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| Romania
History |
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Ethnic Romanians
are descendants of the Dacians, one of the Romanised Thracian
tribes that inhabited the Balkan Peninsula during the first millennium
BC. The region was part of the Roman Empire until AD 275 at which
point it was colonised by the Goths. Between the 6th and
12th centuries, Romania was repeatedly overrun by the Huns, Bulgars
and Slavs. In the 15th century, the majority of the territory
(specifically the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia) was annexed
by the Turkish Ottomans. As the Ottoman Empire entered its
long period of decline during the early 19th century,
Romania came under the Russian sphere of influence.
Wallachia and Moldavia (not to be confused with
the modern state of Moldova, then known as Bessarabia) formally
united as Romania in 1861 under the rule
of Prince Alexander Cuza. Romania subsequently backed the
Russians in their war against the Turks in 1877. After the end of
the war the next year, Romania was finally recognised by the major
European powers as an independent state ruled by King Carol
I (formerly known as Prince Charles of Hohenzollern, and
who had overthrown Alexander Cuza in 1866).
Romania
was at war yet again in 1913, this time against
Bulgaria in the year-long Second Balkan War,
and in 1916 joined the allied cause in World War I. The post-war
re-organisation of Europe saw Romania gain a number of territories
from the dismembered Habsburg empire. During the 1930s,
in common with other European countries, Romania experienced
the swift growth of an indigenous fascist movement, the Iron Guard.
It was not allowed from taking power by King Carol II, who suspended
the constitution and established an absolute monarchy. In 1940,
the Germans occupied Romania and forced Carol to resign.
The country was placed in the hands of General Ion Antonescu
who without delay joined the Nazis in their war against the Soviet
Union. In 1944, with Soviet forces about to occupy
the country, the Antonescu regime was removed from power
and replaced by a coalition government of communists, liberals
and social democrats, under the titular leadership
of Carol II’s son, King Michael.
The Communists slowly established their political control
within the Government; in 1947 the monarchy
was overthrown and the Government declared
the Romanian People’s Republic. Nicolae
Ceausescu assumed the post of First Secretary of
the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) in 1965
and held power in the country until the dramatic, bloody and highly
unexpected revolution during Christmas 1989. Despite being a member
of the Warsaw Pact and the COMECON
trading bloc, Romania was inclined to pursue independent
policies, particularly with regard to military and foreign
policy matters: Ceausescu refused to allow other
Warsaw Pact military forces to maintain bases in the country, and
in 1968 he vigorously denounced the Soviet-led invasion
of what was then Czechoslovakia. The reformist policies
of glasnost and perestroika, introduced by the new Soviet
leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985,
were sarcastically rejected by Ceausescu. Consequently Romania
lost its unique advantage as the maverick of the Soviet
bloc. Also, domestic and international opposition increased as the
true nature of the regime’s draconian domestic policies –
including forced assimilation of minorities, tight rationing of
basic items and severe cultural and political suppression –
became apparent. In mid-December 1989, protests in the city
of Timisoara triggered a nationwide revolt. A large part
of the army defected from the regime to join the revolutionaries
– under the loose umbrella of the National Salvation
Front (NSF) – and for quite a few days the country
was in a state of open civil war as the pro-Ceausescu Securitate
(secret police) mounted a desperate bid to prevent the
collapse of the regime, during which thousands were killed.
The President and his wife were taken into custody,
quickly tried and executed. The new government,
under the provisional leadership of Ion Iliescu
(the former Communist Central Committee Secretary) was faced
with numerous acute problems: the pacification
of the country; the disbanding of the Securitate; the restoration
of the economy; and the need to prepare Romania for peaceful multi-party
elections. Iliescu has since become the dominant figure
in Romanian politics and went on to serve three terms as president.
The next three years were a period of serious instability –
sporadically breaking out into violence – as Romania made
a painful transition from communist dictatorship to pluralist democracy.
The ruling National Salvation Front finally split
into two factions led by Petre Roman, Prime
Minister for 18 months in 1990 and 1991, and President
Iliescu, who formed his own breakaway party, the
Democratic National Salvation Front (later renamed the
Social Democratic Party of Romania). Over the next decade, it was
the Social Democrats who succeeded while the Roman
faction dwindled away. However, at the November
1996 elections, the Social Democrats lost
control of both the presidency and the national assembly,
to a five-party centre-right alliance entitled the Democratic
Convention of Romania (DCR).
The new Government was wracked by internal bickering from
the start. In April 1998, Prime
Minister Viktor Ciorbea resigned from office. Two transitional
governments, lasting 20 and nine months respectively, held office
until the next round of elections scheduled for November 2000. The
Social Democrats were returned to office –
the DCR was all but wiped out – and Ion
Iliescu took over once again as president. The gloomiest
feature of the election was the performance of the far-right nationalist
Partidul Romania Mare (PDR, Party of Great Romania).
The Social Democrats relied on a handful of smaller
parties to guarantee a parliamentary majority,
and the centre-right party led by Traian Basescu won the most recent
presidential elections in December 2004.
Although the constant changes of government have confirmed that
Romania is now a fully-fledged and organized democratic state, they
have made it very hard to pursue and execute major policy initiatives
and this has undoubtedly held back the country’s development
since 1990. Economic progress has been inconsistent
(see Economy section) while Romania has not advanced as
far as its east European counterparts towards its twin
principal goals: membership of NATO
and of the European Union. Nevertheless, it
is definitely in both queues. In 2004
Romania was officially welcomed as a new member
of NATO. Membership of the EU will take a bit longer.
A national referendum in October 2003 secured
popular support for the policies needed to make Romania
eligible to join the EU. This will be a complicated process,
involving radical and painful reform of parts of the Romanian economy,
but the country is on track to join the EU in 2007/8.
Romania’s other foreign policy concerns relate to
ethnicity. So-called discrimination against
Romania’s large Hungarian population has
caused hostility in the past,
but this has eased following a series of co-operation agreements
between Budapest and Bucharest. The situation in
Moldova, the former Soviet republic
which has a mainly ethnic Romanian population,
has caused occasional problems with Moscow. There
is a strong lobby for the unification of Moldova and Romania,
but this is ferociously resisted by the mainly Slav population of
the eastern Moldovan province of Transnistria. A permanent settlement
of the problem, which will also require the endorsement of the Ukrainian
Government, has so far proved elusive. |
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