Kingdom of Romania - Union With Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina

Union With Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina

After World War I, during 1918, Transylvania, part of Banat, Bessarabia (Eastern Moldavia between Prut and Dniester rivers) and Bukovina united with Romania. Except for some territories across the Dniester river, all these territories were united in a single state. Thus, Romania in 1919 was more than twice the size it had been in 1914. Although the country was satisfied and had no further territorial claims, it aroused the enmity of Bulgaria, and especially Hungary and the Soviet Union.

Greater Romania now encompassed a significant minority population, especially of Magyars, and faced the difficulty of assimilation. By contrast, the prewar Romanian state had only one real minority, Jews, but nonetheless anti-Semitism was widespread.

Magyars and Germans were predominate in Transylvania, and with a historically contemptuous attitude towards Romanians, they now feared reprisals. Both groups were effectively excluded from politics as the postwar Romanian regime passed an edict stating that all personnel employed by the state had to speak Romanian. The new Romanian state was also a highly centralized one, so it was unlikely that the Maygar or German minorities would exercise political influence without personal connections in the government in Bucharest. The Romanian policy towards Maygars and Germans was fairly balanced, and both were permitted to have schools in their respective languages and the freedom to publish written material. Judicial hearings would also be conducted in their native official languages. Although prejudice existed, it may well be noted that Maygars were experiencing a level of equality and fair treatment they previously never granted to the Romanians.

Lesser minorities were not as well treated because of their small numbers and because they had no outside power to support them. Jews in particular were highly unpopular. Despite being less than 10% of the Romanian population, they held a disproportionate control of small businesses, banks, shops, factories, and the skilled trades and crafts. Most had emigrated from Russia to escape the pogroms and as such, they invariably spoke Ukrainian or Yiddish and rarely more than a few words of Romanian. For the most part, they were there simply for business and had no interest at all in Romanian history or culture.

Romanian education was a mixed bag. While the nobility had a long tradition of sending their sons to Europe's finest schools, the educated were a tiny minority. Transylvania had the most educated population in Romania while Bessarabia and other ex-Russian areas fared the worst. While all Romanian children were required to attend at least four years of school, few actually went and the system was designed to separate those who would go on to higher education from those who would not. While this was partially necessary due to limited resources, it also ensured that peasants had almost no chance of becoming educated.

High school and college education in Romania was modeled after French schools. Students undertook a rigid curriculum based around the liberal arts and anyone who could pass was very well-educated. However, Romania suffered from the same problem as the rest of Eastern Europe, which was that most students preferred abstract subjects like theology, philosophy, literature, the fine arts, and law (in the philosophical rather than the applied sense) to practical ones like science, business, and engineering.

The peasant population was among the poorest in the region, a situation aggravated by one of Europe's highest birth rates. As elsewhere, peasants everywhere were convinced that land reform would solve their problems, and after the war they began to clamor loudly for such action, which led to the 1921 land reform. But it did precious little to improve productivity, especially since the richness of Romania's soil was negated by a lack of modern farming techniques. Agricultural exports could not compete with those of Western Europe and North America, and the onset of the Great Depression caused the market for them to completely dry up.

In 1919, a staggering 72% of Romanians were engaged in agriculture. And due to one of Europe's highest birth rates, as much as a quarter of the rural population was unnecessary surplus. Farming was primitive and machinery and chemical fertilizers almost unheard of. The Regat (prewar Romania) was traditionally a land of large estates worked by peasants who either had no land of their own or else dwarf plots. The situation in Transylania and Bessarabia was as bad or worse. After peasant calls for land reform snowballed into an avalanche, King Carol II had to oblige, especially once communist groups started taking advantage of the situation. In the end, it did nothing to remedy the basic problems of rural overpopulation and technological backwardness. The redistributed plots were invariably too small to feed their owners and peasants also could not overcome their tradition of growing grain over cash crops. Since draft animals were rare, to say nothing of machinery, actual agricultural productivity was worse than before.

Despite the land reforms, landowners still controlled up to 30% of Romania's soil, also including the forests that peasants needed for fuel. Romania also had little opportunity to export agricultural products since the biggest ones like grain couldn't possibly compete with producers in the United States or elsewhere.

Romanian industry was quite well-developed due to an abundance of natural resources, especially oil. Lumber and various minerals were produced mainly for export, but most industry was owned by foreign companies, over 70% during the interwar period.

By the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, Hungary renounced in favor of Romania all the claims of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy over Transylvania. The union of Romania with Bukovina was ratified in 1919 in the Treaty of Saint Germain, and in 1920 a part of the Western powers recognized Romanian rule over Bessarabia by the Treaty of Paris.