Romania, the Republic of Councils in Hungary and the Great Powers
On March 21st, 1919, the Hungarian Bolsheviks, led by Béla Kun, seized power in Hungary. This was a clear warning sign for Romania, which was the first country severely affected by the Bolshevik threat. Following the Bessarabian Country Council decision in early 1918...
February 1919: The discussion of the union of Transylvania with Romania at the Paris Peace Conference
On February 1st, 1919, the Romanian Prime Minister Ionel Brătianu appeared for the second time before the Supreme Council, this time to support the union of Transylvania with Romania. Ionel Brătianu began his plea with a long exposition of the stages that led him to...
Romania’s objectives at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
Romanian Prime Minister Ionel Brătianu presented himself at the Peace Conference with an extremely well-established and precise plan. On December 14th, 1918, King Ferdinand appointed Ionel Brătianu to head the government. The news was not well received by the Allies,...
Romania, dissatisfied with the way negotiations were handled at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference
Ionel Brătianu, the Romanian prime minister, had a tumultuous relationship in Paris with the leaders of the Great Powers. He was deeply dissatisfied with the fact that the Great Powers did not recognize Romania’s equal status that would allow it to better promote the...
Russia-Ukraine crisis: 9 milestone moments in history that explain today’s invasion
Russian forces have launched a major military attack on Ukraine, on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Tanks and troops have poured into Ukraine at points along its eastern, southern and northern borders, Ukraine says, and explosions have been heard...
Why Stalin Starved Ukraine?
History is a battleground, perennially fought over, endlessly contested. Nowhere does this aphorism hold true more than in Russia. A majority of Russians recently voted Joseph Stalin the “most outstanding person” in world history (followed, naturally, by current...
Declaration of Czecho-Slovak Independence by the Provisional Government in Paris, 18 October 1918
Reproduced below is the text of the Czecho-Slovak declaration of independence, issued by the Paris-based Provisional Government on 18 October 1918. „At this grave moment, when the Hohenzollerns are offering peace in order to stop the victorious advance of the allied...
The Romanian-Italian secret agreements from the beginning of the First World War
At the beginning of the First World War, Romania and Italy were in a similar situation. Both states were bound to the Central Powers through secret agreements, but their main national objectives were in conflict with Austro-Hungarian interests. Many Romanians and...
The Sazonov-Diamandy Agreement, the secret Russo-Romanian convention of 1914
The reorientation of the Romanian foreign policy was initiated even before the outbreak of the First World War, at the initiative of the Liberal government in Bucharest. Romania had signed a secret treaty in 1883 with the Central Powers, but this agreement hindered...
Lenin’s April Theses, April 1917
In Russian the "Aprelskiye Tezisy", the April Theses formed a programme developed by Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution. In these Lenin called for Soviet control of the state. When published the theses contributed to the July Days rising and to the subsequent...
Romania, dissatisfied with the way negotiations were handled at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference
Ionel Brătianu, the Romanian prime minister, had a tumultuous relationship in Paris with the leaders of the Great Powers. He was deeply dissatisfied with the fact that the Great Powers did not recognize Romania’s equal status that would allow it to better promote the...
What did Woodrow Wilson thought about the Russian Bolsheviks at the end of the First World War
US President Woodrow Wilson believed that the Russians alone had to find their way. He told a British diplomat in Washington a week before the end of the war that: “I think we have to let them find their own way out, even if they have been struggling in anarchy for...
The mines of Messines: “We may not change history tomorrow, but we will certainly change geography”
In the summer of 1917 the battle of Messines begins. It was started by the detonation of 19 colossal mines, 500 tonnes each, placed beforehand by the British corps of engineers under the German positions. The fortified peak was destroyed, in what was called at that...
What did Romania risk and what it had to gain if the war continued in 1918?
The decision of the Russian Bolsheviks to conclude peace with the Central Powers exposed Romania to a dramatic situation. Either continue the war alone with the Central Powers, without having the possibility to be resupplied by the Entente, or, as it happened,...
The Allied Intervention at Archangel and Murmansk in 1918
In 1918 the United States entered the Russian Civil War on the side of the so-called “Whites,” anti-Bolshevik counterrevolutionaries. This essay explores the decision to intervene at Murmansk and then Archangel, the U.S. Navy’s role in the operations, and the ultimate...
Gorlice-Tarnów in 1915, Romania in 1916 and Caporetto in 1917, prelude to the Blitzkrieg?
Three military campaigns in the First World War are strikingly similar to what would become known in the Second World War as Blitzkrieg. The campaign of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians at Gorlice-Tarnów, the one at Caporetto, and especially the one in Romania in...