Romania - Eastern Europe - page 477

Bucovina, and Bessarabia. In 1930, King Ferdinand I was succeeded by his son, Carol
II. Ten years later, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia as well as northern Bucovina,
while Germany and Italy forced Romania to give northern Transylvania to Hungary
and southern Dobrogea to Bulgaria. Massive political turmoil and nationwide demon-
strations caused the abdication of Carol II, leaving his 19-year-old son, Michael, to sit
on the throne. With Carol II in exile, Marshall Ion Antonescu imposed a military dic-
tatorship and Romania joined the Nazis but the young Michael staged a royal coup in
1944, and quickly changed sides against the Germans.
In 1945, as part of the Yalta Agreement, Romania fell under direct Soviet influence;
Red Army presence enabled the rapid strengthening of the country's Communists,
who forced King Michael to abdicate in 1947. Less than 70 years after becoming a
kingdom, Romania became a People's Republic and was under the direct, often excru-
ciating, economic control of the USSR until 1958. The notorious SovRom agree-
ments exhausted the country's already limited resources, and Big Brother made taxing
war-reparation demands. But the devastation was not limited to financial resources;
during this time an estimated two million Romanians were imprisoned, mostly on
spurious charges, and between 1948 and 1964, over 200,000 citizens died in Com-
munist-related “incidents.”
In 1968, an upstart Communist named Nicolae Ceau @ escu publicly condemned
Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, thereafter receiving kudos and economic assis-
tance from the West. Apparently nobody noticed Ceau @ escu's burgeoning megaloma-
nia until it was too late, when his obsessions turned toward national debt repayment
and a catastrophic systemization of the economic and social structure with rapid
industrial development, replete with concrete apartment blocks and toxic factories.
Amid the economic gloom, Ceau @ escu created a monstrous police state, and
embarked on a program of cultlike self-glorification, which included the silencing of
opponents and extreme and violent violations of human rights and civil liberties. So
terrifying and pervasive was the dictatorship that women who suffered miscarriages
were subjected to tormenting interrogation sessions as an inability to carry full term
was seen as an attempt to stymie Ceau @ escu's plan to “grow” the nation's workforce.
Life increasingly unbearable, 1989 saw furious anti-Communist protests—sparked
in Timi @ oara and then across the country—and Ceau @ escu and his regime were finally
toppled. Two years later a new democratic constitution was adopted, and the difficult
transition toward a free-market economy was underway. But the road to recovery has
been rocky due to the instability created by successive governments, a result of schizo-
phrenic public support, marked by corrupt politicians, many of whom were active in
the former regime. But after more than a decade of economic instability and decline,
the new millennium finally seems to have ushered in an era of transformation, eco-
nomic growth, and foreign investment: In October 2004, months before the E.U.-acces-
sion treaty was signed, the country was granted “functional market economy” status.
ROMANIAN PEOPLE & CULTURE
Many Romanians take pride in being “a Latin island in a Slavic sea,” thinking of
themselves as the most eastern Romance people, completely surrounded by non-Latin
peoples. While often under the political and cultural dominance of the Ottoman
Empire, it is Western culture that has come to predominate.
While Romanians are proud of their heritage, and take delight in recounting the
names of great individuals—inventors, scientists, poets, discoverers and leaders—they