1	The Romanian Monarchy A Hohenzollern King was invited to rule Romania starting in 1866 Brought in by the wealthy traditional landowners known as the Boyars.
2	Romania in World War I Romania fought in WWI on the Allied side and had great territorial expansion after the war. Victory came at a great cost. The war created Greater Romania from: Hungary: Transylvania and the Banat Austria: Bukovina Russia: Bessarabia Romania doubled its territory and population Its minority population substantially increased, particularly Hungarians and Jews.
3	Romania in the 20s: Prospects for Democracy Good prospects for democracy developed in the 1920s with two strong democratic parties: The Liberal Party of the middle class The National Peasant Party of agricultural laborers (Moderate Socialists) Its overwhelming victory in the 1928 elections of 1928 was a high point for Romanian democracy.
4	Two ominous events: The re-accession of Carol II to the throne in 1930 The Great Depression.
5	Carol II He had been removed from the throne because of a mistress but was reinstated after a governmental crisis. He disdained democracy. He was aided by the collapse of agricultural prices and widespread unemployment.
6	The Iron Guard A successful far right political movement, the Iron Guard,arose. It mixed nationalism, Orthodox spirituality, and anti-Semitism. Few Romanians were attracted to the Communist Party that had been banned in 1924, was totally subordinate to the Soviet Communist Party, and neglected the peasants.
7	The Royal Dictatorship Carol proclaimed a royal dictatorship in 1938 and dissolved all political parties. The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, and the defeat of France in June 1940 suddenly deprived Romania of Great Power support. Between June and September 1940: Soviet Union took Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, Hungary took northern Transylvania, Bulgaria took the southern Dobruja. Carol II had to abdicate in September 1940.
8	Pre-WW2 Romanian Society The population grew steadily, The majority of the population continued to live in the countryside and to depend on agriculture Social differentiation sharpened the distinction between well-off peasants and the majority of smallholders, who lived on the edge of poverty. Great landowners as a class had disappeared after WWI and their place was taken by a gentry that was largely middle-class in outlook.
9	World War II Theories of development became academic during the War. In September 1940 Carol II was replaced by General Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard. Despite their shared contempt for democratic institutions, these new partners were incompatible. Antonescu stood for order, while the Guard shunned economic and social planning.
10	Antonescu vs. the Guard Mutual hostility erupted in war by January 1941. Antonescu, supported by the army and eventually by Germany, won and destroyed the Guard as a significant political force. For the next three and a half years he ruled the country as a military dictator. Antonescu based his foreign policy on an alliance with Germany, which he was certain would win the war.
11	Romania Enters the War In June 1941 he (and the majority of Romanians) joined in the German invasion of the Soviet Union to gain back territory and end the Soviet threat once and for all. The consequences proved disastrous as the Germans were stopped in Russia and began to retreat.
12	The Holocaust in Romania During the war, Antonescu's regime severely oppressed the Jews of Romania. In Moldavia, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, Romanian soldiers carried out brutal pogroms. During the war, about 260,000 Jews were killed in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and in the camps across the Dniester Hungary's Nazi government killed or deported about 120,000 of Transylvania's 150,000 Jews in 1944.
13	Romanian Obstacles for the Germans Despite rampant anti-Semitism, most Romanian Jews survived the war. Germany planned mass deportations of Jews from Romania, but Antonescu balked. Jews acted as key managers in Romania's economy and Antonescu feared that deporting them would lead to chaos Romania supplied the Nazi war effort with oil, grain, and industrial products, but Germany was reluctant to pay for the deliveries. Romanian-Hungarian animosities created problems for Germany.
14	The Soviet Takeover After Stalingrad in February 1943, Antonescu’s main concern was to avoid being overrun by the Red Army. King Michael, who had succeeded his father, took the initiative to overthrow Antonescu in August 1944 and switch support to the Allies. Bucharest was occupied a week later by the Red Army.
15	Communist Romania 1944-1947: A struggle for power between democratic parties and the Soviet-run Communist Party The communists, though they had few supporters, came to power in the spring of 1945 because of Soviet intervention. Extraordinary pressure by Soviet authorities forced King Michael to appoint a procommunist government led by the fellow-traveler Petru Groza on March 6, 1945. Between this time and elections in November 1946, the Communist Party used its control of key government agencies to suppress the opposition.
16	The End of non-Communist Romania The elections of November 1946 gave about 80 percent of the vote to the communists through falsified results in order to hide a substantial victory by the National Peasants. 1947 was the final year for liberal political and economic structures. The Communist Party proceeded to eliminate the remaining opposition in show trials and long prison terms. King Michael was forced to abdicate and the Romanian People's Republic proclaimed on Dec. 30, 1947.
17	Communist Romania 1948-1960: Communist leaders laid the foundations of a Soviet-style regime and established a vast security network. All this intensified the traditional Romanian Russophobia. The Soviet Union formalized its domination of Romanian affairs through various treaties including the Warsaw Pact),
18	National communism The 1960s saw some relaxation at home and defiance of the Soviet Union in international relations. Availability of consumer goods improved, and cultural exchanges with the West grew. The source of this relaxation lay in the emergence of Romanian national communism, stimulated by growing friction with the Soviet Union.
19	Fear of Khrushchev Gheorghiu-Dej feared that the de-Stalinization campaign launched by Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s might threaten him, since he continued to be one of the most rigid Stalinists. He also objected to Khrushchev's insistence that Romania abandon its drive to industrialize and accept the more modest role of supplier of agricultural products and raw materials to the designated “industrial powers” of the Warsaw Pact.
20	The Rise of Ceausescu After Gheorghiu-Dej's death in 1965, his successor, Nicolae Ceausescu, increased efforts to lessen dependence on the Soviet Union. Ceausescu sought to expand economic relations with the West. The high point of his “independent” foreign policy was his denunciation of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
21	The Soviets weren’t worried The Soviets weren’t worried, because they calculated that Ceausescu knew the limits of defiance. Ceausescu voiced satisfying contempt for Western institutions and values In domestic affairs, Ceausescu brought the period of relaxation to an end with his July theses of 1971, in which he demanded a return to rigid ideological orthodoxy. In the nearly two decades of “neo-Stalinism” that followed, the Communist Party intruded more deeply than ever before into the daily lives of citizens.
22	Ceausescu’s Cult of Personality Ceausescu promoted a cult of personality unprecedented in Romanian history. To prevent the emergence of other power centres, he continually rotated officials in both the party and the government and relied increasingly on members of his family (notably his wife, Elena) to fill key positions. His adherence to the Stalinist economic model had disastrous consequences: both industry and agriculture fell into disarray, and the standard of living steadily deteriorated.
23	Collapse of communism By the late 1980s, Ceausescu had transformed Romania into a police state. The Securitate had become the chief prop of his rule. Physical hardship and moral despair overwhelmed society. Yet the Ceausescu dictatorship, which had come to seem unassailable, was overthrown in the course of a single week, Dec. 16–22, 1989. Minor incidents in the Transylvanian city of Timisoara led to violence, which quickly spread to other cities. Ceausescu was forced to flee Bucharest and then was arrested, tried, and executed on December 25. No formal dissolution of the Communist Party took place: it simply melted away.