Romanian nationalism

[7] In Transylvania, then under Habsburg rule, the cultural movement called the Transylvanian School was founded at a time when Romanians in the region faced social and political disenfranchisement.

Following the victory of the Russian Empire and Romania, the ruling prince Carol I assumed the title of King, reflecting the fully independent status of the country.

The Kingdom of Romania first expanded its territory with the acquisition of southern Dobruja from Bulgaria in 1913 during the Second Balkan War, which nonetheless only had a minority of Romanians.

[12] The greatest and most important territorial expansion was initiated at the end of the First World War in 1918; the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire allowed Transylvania to unite with Romania; and the collapse of the Russian Republic and the subsequent Russian Civil War allowed the Romanians of Bessarabia to set up the Moldavian Democratic Republic, which then proceeded to unite with Romania.

[14] In the eyes of the nationalist anthropologists, historians, and scientists, the survival of Romania became fundamentally bound to the need for maintaining a national-ethnic unity within one state; discourse on the subject "soon became invested with racial and biopolitical tropes.

The Iron Guard espoused a strong religious nationalism, with its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu writing that the group was a "spiritual school...[which] strikes to transform and revolutionise the Romanian soul.

Romania under Ion Antonescu joined the Second World War on the side of the Axis Powers and participated in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, receiving back Bessarabia plus Odessa and surrounding territory (the Transnistria Governorate) in compensation for the loss of Northern Transylvania.

Ceaușescu went as far as to semi-rehabilitate Ion Antonescu (deeming him a "misunderstood patriot")[20][21] and denouncing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which had allowed the Soviets to take Bessarabia in 1940.

Nonetheless, the pro-European government of Maia Sandu has developed a closer relationship with Romania fostered by the links in culture and heritage between the two countries.