Historical considerations

The Romanian people's republic, later renamed the Socialist Republic of Romania, came into being in 1948 when the country's communist party, under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, consolidated its power and promulgated a Soviet-style constitution. Romania, in spite of its fierce prewar anticommunism and long antipathy toward tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, became one of the first East European states to suffer a Soviet-sponsored communist takeover after World War II. For nearly a decade after the war, Romania obediently followed Moscow's lead, but in the late 1950s Gheorghiu-Dej defied a Soviet attempt to make his country a "breadbasket" for the East bloc and insisted on continuing his country's rapid industrial expansion. The Romanian leader also developed an independent foreign policy and launched a campaign promoting Romanian nationalism. Nicolae Ceausescu succeeded Gheorghiu-Dej in 1965 and continued his mentor's policies. Ceausescu, however, appended to them an extravagant cult of personality that once promoted him as Romania's "secular god" and heir to the wisdom of Romanian rulers from ages past.

Romanians descend from the Dacians, an ancient people who fell under Rome's dominance in the first century A.D., intermarried with Roman colonists, and adopted elements of Roman culture, including a Vulgar Latin that evolved into today's Romanian. Barbarian tribes forced the Romans out of Dacia in 271. In the eleventh century the Magyars, the ancestors of today's Hungarians, settled the mountainous heart of ancient Dacia, Transylvania. Hungarian historians claim that Transylvania was almost uninhabited when the Magyars arrived; Romanians, however, assert that their ancestors remained in Transylvania after Rome's exodus and that Romanians constitute the region's aboriginal inhabitants. This disagreement was the germ of a conflict that poisoned relations between Romanians and Hungarians throughout the twentieth century.

For thousands of years, Romania suffered from an unfortunate location astride the invasion routes of migrating hordes and the frontiers of ambitious empires that plundered its wealth and enslaved its people. For centuries Transylvania, with its repressed Romanian majority, was a semi-autonomous part of Hungary. Romanians fleeing Transylvania founded the independent principalities of Walachia and Moldavia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Ottoman Empire dominated all three regions from the sixteenth to the late seventeenth century, when Austria's Habsburgs gained full control of Transylvania. Walachia and Moldavia came under Russian protection soon afterward and remained under Russian influence until the Crimean War (1853-56) ended the protectorate. In 1859 Walachia and Moldavia merged to form Romania, and in 1881 its prince renounced Turkish suzerainty and Romania became a kingdom. Austria reunited Transylvania and Hungary in 1867, but the union lasted only until the end of World War I, when Romania acquired Transylvania. World War II brought dismemberment of Greater Romania, and the country sided with Germany hoping to regain its lost territories. In 1943 the Red Army crushed Romanian forces before Stalingrad, and in 1944 Romania's King Michael overthrew the country's radical right-wing premier and signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. Moscow forced Michael to appoint a communist sympathizer to lead the government in 1945, and three years later Romania found itself under strict communist control.

The regime's program of enforced austerity and resulting demodernization flew in the face of the greater equality and material wealth promised by socialism. Egalitarian values had indeed gained widespread popular acceptance. But even if claims of equal distribution of material benefits were true, they fell flat in light of the fact that there was very little to distribute. Moreover, evidence of unequal distribution abounded, as the political elite took greater rewards and were least affected by the deprivation their policies caused. Corruption was rampant, and only those who "knew someone" and had the wherewithal to bribe the appropriate person could obtain even the most basic goods and services. Claims of equalization of status also were suspect. Social ranking, as developed in the minds of individual citizens as opposed to the hierarchy proclaimed and directed by the regime, decidedly preferred nonmanual labor over manual and urban over rural occupations. In the late 1980s, the massive upward mobility experienced earlier appeared unlikely to be repeated, and society showed signs of a hardening stratification. Egalitarian values inculcated under socialist rule had created aspirations that the regime failed to meet, and discontent at every level of society was evidence of the growing frustration associated with that failure.

 Population

At the 1992 census, Romania had a population of 22,760,449. The 2001 estimated population is 22,364,022, yielding an average population density of 94 persons per sq km (244 per sq mi). The population is 58 percent urban.

Historical and archaeological evidence and linguistic survivals seem to confirm that the present territory of Romania had a fully developed society, with a high degree of economic, cultural, and even political development, long before the Roman armies crossed the Danube into what became known as the province of Dacia. Roman influence was profound and created a civilization that managed to maintain its identity during the great folk migrations that followed the collapse of the empire. The first mention of Walachs (Volokhs, Vlachs), the name given to the Romanian people by their neighbours, appears in the 9th century.

 Language

Romania’s official language is Romanian, a Romance language derived mainly from Latin. Minority languages include Hungarian, German, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, and Romani (the language of the Roma). English and French are taught in many schools and are the most common second languages spoken in Romania.