Romania–Russia relations
Encyclopedia
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and Russia. Romania has an embassy in Moscow and 2 consulate-general (in Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
and Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
). Russia has an embassy in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
and a consulate-general in Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....
. Historical relations have oscillated between grudging cooperation, neutrality and open hatred and hostility.
Both countries refused to recognize Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
's independence from Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
and strongly supported its territorial integrity (albeit for different reasons). About 30,000 Russians live in Romania, mainly in the Tulcea County
Tulcea County
Tulcea is a county of Romania, in the historical region Dobruja, with the capital city at Tulcea.-Demographics:In 2002, Tulcea County had a population of 256,492...
(see Lipovans
Lipovans
Lipovans or Lippovans are the Old Believers, mostly of Russian ethnic origin, who settled in the Moldavian Principality, in Dobruja and Eastern Muntenia...
). About 5,308 Romanians live in Russia, mainly in the Russian Far East
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
. Both countries are full members of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...
.
History
In 1992 and 1993, relations between the two were especially strained, as they backed opposite sides in the Transnistria conflict. Romania is part of NATO, which Russia views in a highly negative light. Debates over the status of TransnistriaTransnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
maintain antagonism between Romanians and Russians. Furthermore, according to The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 by Misha Glenny, dislike of Russia and Russians
Russophobia
Russophobia refers to a diverse spectrum of prejudices, dislikes or fears of Russia, Russians, or Russian culture. Its opposite is Russophilia....
is deeply integrated into Romanian culture since the end of the 19th century due to chronic quarrels between the two countries, and has been for most of the modern era. Many Russians have negative views of Romanians as well.
1700s and early 1800s
Russian-Romanian relations were generally cordial until the end of the 19th century when Russia was helping Romania free itself of Ottoman domination.Russia's role as a spiritual "guardian" for the Ottomon Empire's Orthodox Christian subjects was affirmed in the 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, and Russia soon after gained a border with the Ottomon Empire right next to the Romanian principalities. The "Danubian Principalities" (Wallachia and Moldavia) were then semi-autonomous, ruled by Greek Phanariot hospodars, whom the Romanians (both the boyars and the peasantry) widely resented. The hospodars were overthrown by a Romanian revolution led by Vladimirescu (a former Russian army soldier). A Romanian oligarchy replaced the Greek Phanariot one, but faced with the threat of peasant unrest, the new Romanian proto-state actually welcomed the return of Ottomon rule. However, Romania was flooded with French literary works transmitting Enlightenment ideas, and due to the similarity of Romanian and French, these had a much faster effect on Romania than other areas. Hence, from a very early time, there was competition between France and Russia for Romania's affinities, even though Russia was the only one of the two to have any real immediate significance to Romania.
Romania's independence from the Ottoman Empire was achieved mainly with Russian assistance, although during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 it was the Russians that requested military assistance from Romania, after suffering heavy losses in Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
.
From very early on, however, Romanian economic competition with Russia throttled good relations. Romania is a natural economic rival of Russia (on the eve of World War II, in fact, it was the world's fourth larges food exporter, after Russia, Canada and the US): if managed properly, it is a breadbasket, and also had a large supply of oil at the time. Russia moved to try to make Romania a pliant satellite. Romanian boyars were thus forced to sign the Organic Declarations by Russia. Balkans expert Misha Glenny explains Russia's historical attitude towards Romania as such:
...Russia saw wheat cultivation in Romania as a a threat to its own harvests in southern Russia, much of it sold on to Britain and France. If the Principalities were able to modernize the port facilities on the DanubeDanubeThe Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
and the Black SeaBlack SeaThe Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, they could begin to undercut the price of Russian wheat on world markets. To throttle this competition, Russia exploited its position as protector of the Principalities by allowing the mouth of the Danube to silt up. Russia's interest in the Principalities was essentially strategic. St. Petersburg wanted a pliant satellite, not an economic competitor.
1848 to World War I
Russia's actions caused a multiplication of anti-Russian sentiment throughout the Principalities, for each group having a different reason. The urban elite (the later Liberals) were frustrated by Russia's opposition to reform in Romania; while landowning boyars (the later Conservatives) were frustrated by Russia's impediments on the economy. These feelings provided the basis for the modern anti-Russian sentiment in Romania.In 1848, Romanians for the first time revolted against Russia, and the Russian flag and the Organic Declarations were burned in public. Romania in fact wooed the Porte, which had to be "persuaded" by Russia not to aid the Romanians.
In July 1853, Russia invaded and occupied Romania. Russian occupation was harsh and all political organizations were suppressed. When the Porte declared war on Russia in October of that year, Romanians hoped desperately that Russia would be driven from their country (ironically by the country which they had just recently separated from). This wish was granted by the coalition of both Turkey and Austria against Russia.
World War II and after
On the onset of World War II, Romania was divided in sympathies. Most of the country followed the Liberals' Western ideals, mainly represented by Nicolae TitulescuNicolae Titulescu
Nicolae Titulescu was a well-known Romanian diplomat, at various times government minister, finance and foreign minister, and for two terms President of the General Assembly of the League of Nations . He was a member of the Freemasonry.-Early years:...
, while swathes of peasantry and young intellectuals supported the fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael , an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period...
. Initially allied with France and the United Kingdom, Romania pledged neutrality
Neutrality (international relations)
A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907...
early in the war.
Titulescu had a policy of a "balancing act", which succeeded (while he was in power) of balancing out the dangerous influences of both the Third Reich (Nazi Germany) and the Soviet Union, by trying to maintain cordial relations with both sides. Titulescu's Romania also supported the other two members of the Little Entente
Little Entente
The Little Entente was an alliance formed in 1920 and 1921 by Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia with the purpose of common defense against Hungarian revision and the prevention of a Habsburg restoration...
(Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) whenever possible, and tried to remind France of her commitments in the region. However, in addition to the destabilizing growth and momentum of Codreanu's various fascist organizations (the Iron Guard, TPT, etc.), there was also the king and his "camarilla", who had returned to Romania. The goal of King Carol (and his camaraderie, a circle of business men as well as his wife, Elena Lupescu's influential "friends") was to create an industrialized Romania, brought to the standards of Western Europe. However, Romania's population was dominated by rural peasantry, who greatly resented the upper classes, and would vehemently oppose any such plan. The King, having already vastly increased his influence by exploiting political quarrels both between parties and within the Liberal party as well as using his right to decide who the Prime Minister was, was eventually persuaded that democracy was an obstacle to his goal of an industrialized Romania. The electorate and parliament slowly became more and more dependent on the King, and were practically his tool by 1938. Codreanu's influence was also growing. He won support mainly among Moldavian and Transylvanian Romanian peasants not only by protesting in favor of their rights, he also actually gave assistance in bringing in the harvest, building bridges, etc. The affinity of the peasantry to Codreanu grew as resentment to the king and his camaderie grew, not in the least because of large amount of Jews in close association with him (which also aided the indoctrination of the peasants with anti-Semitic ideologies), including his wife. In 1936, Titulescu was forced to resign over a scandal, and in 1938, the Liberals lost their dominance of the parliament. Even more alarmingly, about 26% of the electorate voted for Codreanu's party, and 9% for the Goga-Cuza alliance (an anti-Semitic coalition which had since broken with Codreanu). Carol, repulsed by Codreanu, allowed the Goga-Cuza alliance into the government, and after two months had sown discord between them and Codreanu's faction. The two groups began fighting, and Carol announced a state of emergency and a ban on all political activity, basically solidifying his dictatorship. Facing a decision between a monarchy and a fascist state, the Liberals quickly sided with Carol. By this time, Czechoslovakia and Poland had already been attacked by Germany, having been abandoned by the reluctance of France to engage in war.
However, the fall of France and Britain's retreat from continental Europe rendered their promises of protection meaningless, and on June 26, 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum forcing Romania to cede Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza region. Consequently, Romania left the Allied camp and joined the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
. Romania contributed extensively to Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, and also aided Nazi Germany economically. Romania also annexed Transnistria, partly as a compensation for the loss of Northern Transylvania to Hungary. This move was met with much controversy and opposition in Romania. After the tides reversed against the Axis in 1944, Romania again switched sides and joined the Allies, with the Romanian Army fighting alongside the Soviets across Central and Eastern Europe
Central and Eastern Europe
Central and Eastern Europe is a term describing former communist states in Europe, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90. In scholarly literature the abbreviations CEE or CEEC are often used for this concept...
.
The forceful imposition of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
on Romania, described by Misha Glenny's book as the "only Balkan country in which practically none of the population supported communism", as well as the Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
conflict have obviously not improved the situation for cultural relations between the two groups either.
Raise of the Russian Federation
Romania's foreign policy after 1990 was built exclusively on geo-strategic reasons and less on economic relations, which has led to minimal relations with Russia.It was only in 1999 that Bucharest said it was ready to reconsider its relations with Moscow, both at political and economic level.
A series of high-level contacts culminated with a visit of President Traian Basescu to Moscow in 2005, but his statements at the time, of overcoming historical prejudice of the previous 15 years, did not take shape as the relations continued to freeze.
A main source of tension now is the status of Moldova. The conflict over Moldova, or Bessarabia, is not new. It has been ongoing between Romania and Russia for over a century, due to Russia's strategic interests in the region conflicting with Romania's goal of a unified pan-Romanian state. Bessarabia, now known to most of the world as Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, was originally a region within Moldavia; Romania was forced to hand it over to Russia at the 1870s Congress of Berlin
Congress of Berlin
The Congress of Berlin was a meeting of the European Great Powers' and the Ottoman Empire's leading statesmen in Berlin in 1878. In the wake of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the meeting's aim was to reorganize the countries of the Balkans...
. It was briefly regained, then retaken by the Soviet Union after World War II. Romanians may view Moldova as being "stolen" by Russia. Romania regained the territory at the end of World War I, only to lose it again at the end of World War II. At the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Romanian language (under the controversial name of the "Moldovan language") with a Latin script was mandated as the official language of Moldova, causing conflict with non Romanian-speaking regions (namely, Gagauzia
Gagauzia
Gagauzia , formally known as the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Găgăuzia , is an autonomous region of...
and Transnistria). However, Moldova opted against rejoining Romania at the time, claiming that it had a separate national identity
National identity
National identity is the person's identity and sense of belonging to one state or to one nation, a feeling one shares with a group of people, regardless of one's citizenship status....
(see: Moldovan–Romanian relations; movement for the unification of Romania and Moldova). Romanians may view Moldovans as being victims of forced Russification and brainwashing.
Dispute over the Romanian treasure
After the fall of the USSR, the Russian governments' position toward the Romanian TreasureRomanian Treasure
The Romanian Treasure is a collection of valuable objects the Romanian government sent to Russia for safekeeping during World War I. It was only partially returned .-Historical background:...
remained the same and various negotiations failed. The Romanian-Russian treaty of 2003 did not mention the Treasure; presidents Ion Iliescu
Ion Iliescu
Ion Iliescu served as President of Romania from 1990 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party , whose honorary president he remains....
and Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
decided to create a commission to analyze this problem, but no advances were made.