The state was an autonomous extension of the Hungarian Republic, set up in order to prevent invasion by the French Danube Army, but also aiming to preserve regional integrity against rival nationalisms.

Unlike Bartha, Roth acknowledged the terms of the Hungarian armistice, and was subsequently allowed to maintain his executive position by the Kingdom of Serbia, which occupied Timișoara in November.

His post became largely symbolic, as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (also referred to as Yugoslavia), proclaimed that December, actively pursued an annexation of the Banat; the Commissioner's importance was revived once French forces intervened as peacekeepers.

[17] For this enterprise, Roth used the pen name R. Otto Lippai; other contributors included Lux Terka, Renée Erdős (with fragments of her short story "Kleopátra"), and the "proletarian poet" Sándor Csizmadia.

The movement they created was "limited only to the workers", preparing them for "militant revolution"—in 1908, a more intellectual streak was added by the arrival of Zsigmond Kunfi, who gave his sociological readings in Hungarian literature.

[21] On 1 November 1908, while attending a rally of the MSZDP's Southern Hungarian sections, Roth proposed increasing and radicalizing socialist propaganda—engaging in a dispute over this issue with his more moderate colleague, Otton Ossenkop.

[23] During the electoral campaign of 1910, Roth joined a "large number of socialists" who crashed a town hall meeting by the National Party of Work (NMP) for Lajos Návay.

He heckled Mayor Carol Telbisz and gave his own impromptu speech, including a generic threat that the MSZDP "will not tolerate any kind of party meeting that does not support the position of universal suffrage.

[32] Over the following months, he also proceeded to investigate a shortage of milk which was affecting Temesvár's children, discovering that the city had signed a faulty contract with dairy farmer Endre Csekonics of Zsombolya.

"[34] In July, he and Kálmán Jakobi established a local branch of the Hungarian National Association of Private Sector Employees (Magántisztviselők Országos Egyesületének), for which they registered 170 applications by women.

[36] He was there to collect the military records of his client "Vazul Branka" or "Vasile Branca" (pseudonym of Győző Bircse, originally from Turnu Severin),[37] who was on trial in Austria-Hungary for having deserted to the enemy while on mission to destroy a Russian flotilla on the Danube.

[38] During June 1918, Roth was one of the MSZDP orators who riled up the crowds against Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle, who, they claimed, was sabotaging the effort to enact universal suffrage in Hungary.

[4] Anti-Austrian and anti-war riots began in Temesvár around 6 October, when crowds toppled monuments in honor of Ban Coronini and Anton Scudier; Roth and his colleague Leopold Somló joined the protests, speaking in favor of an immediate separate peace.

[5] On 30 October, immediately after power in Budapest had been handed to the Hungarian National Council (MNT), Roth and Jakobi proceeded to discuss the Banat's future with the still-incumbent authorities.

[46] Looking back on the era in 1960, communist writer Péter Lőrinc described Roth as leader of the "reactionary Republic of the Banat", which, "just one of five days, shot in the head more than one hundred revolutionaries from the 'Red Corner' area of Becskerek!

"[50] Historian Harold Temperley, who visited Timișoara on 7 December, reports that all ethnic communities in the city were temporarily satisfied with the arrangement, noting that "Serb troops have tactfully left the matter alone.

On 25 November, Roth issued a statement in which he urged the local press not to report on Serb atrocities, arguing that these accounts were "alarmist"; according to Birăescu, he had been forced to make these claims by direct pressures from Čolović.

[55] A review of this episode, published in 1934 by Erdélyi Lapok, suggested that the celebration was "natural", since the Regent had lasting connections with the city—the place where his grandfather, Knez Alexander, had lived and died in the 1880s.

"[59] Political historian László Kővágó argues that, in January 1919, there began an "operation directed by Ottó Róth in Temesvár, whose aim was to establish the independent Republic of Banat".

Government commissioners Dr Otto Roth and Kálmán Jakob[i] are now living with their staff in the White Cross Hotel in Arad, but [...] they will return to Temesvár under French protection.

"[66] In March 1919, the Yugoslav authorities were investigating allegations that Roth and his finance minister István Mály had embezzled 24 million crowns from funds set aside for the defunct Banatian polity.

Roth is quoted by Brînzeu as arguing that the whole of Eastern Europe still needed to fulfill a capitalist mode of production before going into communism, and therefore that its peoples would inevitably rise up against the Soviets.

[71] Historian Tibor Hajdu believes that Roth actively "weakened the unity of the labor movement" by "serv[ing] Hungarian national aspirations" rather than proletarian internationalism.

[89] Although formally withdrawn from active politics, Roth still traveled abroad to give public lectures on "democracy and socialism", and still wrote articles for the Banat press.

[103] In June 1939, Roth told Brînzeu that "purebred Hungarians" actually favored a personal union between Hungary and Romania, as the only means of protecting their country from becoming a vassal of Nazi Germany.

This led to a panic among the Romanian Jews, who feared that they would be subjected to retaliation; at the time, Roth resumed his political collaboration with Argetoianu, helping to establish contacts with the Communist Party.

[122] However, he continued to argue that the Premier could balance British and American interests against the Soviets, and that he was the only pro-Western Romanian not to be tinged by fascist associations; he also recorded instances in which Groza was self-derisive and self-critical.

[4][5] He remained formally aligned with the pro-Soviet left, becoming vice president Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union in Timișoara (April 1946),[124] where he also lectured in Hungarian (January 1947).

[126] Brînzeu's diary describes Roth as having by then turned against communism, privately expressing his belief that only three people of the Eastern Bloc actually believed in the communist ideology, namely: Stalin, Tito, and Dimitrov.

[131] In a 1971 issue of Igaz Szó, labor historian László Izsák made a note of Roth's "outstanding role" in Timișoara's socialist movement, on par with Lajos Bebrits.