Romania
Extending inland halfway across the Balkan Peninsula and covering a
large elliptical area of 237,499 square kilometers (91,699 sq. mi.),
Romania occupies the greater part of the lower basin of the Danube
River system and the hilly eastern regions of the middle Danube
basin. It lies on either side of the mountain systems collectively
known as the Carpathians, which form the natural barrier between the
two Danube basins.
Romania's location gives it a continental climate, particularly in
Moldavia and Wallachia (geographic areas east of the Carpathians and
south of the Transylvanian Alps, respectively) and to a lesser
extent in centrally located Transylvania, where the climate is more
moderate. A long and at times severe winter (December-March), a hot
summer (April-July), and a prolonged autumn (August-November) are
the principal seasons, with a rapid transition from spring to
summer. In Bucharest, the daily minimum temperature in January
averages -7oC (20oF), and the daily maximum temperature in July
averages 29oC (85oF).
About 89% of the people are ethnic Romanians, a group that--in
contrast to its Slav or Hungarian neighbors--traces itself to
Latin-speaking Romans, who in the second and third centuries A.D.
conquered and settled among the ancient Dacians, a Thracian people.
As a result, the Romanian language, although containing elements of
Slavic, Turkish, and other languages, is a romance language related
to French and Italian.
Hungarians and Roma are the principal minorities, with a declining
German population and smaller numbers of Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians,
Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Great Russians, and others. Minority
populations are greatest in Transylvania and the Banat, areas in the
north and west, which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire until
World War I. Even before union with Romania, ethnic Romanians
comprised the overall majority in Transylvania. However, ethnic
Hungarians and Germans were the dominant urban population until
relatively recently, and ethnic Hungarians still are the majority in
a few districts.
Before World War II, minorities represented more than 28% of the
total population. During the war that percentage was halved, largely
by the loss of the border areas of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina
(to the former Soviet Union -- now Moldova and a portion of
south-west Ukraine) and southern Dobrudja (to Bulgaria), as well as
by the postwar flight or deportation of ethnic Germans. In the last
several decades, more than two-thirds of the remaining ethnic
Germans in Romania emigrated to Germany.
Romanian troops during World War II participated in the destruction
of the Jewish communities of Bessarabia and Transnistria (both now
comprising the independent Republic of Moldova) and Bukovina (now
part of Ukraine). Although subjected to harsh persecution, including
government-sanctioned pogroms and killings, most Jews from the
territory now comprising Romania survived the Holocaust. Mass
emigration, mostly to Israel, has reduced the surviving Jewish
community from over 300,000 to less than 10,000.
Religious affiliation tends to follow ethnic lines, with most ethnic
Romanians identifying with the Romanian Orthodox Church. Also
ethnically Romanian is the Greek Catholic or Uniate church,
reunified with the Orthodox Church by fiat in 1948, and restored
after the 1989 revolution. The 2002 census indicates that less than
1% of the population is Greek Catholic, as opposed to about 10%
prior to 1948. Roman Catholics, largely ethnic Hungarians and
Germans, constitute about 5% of the population; Calvinists,
Baptists, Pentecostals, and Lutherans make up another 5%. There are
smaller numbers of Unitarians, Muslims, and other religions.
Romania's rich cultural traditions have been nourished by many
sources, some of which predate the Roman occupation. The traditional
folk arts, including dance, music, wood-carving, ceramics, weaving
and embroidery of costumes and household decorations still flourish
in many parts of the country. Despite strong Austrian, German, and
especially French influence, many of Romania's great artists, such
as the painter Nicolae Grigorescu, the poet Mihai Eminescu, the
composer George Enescu, and the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, drew
their inspiration from Romanian folk traditions.
The country's many Orthodox monasteries, as well as the
Transylvanian Catholic and Evangelical Churches, some of which date
back to the 13th century, are repositories of artistic treasures.
The famous painted monasteries of Bukovina make an important
contribution to European architecture.
Poetry and the theater play an important role in contemporary
Romanian life. Classic Romanian plays, such as those of Ion Luca
Caragiale, as well as works by modern or avant-garde Romanian and
international playwrights, find sophisticated and enthusiastic
audiences in the many theaters of the capital and of the smaller
cities. |
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Since about 200 B.C., when it was settled by the Dacians, a Thracian
tribe, Romania has been in the path of a series of migrations and
conquests. Under the emperor Trajan early in the second century
A.D., Dacia was incorporated into the Roman Empire, but was
abandoned by a declining Rome less than two centuries later. Romania
disappeared from recorded history for hundreds of years, to reemerge
in the medieval period as the Principalities of Moldavia and
Wallachia. Heavily taxed and badly administered under the Ottoman
Empire, the two Principalities were unified under a single native
prince in 1859, and had their full independence ratified in the 1878
Treaty of Berlin. A German prince, Carol of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was crowned first King of Romania in 1881.
The new state, squeezed between the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and
Russian empires, looked to the West, particularly France, for its
cultural, educational, and administrative models. Romania was an
ally of the Entente and the U.S. in World War I, and was granted
substantial territories with Romanian populations, notably
Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina, after the war.
Most of Romania's pre-World War II governments maintained the forms,
but not always the substance, of a liberal constitutional monarchy.
The fascist Iron Guard movement, exploiting a quasi-mystical
nationalism, fear of communism, and resentment of alleged foreign
and Jewish domination of the economy, was a key destabilizing
factor, which led to the creation of a royal dictatorship in 1938
under King Carol II. In 1940, the authoritarian General Antonescu
took control. Romania entered World War II on the side of the Axis
Powers in June 1941, invading the Soviet Union to recover Bessarabia
and Bukovina, which had been annexed in 1940.
In August 1944, a coup led by King Michael, with support from
opposition politicians and the army, deposed the Antonescu
dictatorship and put Romania's battered armies on the side of the
Allies. Romania incurred additional heavy casualties fighting
alongside the Soviet Union against the Germans in Transylvania,
Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
According to the officially recognized 2004 Wiesel Commission
report, Romanian authorities were responsible for the death of
between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews in the
territories under Romanian jurisdiction (including Bessarabia,
Bukovina, and Transnistria) out of a population of approximately
760,000. In addition, 132,000 Romanian Jews were killed by the
pro-Nazi Hungarian authorities in Transylvania.
A peace treaty, signed in Paris on February 10, 1947, confirmed the
Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, but restored
the part of northern Transylvania granted to Hungary in 1940 by
Hitler. The treaty also required massive war reparations by Romania
to the Soviet Union, whose occupying forces left in 1958.
The Soviets pressed for inclusion of Romania's heretofore negligible
Communist Party in the post-war government, while non-communist
political leaders were steadily eliminated from political life. King
Michael abdicated under pressure in December 1947, when the Romanian
People's Republic was declared, and went into exile.
By the late 1950s, Romania's communist government began to assert
some independence from the Soviet Union. Nicolae Ceausescu became
head of the Communist Party in 1965 and head of state in 1967.
Ceausescu's denunciation of the 1968 Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia and a brief relaxation in internal repression helped
give him a positive image both at home and in the West. Seduced by
Ceausescu's "independent" foreign policy, Western leaders were slow
to turn against a regime that, by the late 1970s, had become
increasingly harsh, arbitrary, and capricious. Rapid economic growth
fueled by foreign credits gradually gave way to economic autarchy
accompanied by wrenching austerity and severe political repression.
After the collapse of communism in the rest of Eastern Europe in the
late summer and fall of 1989, a mid-December protest in Timisoara
against the forced relocation of an ethnic Hungarian pastor grew
into a country-wide protest against the Ceausescu regime, sweeping
the dictator from power. Ceausescu and his wife were executed on
December 25, 1989, after a cursory military trial. About 1,500
people were killed in confused street fighting. An impromptu
governing coalition, the National Salvation Front (FSN), installed
itself and proclaimed the restoration of democracy and freedom. The
Communist Party was dissolved and its assets transferred to the
state. Ceausescu's most unpopular measures, such as bans on private
commercial entities and independent political activity, were
repealed.
Ion Iliescu, a former Communist Party official demoted by Ceausescu
in the 1970s, emerged as the leader of the NSF. Presidential and
parliamentary elections were held on May 20, 1990. Running against
representatives of the pre-war National Peasants' Party and National
Liberal Party, Iliescu won 85% of the vote. The NSF captured
two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, and named a university
professor, Petre Roman, as Prime Minister. The new government began
cautious free market reforms such as opening the economy to consumer
imports and establishing the independence of the National Bank.
Romania has made great progress in institutionalizing democratic
principles, civil liberties, and respect for human rights since the
revolution. Nevertheless, the legacy of 44 years of communist rule
cannot quickly be eliminated. Membership in the Romanian Communist
Party was usually the prerequisite for higher education, foreign
new-world-travel, or a good job, while the extensive internal security
apparatus subverted normal social and political relations. To the
few active dissidents, who suffered gravely under Ceausescu and his
predecessors, many of those who came forward as politicians after
the revolution seemed tainted by association with the previous
regime.
Over 200 new political parties sprang up after 1989, gravitating
around personalities rather than programs. All major parties
espoused democracy and market reforms, but the governing National
Salvation Front proposed slower, more cautious economic reforms. In
contrast, the opposition's main parties, the National Liberal Party
(PNL), and the National Peasant-Christian Democrat Party (PNTCD)
favored quick, sweeping reforms, immediate privatization, and
reducing the role of the ex-communist elite.
In the 1990 general elections, the FSN and its candidate for
presidency, Ion Iliescu, won with a large majority of the votes
(66.31% and 85.07%, respectively). The strongest parties in
opposition were the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania
(UDMR), with 7.23%, and the PNL, with 6.41%.
Unhappy at the continued political and economic influence of members
of the Ceausescu-era elite, anti-communist protesters camped in
University Square in April 1990. When miners from the Jiu Valley
descended on Bucharest two months later and brutally dispersed the
remaining "hooligans," President Iliescu expressed public thanks,
thus convincing many that the government had sponsored the miners'
actions. The miners also attacked the headquarters and houses of
opposition leaders. The Roman government fell in late September
1991, when the miners returned to Bucharest to demand higher
salaries and better living conditions. Theodor Stolojan was
appointed to head an interim government until new elections could be
held.
Parliament drafted a new democratic constitution, approved by
popular referendum in December 1991. The FSN split into two groups,
led by Ion Iliescu (FDSN) and Petre Roman (FSN) in March 1992;
Roman's party subsequently adopted the name Democratic Party (PD).
National elections in September 1992 returned President Iliescu by a
clear majority, and gave his party, the FDSN, a plurality. With
parliamentary support from the nationalist PUNR and PRM parties, and
the ex-communist PSM party, a technocratic government was formed in
November 1992 under Prime Minister Nicolae Vacaroiu, an economist.
The FDSN became the Party of Social Democracy of Romania (PDSR) in
July 1993. The Vacaroiu government ruled in coalition with three
smaller parties, all of which abandoned the coalition by the time of
the November 1996 elections.
The 1992 elections revealed a continuing political cleavage between
major urban centers and the countryside. Rural voters, who were
grateful for the restoration of most agricultural land to farmers
but fearful of change, strongly favored President Ion Iliescu and
the FDSN, while the urban electorate favored the CDR (a coalition
made up by several parties -- among which the PNTCD and the PNL were
the strongest -- and civic organizations) and quicker reform.
Iliescu easily won reelection over a field of five other candidates.
The FDSN won a plurality in both chambers of Parliament. With the
CDR, the second-largest parliamentary group, reluctant to take part
in a national unity coalition, the FDSN (now PDSR) formed a
government under Prime Minister Nicolae Vacaroiu, with parliamentary
support from the PUNR, PRM, and PSM. PRM and PSM left the government
in October and December 1995, respectively.
The 1996 local elections demonstrated a major shift in the political
orientation of the Romanian electorate. Opposition parties swept
Bucharest and many of the larger cities. This trend continued in the
national elections that same year, where the opposition dominated
the cities and made steep inroads into rural areas theretofore
dominated by President Iliescu and the PDSR, which lost many voters
in their traditional strongholds outside Transylvania. The campaign
of the opposition hammered away on the twin themes of the need to
squelch corruption and to launch economic reform. The message
resonated with the electorate, which swept Emil Constantinescu and
parties allied to him to power in free and fair presidential and
parliamentary elections. The coalition government formed in December
1996 took the historic step of inviting the UDMR and its Hungarian
ethnic backers into government.
The coalition government retained power for four years despite
constant internal frictions and three prime ministers, the last
being the Governor of the National Bank, Mugur Isarescu.
In elections in November 2000, the electorate punished the coalition
parties for their corruption and failure to improve the standard of
living. The PDSR (renamed PSD - Social Democratic Party at June 16,
2001 Congress) came back into power, albeit as a minority
government. In the concurrent presidential elections, former
President Ion Iliescu decisively defeated the extreme nationalist
Greater Romania Party (PRM) leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor.
The PSD government, led by Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, forged a
de facto governing coalition with the ethnic Hungarian UDMR,
ushering in four years of relatively stable government. The PSD
guided Romania toward greater macro-economic stability, although
endemic corruption remained a major problem. In September 2003, the
center-right National Liberal Party (PNL) and centrist Democratic
Party (PD) formed an alliance at a national and local level, in
anticipation of 2004 local and national elections. Romania then
moved closer toward a political system dominated by two large
political blocs.
In October 2003 citizens voted in favor of major amendments to the
constitution in a nationwide referendum to bring Romania's organic
law into compliance with European Union standards.
On November 28, 2004, Romania again held parliamentary and the first
round of presidential elections. In the December 12 presidential
run-off election, former Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu,
representing the center-right PNL-PD alliance, delivered a surprise
defeat to PSD candidate Nastase. Basescu appointed PNL leader Calin
Popescu-Tariceanu as Prime Minister, whose government was approved
by the Parliament on December 28, 2004.
This coalition unraveled due to enmity between the President and
Prime Minister by April 2007. Since April 3, 2007, Prime Minister
Tariceanu's PNL party has run an ultra-minority government in
coalition with the UDMR and tacit support of the PSD. |
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