Romania 101: In its second Century - challanges ahead.

Byline: Corneliu PIVARIU

The Great Union of December 1st, 1919 was a "stellar moment" for Romania, which was achieved by Romanian visionary and patriotic politicians with international support yet above all with the blood sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Romanian soldiers, anonymous in their sacrifice yet eminents by sacrifying their lives on the sanctuary of imortality as a kin. It was a strictly national objective, not directed agains anyone of the world's family of nations. In fact, Romania paid in blood, probably more than other nations, its achievements of unity and independence and the strategic mistakes of the political class during different historical periods of the last 101 years as well.

War to the fore

After 1918, two essential moments marked in a dramatic way Romania's contemporary history: The Second World War (where Romania lost around 800 thousand people, military and civilian) while the end of this universal scourge marked the fall into the then USSR arch of influence (with Romania 101: In its second Century - challanges ahead Corneliu PIVARIU the acceptance - it should be said and reiterated - of the other Moscow's allies during the war) - and the socialist (communist) political orientation.

The second moment is represented by the events of December 1989 when on the backgound of Nicolae CeauEescu's and the Communist Party's removal from power, the orientation towards a democratic society and free market has been resumed going into a transition period which even the dead's spirits and the aspirations of those who remained to achieve it have wanted to be a very short one yet proved to be longer than we wished.

The greatest achievements of the almost 30 years of postDecember 1989 period are Romania's joining NATO (29th of March, 2004) and the European Union (1st of January, 2007). During the almost 50 years of communist dictatorship, some hundreds of thousands more Romanians perished (the exact figure is difficult to quantify), great part of the intellectual elite, generals, valuable politicians who could not survive a terror regime instituted in 44 penitenciaries, 72 forced labour camps, 63 deportation centers, compulsory domiciles, 10 psychiatric hospices with political real cause. We can ask ourseves if Soljenitsin's gulag was more terrifying than the gulags set up during communism in a space called Romania.

After The Second World War, Romania could not come back to its territorial configuration consecrated by the Great Union and, moreover, the Kremlin leadership took care that through arbitrary drawing up of the frontiers (and in 1952 by imposing the establishment of the Hungarian Autonomous Region, which changed its name in MureE Autonomous Region in 1960, afterwards abolished in 1968 only by the administrative territorial division into counties) and that left several possibilities for the neighbours' and minorities' possible discontents and aspirations - especially of the Hungarian one - for achieving its political designs in Romania and in the area.

During the socialist period we notice two important moments: the withdrawal of the Soviet troops...