Elena Bacaloglu was a Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and supporter of Italian fascism

Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

.

Bacologlu was known initially for her marriage to Ovid Densusianu

Ovid Densusianu

Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....

 as well as her journalism. Later she moved to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, marrying a local man, and whilst there became an ardent admirer of fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

. She returned to Romania and set up the National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement

National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement

The National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement or National Italo-Romanian Fascist Movement was a short-lived Fascist movement active in Romania during the early 1920s....

 in 1921, a movement that was noted for being highly mimetic of Italian fascism

Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

. Characterised by her enormous ambition, Bacaloglu hoped to replicate the success of fascism in Italy but attracted little more than 100 followers before the movement was closed down by the police in 1925. Her contacts in Italy also ensured a high profile for the successor National Fascist Movement

National Fascist Movement

The National Fascist Movement was a Romanian political movement formed in 1923 by the merger of the National Romanian Fascia and the National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement....

, although this too failed to attract much domestic support.

Although her movement failed to gain much support, Bacaloglu was nonetheless one of only two women to take the lead of an avowedly fascist movement in pre-war Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 (the other being Rotha Lintorn-Orman

Rotha Lintorn-Orman

-Early life:Born as Rotha Beryl Orman in Kensington London, she was the daughter of Charles Edward Orman, a Major from the Essex Regiment, and her maternal grandfather was Field Marshal Sir John Lintorn Arabin Simmons...

).