Bukovina to Russia and northern Dobrogea to Bulgaria. Northern Transylvania, which had been taken by Hitler and given to the Hungarians, was returned to Romania at the insistence of Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov. Romania faced severe economic and financial conditions as a result of war reparations claims made by the Soviets, and the country was never formally recognized for their ultimate support of the Allied cause during the final years of the war.
With the forced abdication of King Michael in December 1947, the People’s Republic of Romania was initially organized upon the Soviet model. Agriculture was collectivized, industry nationalized, the language Slavicized, and the former ruling class exterminated in Soviet-run labor camps. In 1952, even before Stalin’s death, the secretary general of the Communist Party in Romania, Ghe-orghe Gheorghiu Dej, began purging those who were deemed to have been Stalinist supporters, and he attempted to construct a Romanian socialist state. The Polish and Hungarian crisis of 1956 and Nikita Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalin triggered Romania’s further disengagement from the Soviet bloc. Alhough cofounders of the Warsaw Pact and member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Dej also sought admission to the United Nations and UNESCO; refused to be involved in the Soviet conflicts with the Chinese, Yugoslavs, or Albanians; retained good relations with Israel; vetoed Khruschev’s plans to make Romania an agricultural state; and, in 1958, eliminated the Soviet army of occupation.
Dej’s successor, Nicolae Ceausescu, who came to office in 1965, created the Romanian Socialist Republic and added to the Presidency of the Council the title of President of the Republic, becoming the leading political official in the state. Although obligated to resume Romania’s alliance with the USSR, Ceausescu also established diplomatic relations with West Germany and strengthened contact with France and the United States by hosting Charles de Gaulle in 1968 and Richard Nixon in 1969. He also visited the Queen of England and reestablished trade relations with the West.
During the Czech crisis of 1968, Ceausescu joined Tito in repealing Leonid Brezhnev’s doctrine of the right of intervention and refused to allow Romania’s participation in military exercises with members of the Warsaw Pact. He went so far as to question Russia’s right to occupy Bessarabia. Ceausescu also ignored Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to soften his dictatorial rule over Romania, despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and that event’s implications for the fate of the now crumbling Soviet Union. This precipitated a bloody revolution and, ultimately, Ceausescu’s death. Post-communist Romania has made considerable progress with democratization and, with Moscow’s consent, joined NATO in 2002. See also: CRIMEAN WAR; PARIS, CONGRESS AND TREATY OF 1856; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Florescu, Radu R. (1997). The Struggle against Russia in the Romanian Principalities. IASI: Center for Romanian Studies. Moseley, M. P. E. (1934). Russian Diplomacy and the Opening of the Eastern Question in 1838 and 1839. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
(d. 1560), first wife of Russia’s first official tsar, Ivan IV, and dynastic link between the Rurikid and the Romanov dynasties.
Anastasia Romanova, daughter of a lesser bo-yar, Roman Yuriev-Zakharin-Koshkin, and his wife, Yuliania Fyodorovna, became Ivan IV’s bride after an officially proclaimed bride-show. After her wedding in November 1547, Romanova had difficulty producing royal offspring. Her three daughters died in infancy, and her eldest son, Dmitry Ivanovich, died as a baby in a mysterious accident during a pilgrimage by his parents in 1553. Her second son, Ivan Ivanovich (born in 1554), suffered an untimely end in 1581 at the hands of his own father. The incident caused the transfer of power after Ivan IV’s death to Romanova’s last son, the sickly Fyodor Ivanovich (1557-1598), whose childlessness set the stage for the Time of Troubles and the emergence of the Romanov dynasty. After a prolonged illness, Romanova passed away in August 1560 and was buried in the Monastery of the Ascension in the Kremlin, much mourned by the common people of Moscow.
1294
Scholars generally emphasize Romanova’s positive influence on Ivan IV’s disposition, her pious and charitable nature, and her dynastic significance as the great-aunt of Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov. This view, however, is largely based on later sources and thus reflects more the tsarina’s image than her actual person. Recent research on Romanova’s pilgrimages to holy sites and embroideries from her workshop suggests that Romanova actively shaped her role as royal mother by promoting the cults of Russian saints who were credited with the ability to promote royal fertility and to protect royal children from harm. See also: IVAN IV; ROMANOV DYNASTY; RURIKID DYNASTY
Kaiser, Daniel. (1987). “Symbol and Ritual in the Marriages of Ivan IV.” Russian History 14(1-4):247-262. Thyr?t, Isolde. (2001). Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
ROMANOVA, ANASTASIA NIKOLAYEVNA
(1901-c. 1918), youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna.
Anastasia Nikolayevna’s place in history derives less from her life than from the legend that she somehow survived her family’s execution. The mythology surrounding her and the imperial family remains popular in twentieth-century folklore.
Following the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, members of the royal family were imprisoned, first at the Alexander Palace outside Petrograd and later in the Siberian city of Tobolsk. Finally Nicholas and his immediate family were confined to the Ipatiev House in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). According to official accounts, local communist forces executed Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children, and four retainers during the night of July 16, 1918. Because no corpses were immediately located, numerous individuals emerged claiming to be this or that Romanov who had miraculously survived the massacre. Most claimants were quickly dismissed as frauds, but one “Anastasia” seemed to have better credentials than the others.
The first reports of this “Anastasia” came in 1920 from an insane asylum in Berlin, where a young woman was taken following an attempt to drown herself in a canal. Anna Anderson, as she came to be known, was far from the beautiful lost princess reunited with her grandmother, as Hollywood retold the story. Instead, she was badly scarred, both mentally and physically, and spent the remainder of her life rotating among a small group of patrons, eventually marrying historian John Ma-hanan and settling in Charlottesville, VA, where she remained until her death on February 12, 1984.
No senior surviving member of the Romanov family ever formally recognized Anderson as being Anastasia. Instead, her supporters came largely from surviving members of the royal court, many of whom were suspected of using Anderson for financial gain. Anderson did file a claim against tsarist bank accounts held in a German bank. Extensive evidence was offered on her behalf, from eyewitness testimony to photographic comparisons. The case lasted from 1938 to 1970, and eventually the German Supreme Court ruled that her claim could neither be proved nor disproved.
Interest in Anderson’s case revived in 1991, following the discovery of the Romanov remains outside Yekaterinburg. Two skeletons were unaccounted for, one daughter and the son. Anderson’s body had been cremated, but hospital pathology specimens were later discovered and submitted for DNA testing in 1994. Although the results indicated that Anderson was Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker, Anderson’s most die-hard supporters still refused to accept the results. The Yekaterinburg remains were interned in the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998, eighty years after the execution. See also: NICHOLAS II; ROMANOV DYNASTY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kurth, Peter. (1983). Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. Boston: Little, Brown. Massie, Robert K. (1995). The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. New York: Random House.
