Habersack, Sabine - Puşcaş, Vasile - Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Democraţia in Europa centrală şi de Sud-Est - Aspiraţie şi realitate (Secolele XIX-XX) (Satu Mare, 2001)
Teodor Pavel: Wold War I and Revolutionary Options in Central-Eastern Europe: the Project of the "Insurrection" of Romania at the End of the Year 1917
Dr. Teodor Pavel the building up of a new and Great Romania, which we will build up together through the universal vote you'll receive”15. But first attempts to put into practice the plan conceived in Berlin and Petrograd of dethroning the monarchy have been made at the beginning of the month of May. Russian bolschevized soldiers caused disturbances, they criticized the “Romanian oligarchy” and the monarchic regime in Romania and started street actions for the establishing of the republic. On the last of May, they assaulted some houses in the SGrDria district, where Christian Rakovski was imprisoned, a socialist internationalist militant, a Romanian citizen of Bulgarian origin, a known agent paid by Vienna and Berlin and a faithful collaborator of the Soviet Powers against the Romanian State. At the demonstration which took place in the centre of the city, after Rakovski's liberation, he and other socialists made incendiary speeches against the Romanian dynasty and the “bourgeois oligarchy”. After some days, on May 6th, similar manifestations took place in other localities in Moldavia: Iaşi, Bacău, Tecuci, Roman, Bârlad etc. But the diversion could be hintered. The big majority of the population and of the army sided with the king and the government the parliament started the debates of the project of the great reforms, on 6th of May 1917 introducing the necessary modifications in the Constitution, in order to be able to legislate them. The noisy actions of the diversionist forces, who speculated the sufferings and sacrifices of a deeply tried people, were in contrast with the fiercy efforts and the feverish activity taken to reorganize and equip the army in view of the future fights for the salvgardation of the statal being of Romania. The victories won in Mărăşeşti, Oituz, Mărăşti in the summer of the 1917, a true model of bravery and heroism of the Romanian people in the defence of their fatherland, were also a ferm answer given to the foreign plans of liquidating the independent Romanian state16. The taking over of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks in October 25lh/November 7th, 1917 and the Decree upon Peace signed by Lenin the next day, mark the Russian's abandon of the war, thus creating a dramatic situation for Romania. In her diary, Queen Maria synthesizes the dramatism of the situation:”Nando is depressed and desperate. I fear he is on the verge of a real collapse. The latest news from Russia were so 15 România ("Romania" review), an I, nr. 79 din 23 aprilie 1917; Ion Scurtu, op. tit., p. 41. 16 See România în anii primului război mondial (Romania in the First Years of the I WW), vol. II, Bucureşti, 1987, p. 336-375. 92
