Romania: Difference between revisions
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Romania's entry into World War I mostly came about under pressure from the Allies and promises that they could annex Transylvania from Hungary. It proved to be a disaster, with the Germans, Austrians, Bulgarians and Ottomans all ganging up on a poorly organised army and forcing it to retreat up to Moldova, where they held together for a few more years before finally capitulating. As part of the Peace of Bucharest of March 1918, Romania [[Disproportionate Retribution|was reduced to a vassal state occupied by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, had several of its territories yanked away again and would have a German monopoly on oil exports for 99 years]]. Said peace treaty was never completely ratified because King Ferdinand refused to sign it, and Romania re-entered the war one day before the armistice with Germany was signed and well after the military forces of the Central Powers had been thrashed on the Western Fronts. The Allies eventually kept their word, giving Transylvania to Romania (but Romania had to twist their hand a bit by starting a [[Curb Stomp Battle|Curb Stomp War]] with Hungary in 1919 and occupying and plundering it for about a year or so, and then milking some abusive armistice terms), which had also regained the Romanian-dominated area (Moldova between the Prut and Dniester rivers) in the meantime. Greater Romania was born.
Greater Romania lasted between 1919-1940 and is generally regarded as Romania's one period of [[Glory Days]] in history, when its culture was flourishing, reforms were implemented to address social ills, the economy was doing well and Bucharest was legitimately called "The Paris of the East" - it's okay as long as you don't mind the worrying popularity of far-right groups (like the Iron Guard) or [
Once the 1946 elections where thoroughly frauded to make the Communists win <ref> The main argument in the Communist Party was whether they should give themselves a "reasonable" 70% victory or at least 90%</ref>, the King was deposed and thrown out and the parties banned, Communism took over - it's a reasonable claim to argue that Romania had one of the worst regimes in Eastern Europe during the [[Cold War]]. Amazingly enough it only had two leaders. The first, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (1948-1965), presided over horrible repression, the nationalisation of industry, the violent collectivisation of agriculture, the institution of the Five-Year Plans and the foundation of the infamous [[State Sec|secret police]] ''Securitate'' ("Security"), all with appropriately Stalinist zeal. The next was Nicolae Ceauşescu, who managed to be [[Up to Eleven|even worse]] than Dej and is routinely credited for destroying the country thanks to his policies.
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The Romanian version of the [[Hole in Flag]] revolutions was the only one that got seriously violent. Then again, the Ceauşescu regime was seriously unpleasant (complete with the mental hospitals and destroying the economy to repay the foreign debt). While this makes Romania probably the worst of the post-Stalin Soviet Bloc countries, ironically Ceauşescu at first had gained some popularity for his independent foreign policy and challenging the authority of the Soviet Union. This however had more to do with him admiring himself more than the respective Soviet leaders than with being a good human.
The Revolution saw 1,104 deaths, with Ceauşescu and his wife receiving a machine-gunning, on camera, as a Christmas present. It too counts as a [[Meet the New Boss]], since in the entire chaos the second rung of the Communist Party ended up in power. Try to steer clear of this subject, since there's so many unknowns and suspicious details going around that it's a prime source of [[Epileptic Trees]] and [[Poison Oak Epileptic Trees]] - where the USA has [[Who Shot JFK?]]?, Romania has What Really Happened In 1989? and What The Hell Was Up With [
Romania has many long-standing problems, one of them being [[Orphanage of Fear|nasty orphanages]]. This had to do with Ceauşescu wanting to boost the Romanian population by all means, even if this involved many mothers not being able to care for so many unwanted kids, abandoning them instead, so they ended up in... right. And we haven't even gone into the chaotic post-Communist situation, the Mineriad, the inefficient education system, the severe corruption and plain [[They Just Didn't Care|incompetent governments]]...
Used to have a long enmity with Hungary, especially over Transylvania (a bit more on this historical conflict on the [[
Transylvania, setting for "Dracula", is in Romania - now. It was transferred from Hungary at the end of [[World War
In other words, when someone tries to do a gritty adaptation of Dracula and has him speaking Romanian to up the realism, they're wrong. He should be speaking Hungarian. If they were making a film about Vlad Dracul, Wallachian prince and freedom fighter also known as "The Impaler", ''then'' he ought to be speaking Romanian.
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By 1985-1989, at the tail end of Ceaușescu's "pay off debt by starving the population" phase, the entire network's runtime had been reduced to two hours, containing mostly patriotic songs. The people were not amused. People could still watch foreign stations with make-shift (or very expensive, depending on the case) "black market" parabolic antennas. For the worst of those, they could see Russian, Moldovan and Bulgarian stations. For the best, they could tune to French ones.
After the fall of Communism in the '90s, television tried to grow, but unfortunately TVR was the only available option and still in the grasp of the Neo-Communists that had come to power. One of the first (free, private) stations was [https://web.archive.org/web/20120224204716/http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Tele7ABC Tele7ABC], but the first mainstream television station to hold its ground as leader even today was Pro TV, ''was created in 1995''.
Film rights and airing were scarce, but televisions tried. While the copyright law made it fair game (''now, in 2010'', in Moldova, there are still reports of movies being aired directly from downloaded from the internet by national stations), we didn't really needed the problems. On the other hand, television ratings were nonexistent until the 2000s (even 2005). This implied nothing short of porn could be aired all day or all night (there were attempts to forbid porn as "violating public morals" or whatever) - 16+ horrors at 8 o'clock, etc, if you can imagine it, it was aired whenever they liked it. This was partly due to the authorities' fear that they'd be accused of limiting the "freedom of the press" ([[Double Standard|while stealing everything there was to steal left from the old regime]]), and coincided with the country's "Wild West / Aggressive Capitalism" period, where almost anything, however legal, semi-legal or ''illegal'' it was, was mostly fair game (short of stealing from someone's house: steal millions of dollars from a bank, split up the profit with the country's rulership, profit; you steal an apple from someone's house, [[Disproportionate Retribution|5 years jail, no discussion]]).
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* The [[Roma]] - their actual number in the general population is not large and never was, yet they are [[Wrong Side of the Tracks|disproportionately represented in the criminal class]]. They suffer from terrible poverty, prejudice against them and "invisibility" - according to a UN survey, Romania is the most highly segregated society in Eastern Europe when it comes to the separation between the Roma and the rest of the population.
* Poverty - most street begging is actually ''professional and profitable'', playing on the [[Chronic Hero Syndrome|compulsive duty of the average Romanian to appear compassionate]].
=== Famous Romanians ===
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* ''Train of Life'', a great tragicomedy about Romanian Jews in [[World War II]] who know that they're to be deported and hatch a crazy plan - that could work.
* In ''[[Harry Potter]]'', Ron's brother, Charlie Weasley, works with dragons in Romania.
* In ''[[Twilight (
* ''[[South Park]]'''s answer to the Elian Gonzalez debacle, ''Quintuplets 2000'', involved Romanian quintuplets... whose home country is apparently still Communist, and certainly dominated by grey, bland architecture and an economy and populace so poor that a few hundred US dollars makes one "rich" there. Probably not the best depiction, and not necessarily all that accurate, either it turns out (current-day Bucharest, at any rate, is [
** The older bits of Bucharest are pretty. The Communists did their best to hack the place apart and fill it with depressing architecture. It's all a matter of finding the old parts that escaped relatively unscathed.
* An ''unintentional'' depiction occurred in an episode of ''[[
** The same happens in [[
*** Perhaps coincidentally, the tribe that invented that spell were protected by Dracula, so they might have picked up elements of the spell from other magicians nearby.
** Same again in the Wolf Man remake. The two gypsy women speak in Romanian.
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* Wallachia is the location of the [[Our Wormholes Are Different|first gateway]] to the Vampire World, and the birthplace (not to mention undeath place) of the [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] from the first two books of the ''[[Necroscope]]'' saga.
* Romania as represented in ''[[Scandinavia and The World]]'' is a vampire who steals, in keeping with the typical exaggeration of stereotypes. He also re-enacted Dracula with the Netherlands, at least until England threw them out of his garden.
* ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia
* Though presented as Kazakhstan, the village at the beginning of ''[[Borat]]'' is in Romania.
* A ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]'' episode revolves around Romania, due to the fact that Alex wants to travel there for entertainment, and she doesn't know exactly where it is located (or what ''[[Book Dumb|it actually is]]''). Her father explains to her that Romania is a country in Europe, filled with gymnasts and vampires.
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* [[Common Knowledge]]: The history curriculum in Romania conflates the Dacians and the Getae, something modern historians aren't very eager to champion (some go so far as to suggest they were two separate tribes of Thracians, the Getae living in southern Romania and the Dacians beyond the Carpathians). This is mostly a legacy of the long Romanian-Hungarian dispute over who "rightfully" owns Transylvania, wherein both sides gleefully bent history to try and fit their own narratives - the Geto-Dacian classification is meant to emphasise the fact that Romanians were there first.
* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: In practice, less accent on the ''crazy'' part and more on the ''crazily fast''. While may be many crackpot theories to explain the disregard of rules<ref> Don't try. [[Flame War]] ensues.</ref>, in reality the disregard is first and foremost for the police, who are regarded as the most disgusting species of [[Corrupt Hick|CorruptHicks]] on Earth.<ref> Their efforts to prove [[I Am the Trope|they are just that]] [[Sarcasm Mode|are admirable]].</ref>
* [[
* [[Misplaced Nationalism]] and [[Patriotic Fervor]]: Bring up the Hungarian minority's rights, or just Hungary in general, in the right crowd. Make sure you have popcorn.
* [[Nosy Neighbor]]: Description is futile, one has to experience life among them to believe.
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* [[The Mafiya]]: most business and politics enterprises are almost entirely dependent of personal or family relationships, even more visible outside large cities. Stepping on the wrong people's toes in business or inter-gender relationships may have unfortunate results. Having the right friends always helps.
* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]: From the way Julia Gelardi describes it, Romania was severely losing at the first few weeks of the Paris Peace Conference<ref>backing the theory that the Allies only promised the country territory to get it into [[World War I]] in the first place</ref>, so in a fit of desperation PM Ionel Brătianu asked Queen Marie to travel to France to represent the country. Marie proceeded to use her charisma and reminders about Romania's considerable losses to charm-bully the Allies onto her side, and the conference ended with Romania receiving all it set out to gain (and then [[What the Hell, Hero?|starting a curbstomp war with Hungary and pillaging it in retaliation]]). [[Broken Aesop|Clearly, if you want to expand a country's territory, you should join the war, get beaten, re-join at the last minute and then send your monarch to annoy everybody else into giving you what you want.]]
* [[Slave to PR]]: Romanians [[Turn of the Millennium|of the 2000s]] are masters of online campaigns (in the English language nevertheless). In the recent past, they have [
* [[Vodka Drunkenski]]: Romania is the [
== the Romanian flag ==
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