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

The proclamation of the Republic in Bessarabia is eloquent for the spirit of imitation of the Romanians"34. The assurances given by Rakovski that the plan wouldn't endanger the Austrian interests in the perspectives of Austria entering the "Federative Balcanic Republic", which he enthusiastically promoted seemed not to be calming enough. Of course, noticed the Austrian diplomat - the project of "The Balcanic Federative Republic" totally contravene to the Balcanic policy of Austro- Hungary. Yet "the coup d'état in Romania", which was planned together with Rakovski could be "momentary useful" to the Central Powers, because once Romania is out of the war it could quicken the military surrender of Italy and Greece. Being convinced of the force of attraction exercised by the social revolution slogans upon the population exhausted by the war, the plotters of the plan of the "revolutionizing” of Romania were almost sure of success.

Without contesting the permeability of the Romanian society to the ideas of the social revolution and to the democratic reforms, the mistake of the authors of the project of "insurrecting" Romania at the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 was obvious. They neglected the essential aspiration of the Romanian nation to their liberation from under foreign rulings by the completing the state unification of the Romanian territories, without which the great social and political reforms announced even before the war and solemnly promised by king Ferdinand in the summer of the 1917, were very difficult to be understood. The overbid of the importance of the social revolution as a propagandistic factor of counteracting of the national consciousness of a people with an old tradition of the national movements who entered the war only to completing its country, made the plan of the importers of the revolution inoperative and without any chance of success. The millions of Romanian soldiers-peasants, intellectuals and town dwellers drawn together in a dramatic effort to save their country, didn't look in antinomical terms to the democratic reforms and the state unification as the “maximalists" proposed them, persons who were in the payroll of foreign interests. The funciary patriotism of the population naturally folded on the national principle which dominated the political thought and practice in Europe and in other continents at the beginning of the XXth century.

As a result, the action in force of the Romanian troops from Iassy and other places in Moldavia of disarming the bolshevised Russian soldiers, as well as other measures ment to save the country in the

World War I and Revolutionary Options

34 Ibidem.

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