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career both as student and instructor. In 1926 he was well known as a
professor at the University of Coimbra with a number of publications on
abstruse fiscal matters and strong opinions on economic policy issues.
When asked to take over the Ministry of Finance, he declined because
he could not obtain the guarantee of a completely free hand that he
demanded. Within two years the offer was renewed, with all his condi-
tions fully met. Thus in 1928 Salazar, the most bureaucratic of dictators,
began a 40-year regime in the most bureaucratic of manners. He was, in
effect, hired to manage a government that could not manage itself.
Although his accession to power was in prosaic contrast to Benito Mus-
solini's flamboyant march on Rome a few years earlier, the emergence
of this new ultraconservative nationalist leader on the European scene
soon led journalists to link them in an ill-assorted phalanx of dictators
that briefly included Primo de Rivera in Spain and some exotic charac-
ters farther to the east. Moving with all deliberate speed, Salazar estab-
lished an official party, the National Union, in 1930, took the office of
prime minister in 1932, and crafted a new constitution in 1933 to
enshrine his so-called New State. The corporate models upon which
these institutions were based fall short, however, of full fascism.
Salazar was, in fact, no Mussolini or Adolf Hitler. He was a pragmatic
dictator, who understood the situation in which Portugal found herself
and the limits of her possibilities. Salazar realized the significance of
such social institutions as the Catholic Church and the landowning
aristocracy but granted them respect rather than power. Similarly he set
the limit of the generals' ambitions by emphasizing budgetary limita-
tions that curtailed military adventurism or foreign policy initiatives.
With no personal military experience (unlike the aforementioned Ital-
ian, German, and Spanish dictators), Salazar had no empathy with sol-
diers and considered them merely well-paid civil servants. Perhaps
because they mistrusted one another, the military men accepted this
relationship with their civilian national leader. While Salazar's new
secret police harassed leftists and his censors muzzled intellectuals, the
great part of the population, however, found increased efficiency, devel-
opment of the infrastructure, and modest growth in industrialization
sufficient justification for the professor's blend of austerity and
repression.
By the time Spain plunged into civil war in 1936 Portugal had already
experienced the overthrow of its monarchy, an unhappy experiment
with a republic, and the stress of dictatorship. But it had at least avoided
the kind of fraternal bloodletting that was about to sweep over its larger
neighbor. During the war Salazar became increasingly cooperative with
the insurgents, whose conservative principles largely resembled his
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