Romanian nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that Romanians are a nation and promotes the identity and cultural unity of Romanians. [1] [2] Its extremist variation is Romanian ultranationalism. [3]
Romanian nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that Romanians are a nation and promotes the identity and cultural unity of Romanians. [1] [2] Its extremist variation is Romanian ultranationalism. [3]
The predecessors of the modern Romanian state were the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which for most of their existence were vassals of the Ottoman Empire. One of the earliest proponents of Romanian nationalism was the Moldavian prince Iacob Heraclid (ruled 1561-1563), who declared that the Romanians had Roman ancestry and made failed attempts to unite Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania- the three principal regions inhabited by Romanians. [4] [5] Later the Wallachian prince Michael the Brave was able to, for a short time in 1600, unite the three regions, marking the first time this had ever been done under a single ruler. [6] For this he is still today regarded as a symbol of Romanian unity. [7]
In Transylvania, then under Habsburg rule, the cultural movement called the Transylvanian School was founded at a time when Romanians in the region faced social and political disenfranchisement. In the 1791 document Supplex Libellus Valachorum Transsilvaniae ("Petition of the Vlachs [Romanians] of Transylvania", the School demanded equal rights for the Romanian population and asserted a Romanian national continuity stretching back to Roman Dacia. [8] The document was ignored.
The spread of Romantic nationalism throughout Europe in the 19th century affected the Romanians as well. The Wallachian uprising of 1821, led by Tudor Vladimirescu, has been described by scholars as espousing an early version of Romanian nationalism. [9] [10] The closely related 1848 revolts in Wallachia and Moldavia (part of the broader European revolutions of 1848) also had nationalist overtones. Transylvanian Romanians during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, led by Avram Iancu, fought the Hungarian revolutionaries and themselves demanded autonomy.
These nationalist currents ultimately culminated with the establishment of the personal union of Moldavia and Wallachia under Alexandru Ioan Cuza in 1859, which became a full political union in 1862 and established the modern Romanian state. It remained under Ottoman suzerainty, though this status was by then merely nominal. On 21 May 1877, Romania declared independence from the Ottomans in the midst of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), with these events and the associated fighting known in Romanian historiography as the "Romanian War of Independence". Following the victory of the Russian Empire and Romania, the ruling prince Carol I assumed the title of King, reflecting the fully independent status of the country.
The Kingdom of Romania first expanded its territory with the acquisition of southern Dobruja from Bulgaria in 1913 during the Second Balkan War, which nonetheless only had a minority of Romanians. [11]
The greatest and most important territorial expansion was initiated at the end of the First World War in 1918; the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire allowed Transylvania to unite with Romania; and the collapse of the Russian Republic and the subsequent Russian Civil War allowed the Romanians of Bessarabia to set up the Moldavian Democratic Republic, which then proceeded to unite with Romania. "Greater Romania" was fulfilled, and the ambitions of the nationalists and irredentists were satisfied.
However, there were now sizable non-Romanian minorities (especially Hungarians in Transylvania and Slavic groups in Bessarabia). The new multiethnic and multicultural reality fundamentally conflicted with nationalists' desire for a homogenous Romanian state, [12] and there was difficulty in imposing a "modern national consciousness" because of the hundreds of years of political separation of the Romanian regions. [13] In the eyes of the nationalist anthropologists, historians, and scientists, the survival of Romania became fundamentally bound to the need for maintaining a national-ethnic unity within one state; discourse on the subject "soon became invested with racial and biopolitical tropes." [13]
By the time of the Romanian fascist period (1937-1944), nationalist attitudes had developed to an extreme form and were imbued with antisemitism as well. The most intense fascist movement was that of the Iron Guard, which briefly governed from 1940 to 1941. The Iron Guard espoused a strong religious nationalism, with its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu writing that the group was a "spiritual school...[which] strikes to transform and revolutionise the Romanian soul." [14] [15]
During this time, Romanian territorial successes were somewhat reversed with the 1940 Soviet occupation and annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina and the forced cession of Northern Transylvania to Hungary that same year. Romania under Ion Antonescu joined the Second World War on the side of the Axis Powers and participated in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, receiving back Bessarabia plus Odessa and surrounding territory (the Transnistria Governorate) in compensation for the loss of Northern Transylvania. During the war, Antonescu pursued a policy of colonization in the Transnistria Governorate, marking a shift from a nationalist policy that valued separation from foreign nationalities to one that promoted expansionism and dominance over those perceived as lesser peoples (Slavs and Jews). This was seen as beneficial to the Romanian people because it involved the suppression of peoples perceived as a fundamental threat to Romania through the reduction of their "living space". [16]
The Axis Powers ultimately lost the war and the borders of Romania shifted once more. The Soviet Union retook Bessarabia and Romania regained northern Transylvania. To this day these are still the borders of Romania.
A communist regime was installed in Romania following the end of the Second World War, and during the early years of this regime Romanian nationalism was suppressed in favor of Russification. [17] After 1955, a process of de-satellization occurred, ending the period of unchallenged Soviet domination. [18]
During the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu (1965-1989), a form of Romanian nationalism (known as national communism) began to be promoted, involving the formation of a cult of personality around Ceaușescu and the idealization of Romanian history (protochronism). Ceaușescu went as far as to semi-rehabilitate Ion Antonescu (deeming him a "misunderstood patriot") [19] [20] and denouncing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which had allowed the Soviets to take Bessarabia in 1940. [21]
The communist era in Romania ended with the overthrow of Ceaușescu in 1989.
Today the main expression of Romanian nationalism is the promotion of the reunification of Moldova and Romania. Moldova (formed from most of Soviet Bessarabia) gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 but failed to reunify with Romania. The movement faced hostility from previous pro-Russian governments of independent Moldova. Nonetheless, the pro-European government of Maia Sandu has developed a closer relationship with Romania fostered by the links in culture and heritage between the two countries. Sandu herself stated once that if a referendum on the unification of Moldova and Romania was held, she would vote yes. [22] [23]
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The history of Moldova spans prehistoric cultures, ancient and medieval empires, and periods of foreign rule and modern independence.
The Romanian state was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. During World War I, after declaring its neutrality in 1914, Romania fought together with the Allied Powers from 1916. In the aftermath of the war, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Transylvania, and parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș became part of the Kingdom of Romania. In June–August 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Second Vienna Award, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union and Northern Transylvania to Hungary. In November 1940, Romania signed the Tripartite Pact and, consequently, in June 1941 entered World War II on the Axis side, fighting against the Soviet Union until August 1944, when it joined the Allies and recovered Northern Transylvania.
Ion Antonescu was a Romanian military officer and marshal who presided over two successive wartime dictatorships as Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II. Having been responsible for facilitating the Holocaust in Romania, he was tried for war crimes and executed in 1946.
The 41 județe and the municipality of Bucharest comprise the official administrative divisions of Romania. They also represent the European Union' s NUTS-3 geocode statistical subdivision scheme of Romania.
The Kingdom of Romania was a constitutional monarchy that existed from 13 March (O.S.) / 25 March 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I, until 1947 with the abdication of King Michael I and the Romanian parliament's proclamation of the Romanian People's Republic.
The Kingdom of Romania, under the rule of King Carol II, was initially a neutral country in World War II. However, Fascist political forces, especially the Iron Guard, rose in popularity and power, urging an alliance with Nazi Germany and its allies. As the military fortunes of Romania's two main guarantors of territorial integrity—France and Britain—crumbled in the Fall of France, the government of Romania turned to Germany in hopes of a similar guarantee, unaware that Germany, in the supplementary protocol to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, had already granted its blessing to Soviet claims on Romanian territory.
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic or Moldavian SSR, also known as the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldovan SSR, Soviet Moldavia, Soviet Moldova, or simply Moldavia or Moldova, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on 2 August 1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on 28 June of that year, and parts of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous Soviet republic within the Ukrainian SSR.
The term Greater Romania usually refers to the borders of the Kingdom of Romania in the interwar period, achieved after the Great Union. It also refers to a pan-nationalist idea.
The historical regions of Romania are located in Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe. Romania came into being through the unification of two principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia in 1862. The new unitary state extended over further regions at various times during the late 19th and 20th centuries, including Dobruja in 1878, and Transylvania in 1918.
The Germans of Romania represent one of the most significant historical ethnic minorities of Romania from the modern period onwards.
The history of the Jews in Romania concerns the Jews both of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is present-day Romanian territory. Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were a target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society from the late-19th century debate over the "Jewish Question" and the Jewish residents' right to citizenship, to the genocide carried out in the lands of Romania as part of the Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of aliyah, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.
Modern Moldova-Romania relations emerged after the Republic of Moldova gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Pan-Romanianism has been a consistent part of Moldovan politics, and was adopted in the Popular Front of Moldova's platform in 1992. The official language of Moldova is Romanian. The peoples of the two countries share common traditions and folklore, including a common name for the monetary unit – the leu. At present, relations between the two states are exceptionally friendly, especially on account of the pro-Romanian administration of Maia Sandu in Moldova.
Romania–Russia relations are the foreign relations between Romania and Russia. Romania has an embassy in Moscow and a consulate-general in Saint Petersburg. Russia has an embassy in Bucharest and a consulate-general in Constanța. Historical relations have oscillated among grudging cooperation, neutrality, open hatred and hostility.
A controversy exists over the national identity and name of the native language of the main ethnic group in Moldova. The issue more frequently disputed is whether Moldovans constitute a subgroup of Romanians or a separate ethnic group. While there is wide agreement about the existence of a common language, the controversy persists about the use of the term "Moldovan language" in certain political contexts.
National communism in Romania is a term referring to a form of nationalism promoted in the Socialist Republic of Romania between the early 1960s and 1989; the term itself was not used by the Communist regime. Having its origins in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's political emancipation from the Soviet Union, it was greatly developed by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who began in 1971, through his July Theses manifesto, a national cultural revolution. Part of the national mythology was Nicolae Ceaușescu's cult of personality and the idealization of Romanian history, known in Romanian historiography as protochronism.
The Bessarabian question, Bessarabian issue or Bessarabian problem is the name given to the controversy over the ownership of the geographic region of Bessarabia that began with the annexation of the region by the Russian Empire from the Romanian principality of Moldavia in 1812 through the Treaty of Bucharest and which continued with the independence and union of Bessarabia with Romania in 1917, the occupation and annexation of the region by the Soviet Union in 1940, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that caused the emergence of two new states that each controlled parts of Bessarabia: Moldova and Ukraine.
The territorial evolution of Romania includes all the changes in the country's borders from its formation to the present day. The precedents of Romania as an independent state can be traced back to the 14th century, when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were founded. Wallachia during its history lost several portions of its territory, either to the Ottomans or the Habsburgs. However, this land would be later essentially recovered in its entirety. Moldavia, on the other hand, suffered great territorial losses. In 1774, the Habsburgs invaded Bukovina and annexed it one year later, and in 1812, the Russian Empire took control of Bessarabia. Both territories were later exposed to powerful colonization policies. The principalities declared unification in 1859 as the Principality of Romania. This new state sought independence from the Ottoman Empire's vassalage, and in 1878, it fought a war against it alongside Russia. However, the latter would annex Southern Bessarabia, which was recovered decades before. Romania received Northern Dobruja as compensation, and would wage a war for the southern part against Bulgaria in 1913.
The Bukovina Governorate was an administrative unit of Romania during World War II.
Greater Moldova or Greater Moldavia is an irredentist concept today used for the credence that the Republic of Moldova should be expanded with lands that used to belong to the Principality of Moldavia or were once inside its political orbit. Historically, it also meant the unification of the lands of the former principality under either Romania or the Soviet Union. Territories cited in such proposals always include Western Moldavia and the whole of Bessarabia, as well as Bukovina and the Hertsa region; some versions also feature parts of Transylvania, while still others include areas of Podolia, or Pokuttia in its entirety. In most of its post-Soviet iterations, "Greater Moldova" is associated with a belief that Moldovans are a distinct people from Romanians, and that they inhabit parts of Romania and Ukraine. It is a marginal position within the Moldovan identity disputes, corresponding to radical forms of an ideology polemically known as "Moldovenism".
The Bessarabia Governorate was an administrative unit of Romania during World War II.
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