(; literally "Stone-Crusher" or ăPiatră"Rock-Breaker", named after one of the Uriași characters in Romanian folklore) was an antisemitic daily, monthly and later weekly newspaper, published in Romania during the late 1930s and early 1940s. One in a series of publications founded by Nichifor Crainic (better known as the head of Gândirea magazine), with support from Universul editor-in-chief Stelian Popescu, it attempted to regroup the various fascist and pro-fascist movements around Crainic's "ethnocratic" principle. The editorial staff comprised a group of far right intellectuals; alongside the editor-in-chief Alexandru Gregorian, they included Ovidiu Papadima, Vintilă Horia, Dan Botta, Dragoș Protopopescu, Toma Vlădescu, and Pan M. Vizirescu. It notably hosted contributions by writers Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești, Radu Gyr and Ștefan Baciu.
Noted for its contemptuous style of journalism and its recourse to violent language, Sfarmă-Piatră launched press campaigns against various figures who advocated left-wing or centrist positions, as well as against prominent members of the Jewish-Romanian community. Among the targets of its attacks were mainstream politicians such as Constantin Argetoianu and Constantin Stere, and the well-known writers Tudor Arghezi, Eugen Lovinescu and Mihail Sadoveanu. The publication was involved in a lengthy conflict with left-wing newspapers such as Adevărul and Dimineața, as well as with two rival voices on the far right—the National Christian Party (PNC) of Octavian Goga and A. C. Cuza, and Mihail Manoilescu's Buna Vestire.
Initially adverse to King Carol II and attempting a rapprochement with the fascist Iron Guard, it came to support Carol's National Renaissance Front after 1938. During World War II, it switched its position, offering to back to the Guard's National Legionary regime and finally to that of Conducător Ion Antonescu. The 1941 edition of Sfarmă-Piatră is remembered for welcoming Operation Barbarossa and the Iași pogrom, and for circulating antisemitic canards. The paper was ultimately shut down after Antonescu's fall in 1944, and its staff either went into hiding or was prosecuted for various political crimes.
History
Beginnings
The paper was a successor to Nichifor Crainic's daily Calendarul. The latter had been shut down by the authorities in December 1933, just after Romanian Premier Ion G. Duca was murdered by the Iron Guard's Nicadori death squad. By then, Dragoș Protopopescu, the managing editor of Calendarul, had become a close associate of the Guard. Together with Protopopescu, with Cuvântul journalist Nae Ionescu, and with other far-right supporters in the press, Crainic was arrested on charges of having morally instigated the killing. They faced trial on such charges in 1934. Still, they were eventually acquitted. On the occasion, Crainic and the others publicly distanced themselves from the Guard and its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, but, at various times, switched back to supporting Codreanu's politics. By then, Crainic was also putting an end to his brief association with the PNC. This was the start of internecine conflicts within Romania's radical right, highlighted when Crainic criticized Alexandru Vaida-Voevod (whose own right-wing party, the minor Romanian Front, was about to merge into the PNC).
Crainic sought to revive Calendarul, but his attempts were frustrated by successive governments down to 1938. As such, Sfarmă-Piatră saw print on November 14, 1935, once Crainic received his funding from sympathizer Stelian Popescu. In its first issue, it proclaimed a commitment to ethnic nationalism. Sfarmă-Piatră also produced a manifesto targeting corruption, stating that it was time to "obliterate those rookeries that the naive see as temples and the con artists claim are eternal", while stating that its goal was to bring down "the freckled dragons" of Romanian political life.
According to literary historian Z. Ornea, the journal was soon noted for abusing "the violent, sneering, vulgar and unsubstantial lampoon". Noting the heavy use of demeaning epithets, literary critic Ruxandra Cesereanu describes Sfarmă-Piatră and all its partners on the far right as chiefly preoccupied with "besmirching writers and public figures", while political analyst Michael Shafir summarizes its content as "viciously antisemitic". According to literary historian Nicolae Manolescu, Gregorian, Crainic's right-hand man, was from the inception "a notorious antisemite".