1915: OPINIA PUBLICĂ ŞI IMAGINEA BELIGERANŢILOR ÎN ROMÂNIA VECHIULUI REGAT
1915: The Public Opinion and the Image of the Belligerents in the Old Kingdom Romania

Summary/Abstract: By 1915, the war had seemed to go on for ages and victory was nowhere in sight. Propaganda was the most important weapon to wield, since both belligerent blocks were looking for new allies. For Romania, the choice was not easy, since it wanted to claim a smaller or larger territory inhabited mostly by Romanians from each of the two (out of three) most important empires of the continent: Austro-Hungary and Russia. Regarding itself as key player in the Balkans, it had to choose whether to join the Entente or the Central Powers, being bound to the latter by a secret and obsolete treaty. But apart from the military, economical and political strategies made by the elites, what was the image of the potential enemy shaped up in the Romanian public opinion of 1915? Did it value its past experience, or was it more likely to seize the moment and choose accordingly to the present context in order to achieve its goal? Did the folklore image of the belligerent states matter or did reason finally prevail? This is the main purpose of this study, we mean to present Romanian images of potential enemies and allies before choosing the alliance in 1916.

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