Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Did Romania participate in WWII?
During World War II, Hungary and Romania became allies and participated in the war against the Soviet Union. But after the coup on 23 August 1944 Romania switched sides and fought against Hungary. Consequently, Soviet and Romanian troops invaded Hungary, occupied Northern Transylvania by October 1944 and re-established the Romanian administration in the region in March 1945. The 1947 Treaty of Paris reaffirmed the borders between Romania and Hungary as originally defined in Treaty of Trianon 27 years earlier, thus confirming the return of Northern Transylvania to Romania.
Romania first participated in Paralympic competition at the 1972 Summer Paralympics in Heidelberg, Germany, but did not make another appearance until the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta. Their only prior appearance at the Winter Paralympics was four years prior, at the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics. Although the nation has won medals at the Summer Paralympics, they have yet to win a medal at the Winter Paralympics. The 2014 Winter Paralympics were held from 7–16 March 2014, in Sochi, Russia; 45 countries and 547 athletes took part in the multi-sport event. Laura Valeanu was selected as the only athletes in the Romanian delegation to Sochi. She was chosen as the Romanian flag bearer for the parade of nations during the opening ceremony and for the closing ceremony.
Italian-Romanian relations are foreign relations between Italy and Romania. Both countries established diplomatic relations on 21 April 1873. Italy has an embassy in Bucharest and five honorary consulates (in Iaşi, Satu Mare, Braşov, Arad and Timişoara). Romania has an embassy in Rome, five general consulates (in Milan, Torino, Trieste, Bari and Bologna), two general honorary consulates (in Genova and Treviso) and two honorary consulates (in Napoli and Trento).
Romania is one of the world's largest wine producers and sixth largest among European wine-producing countries. In 2015 it produced around 4.069 million hectolitres of wine. In recent years, Romania has attracted many European business people and wine buyers, due to the affordable prices of both vineyards and wines compared to other wine-producing nations such as France, Germany, and Italy.
Transylvania is a historical region in central and northwestern Romania. It was part of the Dacian Kingdom (1st–2nd centuries CE), Roman Dacia (2nd–3rd centuries), the Hunnic Empire (4th–5th centuries), the Kingdom of the Gepids (5th–6th centuries), the Avar Khaganate (6th–9th centuries) and the 9th century First Bulgarian Empire. During the late 9th century, western Transylvania was reached by the Hungarian conquerors and later it became part of the Kingdom of Hungary, formed in 1000. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526 it belonged to the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, from which the Principality of Transylvania emerged. During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the principality was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire; however, the principality had dual suzerainty (Ottoman and Habsburg). In 1690, the Habsburgs gained possession of Transylvania through the Hungarian crown. After 1711 Habsburg control of Transylvania was consolidated, and Transylvanian princes were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the separate status of Transylvania ceased; it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary (Transleithania) as part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. After World War I, Transylvania became part of Romania. In 1940 Northern Transylvania reverted to Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award, but it was reclaimed by Romania after the end of World War II.
Hungary did not immediately participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union. The invasion began on 22 June 1941, but Hitler did not directly ask for Hungarian assistance. Nonetheless, many Hungarian officials argued for participation in the war in order to encourage Hitler not to favour Romania in the event of border revisions in Transylvania. On 26 June 1941, the Soviet air force bombed Košice (Kassa). Some speculation exists that this was a "false-flag" attack instigated by Germany (possibly in cooperation with Romania) to give Hungary a "casus belli" for joining Operation Barbarossa and the war. Hungary declared war against the Soviets on 27 June 1941.
Romania has one of the largest areas of undisturbed forest in Europe, covering almost 27% of the territory. Some 3,700 plant species have been identified in the country, from which to date 23 have been declared natural monuments, 74 missing, 39 endangered, 171 vulnerable, and 1,253 rare.
The timeline of granting women's suffrage in Romania was gradual and complex, due to the turbulent historical period when it happened. The concept of universal suffrage for all "men" was introduced in 1918, and reinforced by the 1923 Constitution of Romania. Although this constitution opened the way for the possibility of women's suffrage too (Article 6), this did not materialize: the Electoral Law of 1926 did not grant women the right to vote, maintaining all male suffrage. Starting in 1929, women who met certain qualifications were allowed to vote in local elections. After the Constitution from 1938 (elaborated under Carol II of Romania who sought to implement an authoritarian regime) the voting rights were extended to women for national elections by the Electoral Law 1939, but both women and men had restrictions, and in practice these restrictions affected women more than men (the new restrictions on men also meant that men lost their previous universal suffrage). Although women could vote, they could be elected only in the Senate and not in the Chamber of Deputies (Article 4 (c)). (the Senate was later abolished in 1940). Due to the historical context of the time, which included the dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, there were no elections in Romania between 1940–1946. In 1946, Law no. 560 gave full equal rights to men and women to vote and to be elected in the Chamber of Deputies; and women voted in the Romanian general election, 1946. The Constitution of 1948 gave women and men equal civil and political rights (Article 18). Until the collapse of communism in 1989, all the candidates were chosen by the communist party, and civil rights were merely symbolic under this authoritarian regime.
Romanian descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman provinces of Southeastern Europe. Roman inscriptions show that Latin was primarily used to the north of the so-called Jireček Line (a hypothetical boundary between the predominantly Latin- and Greek-speaking territories of the Balkan Peninsula in the Roman Empire), but the exact territory where Proto-Romanian (or Common Romanian) developed cannot certainly be determined. Most regions where Romanian is now widely spokenBessarabia, Bukovina, Crișana, Maramureș, Moldova, and significant parts of Munteniawere not incorporated in the Roman Empire. Other regionsBanat, western Muntenia, Oltenia and Transylvaniaformed the Roman province of Dacia Traiana for about 170 years. According to the "continuity" theory, modern Romanian is the direct descendant of the Latin dialect of Dacia Traiana and developed primarily in the lands now forming Romania; the concurring "immigrationist" theory maintains that Proto-Romanian was spoken in the lands to the south of the Danube and Romanian-speakers settled in most parts of modern Romania only centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The idea of building a large steel works in eastern Romania, with access to the Danube and/or the Black Sea, was first discussed in 1958 at a plenary session of the ruling Romanian Workers' Party. The decision was formalized by a decree in July 1960, shortly after the party's 8th Congress approved a huge investment for the project. At the congress, a heated debate took place over where to situate the plant; some wanted it near Constanţa, at Midia or Mangalia, but they were overruled by leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who had roots in Galați. Building the works went against the wishes of the Soviet Union, whose leader Nikita Khrushchev, supported by the more industrialized Czechoslovakia and East Germany, wanted to have the southern part of the Comecon focus on building agrarian economies. Gheorghiu-Dej stridently opposed this notion, and the Soviets' unwillingness to back the project helped foster Romania's opening towards the West.
The 1802 Vrancea earthquake occurred in the Vrancea Mountains of today's Romania (then Moldavia) on , on St. Paraskeva's Day. With an estimated intensity of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale, it is the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Romania and one of the strongest in European history. It was felt across an area of more than two million square kilometers in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, from Saint Petersburg to the Aegean Sea.
By 1947, Romania remained the only monarchy in the Eastern Bloc. On 30 December that year, Michael was at his palace in Sinaia when Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej summoned him back to Bucharest. They presented him with a pretyped instrument of abdication and demanded that he sign it. With pro-Communist troops surrounding his palace and his telephone lines cut, Michael was forced to sign the document. Hours later, Parliament abolished the monarchy and proclaimed Romania a People's Republic. In February 1948, the Communists forced what remained of the Social Democrats to merge with them to form the Romanian Workers' Party. However, the few remaining independent-minded Socialists were soon pushed out, and the merged party was the PCR with a new name. Meanwhile, most non-Communist politicians had either been imprisoned or fled into exile.
The Second Polish Republic, established in 1918, existed as an independent state until 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union destroyed it in their invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II. Millions of Polish citizens perished in the course of the Nazi occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945 as Germany classified ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Jews and Romani (Gypsies) as subhuman. Nazi authorities targeted the last two groups for extermination in the short term, deferring the extermination and/or enslavement of the Slavs as part of the "Generalplan Ost" ('General Plan for the East') conceived by the Nazi régime. A Polish government-in-exile nonetheless functioned throughout the war and the Poles contributed to the Allied victory through participation in military campaigns on both the eastern and western fronts. The westward advances of the Soviet Red Army in 1944 and 1945 compelled Nazi Germany's forces to retreat from Poland, which led to the establishment of a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union, known from 1952 as the Polish People's Republic.
Romania has about 187,000 hectares of vine plantations; that ranks it on sixth place between the European wine-producing countries. With a wine production of about 4.5 million hl/year, Romania is the thirteenth largest wine-producing country in the world.
He also insisted, despite his leading position in the federal faction of the Romanian aristocracy and as Governor of Bukovina, that all citizens had the right to freely exercise their own religion and culture, and to have their mother tongue recognized, but always under the auspices of the Habsburg monarchy and the leadership of the Emperor. After the Kingdom of Romania was founded in 1881, Alexander proved to be a resolute opponent of the growing number of proponents for a connection of the Bucovina with Romania. In his opening speech as governor given in German language in the Bukovina Parliament on July 22, 1884, he called on all parliamentarians, to proceed unanimously in upholding provincial autonomy within the concept of an Austrian state. He also campaigned for the legal recognition of the German, Romanian and Ruthenian languages, stressing that the German language was the common bond of all the peoples in the monarchy. These have evolved historically and factually as the only official language, and is therefore to be ruled by them. He was considered an early pioneer of the idea of a United Europe of Nations.
There was a period of revolutions and interventions in Hungary between 1918 and 1920. The First Hungarian Republic was founded by Mihály Károlyi during the Aster Revolution in 1918. In March 1919, the republic was overturned by another revolution, and the Hungarian Soviet Republic (also known as Hungarian Republic of Councils) was created. The unresolved conflicts led to wars between Hungary and its neighbor states (Kingdom of Romania, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the evolving Czechoslovakia) in 1919. The Hungarian Soviet Republic ceased to exist after the Romanian occupation. The Treaty of Trianon in Versailles chilled the conflicts and beneficiaries for this event were Romania, the newly formed states of Czechoslovakia, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
Romania did not send any all-around teams to the Olympics for the first time since 1968, despite Cătălina Ponor coming out of retirement. This ended the streak of winning a team medal in the event since 1976. Romania has entered three artistic gymnasts into the Olympic competition. Four-time Olympic medalist Marian Drăgulescu claimed his Olympic spot in the men's apparatus and all-around events at the 2015 World Championships, while two more places were awarded to one Romanian male and female gymnast, who participated at the Olympic Test Event in Rio de Janeiro.
In April 2013, Romania submitted their annual Convergence Programme to the European Commission, which for the first time did not specify a target date for euro adoption. Then Prime Minister Victor Ponta stated that "eurozone entry remains a fundamental objective for Romania but we can't enter poorly prepared", and that 2020 was a more realistic target. In April 2013, the National Bank of Romania submitted draft amendments to the Romanian Constitution to the European Central Bank (ECB) for review. The amendments would make the NBR's statue an organic law to ensure "institutional and functional stability", and would allow for the "transfer of NBR tasks to the ECB and the introduction of the euro as legal tender" using organic law. In 2014, Romania's Convergence Report set a target date of 1 January 2019 for euro adoption.
Modified 11 times in the ensuing years, the 1952 Constitution was abrogated on August 21, 1965, when the 1965 Constitution of Romania came into force.
The People's Republic of Hungary remained in existence until 1989, when opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary. The state considered itself the heir to the Republic of Councils in Hungary, which was formed in 1919 as the first communist state created after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR). It was designated a people's democratic republic by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Geographically, it bordered Romania and the Soviet Union (via the Ukrainian SSR) to the east; Yugoslavia to the southwest; Czechoslovakia to the north and Austria to the west.
The 1952 Constitution of Romania, also called the "constitution of building socialism", expressed the consolidation of Communist power, featuring greater ideological content than its 1948 predecessor. A draft was written by a commission elected by the Great National Assembly on March 27, 1952, and published on July 18. By a 324-0 vote, it was adopted by the Great National Assembly on September 24, when it came into force, and published three days later.
The one exception to Comăneci's travel ban was her participation in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles as part of the Romanian delegation. Although a number of Communist nations had boycotted the 1984 Olympics in tit-for-tat to the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Romania chose to participate. Comăneci later wrote in her memoir that many believed Romania went to the Olympics because an agreement had been made with the United States not to accept defectors. However, Comăneci did not participate in the Games as a member of the Romanian team. She served in the capacity of an observer (not a judge), and she was able to watch Bela Károlyi's new protégé, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton, dominate the Olympics. However, she was not allowed to speak with Károlyi and was closely watched the entire time.
In early January 2012, Romania's participation remained unconfirmed. The online portal of one of Romania's newspapers, "Cotidianul", assumed that Romania was not going to enter the 2012 edition of the contest due the lack of foundation, but TVR officials did not confirm this claim. It was subsequently announced that Romania would take part in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. TVR pressured the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to lower the entry fee and stated that participation was only possible if 40% of all the costs that may occur could be funded by a sponsor.
The table below contains the list of members of people (called "Team Romania") that will be participating in the 2018 Games.
The Romanian National Paralympic Committee has few employees. They also have very little money. Despite this, they try very hard to help all sportspeople with disabilities in Romania. Their 2014 budget was for twelve sports. Snowboard became their thirteenth sport. This happened after Mihaita Papara asked the Committee Chairperson Sally Wood Lamont to support him. In 2016, the budget for the Romanian National Paralympic Committee increased. The year of the Summer Paralympics, their budget was . In comparison, Croatia had a budget of in 2015. They money increased because Romanians did well in international competitions. Because the costs to compete are very high, the money was still not enough. There are few sponsors for disability sportspeople in Romania. The Paralympic Games do not get much media coverage. This makes it very difficult for people in Romania to go to the Paralympic Games.
In 1996, for the only time in Eurovision history, an audio-only pre-qualifying round (from which hosts Norway were exempt) was held on 20 March as 29 countries wished to participate in the final but the European Broadcasting Union had set a limit of 22 (plus Norway). The countries occupying the bottom seven places after the pre-qualifier would be unable to take part in the main contest. After the voting, "Rugă pentru pacea lumii" had received 11 points, placing 29th (last) and because of that Romania did not participate in 1996 Eurovision Song Contest.