Romanian political agitator Corneliu (Zelea) Codreanu, early exposed to anti-Jewish sentiments, had participated widely in anticommunist and anti-Jewish activities during his university years at Iasi, where in 1922 he had helped found the Association of Christian Students, which, from 1923 to 1927, he has affiliated with the League of National Christian Defense (LANC), headed by the anti-Jewish university professor A.C. Cuza.

Codreanu had been arrested and imprisoned in 1923 for threatening to kill "traitors"; arrested again on a murder charge in 1925, he had been acquitted.

In 1927, he breaks with LANC to form his Legion of the Archangel Michael, a fascist Christian-nationalist anti-Jewish organization, which will later call itself the Legion or Legionary Movement.