The Great Union of 1918 and Greater Romania

The year 1918 brought the fulfilment of the ideal of national unity. The collapse of the great empires – the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman – and the principle of national self-determination proclaimed by US President Woodrow Wilson created the conditions for the union of all Romanians. Liberation movements arose in every historic province: in Bessarabia, in Bukovina and in Transylvania. Each of these decisions was taken by the elected representatives of the population, in assemblies that expressed the wish for union with Romania.

The first step was taken by Bessarabia. There, after the Russian Revolution, the Moldavian Democratic Republic was proclaimed in December 1917. The Sfatul Țării, the representative assembly in Chișinău, voted on 27 March/9 April 1918 for union with Romania, with 86 votes in favour, 3 against and 36 abstentions. The union was at first made conditional on agrarian reforms and autonomy, conditions which the Sfatul Țării removed in November 1918. The decision was an act of courage, in the face of strong military pressure from the Bolsheviks.

The second step was Bukovina. On 28 November 1918 the General Congress of Bukovina, meeting in Cernăuți under the leadership of Iancu Flondor, voted for the unconditional and perpetual union of Bukovina, within its ancient borders, with the Kingdom of Romania. The decision was taken after the Romanian army had entered the city, to prevent its occupation by the Ukrainians. The union of the province, which had been under Austrian rule since 1775, was later recognized by the Treaty of Saint-Germain of 10 September 1919. The decision was welcomed with enthusiasm by the Romanian population of the province.

The largest assembly was the one at Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918. A total of 1,228 delegates elected from all parts of Transylvania, the Banat, Crișana and Maramureș gathered there, in the presence of over 100,000 people who had come from every corner of the country. The Resolution of Union, read by the Greek-Catholic bishop Iuliu Hossu, proclaimed “the union of these Romanians and of all the territories inhabited by them with Romania”. Vasile Goldiș presided over the assembly. The resolutions were accepted by King Ferdinand by a decree of 11 December 1918.

The union was recognized internationally through the peace treaties: Saint-Germain (1919) for Bukovina, Neuilly (1919), Trianon (4 June 1920) for Transylvania, the Banat, Crișana and Maramureș, and the Treaty of Paris (1920) for Bessarabia, the last of which was not ratified by Japan. Romania reached an area of about 295,000 km² and a population of over 18 million, almost double that of 1914. On 15 October 1922, at Alba Iulia, King Ferdinand and Queen Marie were crowned sovereigns of Greater Romania in the Coronation Cathedral.