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| ROMANIAN STATE UNITY 24/01/2008 |
| (2008-01-24) |
| Last updated: 2008-01-25 18:42 EET |
In 1859, the pro-western unionist elite from the medieval principalities of Moldova and Wallachia, which were still under the rather formal sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, came up with the political solution of a union that had until then been denied to them. Having finally become a political decision maker, the generation of the 1848 revolution took advantage of a favourable geopolitical context following the recently ended Crimean War, in which Russia, hostile to the union, was defeated and pro-Romanian France emerged victorious. Soon after being appointed the ruler of Moldova on the 5th of January, colonel Alexandru Ioan Cuza, himself a participant in the 1848 Revolution, was also elected ruler of Wallachia by an ad-hoc election assembly on the 24th of January.
The double election of colonel Cuza implied a personal union, something which the great powers agreed to. At first, they said they would recognise the union only as long as Cuza remained in power. Cuza's rule lasted until 1866 and saw a number of essential reforms: the unification of the legal systems, the administration and the armies of the two principalities, the beginning of institutional Europenisation and a far-reaching agricultural reform, thanks to which many properties belonging to boyars and monasteries were distributed among farmers living in poverty. Also, for the first time in its history, Bucharest became the capital of all Romanians. The Romanian state started funding schools and churches for Romanians living everywhere from the Balkans to Transylvania, under the rule of multinational empires such as the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire and the Tsarist Empire.
Thus, Cuza became, and remains to this day, one of the most popular rulers of Romanians. However, his authoritarian tendencies, his lack of international experience and his libertine behaviour created a gap between Cuza and the political class. Forced to renounce power and go into exile, Cuza eventually died far his home country. Determined to bring the country closer to the West, Romanian politicians invited prince Carol to take over the throne, a member of the German aristocratic family of Hohenzollern. His rule, the longest in Romania's history, lasted 48 years and had a decisive contribution to the consolidation of the Romanian state. It was during his rule that the country acquired full independence in 1877 and saw the proclamation of the Romanian Kingdom in 1881. Carol's successor, Ferdinand 1st, acquired the union of all Romanians in 1918, after World War One.
Known in history as Greater Romania, this was a rather temporary construction. In 1940, Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia re-annexed the eastern Romanian territories of Bassarabia and northern Bukovina, today divided between the ex-Soviet republics of Moldova and Ukraine. The relationship today between Chisinau and Bucharest is not very good. Having resumed power, the pro-Russian communists in Moldova are trying to legitimise the artificial concept of a Moldovan identity as something different from Romanian identity. Blinded by a pathological anti-Romanian feeling, president Vladimir Voronin and his people are seeking to manufacture a Moldova for their own personal use, and intentionally forget that the unification of Romanians started with Cuza's first election in Iasi, which is, in fact, Moldova's historical capital.
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