A century of ethnic changes in the Romanian territories united with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918
A century of ethnic changes in the Romanian territories united with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918

Summary/Abstract: The objective of the study is to clarify to what extent the alienation of a territory and the dynamics of the urbanization process may affect the evolution of the ethnic structure of the population within the time span o f a century. The year 1918 was an essential moment in the territorial evolution of the Romanian state which, in a short time, passed from the imminence of the total occupation by the Central Powers to the resolutions of the 1919-1920 peace treaties that sanctioned the unification of all the regions inhabited predominantly by Romanians. The evolution of the ethnic structure of the population in these territories recorded different tendencies, depending on the political and historical context. The territories that continued to belong to the Romanian state experienced a continuous strengthening of the majority ethnic component, including in urban centres. However, in the territories occupied by the Soviet Union, the territorial fragmentation, the assertion of an artificial national identity (the Moldovan one) and the favouring of Eastern Slavic communities produced complex effects, from marginalization and isolation in rural communities (the case of the territories assigned to Ukraine) to an identity crisis in the Republic of Moldova. The post-communist period registered the same trends in the territories of north-western Romania while being significantly disturbed in the ex-Soviet territories. The results of the study prove the importance of integrating predominantly Romanian territories into the unitary Romanian state.

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