The message delivered on behalf of King Michael on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Communism in Romania. As so often in history, Romania proved an exception to the rule - as it was the only country where overthrow of the regime was violent, if no less the result of mass opposition to Communism. Romania has not quite come to terms with its traumatic history, from which the Royal Family alone are a shining light. Romania gained and lost territory in the 20th Century. It then came under Soviet domination, only for the horrid Ceausescu to pursue his own course (which of course did not make him any less bad - but the West for a time fell for it!), which of itself ensured that his own demise was violent. Gaddhafi met the same fate, I hope others (like Robert Mugabe) do as well. Historically, too, Romania is somewhat different from the rest of the Balkans. The most obvious is ethno-linguistic, Romanian is a Romance language and a conservative one at that, which in many ways did not structurally deviate greatly from Latin. The Dacians were an ancient people, who were followed by the Vlachs who were ancestors of Romanians. Unlike other Orthodox Balkan peoples, Romania maintained its self-government despite Ottoman domination, through its boyar aristocracy. To highlight this uniqueness, 19th Century Romanian conservative thinkers also stated that Romanian feudalism was different from Western feudalism. Many of those were also Phanariotes, who thus were a link to Byzantine Greece and further back...
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 06:32:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015