The National Peasants' Party was an agrarian political party in the Kingdom of Romania. It was formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party (PNR), a conservative-regionalist group centred on Transylvania, and the Peasants' Party (PȚ), which had coalesced the left-leaning agrarian movement in the Old Kingdom and Bessarabia. The definitive PNR–PȚ merger came after a decade-long rapprochement, producing a credible contender to the dominant National Liberal Party (PNL). National Peasantists agreed on the concept of a "peasant state", which defended smallholding against state capitalism or state socialism, proposing voluntary cooperative farming as the basis for economic policy. Peasants were seen as the first defence of Romanian nationalism and of the country's monarchic regime, sometimes within a system of social corporatism. Regionally, the party expressed sympathy for Balkan federalism and rallied with the International Agrarian Bureau; internally, it championed administrative decentralization and respect for minority rights, as well as, briefly, republicanism. It remained factionalized on mainly ideological grounds, leading to a series of defections.
Iuliu Maniu was an Austro-Hungarian-born lawyer and Romanian politician. He was a leader of the National Party of Transylvania and Banat before and after World War I, playing an important role in the Union of Transylvania with Romania.
Constantin Sănătescu was a Romanian general and statesman who served as the 44th Prime Minister of Romania after the 23 August 1944 coup after which Romania left the Axis powers and joined the Allies.
Ion Mihalache was a Romanian agrarian politician, the founder and leader of the Peasants' Party (PȚ) and a main figure of its successor, the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ).
The Romanian Front was a moderate fascist party created in Romania in 1935. Led by former Prime Minister Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, it originated as a right-wing splinter group from the mainstream National Peasants' Party (PNȚ). While in power, Vaida had an ambiguous approach to the Iron Guard, and constructed his own radical ideology; the FR had a generally xenophobic program of positive discrimination, being implicitly antisemitic. It was subsumed to the policies of King Carol II, maneuvering between the mainstream National Liberals, the PNȚ's left-wing, and the more radically fascist Guardists. Vaida tried to compete with the former two and appease the latter, assuming fascist trappings such as the black-shirted uniform. Like the Guard, he supported aligning Romania with the Axis powers, though he also hoped to obtain their guarantees for Greater Romania's borders. The FR's lower echelons included Viorel Tilea and other opponents of Vaida's approach, who believed in Romania's attachments to the League of Nations and the Little Entente.
The Peasants' Party was a political party in post-World War I Romania that espoused a left-wing ideology partly connected with Agrarianism and Populism, and aimed to represent the interests of the Romanian peasantry. Through many of its leaders, the party was connected with Poporanism, a cultural and political trend in turn influenced by Narodnik ideas. In 1926, it united with the Romanian National Party to form the National Peasants' Party (PNŢ).
The Romanian National Party, initially known as the Romanian National Party in Transylvania and Banat, was a political party which was initially designed to offer ethnic representation to Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Transleithanian half of Austria-Hungary, and especially to those in Transylvania and Banat. After the end of World War I, it became one of the main parties in Romania, and formed the government with Alexandru Vaida-Voevod between November 1919 and March 1920.
General elections were held in Romania on 19 November 1946, in the aftermath of World War II. The official results gave a victory to the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), its allies inside the Bloc of Democratic Parties, together with its associates, the Hungarian People's Union and the Democratic Peasants' Party–Lupu. The event marked a decisive step towards the disestablishment of the Romanian monarchy and the proclamation of a Communist regime at the end of the following year. Breaking with the traditional universal male suffrage confirmed by the 1923 Constitution, it was the first national election to feature women's suffrage, and the first to allow active public officials and army personnel the right to vote. The BPD, representing the incumbent leftist government formed around Prime Minister Petru Groza, was an electoral alliance comprising the PCR, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the Ploughmen's Front, the National Liberal Party–Tătărescu (PNL–Tătărescu), the National Peasants' Party–Alexandrescu (PNȚ–Alexandrescu) and the National Popular Party.
The Bessarabian Peasants' Party or Moldavian National Democratic Party was an agrarian political party, active in the Kingdom of Romania and, more specifically, the region of Bessarabia. Comprising various pro-Romanian and regionalist factions that had existed within the Moldavian Democratic Republic, it was brought together by shared opposition to Bolshevik Russia and communism. The PȚB, founded in August 1918, was led by Pan Halippa and Ion Inculeț, originally representing, respectively, its right and left wings; Ion Pelivan was the co-chair.
Grigore Iunian was a Romanian left-wing politician and lawyer. A member of the National Liberal Party (PNL) during the 1910s, he rallied with the Peasants' Party (PȚ) after World War I, and followed it into the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), before leaving in 1933 to create the Radical Peasants' Party (PȚR), over which he presided until his death.
Ion Alion Buzdugan was a Bessarabian-Romanian poet, folklorist, and politician. A young schoolteacher in the Russian Empire by 1908, he wrote poetry and collected folklore emphasizing Bessarabia's links with Romania, and associated with various founding figures of the Romanian nationalist movement, beginning with Ion Pelivan. Buzdugan was a far-left figure during the February Revolution, but eventually rallied with the National Moldavian Party in opposition to the socialists and the Bolsheviks. He vehemently supported the union of Bessarabia with Romania during the existence of an independent Moldavian Democratic Republic, and, as a member of its legislature, worked to bring it about. Threatened by the Bolsheviks, he fled to Romania and returned with an expeditionary corps headed by General Ernest Broșteanu, being one of the delegates who voted for the union, and one of dignitaries who signed its proclamation.
General elections were held in Romania between 1 and 3 March 1922. In the first stage between 1 and 3 March, seats in the Senate were elected. In the second stage between 5 and 7 March the Chamber of Deputies was elected, and in the third and final stage from 9 to 11 March, additional Senate seats were elected. The result was a victory for the governing National Liberal Party, which won 222 of the 372 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 111 of the 148 seats in the Senate. Both houses were combined to form a Constitutional Assembly, which approved the 1923 constitution.
The Vlad Țepeș League, later Conservative Party, was a political party in Romania, founded and presided upon by Grigore Filipescu. A "right-wing conservative" movement, it emerged around Filipescu's Epoca newspaper, and gave political expression to his journalistic quarrels. Primarily, the party supported the return of Prince Carol as King of Romania, rejecting the Romanian Regency regime. It achieved this goal in 1930, but failed to capitalize on the gains. LVȚ and PC monarchism was generally moderate and within the classical political spectrum, reclaiming the legacy of the old-regime Conservative Party; however, the League idealized efficient government by dictatorial means, and its fringes grouped ultra-nationalists and fascists.
Constantin Gheorghe Banu was a Romanian writer, journalist and politician, who served as Arts and Religious Affairs Minister in 1922–1923. He is remembered in literary history as the founder of Flacăra review, which he published in two editions, alongside Petre Locusteanu, Ion Pillat, Adrian Maniu, and, later, Vintilă Russu-Șirianu. A best-selling magazine for its time, it functioned as a launching pad for several writers of the Romanian Symbolist movement.
Paul Bujor was a Romanian zoologist, physiologist and marine biologist, also noted as a socialist writer and politician. Hailing from rural Covurlui County, he studied biology in France and Switzerland, where he was attracted by left-wing ideas; his evolutionary biology, informed by the work of Carl Vogt, veered into Marxism and irreligion. Returning to the Kingdom of Romania, he was a junior member of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party, active on its moderate wing. He earned the critics' attention in the 1890s as a short story writer with a socialist and pacifist message, but only returned to fiction writing briefly, in the 1930s. An award-winning ichthyologist, Bujor was hired by the University of Iași, where he taught for 41 years, and throughout the period worked on documenting the Black Sea fauna, and made discoveries concerning the environment of Techirghiol Lake. He inaugurated the Romanian study of animal morphology, while also contributing to histology, embryology, and parasitology, and gave popular lectures on evolution and physical culture.
Grigore N. Filipescu was a Romanian politician, journalist and engineer, the chief editor of Epoca daily between 1918 and 1938. He was the scion of an aristocratic conservative family, son of the statesman Nicolae Filipescu and a collateral descendant of Alexandru II Ghica. During the early stages of World War I, he and his father led a pro-Allied dissident wing of the Conservative Party. After serving on the front, and behind the lines to 1918, as aide to General Alexandru Averescu, Filipescu Jr. became his political adviser. He had a stint in the Labor Party, merged into Averescu's own People's Party. Filipescu served as the latter group's tactician and campaigner, but had irreconcilable differences with Averescu.
Constantin Ritter von Isopescu-Grecul was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian jurist, politician, and journalist. He represented the region of Bukovina and a Romanian constituency in the Austrian House of Deputies continuously from 1907, participating in the political events of World War I. He was foremost known as a legal reformer and a political moderate, who objected to radical forms of Romanian nationalism and mainly sought to obtain a special status for the Romanians within a reformed Austria. His loyalism was rewarded by the Austrian authorities and antagonized the Romanian National People's Party, but Isopescu-Grecul also took distance from the pro-Austrian line advocated by Aurel Onciul. In 1908, Isopescu-Grecul joined Nicu Flondor and Teofil Simionovici in creating an Independent Party, which espoused a moderate program. He later rallied behind Iancu Flondor, embracing his conservative approach to national issues.
The Save Romania Union is a liberal and neoliberal political party active in Romania and Moldova, currently the third largest party in the Parliament with 43 deputies and 22 senators, and fifth at national level, after the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR/RMDSZ) and the People's Movement Party (PMP), two smaller centre-right political parties in the country.
Legislative elections were held in Romania on 6 December 2020 to elect the 136 members of the Senate and the 330 constituent members of the Chamber of Deputies.
