Romania

Coordinates: 46°N 25°E / 46°N 25°E / 46; 25

Romania (ⁱ/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a]) is a unitary semi-presidential republic located in Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea, between Bulgaria and Ukraine. It also borders Hungary, Serbia, and Moldova. It covers 238,391 square kilometres (92,043 sq mi) and has a temperate-continental climate. With its 19.94 million inhabitants, it is the seventh most populous member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth largest city in the EU. The River Danube, which is Europe's second longest river after the Volga, rises in Germany and flows southeastwards for a distance of 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying in Romania's Danube Delta. Some of its 1,075 km length bordering the country drains the whole of it. The Carpathian Mountains, with their tallest peak Moldoveanu at 2,544 m (8,346 ft), cross Romania from the north to the southwest.

Modern Romania emerged within the territories of the ancient Roman province of Dacia, and was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. During World War II, Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, fighting side by side with the Wehrmacht until 1944, then it joined the Allied powers after being occupied by the Red Army forces. During the war, Romania lost several territories, of which Northern Transylvania was regained after the war. Following the war, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition back towards democracy and a capitalist market economy.

Bucharest

Bucharest (/ˈbjuːkərɛst/; Romanian: București, pronounced [bukuˈreʃtʲ]) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, at 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E / 44.43250°N 26.10389°E / 44.43250; 26.10389Coordinates: 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E / 44.43250°N 26.10389°E / 44.43250; 26.10389, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km (37.3 mi) north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border.

Bucharest was first mentioned in documents in 1459. It became the capital of Romania in 1862 and is the centre of Romanian media, culture, and art. Its architecture is a mix of historical (neo-classical), interbellum (Bauhaus and art deco), communist-era and modern. In the period between the two World Wars, the city's elegant architecture and the sophistication of its elite earned Bucharest the nickname of "Little Paris" (Micul Paris). Although buildings and districts in the historic city centre were heavily damaged or destroyed by war, earthquakes, and above all Nicolae Ceaușescu's program of systematization, many survived. In recent years, the city has been experiencing an economic and cultural boom.

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romanian: [nikoˈla.e t͡ʃe̯awˈʃesku]; 26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989.

A member of the Romanian Communist youth movement, Ceaușescu rose up through the ranks of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's Socialist government and, upon the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in 1965, he succeeded to the leadership of Romania’s Communist Party as General Secretary.

After a brief period of relatively moderate rule, Ceaușescu's regime became increasingly brutal and repressive. By some accounts, his rule was the most rigidly Stalinist in the Soviet bloc. He maintained controls over speech and the media that were very strict even by Soviet-bloc standards, and internal dissent was not tolerated. His secret police, the Securitate, was one of the most ubiquitous and brutal secret police forces in the world. In 1982, with the goal of paying off Romania's large foreign debt, Ceaușescu ordered the export of much of the country’s agricultural and industrial production. The resulting extreme shortages of food, fuel, energy, medicines, and other basic necessities drastically lowered living standards and intensified unrest. Ceaușescu's regime was also marked by an extensive and ubiquitous cult of personality, nationalism, a continuing deterioration in foreign relations even with the Soviet Union, and nepotism.

Little Paris

Little Paris may refer to:

See also

World war

A world war is a war involving many or most of the world's most powerful and populous countries. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theatres.

The term is applied to the two major international conflicts that occurred during the 20th century:

In terms of human technological history, the scale of these wars was enabled by the technological advances of the Second Industrial Revolution and resulting globalization that allowed global power projection and mass production of military hardware, but wars on such a scale have not been repeated due to the onset of the Atomic Age and the resulting danger of mutual assured destruction.

Origins of the term "world war"

The term "World War" was coined speculatively in the early 20th century, some years before the First World War broke out, probably as a literal translation of the German word Weltkrieg. German writer August Wilhelm Otto Niemann had used the word in the title of his anti-British novel Der Weltkrieg: Deutsche Träume ("The World War: German Dreams") as early as 1904, published in English as The coming conquest of England. Also, the term was used as early as 1850 by Karl Marx in The Class Struggles in France, as well as his associate Friedrich Engels.Rasmus B. Anderson in 1889 describes an episode in Teutonic mythology as a world war (Swedish världskrig), justifying this description by a line in an Old Norse epic poem, Völuspá: folcvig fyrst i heimi (the first great war in the world). The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first known usage in the English language to a Scottish newspaper, the People's Journal in 1848: "A war amongst the great powers is now necessarily a world-war."