People and Religions

THE ETHINC MINORITIES

In the three principalities where they lived until the nation-state was founded, the Romanians always were the majority population. In Wallachia and Moldavia, they constantly accounted for at least nine-tenths of the total population. In Transylvania, which was incorporated in foreign kingdoms and empires, the Romanians always made up the majority ethnic group, accounting for half or even two-thirds of the principality's population. Despite the policy of denationalisation, the Romanians remained the majority population both in Bessarabia and in Bukovina. At the same time, several other ethnic groups settled in the territory inhabited by Romanians.

The first census conducted in Romania after the union of 1918, the one of 1930, recorded, alongside the Romanians (72% of the total population), the following ethnic minorities: 1.426.000 Hungarians, 740.000 Germans (Saxons and Swabians), 722.000 Jews and much smaller numbers of Russians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Gypsies, Bulgarians, Serbs, Poles, Turks and Tartars. What is the explanation of this broad ethnic range?

The most numerous minorities, the Hungarians and the Germans, came to live here when certain Romanian territories were incorporated in other states. The Hungarians, who had come from the Pannonian Plain around AD 900, settled in Transylvania as this principality was conquered. Since their number was small, the Hungarians brought here other ethnic groups as well, granting them certain privileges that made them loyal to the Hungarian Kingdom. This way they managed to break the monolithic character of the native Romanians and, in addition, to exploit the region more efficiently. The first foreign ethnics to come here were the Szecklers, and ethnically heterogeneous population of Asian stock, which was allied with the Hungarians and was gradually assimilated by them from the linguistic point of view. In the 12th-13th centuries they settled in the south and east of Transylvania, where they have been living to this day. The same areas were colonized with German ethnics, later known as Saxons. In the Banat, a historical region in south-western Romania, incorporated in the Hapsburg Empire in the 18th century, the House of Austria settled other colonists of German descent, the Swabians. Other German colonists settled in the 18th century in Bukovina, which was annexed by the Hapsburg Empire in 1775. In Dobrudja, the region between the Danube and the Black Sea, communities of Turks and Tartars were colonized during the long Ottoman domination.

Other ethnic minorities in present-day Romania are the result of immigration. Beginning in the Middle ages, isolated groups of Gypsies, Armenians and Jews settled down here. The Jewish communities grew rapidly at the end of the 19th century, given the inflow of immigrants from the Tsarist and Hapsburg empires, and became the main minority in the early 20th century Romania. In Iasi, Avram Goldfaden was to set up in 1878 the first Jewish theatre in the world. Finally, as everywhere else, in Romania there are also communities originating in the neighbour countries: Serbs, Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, and Czechs.

The fact that the Romanians were the most numerous and that the territories they inhabited were not ethnically heterogeneous explains why no bloody interethnic conflicts or religious wars have broken out here. On the other hand, there is no overemphasizing that, although they were nationalistic, to the effect that they fought for a single homeland, the Romanians have never been chauvinistic. They respected the traditions and beliefs of the minorities, and so the minorities have not felt deprived of a homeland. A version from this coexistence occurred during World War II, when Romania was at first in Nazi Germany's sphere of influence and then under the control of the Soviet armies. In the early��, when Romania was allied to Nazi Germany, the Jewish population was discriminated and persecuted. Deported in Trans-Dniester, as Ion Antonescu had ordered, thousands of Jewis from Bessarabia and Bukovina died. On the other hand, in January 1945, the Soviet troops stationed in Romania deported about 100.000 German ethnics to the labour camps in the USSR.

In the 20th century immigration no longer altered the population structure. In exchange, in the nearly 50 years of communism, almost two million people left the country. The 1992 census showed that German, Jewish and Armenian communities virtually disappeared after having lived for centuries in the Romanian territory. The result is that in today's Romania, the Romanians account for nearly 90% of the population, with the remaining 10% made up of ethnic minorities. The most numerous minorities is by far the Hungarian one, followed much behind by Gypsies, Germans, Ukrainians, Jews, etc.

The Ortodox Church

According with the 1992 census, from the total population of Romania, 19802239 people declared themselves as being Christian Orthodox, which means 86.8%.

The Romanian Orthodox Church is autocephalous and united in its form of organization and keeps the dogmatic and canonic unity with all Orthodox Sister churches from within The Universal Orthodox Church. In Romania, The Orthodox Church is national and majoritary, comprising all Christians of Orthodox faith from Romania and Diaspora.

At present, The Romanian Orthodox Church has 30 dioceses all over the country and abroad (15 in 1989); in the dioceses found in Romania there are 13631 units - parishes, filias, monasteries and small, secluded convents.

The pastoral and religious assistance is fulfilled by 42 bishops (23 in 1989), 11105 priests and deacons.

The monachal life goes on inside the 531 monachal sites, where 7532 nuns and monks (2511 in 1989) live, work, study and pray.

The Orthodox education is organized upon two stages: a) gymnasial medium-leveled education - 38 seminars and 19 singing school and b) upper education organized in 14 theological faculties in the main towns from Romania.

The Romanian theological school is profoundly indebted for the contribution brought to its enrichment, under the mystical and filokalic aspects, to the professor and priest Dumitru Staniloaie, who served diligently for over 6 decades.

Under the canonic and administrative organization, The Romanian Orthodox Church is organized as a Patriarchy, called Romanian Patriarchy, having the Patriarch Teoctist as patriarch.

CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS

Today in Romania there are over one million Catholics, or approx. 5% of the population. Part of the Hungarians and all the Swabians in Banat are Catholic.

The remaining Hungarians and the Saxon in Transylvania, today about 800,000 persons, or 3.5% of the total population, are Reformed. This confessional diversification dates back to the 16th century, as prior to that time all the Transylvanian Hungarians and Saxons had been Catholic. When the Reform penetrated their regions, all the Saxon embraced Lutheranism, which became a distinctive mark of their ethnic group, part of the Hungarians espoused Calvinism, a small number of Hungarians became Unitarian and the rest stuck to Catholicism. Therefore, since the end of the XVI-th century four denominations - Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist and Unitarian - were recognized as official. The Orthodox religion of the Romanians continued to be merely tolerated.

OTHER CULTS

Corresponding to the ethnic structure, in Romania there exists also a Muslim denomination with about 50,000 Turkish and Tartar followers in Dobrudja, as well as a Mosaic community of about 9,000 Jews. The first neo-Protestant communities were established here in 1930, when the first Baptist congress took place and the Union of the Seventh-Day Adventists was set up. In 1922 the first Pentecostal church emerged in Arad. Today there are approx. 100,000 Baptists and about 200,000 Pentecostals.

THE ROMANIANS OUTSIDE THE COUNTRY BORDERS

Estimates put the number of Romanians living abroad somewhere between eight and ten million persons. This figure includes several layers from different chronological levels. The oldest dated to the beginnings of the Romanians' history and is made up of descendants from the Romanians south of the Danube, dislodged by the great Slavic wave in the 7th-8th centuries. These branched out into three groups, the Aromanians, the Megleno-Romanians and the Istro-Romanians, all living in the Balkan Peninsula. Today they constitute ethnic minorities in different Balkan states. The following layer comprises the Romanians who remained within the borders of other states after the last territorial amputations inflicted upon Romania. Most of these, about 4 million, live east and north of the Prut, in the regions detached under the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, today included in the Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.

A last layer, which development in time, is made up of the émigré communities.

The phenomena of emigration have not been a feature of the Romanian history.

It appeared for the first time in the decades that preceded World War I, determined by the denationalisation policy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and by a difficult economic situation. At that time a number of Romanians from Transylvania left for America. In interwar Romania, through the law stipulated the right to free emigration and immigration, the number of persons leaving and of immigrants was insignificant oscillating around the average figure of 2,000 persons annually. The biggest emigration wave was determined by the hardships under the communist regime, and particularly in 1945-1948, and in the last decade of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. Only in this post-war period is it possible to speak of a Romanian Diaspora.

In the very first days after the fall of communism in December 1989, Romania applied the principle of full freedom of circulation for its citizens, in force in any democratic country. The relations between the Romanians in Romania and those living abroad have always been natural, except for the communist epoch, when the Bucharest authorities interrupted the free communication and dialogue with the Romanian emigration. The largest Romanian communities in Western Europe are to be found, in order of magnitude, in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Sweden and Spain. As for the other continents, the communities institutionally best organized, with a view to preserving and asserting their ethnic, cultural and religious identities, are to be found in the USA and Canada. In Latin America, the Romanian emigration is quite numerous in Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, and the same holds true for Australia and New Zealand. In Asia one can only speak of Romanian ethnics from the former Soviet Union, who were deported to or settled in Siberia and in the present states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan in central Asia.

Two countries are characterized as being a new homeland to persons from Romania: Germany for about 600,000 Saxons and Swabians and Israel for 450,000 Jews. The communities of Jews, Saxon, Swabians, Armenians, Turks, Tartars and Greeks who were born and raised in the Romanian environment have remained close to the language and culture of their country of origin, no matter where they went to live.

THE POPULATION

In the Romanian space, the population has grown steadily, yet with certain oscillations due mainly to wars but also to the epidemics between 1600 and 1830. Yet never has famine threatened the demographic equilibrium in this area. In the 20th century immigration no longer altered the population structure, but the two world wars cut off a large number of lives. Furthermore, under the communist regime, nearly two million persons emigrated - both Romanians and, especially, persons belonging to the ethnic minorities.

Dinamics of the population in the prezent day territory of the country

Ancient Dacia ca. 1,0 millions
Romanian countries in:
1600 ca. 2.2 millions
1859 ca. 8.6 millions
1912 ca. 12.9 millions
1930 ca. 14.2 millions
1948 ca. 17.4 millions
1977 ca. 21.5 millions
1999 ca. 22.4 millions

In the 20th century the structure by gender has shown a slight prevalence of the female population, just as at world level, this being due to a higher death rate of males as well as to the loss of lives during the two world wars. The structure by age groups has changed in the last decades, with the elderly groups growing, to match the European average. Life expectancy at birth has grown, somewhat more slowly in the two decades, approaching 70 years. In exchange, in the ��s, for the first time, the share of the population under the age of 14 has dropped to less that 1/5 of the total, which is a worrisome phenomenon for any society. With approx. 95 inhabitants/sq.km, Romania currently has a density double the one of 1900, through it still is below the European average. This figure is three times bigger than the one of the USA, but less than half the one of the UK and Germany.

The historical provinces on the outer part of the Carpathian Mountains, i.e. Muntenia, Oltenia, Moldavia and Dobrudja, account for 2/3 of the total population, whereas the provinces within the mountainous arch - Transylvania, the Banat, Maramures and Crisana - are home to only 1/3 of the total population. Permanent human settlements are spread throughout the territory, from areas with an elevation of barely a few metres, such as in the Danube Delta and on the Black Sea coast, up to 1,600 metres in the Apuseni Mountains. Nearly all the population lives in the plains and in hilly zones, with only 10% living at altitudes in excess of 600 m.

Compared to the European level, Romania's current urbanization index, 55%, is modest. Nevertheless, considering the situation in 1930, when just 1/5 of the population was urban, one will notice that in the last 50 years migration from the rural to the urban environment has been substantial. The rise in the urban population was determined also by the natural increment in the population of existing towns and cities, the move of rural population into industrial activities and by urban areas expanding and incorporating nearby rural settlements. Moreover, a specific form of urbanization during the communist era was the overnight transformation of rural settlements into towns, based on decree, and so was the building of so-called new towns from scratch. A direct outcome of this migration from the rural to the urban environment was also the change determined by industrialization in the social and economic structure of the employed population. As the population employed in agriculture declined due to collectivisation and mechanization - although in this respect Romania still ranks high in Europe - there occurred a growth in the population employed in industrial activities, construction trade as well as in the non-productive field, notably education, health care, culture and the administration. The share of the personnel in the sector of services is still relatively low.

THE VILLAGE

In Romania the village is not only the oldest form of human community, attested by archaeological finds from the early Neolithic. For a long time the village was dominant community, the cradle of a vigorous folk culture, which has preserved its vitality to date. The structure of Romania's current 13,285 villages, grouped in 2,685 communes, is determined by the physical features of the area where they came into being, their size (from a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants) and the economic function (agriculture, vine growing, fruit growing, animal husbandry, forestry, balneal area, etc.). The mountainous zone is characterized by scattered villages, with isolated homesteads or small groups of homesteads dotting valleys and slopes, especially in the Apuseni Mountains. Hilly zones are characterized by villages with houses separated by vineyards and orchards, whereas in agricultural areas in the plains or depressions it is agglomerated villages that prevail, i.e. villages with compact clusters of houses and streets intersecting at right angles. Most villages are farming communities but many combine such pursuits as vine growing or fruit growing with animal husbandry and forestry. The Romanian village lent an unusual vitality to folk culture in the Carpathian-Danubian space, a good part of which has been preserved to this day, in spite of the inherent erosion characteristic of industrial societies. Romanian rural architecture is, owing to nature's generosity, one of the world's few where the three basic materials - wood, stone and clay - are used in a balanced manner. Besides, it is very original, with carved wood being used ingeniously, in refined sculptures adoring the roofs, porches and other elements. Standing proof to this artistry are the wooden churches in Maramures, the Apuseni Mountains and the Banat. The spire of the church at Surdesti (Maramures), built in 1764, is 54 m tall, an absolute record for wooden buildings in Romania and one of Europe's most depressive. The Village Museum in Bucharest, founded in 1936, is considered one of the content's most original and ingeniously organized open-air museums. The variety of the folk culture also reflects the life of ethnic minorities of Romania. The fortified churches and medieval peasant citadels in south-eastern Transylvania, erected by the German population, are among the most interesting in Europe. The Romanian written culture and music in particular owe a lot o folklore, a branch of folk culture. Other fields of folk culture recognized for their notable achievements are ceramics, textiles, embroidery, leatherwear, and metal processing. Icons painted on glass are another attraction both for tourists and collector.

THE TOWN

The first urban settlements in what is today Romania emerged more than two and a half millennia back as colonies founded by the Greeks on the coast of the Black Sea. For over one millennium, Histria, Callatis (today Mangalia) and Tomis (Constanta, the biggest port on the Black Sea) played an important role in the trade and culture of these lands. During the Roman rule in Dacia and Moesia, urban civilization developed intensely, overlapping the peak period in the development of towns in the Roman Empire. Flourishing urban centres are erected on the place of many previous settlements and receive the rank of colonia and municipium: Apulum (today Alba Iulia), Napoca (today Cluj), Drobeta (Turnu Severin), and others. Yet the migrations were to break the continuity of urban life in the territory of Romania, except, to a certain extent, the area of Dobrudja, which benefited from commercial relations in the Black Sea. The first medieval towns only appear in the 10th-12th centuries, at the junction of major trade routes, first in Transylvania (the Saxon colonists here, just like the Hungarian conquerors, plays a meritorious role) and in Dobrudja (which in the 10th century was returned to Byzantine rule) and later - in the form of boroughs - also in Wallachia and Moldavia. In the 19th century, form commercial and crafts centres, the towns also develop into industrial centres and railway junctions. After World War II, the number of towns rises from 152 in 1948 to the current 263, spread throughout all physical features, from the Danube Delta (the town of Sulina lies at barely 3.5 m above sea level) to the mountains (Predeal is situated at 1,035 m, the highest altitude of a town in Romania). Yet for political reasons certain rural settlements that did not fulfil the urbanism criteria were nevertheless declared towns. Numerically, it is the small and medium-sized towns that prevail, only 25 of Romania's towns having a population above 100,000 Bucharest, the capital of Vallachia and then, since 1862, of the nation-state, has 2 million inhabitants, whereas the next echelon comes far behind with 300,000 - 350,000 inhabitants. The cities in this category are either old historical and cultural centres such as Iasi (the former capital of Moldavia), Cluj-Napoca (capital of the Principality of Transylvania), Constanta (built on the place of the ancient Greek port of Tomis, founded in the 6th century BC), Craiova (sea of the Ban of Oltenia, the most important dignitary after the prince of Vallachia) and Timisoara (administrative centre of the Banat region) - or powerful medieval commercial centres, such as Brasov and Galati, which became major industrial cities in the 20th century.

THE FAMILY WITH THE ROMANIANS

In a society like the Romanian one, which was rural for a long time, the family still is a very important institution and has preserved its traditional structure: mother, father and children. Common-law marriage are rare, just as rare are children born to single mother. Though people start a family at a relatively young age, the number of single persons at age 50 being quite low, divorces are fewer than the European or American average. Traditional family does not mean that the father works and the mother is a housewife. After World War II, this type of family virtually disappeared. Most women have jobs and contribute to the economic support of the family, especially as there is no difference in wages between men and women. Many women have achieved distinction in their careers in the professions and have even become members of the Academy. The existence of grandparents and the help they provide make up for the time the mother works. The generation gap was not a problem until recently, but after the fall of communism it has surfaced, through not dramatically. In fact, other developments, too, in this last period, indicate an alignment with western patterns, one of the most worrisome being the declining birth rate.