WWI brought about the Entente powers’
\nvictory and a fundamental change in Europe’s geopolitical map. New states were
\nborn out of the ashes of the former empires, while others extended their
\nterritory. Romania was in the winners’ camp and on December 1st
\n1918, together with the provinces of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania,
\ninhabited by a majority Romanian-speaking population, set the basis of the
\nGreater Romanian Kingdom. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The most important ideas that underlay
\nthe construction of this political edifice took a clearer shape in the years of
\nWWI, especially in the case of the Romanians from Austria-Hungary. The
\nafter-1918 historiography books insisted on the scope of the event and
\naccentuated the sacrifice of the Romanian nation for the union of all Romanians
\ninto one single state around the figure of a monarch that embodied both
\nidentities. The Communist regime seriously distorted the reality of December 1st
\n1918, turning it into a thousands-of-years struggle of an entire people to form
\nthe unitary nation-state.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
However, the ideas that accompanied the
\nfight for the rights of the Romanian ethnics in Austria-Hungary had a much more
\nconvoluted history. Far from being united in their goals and means of reaching
\nthese goals, the Romanians in Transylvania often had conflicting views on
\nmatters related to the policies and national rights of their co-nationals. One
\nsuch case was the conflict between the newspaper Tribuna and the
\nNational Romanian Party over the election tactics, a conflict that many saw as
\nfratricidal. This case was relevant for the social and political context of the
\n1890s, marked by the radicalism of a new generation of young intellectuals
\nchampioned by Octavian Goga and Octavian T\u0103sl\u0103uanu. It
\nwas around that time that the idea emerged that while parties would divide a
\nnation, culture would unite it. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
One of the most popular ideas was
\nfederalism. Emerging in the first half of the 19th Century,
\nfederalism spread quickly among the intellectuals who were seeking the
\nmodernization of the state. In Austria-Hungary, the idea was even more
\nsuccessful because the structure of that dual state allowed a reform in this
\nrespect. Historian R\u0103zvan Paraianu, from the Petru Maior University in Targu Mures, says
\nthe Romanian federalist Aurel C. Popovici was among the leading Romanian
\nnationalist thinkers:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Aurel C. Popovici was one of the
\ngreatest nationalists of the 19th century, and he wanted to federalize the
\nAustro-Hungarian Empire on a nation by nation basis. His theory was that the
\ncentral and eastern European nations could not survive by themselves caught
\nbetween what he called the great German race and the great Slavic race. Sooner
\nor later, Popovici said, these two would clash, and all these nations, such as
\nRomanians and Hungarians, would be crushed between the two great forces, the
\ntwo great races, as he called them. Popovici died before the Great War ended in
\n1917, in exile, at a time when Romania was in dire straits. Only at the end did
\nhe realize that there was no hope for the empire because of the totally
\nuninspired policies run by the Istvan Tisza government.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The coming war precipitated things, and
\nradical solutions became more popular. Here is R\u0103zvan Paraianu: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
We should say that early in the war, the Tisza government had a
\nrelatively favorable position towards Romanians, who had surprised him with
\ntheir enthusiasm for mobilization. He tended to take into consideration some
\nnational demands. Things changed dramatically after Romania joined the war
\nagainst Austria-Hungary. At that time, many Romanians in the area of Brasov
\nwelcomed with open arms the Romanian army. That being said, after the Romanian
\narmy was forced to retreat, the Hungarian government had a vindictive policy
\nnot only towards people who had shown their enthusiasm for the Romanian army
\nattacking the empire, but against Romanians in general. For instance, church
\nschools were suspended and were turned into state schools. They attempted an
\nethnic conversion of the Romanian population. A lot of priests and teachers
\nwere interned in camps, taken from home and moved, in order not to stir up
\npopular malcontent. Towards the end of the war, when things did not go as
\nplanned for the Habsburg and German armies, the discontent was about to
\nexplode. It was not the discontent of Romanians only, it was general
\ndiscontent. Bolshevik revolutions were erupting in Budapest, Vienna and
\nGermany. Against this background, Transylvanian Romanians started believing
\nthat Romania had become a solution for all the chaos that an entire society and
\nstate was sinking into.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Greater Romania formed on 1 December 1918 by the will and vote of
\nthe National Assembly in Alba Iulia and some Transylvanian Romanian leaders such
\nas Iuliu Maniu, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, Vasile Goldi\u015f, and the leaders of the
\nOrthodox and Greek Catholic churches. All those statesmen saw in the new
\npolitical construction that was Romania an end to uncertainty, and hope in a
\nnew model of state and society. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WWI brought about the Entente powers victory and a fundamental change in Europes geopolitical map.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":129277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[31489,30786],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-union","tag-world-war-one"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n