad-based Moldovan Law of 1930 and the legalized abortion in cases based on eugenic criteria, to restrictive measures and pressures placed on Romanian military and government officials against miscegenation.
But perhaps the Romanian eugenicists' most significant role was in introducing and popularizing eugenic culture. Their rhetoric helped shape public debates on the relationship between individuals and the state and contributed to the destabilization of the nation's fledgling political life. This was far different from similar eugenic movements in the Western world. In France, Germany, England, and the United States-industrialized countries with a well-defined sense of national identity-eugenics addressed perceived social and health crises such as overpopulation of the poor, the rise of squalor in large cities, and the spread of such diseases as tuberculosis. In the more rural country of Romania, proponents of eugenics engaged in the politics of nation-building, and their rhetoric focused on the problems common to a rural, agricultural economy. Romanian eugenicists placed an emphasis on modernizing the state, especially evidenced in Iuliu Moldovan's influential work Biopolitica, as well as on expanding the state's control in social welfare, public health, and other public activities proposed by eugenicists.
Bucur's interpretation of eugenics in interwar Romania raises issues relevant to today's scientific culture. Should the modern welfare state regulate the lives and reproductive rights of its citizens? Are modernization, social organization, and progress facilitated in any way by eugenics? Scientists and policymakers continue to ask questions similar to those posed by Romanian eugenicists a half-century ago. With this book, Bucur sets the stage for an intellectual dialogue with other historians, scientists, and policymakers.
