Prehistory

Human remains found in Peștera cu Oase ("Cave with Bones"), radiocarbon date from circa 40,000 years ago, and represent the oldest known Homo sapiens in Europe.^[27] Neolithic agriculture spread after the arrival of a mixed group of people from Thessaly in the 6th millennium BC.^[28]^[29] Excavations near a salt spring at Lunca yielded the earliest evidence for salt exploitation in Europe; here salt production began between the 5th and 4th millennium BC.^[30] The first permanent settlements developed into "proto-cities",^[31] which were larger than 320 hectares (800 acres).^[32]^[33]

The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture—the best known archaeological culture of Old Europe—flourished in Muntenia, southeastern Transylvania and northeastern Moldavia between c. 5500 to 2750 BC.^[34] During its middle phase (c. 4000 to 3500 BC), populations belonging to the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture built the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe, some of which contained as many as three thousand structures and were possibly inhabited by 20,000 to 46,000 people.^[35]

The first fortified settlements appeared around 1800 BC, showing the militant character of Bronze Age societies.^[33]

Antiquity

Greek colonies established on the Black Sea coast in the 7th century BC became important centres of commerce with the local tribes.^[36]^[37] Among the native peoples, Herodotus listed the Getae of the Lower Danube region, the Agathyrsi of Transylvania and the Syginnae of the plains along the river Tisza at the beginning of the 5th century BC.^[38] Centuries later, Strabo associated the Getae with the Dacians who dominated the lands along the southern Carpathian Mountains in the 1st century BC.^[39]

Burebista was the first Dacian ruler to unite the local tribes.^[39]^[41] He also conquered the Greek colonies in Dobruja and the neighbouring peoples as far as the Middle Danube and the Balkan Mountains between around 55 and 44 BC.^[39]^[42] After Burebista was murdered in 44 BC, his kingdom collapsed.^[39]^[43]

The Romans reached Dacia during Burebista's reign and conquered Dobruja in 46 AD.^[43] Dacia was again united under Decebalus around 85 AD.^[39]^[44] He resisted the Romans for decades, but the Roman army defeated his troops in 106 AD.^[45] Emperor Trajan transformed Banat, Oltenia, and the greater part of Transylvania into a new province called Roman Dacia, but Dacian and Sarmatian tribes continued to dominate the lands along the Roman frontiers.^[46]^[47]

The Romans pursued an organised colonisation policy, and the provincials enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity in the 2nd century.^[48]^[49] Scholars accepting the Daco-Roman continuity theory—one of the main theories about the origin of the Romanians—say that the cohabitation of the native Dacians and the Roman colonists in Roman Dacia was the first phase of the Romanians' ethnogenesis.^[50]^[51] The Carpians, Goths, and other neighbouring tribes made regular raids against Dacia from the 210s.^[52]

The Romans could not resist, and Emperor Aurelian ordered the evacuation of the province Dacia Trajana in the 270s.^[53] Scholars supporting the continuity theory are convinced that most Latin-speaking commoners stayed behind when the army and civil administration were withdrawn.^[54] The Romans did not abandon their fortresses along the northern banks of the Lower Danube for decades, and Dobruja (known as Scythia Minor) remained an integral part of the Roman Empire until the early 7th century.^[50]^[55]

Middle Ages

Thumb — Gutthiuda, or the land of the Gothic-speaking Thervingi, and the neighbouring tribes (370s AD)

The Goths were expanding towards the Lower Danube from the 230s, forcing the native peoples to flee to the Roman Empire or to accept their suzerainty.^[56]^[57]^[58] The Goths' rule ended abruptly when the Huns invaded their territory in 376, causing new waves of migrations.^[56]^[58]^[59] The Huns forced the remnants of the local population into submission, but their empire collapsed in 454.^[56]^[60] The Gepids took possession of the former Dacia province.^[61]^[62] Place names that are of Slavic origin abound in Romania, indicating that a significant Slavic-speaking population lived in the territory.^[63] The first Slavic groups settled in Moldavia and Wallachia in the 6th century,^[64] in Transylvania around 600.^[65] The nomadic Avars defeated the Gepids and established a powerful empire around 570.^[56]^[66] The Bulgars, who also came from the European Pontic steppe, occupied the Lower Danube region in 680.^[56]

Thumb — First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018) around 850

After the Avar Khaganate collapsed in the 790s, the First Bulgarian Empire became the dominant power of the region, occupying lands as far as the river Tisa.^[56] The First Bulgarian Empire had a mixed population consisting of the Bulgar conquerors, Slavs, and Vlachs (or Romanians) but the Slavicisation of the Bulgar elite had already begun in the 9th century. Following the conquest of southern Transylvania around 830, people from the Bulgar Empire mined salt at the local salt mines.^[67] The Council of Preslav declared Old Church Slavonic the language of liturgy in the country in 893.^[68] The Vlachs also adopted Old Church Slavonic as their liturgical language.^[69]

The Magyars (or Hungarians) took control of the steppes north of the Lower Danube in the 830s, but the Bulgarians and the Pechenegs jointly forced them to abandon this region for the lowlands along the Middle Danube around 894.^[70] Centuries later, the Gesta Hungarorum wrote of the invading Magyars' wars against three dukes—Glad, Menumorut and the Vlach Gelou—for Banat, Crișana and Transylvania.^[71]^[72] The Gesta also listed many peoples—Slavs, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Khazars, and Székelys—inhabiting the same regions.^[73]^[74] The reliability of the Gesta is debated. Some scholars regard it as a basically accurate account, others describe it as a literary work filled with invented details.^[75]^[76]^[77] The Pechenegs seized the lowlands abandoned by the Hungarians to the east of the Carpathians.^[78]

Byzantine missionaries proselytised in the lands east of the Tisa from the 940s^[79] and Byzantine troops occupied Dobruja in the 970s.^[80] The first king of Hungary, Stephen I, who supported Western European missionaries, defeated the local chieftains and established Roman Catholic bishoprics (office of a bishop) in Transylvania and Banat in the early 11th century.^[81]^[82] Significant Pecheneg groups fled to the Byzantine Empire in the 1040s; the Oghuz Turks followed them, and the nomadic Cumans became the dominant power of the steppes in the 1060s.^[83] Cooperation between the Cumans and the Vlachs against the Byzantine Empire is well documented from the end of the 11th century.^[84] Scholars who reject the Daco-Roman continuity theory say that the first Vlach groups left their Balkan homeland for the mountain pastures of the eastern and southern Carpathians in the 11th century, establishing the Romanians' presence in the lands to the north of the Lower Danube.^[85]

Exposed to nomadic incursions, Transylvania developed into an important border province of the Kingdom of Hungary.^[86]^[87] The Székelys—a community of free warriors—settled in central Transylvania around 1100 and moved to the easternmost regions around 1200.^[88] Colonists from the Holy Roman Empire—the Transylvanian Saxons' ancestors—came to the province in the 1150s.^[88]^[89] A high-ranking royal official, styled voivode, ruled the Transylvanian counties from the 1170s, but the Székely and Saxon seats (or districts) were not subject to the voivodes' authority.^[90] Royal charters wrote of the "Vlachs' land" in southern Transylvania in the early 13th century, indicating the existence of autonomous Romanian communities.^[91] Papal correspondence mentions the activities of Orthodox prelates among the Romanians in Muntenia in the 1230s.^[92] Also in the 13th century, the Republic of Genoa started establishing colonies on the Black Sea, including Calafat, and Constanța.^[93]^[94]

The Mongols destroyed large territories during their invasion of Eastern and Central Europe in 1241 and 1242.^[95] The Mongols' Golden Horde emerged as the dominant power of Eastern Europe, but Béla IV of Hungary's land grant to the Knights Hospitallers in Oltenia and Muntenia shows that the local Vlach rulers were subject to the king's authority in 1247.^[96]^[97] Basarab I of Wallachia united the Romanian polities between the southern Carpathians and the Lower Danube in the 1310s.^[98] He defeated the Hungarian royal army in the Battle of Posada and secured the independence of Wallachia in 1330.^[99]^[100] The second Romanian principality, Moldavia, achieved full autonomy during the reign of Bogdan I around 1360.^[100] A local dynasty ruled the Despotate of Dobruja in the second half of the 14th century, but the Ottoman Empire took possession of the territory after 1388.^[101]

Princes Mircea I and Vlad III of Wallachia, and Stephen III of Moldavia defended their countries' independence against the Ottomans. Most Wallachian and Moldavian princes paid a regular tribute to the Ottoman sultans from 1417 and 1456, respectively.^[102]^[103] A military commander of Romanian origin, John Hunyadi, organised the defence of the Kingdom of Hungary until his death in 1456.^[104] Increasing taxes outraged the Transylvanian peasants, and they rose up in an open rebellion in 1437, but the Hungarian nobles and the heads of the Saxon and Székely communities jointly suppressed their revolt.^[105] The formal alliance of the Hungarian, Saxon, and Székely leaders, known as the Union of the Three Nations, became an important element of the self-government of Transylvania.^[106] The Orthodox Romanian knezes ("chiefs") were excluded from the Union.^[106]

Early Modern Times and national awakening

The Kingdom of Hungary collapsed, and the Ottomans occupied parts of Banat and Crișana in 1541.^[106] Transylvania and Maramureș, along with the rest of Banat and Crișana developed into a new state under Ottoman suzerainty, the Principality of Transylvania.^[107] Reformation spread and four denominations—Calvinism, Lutheranism, Unitarianism, and Roman Catholicism—were officially acknowledged in 1568.^[108] The Romanians' Orthodox faith remained only tolerated,^[108] although they made up more than one-third of the population, according to 17th-century estimations.^[109]^[110]

During the Long Turkish War, Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave (portrayed to the right) reigned briefly over the three medieval principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, covering most of the present-day territory of Romania.

The princes of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia joined the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire in 1594.^[111] The Wallachian prince, Michael the Brave, united the three principalities under his rule in May 1600.^[112]^[113] The neighboring powers forced him to abdicate in September, but he became a symbol of the unification of the Romanian lands in the 19th century.^[112] Although the rulers of the three principalities continued to pay tribute to the Ottomans, the most talented princes—Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania, Matei Basarab of Wallachia, and Vasile Lupu of Moldavia—strengthened their autonomy.^[114]

The united armies of the Holy League expelled the Ottoman troops from Central Europe between 1684 and 1699, and the Principality of Transylvania was integrated into the Habsburg monarchy.^[115] The Habsburgs supported the Catholic clergy and persuaded the Orthodox Romanian prelates to accept the union with the Roman Catholic Church in 1699.^[116] The Church Union strengthened the Romanian intellectuals' devotion to their Roman heritage.^[117] The Orthodox Church was restored in Transylvania only after Orthodox monks stirred up revolts in 1744 and 1759.^[118] The organisation of the Transylvanian Military Frontier caused further disturbances, especially among the Székelys in 1764.^[119]

Princes Dimitrie Cantemir of Moldavia and Constantin Brâncoveanu of Wallachia concluded alliances with the Habsburg Monarchy and Russia against the Ottomans, but they were dethroned in 1711 and 1714, respectively.^[120] The sultans lost confidence in the native princes and appointed Orthodox merchants from the Phanar district of Istanbul to rule Moldova and Wallachia.^[121]^[122] The Phanariot princes pursued oppressive fiscal policies and dissolved the army.^[123] The neighboring powers took advantage of the situation: the Habsburg Monarchy annexed the northwestern part of Moldavia, or Bukovina, in 1775, and the Russian Empire seized the eastern half of Moldavia, or Bessarabia, in 1812.^[124]^[125]

A census revealed that the Romanians were more numerous than any other ethnic group in Transylvania in 1733, but legislation continued to use contemptuous adjectives (such as "tolerated" and "admitted") when referring to them.^[126]^[127] The Uniate bishop, Inocențiu Micu-Klein who demanded recognition of the Romanians as the fourth privileged nation was forced into exile.^[128]^[127] Uniate and Orthodox clerics and laymen jointly signed a plea for the Transylvanian Romanians' emancipation in 1791, but the monarch and the local authorities refused to grant their requests.^[129]^[126]

The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca authorised the Russian ambassador in Istanbul to defend the autonomy of Moldavia and Wallachia (known as the Danubian Principalities) in 1774.^[130] Taking advantage of the Greek War of Independence, a Wallachian lesser nobleman, Tudor Vladimirescu, stirred up a revolt against the Ottomans in January 1821, but he was murdered in June by Phanariot Greeks.^[131] After a new Russo-Turkish War, the Treaty of Adrianople strengthened the autonomy of the Danubian Principalities in 1829, although it also acknowledged the sultan's right to confirm the election of the princes.^[132]

Mihail Kogălniceanu, Nicolae Bălcescu and other leaders of the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia demanded the emancipation of the peasants and the union of the two principalities, but Russian and Ottoman troops crushed their revolt.^[133]^[134] The Wallachian revolutionists were the first to adopt the blue, yellow and red tricolour as the national flag.^[135] In Transylvania, most Romanians supported the imperial government against the Hungarian revolutionaries after the Diet passed a law concerning the union of Transylvania and Hungary.^[135] Bishop Andrei Șaguna proposed the unification of the Romanians of the Habsburg Monarchy in a separate duchy, but the central government refused to change the internal borders.^[136]

Independence and monarchy

The Treaty of Paris put the Danubian Principalities under the collective guardianship of the Great Powers in 1856.^[134] After special assemblies convoked in Moldavia and Wallachia urged the unification of the two principalities, the Great Powers did not prevent the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as their collective domnitor (or ruling prince) in January 1859.^[137] The united principalities officially adopted the name Romania on 21 February 1862.^[138] Cuza's government carried out a series of reforms, including the secularisation of the property of monasteries and agrarian reform, but a coalition of conservative and radical politicians forced him to abdicate in February 1866.^[139]^[140]

Cuza's successor, a German prince, Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (or Carol I), was elected in May.^[141] The parliament adopted the first constitution of Romania in the same year.^[142] The Great Powers acknowledged Romania's full independence at the Congress of Berlin and Carol I was crowned king in 1881.^[143] The Congress also granted the Danube Delta and Dobruja to Romania.^[143] Although Romanian scholars strove for the unification of all Romanians into a Greater Romania, the government did not openly support their irredentist projects.^[144]

The Transylvanian Romanians and Saxons wanted to maintain the separate status of Transylvania in the Habsburg Monarchy, but the Austro-Hungarian Compromise brought about the union of the province with Hungary in 1867.^[145] Ethnic Romanian politicians sharply opposed the Hungarian government's attempts to transform Hungary into a national state, especially the laws prescribing the obligatory teaching of Hungarian.^[143] Leaders of the Romanian National Party proposed the federalisation of Austria-Hungary and the Romanian intellectuals established a cultural association to promote the use of Romanian.^[146]^[147]

World Wars and Greater Romania

Fearing Russian expansionism, Romania secretly joined the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy in 1883, but public opinion remained hostile to Austria-Hungary.^[148]^[149] Romania seized Southern Dobruja from Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War in 1913.^[150] German and Austrian-Hungarian diplomacy supported Bulgaria during the war, bringing about a rapprochement between Romania and the Triple Entente of France, Russia and the United Kingdom.^[150] The country remained neutral when World War I broke out in 1914, but Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu started negotiations with the Entente Powers.^[151] After they promised Austrian-Hungarian territories with a majority of ethnic Romanian population to Romania in the Treaty of Bucharest, Romania entered the war against the Central Powers in 1916.^[151]^[152] The German and Austrian-Hungarian troops defeated the Romanian army and occupied three-quarters of the country by early 1917.^[153] After the October Revolution turned Russia from an ally into an enemy, Romania was forced to sign a harsh peace treaty with the Central Powers in May 1918,^[154] but the collapse of Russia also enabled the union of Bessarabia with Romania.^[155] King Ferdinand again mobilised the Romanian army on behalf of the Entente Powers a day before Germany capitulated on 11 November 1918.^[154]

Austria-Hungary quickly disintegrated after the war.^[154] The General Congress of Bukovina proclaimed the union of the province with Romania on 28 November 1918, and the Grand National Assembly proclaimed the union of Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș with the kingdom on 1 December.^[156]^[157] Peace treaties with Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary delineated the new borders in 1919 and 1920, but the Soviet Union did not acknowledge the loss of Bessarabia.^[158] Romania achieved its greatest territorial extent, expanding from the pre-war 137,000 to 295,000 km² (53,000 to 114,000 sq mi).^[159] A new electoral system granted voting rights to all adult male citizens, and a series of radical agrarian reforms transformed the country into a "nation of small landowners" between 1918 and 1921.^[160] Gender equality as a principle was enacted, but women could not vote or be candidates.^[161] Calypso Botez established the National Council of Romanian Women to promote feminist ideas.^[161] Romania was a multiethnic country, with ethnic minorities making up about 30% of the population, but the new constitution declared it a unitary national state in 1923.^[159]^[162]^[163] Although minorities could establish their own schools, Romanian language, history and geography could only be taught in Romanian.^[164]

Agriculture remained the principal sector of economy, but several branches of industry—especially the production of coal, oil, metals, synthetic rubber, explosives and cosmetics—developed during the interwar period.^[165]^[166] With oil production of 5.8 million tons in 1930, Romania ranked sixth in the world.^[166] Two parties, the National Liberal Party and the National Peasants' Party, dominated political life, but the Great Depression in Romania brought about significant changes in the 1930s.^[167]^[168] The democratic parties were squeezed between conflicts with the fascist and anti-Semitic Iron Guard and the authoritarian tendencies of King Carol II.^[169] The King promulgated a new constitution and dissolved the political parties in 1938, replacing the parliamentary system with a royal dictatorship.^[170]^[171]

Thumb — Romania's territorial losses in the summer of 1940. Of these territories, only Northern Transylvania was regained after the end of World War II.

The 1938 Munich Agreement convinced King Carol II that France and the United Kingdom could not defend Romanian interests.^[172] German preparations for a new war required the regular supply of Romanian oil and agricultural products.^[172] The two countries concluded a treaty concerning the coordination of their economic policies in 1939, but the King could not persuade Adolf Hitler to guarantee Romania's frontiers.^[173] Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union on 26 June 1940, Northern Transylvania to Hungary on 30 August, and Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria in September.^[174] After the territorial losses, the King was forced to abdicate in favour of his minor son, Michael I, on 6 September, and Romania was transformed into a national-legionary state under the leadership of General Ion Antonescu.^[175] Antonescu signed the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy and Japan on 23 November.^[176] The Iron Guard staged a coup against Antonescu, but he crushed the riot with German support and introduced a military dictatorship in early 1941.^[177]

Romania entered World War II soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.^[178] The country regained Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and the Germans placed Transnistria (the territory between the rivers Dniester and Dnieper) under Romanian administration.^[179] Romanian and German troops massacred at least 160,000 local Jews in these territories; more than 105,000 Jews and about 11,000 Gypsies died during their deportation from Bessarabia to Transnistria.^[180] Most of the Jewish population of Moldavia, Wallachia, Banat and Southern Transylvania survived,^[181] but their fundamental rights were limited.^[182] After the September 1943 Allied armistice with Italy, Romania became the second Axis power in Europe in 1943–1944.^[183]^[184] After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, about 132,000 Jews – mainly Hungarian-speaking – were deported to extermination camps from Northern Transylvania with the Hungarian authorities' support.^[180]^[185]

After the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, Iuliu Maniu, a leader of the opposition to Antonescu, entered into secret negotiations with British diplomats who made it clear that Romania had to seek reconciliation with the Soviet Union.^[186] To facilitate the coordination of their activities against Antonescu's regime, the National Liberal and National Peasants' parties established the National Democratic Bloc, which also included the Social Democratic and Communist parties.^[187] After a successful Soviet offensive, the young King Michael I ordered Antonescu's arrest and appointed politicians from the National Democratic Bloc to form a new government on 23 August 1944.^[188] Romania switched sides during the war, and nearly 250,000 Romanian troops joined the Red Army's military campaign against Hungary and Germany, but Joseph Stalin regarded the country as an occupied territory within the Soviet sphere of influence.^[189] Stalin's deputy instructed the King to make the Communists' candidate, Petru Groza, the prime minister in March 1945.^[190]^[191] The Romanian administration in Northern Transylvania was soon restored, and Groza's government carried out an agrarian reform.^[191] In February 1947, the Paris Peace Treaties confirmed the return of Northern Transylvania to Romania, but they also legalised the presence of units of the Red Army in the country.^[192]^[193]

Communism

Thumb — King Michael I of Romania was forced to abdicate by the communists in late December 1947, simultaneously with the Soviet occupation of the country.

During the Soviet occupation of Romania, the communist-dominated government called for new elections in 1946, which they fraudulently won, with a fabricated 70% majority of the vote.^[194] Thus, they rapidly established themselves as the dominant political force.^[195] Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, a communist party leader imprisoned in 1933, escaped in 1944 to become Romania's first communist leader. In February 1947, he and others forced King Michael I to abdicate and leave the country and proclaimed Romania a people's republic.^[196]^[197] Romania remained under the direct military occupation and economic control of the USSR until the late 1950s. During this period, Romania's vast natural resources were drained continuously by mixed Soviet-Romanian companies (SovRoms) set up for unilateral exploitative purposes.^[198]^[199]^[200]

In 1948, the state began to nationalise private firms and to collectivise agriculture.^[201] Until the early 1960s, the government severely curtailed political liberties and vigorously suppressed any dissent with the help of the Securitate—the Romanian secret police. During this period the regime launched several campaigns of purges during which numerous "enemies of the state" and "parasite elements" were targeted for different forms of punishment including: deportation, internal exile, internment in forced labour camps and prisons—sometimes for life—as well as extrajudicial killing.^[202] Nevertheless, anti-communist resistance was one of the most long-lasting and strongest in the Eastern Bloc.^[203] A 2006 commission estimated the number of direct victims of the Communist repression at two million people.^[204]

In 1965, Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power and started to conduct the country's foreign policy more independently from the Soviet Union. Thus, communist Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country which refused to participate in the Soviet-led 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Ceaușescu even publicly condemned the action as "a big mistake, [and] a serious danger to peace in Europe and to the fate of Communism in the world".^[205] It was the only Communist state to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel after 1967's Six-Day War and established diplomatic relations with West Germany the same year.^[206] At the same time, close ties with the Arab countries and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) allowed Romania to play a key role in the Israel–Egypt and Israel–PLO peace talks.^[207]

As Romania's foreign debt increased sharply between 1977 and 1981 (from US$3 billion to $10 billion),^[208] the influence of international financial organisations—such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—grew, gradually conflicting with Ceaușescu's autocratic rule. He eventually initiated a policy of total reimbursement of the foreign debt by imposing austerity steps that impoverished the population and exhausted the economy. The process succeeded in repaying all of Romania's foreign government debt in 1989. At the same time, Ceaușescu greatly extended the authority of the Securitate secret police and imposed a severe cult of personality, which led to a dramatic decrease in the dictator's popularity and culminated in his overthrow in the violent Romanian Revolution of December 1989 in which thousands were killed or injured.

After a trial, Ceaușescu and his wife were executed by firing squad at a military base outside Bucharest on 25 December 1989.^[209]^[210] The charges for which they were executed were, among others, genocide by starvation.

Contemporary period

After the 1989 revolution, the National Salvation Front (FSN), led by Ion Iliescu, took partial and superficial multi-party democratic and free market measures after seizing power as an ad interim governing body.^[211]^[212] In March 1990, violent outbreaks went on in Târgu Mureș as a result of Hungarian oppression in the region. In April 1990, a sit-in protest contesting the results of that year's legislative elections and accusing the FSN, including Iliescu, of being made up of former Communists and members of the Securitate grew rapidly to become what was called the Golaniad. Peaceful demonstrations degenerated into violence, prompting the intervention of coal miners summoned by Iliescu. This episode has been documented widely by both local^[213] and foreign media,^[214] and is remembered as the June 1990 Mineriad.^[215]^[216]

The subsequent disintegration of the Front produced several political parties, including most notably the Social Democratic Party (PDSR then PSD) and the Democratic Party (PD and subsequently PDL). The former governed Romania from 1990 until 1996 through several coalitions and governments, with Ion Iliescu as head of state. Since then, there have been several other democratic changes of government: in 1996 Emil Constantinescu was elected president, in 2000 Iliescu returned to power, while Traian Băsescu was elected in 2004 and narrowly re-elected in 2009.^[217]

In 2009, the country was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund as an aftershock of the Great Recession in Europe.^[218] In November 2014, Sibiu former FDGR/DFDR mayor Klaus Iohannis was elected president, unexpectedly defeating former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who had been previously leading in the opinion polls. This surprise victory was attributed by many analysts to the implication of the Romanian diaspora in the voting process, with almost 50% casting their votes for Klaus Iohannis in the first round, compared to only 16% for Ponta.^[219] In 2019, Iohannis was re-elected president in a landslide victory over former Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă.^[220]

The post–1989 period is characterised by the fact that most of the former industrial and economic enterprises which were built and operated during the communist period were closed, mainly as a result of the policies of privatisation of the post–1989 regimes.^[221]

Corruption has been a major issue in contemporary Romanian politics.^[222] In November 2015, massive anti-corruption protests which developed in the wake of the Colectiv nightclub fire led to the resignation of Romania's Prime Minister Victor Ponta.^[223] During 2017–2018, in response to measures which were perceived to weaken the fight against corruption, some of the biggest protests since 1989 took place in Romania, with over 500,000 people protesting across the country.^[224]^[225] Nevertheless, there have been significant reforms aimed at tackling corruption. A National Anticorruption Directorate was formed in the country in 2002, inspired by similar institutions in Belgium, Norway and Spain.^[226] Since 2014, Romania launched an anti-corruption effort that led to the prosecution of medium- and high-level political, judicial and administrative offenses by the National Anticorruption Directorate.^[227]

NATO and EU integration

After the end of the Cold War, Romania developed closer ties with Western Europe and the United States, eventually joining NATO in 2004, and hosting the 2008 summit in Bucharest.^[228] The country applied in June 1993 for membership in the European Union and became an Associated State of the EU in 1995, an Acceding Country in 2004, and a full member on 1 January 2007.^[229]

During the 2000s, Romania had one of the highest economic growth rates in Europe and has been referred at times as "the Tiger of Eastern Europe".^[230] This has been accompanied by a significant improvement in living standards as the country successfully reduced domestic poverty and established a functional democratic state.^[231]^[232] However, Romania's development suffered a major setback during the late 2000s' recession leading to a large gross domestic product contraction and a budget deficit in 2009.^[233] This led to Romania borrowing from the International Monetary Fund.^[234] Worsening economic conditions led to unrest and triggered a political crisis in 2012.^[235]

Near the end of 2013, The Economist reported Romania again enjoying "booming" economic growth at 4.1% that year, with wages rising fast and a lower unemployment than in Britain. Economic growth accelerated in the midst of government liberalisation in opening up new sectors to competition and investment—most notably, energy and telecoms.^[236] In 2016, the Human Development Index ranked Romania as a nation of "Very High Human Development".^[237]

Following the experience of economic instability throughout the 1990s, and the implementation of a free travel agreement with the EU, a great number of Romanians emigrated to Western Europe and North America, with particularly large communities in Italy, Germany, and Spain. In 2016, the Romanian diaspora was estimated to be over 3.6 million people, the fifth-highest emigrant population in the world.^[238]