Early Human Settlement: Human settlement first appeared in the lands that now constitute Romania during the Pleistocene Epoch. Later, about 5500 B.C., Indo-European people lived in the region. The Indo-Europeans in turn gave way to Thracian tribes, and today's Romanians are in part descended from the Getae, a Thracian tribe that lived north of the Danube River. During the Bronze Age (roughly 2200 to 1200 B.C.), these Thraco-Getian tribes engaged in agriculture, stock raising, and trade with peoples who lived along the Aegean Sea coast, including Greek trading colonies, and Greek culture made inroads on the Thraco-Getian villages. By about 300 B.C., the Lower Danube Getae had forged a state, and from 112 to 109 B.C. the Getae joined the Celts to invade Roman possessions in the western Balkans. Decades passed, and Roman influence in the region grew as Getian interference in Roman affairs was met by punitive Roman campaigns.
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After Trajan became Roman emperor in A.D. 98, he launched two campaigns (in A.D. 101 and 105) to seize control of Getian territory. The Roman legions moved into the heart of Transylvania and stormed the Getian capital, Sarmizegetusa (present-day Gradistea Muncelului). From the newly conquered land, Trajan organized the Roman province of Dacia, and in the next 200 years a Dacian ethnic group arose as Roman colonists commingled with the Getae and the coastal Greeks. In A.D. 271 the Emperor Aurelian concluded that Dacia was overexposed to invasion and ordered his army and colonists to withdraw across the Danube. Without Rome's protection, Dacia became a conduit for invading tribes who plundered Dacian settlements. The Visigoths, Huns, Ostrogoths, Gepids, and Lombards swept over the land from the third to the fifth centuries, and the Avars arrived in the sixth, along with a steady inflow of Slavic peasants. Unlike other tribes, the Slavs settled the land and intermarried with the Dacians. In 676 the Bulgar Empire absorbed a large portion of ancient Dacia.
Creation of Moldavia and Walachia: In 896 the Magyars, the last of the migrating tribes to establish a state in Europe, settled in the Carpathian Basin, and a century later their king, Stephen I, integrated Transylvania into his Hungarian kingdom. The Hungarians constructed fortresses, founded a Roman Catholic bishopric, and began proselytizing Transylvania's indigenous people. In 1241 the Mongols invaded Transylvania from the north and east over the Carpathians. When the Mongols withdrew suddenly in 1242, King Béla IV launched a vigorous reconstruction program. With Béla's effort and the fall of the Árpád Dynasty in 1301, Transylvania became virtually autonomous.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Transylvanian émigrés founded two principalities, Walachia and Moldavia, which steadily gained strength in the fourteenth century, a peaceful and prosperous time throughout southeastern Europe, and Walachia freed itself from Hungarian sovereignty in 1380. By the early 1400s, however, Walachia and Moldavia were in decline while the Ottoman threat waxed. Eventually, around 1541, Transylvania became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty. But with the rise of the Ottomans in Central Europe, Walachia and Moldavia lost all but the veneer of independence. The Romanians' final hero before the Turks and Greeks closed their stranglehold on the principalities was Walachia's Michael the Brave (r. 1593–1601). Michael, whose short-lived unification of Walachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania in 1600 grew more impressive in legend than in life, later inspired the Romanian struggle for cultural and political unity.
The Struggle for Transylvania: In 1683, decades after Michael the Brave's brief tenure, Jan Sobieski's Polish army crushed an Ottoman army besieging Vienna, and Christian forces soon began the slow process of driving the Turks from Europe. In 1688 the Transylvanian Diet renounced Ottoman suzerainty and accepted Austrian protection. Eleven years later, the Ottoman government officially recognized Austria's sovereignty over the region. Under Habsburg rule, Roman Catholics dominated Transylvania's more numerous Protestants, and Vienna mounted a campaign to persuade Orthodox clergymen to join the Uniate Church, which retained Orthodox rituals and customs but accepted four key points of Catholic doctrine and acknowledged papal authority.
By the early 1700s, the Uniate Church emerged as a seminal force in the rise of Romanian nationalism. Uniate clergymen schooled in Rome and Vienna acquainted the Romanians with Western ideas, wrote histories tracing their Daco-Roman origins, adapted the Latin alphabet to the Romanian language, and published Romanian grammars and prayer books. The Romanians' struggle for equality in Transylvania found a formidable advocate in a Uniate bishop, Inocentiu Micu Klein, who from 1729 to 1744 submitted petitions to Vienna on the Romanians' behalf.
Over the next decades, Habsburg rule varied as some emperors engaged in dialogue with the Diet while others entirely ignored it. In early 1848, under the reign of Ferdinand V (r. 1835–48), Transylvania and Hungary were united. Unification galvanized Romanian opposition and spurred first protests and then warfare. In June 1849, however, the tsar heeded an appeal from Emperor Franz Joseph (r. 1848–1916) and sent in Russian troops, who extinguished the revolution. After quashing the revolution, Austria imposed a repressive regime on Hungary and ruled Transylvania directly through a military governor. Dismal conditions uprooted many Romanian families, who crossed into Walachia and Moldavia seeking better lives.
Russian Influence on Walachia and Moldavia: Ottoman rule over Walachia and Moldavia was interrupted by periods of Russian occupation throughout the 1700s and early 1800s. In 1812 Russia signed the Peace of Bucharest, which returned the principalities to the Ottomans, but complete Russian withdrawal was delayed until 1834. The uprising of Transylvania's Romanian peasants during the 1848 European revolutions ignited Romanian national movements in Walachia and Moldavia. In response, the tsar invaded Moldavia and later Walachia. In 1854 Russia, under pressure from the Turks and Franz Joseph, withdrew entirely from Walachia and Moldavia, paving the way again for Ottoman suzerainty over the principalities.
Unification of Moldavia, Transylvania, and Walachia: In 1856 an active campaign to unite Walachia and Moldavia began, and in 1859 the separate assemblies at Bucharest and Iasi unanimously elected the same man, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, governor of both principalities. The European powers and the Ottoman Empire ratified Cuza's election, and the United Principalities officially became Romania in 1861. A period of reform followed by political instability ensued. Cuza was deposed and replaced by Prince Charles (r. 1866–1914), who backed Russia during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. After the Ottomans' defeat, Charles proclaimed Romania's independence, ending five centuries of vassalage. In 1881 the parliament proclaimed Romania a kingdom, and Charles was crowned in Bucharest. Romania enjoyed relative peace and prosperity for the next three decades. Walachian wells began pumping oil, a bridge was built across the Danube at Cernavoda (in Dobruja), and new docks rose at Constanta. Charles equipped a respectable army, and peasant children filled newly constructed rural schoolrooms. Romania borrowed heavily to finance development, however, and most of the population continued to live in penury and ignorance. With the outbreak of World War I (and the death of Prince Charles), Romania joined the war on the side of Britain, Russia, France, and Italy and on August 27, 1916, declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In 1919 Romanians voted in the country's first free elections. Two postwar agreements that Romania signed, the Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria and the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary, more than doubled Romania's size, adding Transylvania, Dobruja, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and part of the Banat to the Old Kingdom. The treaties also fulfilled the centuries-long Romanian dream of uniting all Romanians in a single country.
The Interwar Years and WWII: In October 1922, Ferdinand became king of Greater Romania, and in 1923 Romania adopted a new constitution providing for a highly centralized state. The Communist Party, founded in 1921, was banned by the government in 1924. Romania's economy boomed during the interwar period, but the 1929 collapse of the New York Stock Exchange sent world grain prices tumbling and plunged Romania into an agricultural crisis. The economic downturn provided a fertile context for the formation of the Iron Guard, a macabre political cult consisting of malcontents, unemployed university graduates, thugs, and anti-Semites, who called for war against Jews and communists. The Iron Guard soon became the Balkans' largest fascist party. On September 6, 1940, the Iron Guard, with the support of Germany and renegade military officers led by the premier, General Ion Antonescu, forced the king to abdicate, leaving the king's nineteen-year-old son, Michael V (r. 1940–47), to succeed him. Antonescu soon usurped Michael's authority and brought Romania squarely into the German camp, and on June 22, 1941, German armies attacked the Soviet Union with Romanian support. During the war, Antonescu's regime severely oppressed the Jews in Romania and the conquered territories. Despite rampant anti-Semitism, however, most Romanian Jews survived the war.
In August 1943, King Michael, a number of army officers, and armed Communist-led civilians seized control of the government. The coup speeded the Red Army's advance, putting an end to Romania's war against the Allies. The Red Army occupied Bucharest on August 31, 1944. Less than a month later, Romania and the Soviet Union signed an armistice in which Romania retroceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union. On October 9, 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met in Moscow, where Churchill offered Stalin a list of Balkan and Central European countries with percentages expressing the "interest" the Soviet Union and other Allies would share in each—including a 90 percent Soviet preponderance in Romania. Stalin, ticking the list with a blue pencil, accepted the deal.
The Move Toward Socialism: In late 1944, Romania's Communist Party recruitment campaigns began netting large numbers of workers, intellectuals, and others disillusioned by the breakdown of the country's democratic experiment and hungry for radical reforms. In 1945 the Soviet-backed Romanian Communist Party seized power in Romania, and in 1947 King Michael, facing pressure from the Communists, abdicated. In June 1948, the national assembly enacted legislation to complete the nationalization of the country's banks and most of its industrial, mining, transportation, and insurance companies. Within three years, the state controlled 90 percent of Romania's industry. In January 1949, Romania joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), initiated forced agricultural collectivization to feed the growing urban population and generate capital, and launched an ambitious program of forced industrial development at the expense of agriculture and consumer-goods production. Industrialization proceeded quickly and soon began reshaping the country's social fabric as peasants left the fields and villages for factory jobs in urban areas.
After Stalin’s death in March 1953, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej forged a "New Course" for Romania's economy and set Romania on its so-called "independent" course within the East bloc. Although following a Stalinist model of development domestically, Gheorghiu-Dej defied Soviet hegemony over the East bloc internationally and initiated economic and political ties with China and Yugoslavia.
The Rise of Nicolae Ceauşescu: After Gheorghiu-Dej’s death in March 1965, Nicolae Ceauşescu, the party's first secretary, wasted little time consolidating power and eliminating rivals. Romania's divergence from Soviet policies widened under Ceauşescu. Popular acceptance of Ceauşescu's regime peaked with his defiance of the Soviet Union following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968; most Romanians believed his actions had averted Soviet re-occupation of their country.
During his early years in power, Ceauşescu sought to present himself as a reformer and populist champion of the common man. Purge victims began returning home; contacts with the West multiplied; and artists, writers, and scholars found new freedoms. After consolidating power, however, Ceauşescu regressed. The government again disciplined journalists and demanded the allegiance of writers and artists to socialist realism. By the early 1970s, Ceauşescu adopted the principle of cadre rotation, making the creation of power bases opposed to him impossible. In 1973 Ceauşescu's wife, Elena, became a member of the Politburo, and in 1974 voters "elected" Ceauşescu president.
Dynastic Socialism: The Eleventh Party Congress in 1974 signaled the beginning of a regime based on "dynastic socialism." Ceauşescu placed members of his immediate family—including his wife, three brothers, a son, and a brother-in-law—in control of defense, internal affairs, planning, science and technology, youth, and party cadres. Ceauşescu launched monumental, high-risk ventures, including huge steel and petrochemical plants, and restarted work on the Danube-Black Sea Canal. Central economic controls tightened, and imports of foreign technology skyrocketed.
Halfway through the Sixth Five-Year Plan (1976–80), the economy faltered. A devastating earthquake, drought, higher world interest rates, soft foreign demand for Romanian goods, and higher prices for petroleum imports pushed Romania into a balance-of-payments crisis. Ceauşescu imposed a crash program to pay off the foreign debt. The government cut imports, slashed domestic electricity usage, enacted stiff penalties against hoarding, and squeezed its farms, factories, and refineries for exports. Ceauşescu's debt-reduction policies caused average Romanians terrible hardship.
By the mid-1980s, Romania’s economy was increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union for energy imports and raw materials, and as a noncompetitive market for Romanian goods. Despite this dependence, Ceauşescu remained vocal in his criticisms of the liberalization policies of Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989 Ceauşescu was reelected for another five-year term as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party.
The Fall: As changes swept peacefully through the East bloc states from the Baltic to the Balkans, Ceauşescu continued to exercise an iron grip on Romania. It seemed for a time as if the regime liberalization taking place all around it might bypass Romania entirely. When cracks unexpectedly appeared in the regime, however, Ceauşescu’s decline from power was swift and violent. In December 1989, protesters in Timişoara led by a young Hungarian pastor named Laszlo Tokes took to the streets after government efforts to remove him from his church. Despite government orders to disperse, the protests swelled, and the crowd began calling for Ceauşescu’s regime to step down. On December 17, before departing on a three-day trip to Tehran, Ceauşescu ordered the minister of national defense to fire on the crowd in order to end the demonstrations. The order to use deadly force was not initially followed, but later that afternoon, Securitate (secret police) forces opened fire, killing and wounding scores of demonstrators.
Word of the Timişoara uprising spread to the rest of the country, thanks in large part to foreign radio broadcasts. When Ceauşescu returned from Iran on December 20, accounts of heavy loss of life in Timişoara had already incited protests in Bucharest. At a televised pro-regime rally the next day, Ceauşescu addressed a large crowd of supporters. As he spoke, a few brave students began unfurling anti-Ceauşescu banners and chanting revolutionary slogans. Dumbfounded by the crowd's rumblings, the aged ruler yielded the microphone to his wife as the television broadcast was interrupted. The once unassailable Ceauşescu regime suddenly appeared vulnerable.
On the morning of December 22, Ceauşescu again appeared on the balcony of Central Committee headquarters and tried to address the crowds milling below. Seeing that the situation was now out of his control and that the army was joining the protesters, Ceauşescu and his wife fled the capital but were captured several hours later. The desperate fugitives' attempts to bribe their captors failed, and for three days they were hauled about in an armored personnel carrier. Meanwhile, confused battles among various military and Securitate factions raged in the streets. The media's grossly exaggerated casualty figures (some reports indicated as many as 70,000 deaths; the actual toll was slightly more than 1,000 killed) convinced citizens that Romania faced a protracted, bloody civil war, the outcome of which could not be predicted. Against this ominous backdrop, a hastily convened military tribunal tried Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu for "crimes against the people" and sentenced them to death by firing squad. On Christmas Day, a jubilant Romania celebrated news of the Ceauşescus' executions and sang long-banned traditional carols.
Post-Ceauşescu Romania: Political and economic stability has not come easily to Romania since the fall of the Ceauşescu regime. One party has largely dominated Romanian politics since 1989 under a variety of names. In what was essentially a palace coup, Ion Iliescu, a former party elite who had fallen out of favor, seized power after the execution of the Ceauşescus. Iliescu quickly repealed many of Ceauşescu’s most unpopular policies, paving the way for his party’s victory in the 1990 elections. The center-left National Salvation Front (NSF; as it was known at that time) was faced with serious social, political, and economic concerns that it was ill equipped to address equitably or meaningfully. Corruption was rampant, and many feared, with good reason, that Iliescu and his allies lacked a sincere commitment to democracy. Pro-democracy protests in Bucharest in 1990 were violently suppressed by miners from the Jiu Valley, who many believed were directed by Iliescu. In 1991 the miners made a second violent return to Bucharest, only this time to protest market reforms pushed by Prime Minister Petre Roman. The government collapsed, the NSF split into two factions, and elections were held in 1992.
The 1992 elections returned Iliescu and his branch of the NSF (now called the Democratic National Salvation Front, or FDSN) to power. Significant reform did not take place under Iliescu’s leadership. The FDSN renamed itself the Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PSDR). In 1996 Iliescu lost a presidential runoff to Emil Constantinescu, an academic and former visiting professor at Duke University, who led an unstable center-right alliance. Living standards declined in the late 1990s, weakening support for Constantinescu. In the 2000 elections, voters once again put their faith in the devil they knew over the devil they did not know and returned Iliescu to power in a runoff with Corneliu Vadim Tudor, leader of the extreme nationalist Greater Romania Party. In keeping with tradition, the PSDR was renamed once again, this time as the Social Democratic Party (PSD). The PSD presided over a period of relative popularity and party stability as living standards rebounded somewhat and was expected to hold power in the 2004 elections. However, Traian Basescu, leader of a center-right coalition and the popular mayor of Bucharest, handed the PSD a surprising defeat. After a court ruling in early July 2005 blocked reforms required by the European Union (which Romania hopes to join in 2007), Prime Minister Calin Popescu announced that his cabinet would resign and early elections would be held.