Russian soldiers entered
\nRomanian territory during WWI as allies, following an agreement on 16th August
\n1916 when Romania joined the war alongside France, Britain and Russia. Russia’s
\nhelp did not arrive immediately and even when it did, it was weak and
\nunconvincing. The Romanian army was defeated and in December 1916 the
\nauthorities were forced to leave the capital and take refuge in Moldovia. It wasn’t
\nuntil early 1917 that Russia sent in more significant reinforcement consisting
\nin the presence of 1 million soldiers. Romanian-Russian cooperation worked
\nwell, also owing to the direct involvement of the French, and the Central Powers
\nwere thus unable to penetrate the defence in 1917. However, the year would not
\nfinish as promising as it began, on the contrary. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The revolutions in
\nRussia destroyed the morale of the Russian troops and the disintegration of the
\nRussian army endangered not only the front in the Carpathian Mountains, but
\nalso the existing social order. When Lenin and his group triumphed and put in
\nplace the Bolshevik system in November 1917, in Romania the situation got out
\nof control. The Russian soldiers were behaving not like allies, but like
\nenemies, and the Romanian army soon realised that they were at least as
\ndangerous as the German enemy. Through great effort, the Romanian army managed
\nto quell the rebellion of the Russian soldiers and stabilise the situation. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Historian \u0218erban Pavelescu from the Institute
<\/p>\n
Many of these troops were behind the frontline,
<\/p>\n
Some Russian soldiers perpetrated extreme acts
<\/p>\n
These troops defeated and driven out by the Romanian troops by force would
<\/p>\n
The memoirs of the two Russian generals are full of details about how people
<\/p>\n
There are many interesting details about the situation within the
<\/p>\n
Despite this situation and the huge damage caused by
<\/p>\n
It is worth noting that
<\/p>\n
During WWI, Romania was forced to confront both the
<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Romanian front during World War One at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":50395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[30788],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-131137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-wwi"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nof Political Studies, Defence and Military History is the editor of a book called Aliatul inamic <\/em>(Enemy Ally) which
\ncontains the memoirs of two Russian generals, Nikolai A. Monkevits and Aleksandr
\nN. Vinogradski. The two were on the Romanian front in 1917 and 1918 and
\nremember how Romania coped with the Bolshevik revolution:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nwith a large group of Russian troops being located in the Nicolina area, near Ia\u0219i.
\nThe Bolshevik upheaval created there by the revolutionary committees set up after
\nOctober 1917 threatened the political and administrative structures of the
\nRomanian state. A conflict soon appeared, at the end of 1917 and the beginning of
\n1918, when the Romanian troops were eventually forced to step in against its former
\nally in order to drive it away from Romanian territory. This would give rise in
\n1918 to genuine battles between the Romanian and the Russian troops, with the
\nformer trying to prevent the latter from abandoning the front with the weapons
\nand the munition. Behind the front, the lack of discipline, the chaos and the revolutionary
\nturmoil transformed the Russian troops into bands of looters who destroyed everything
\nin their wake.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nof violence, especially in Bessarabia, the present-day Republic of Moldova. Historian
\n\u0218erban Pavelescu explains:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\ncross the Prut river and unleash terror there. The intervention of the Romanian
\ntroops in Bessarabia in March 1918 was nothing but an attempt to bring back
\norder at a time when the lives and property, not to mention the decisions of
\nthe democratically elected structures of the Romanians living between the Prut
\nand the Dniestr rivers, were threatened by Bolshevik hegemonic ambitions.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nperceived the war and the changes taking place under their very eyes. Historian
\n\u0218erban Pavelescu:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nRussian army at the time. We can understand how general Shcherbachev, the last commander of the Russian troops on
\nthe Romanian front, ended up being protected from his own troops by a Romanian
\ninfantry unit. The memoirs also describe how different ways were being looked
\nfor to motivate the troops to continue fighting. The provisional government would
\nreluctantly accept to motivate its own troops and convince them to keep on
\nfighting, as it had promised to its western allies. As far as the Bolsheviks were
\nconcerned, things were completely different, and they would be willing, as was
\nto be seen on the Romanian front, to make any compromise in order to retain the
\npower they had just conquered.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nthe Russians, historian
\n\u0218erban Pavelescu says the intervention of the Romanian army was decisive in the
\ncase of many of the former. Some of them changed their views and gave up their
\nrevolutionary ideas:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nowing to the distance of the Romanian front from Moscow and the central
\ncommand, the way in which the Russian troops acted, even the example set by the
\nRomanian troops, who would not let themselves be contaminated by Bolshevism, the
\nlevel of defection and Bolshevisation among the Russian troops was the lowest
\non the entire eastern front. Most of the troops who would go on to fight
\nalongside the Whites would be recruited from among those on the Romanian front.
\nI don’t just mean units made up of officers, non-commissioned officers and cadets,
\nbut regular troops as well, who would join the White Army.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nenemy in front and the enemy behind its own lines, and the Bolshevik revolution
\nwas the enemy it least expected. <\/p>\n