LATINS IN A SEA OF SLAVS, THE ROMANIANS HAVE TRIED TO SECURE SOME AUTONOMY WITHIN THE SOVIET BLOC, BUT THEY NOW FACE ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
The Romanians are a Latin people who have tenaciously retained their language and customs despite being surrounded by Hungarians and Slav-speaking Bulgars, Yugoslavs and Ukrainians. In turn they fought against Hungarian, Turkish and Hapsburg occupation. Heroic leaders resisted Turkish onslaughts for five centuries; one of them, Vlad Tepes (1456-75), known as the Impaler, was immortalized later as Dracula, the vampire count of the famous horror story.
Romania became an independent state in 1878, fought against Germany in the First World War and with Germany in the Second. Though it joined the Allies in 19" its postwar fate was decided by the Soviet advance into central Europe: it became a Communist state.
On the map Romania resembles a Catherine wheel. In the south-east, the 'fuse' comprises the reed jungle, river channels and wildlife paradise of the DANUBE delta, and the dry rolling farmlands of DOBRUJA separating the river from the BLACK SEA coast. Inland is a ring of rich agricultural plains, flat in the south (WALACHIA) and west (Banat) and hilly in the east (MOLDAVIA).
These plains enclose the sweeping arc of the forested CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS that rise to 2548 m (8360 ft). On the southwestern Yugoslav frontier, the Danube breaches the mountains in the magnificent 160 km (100 mile) IRON GATES gorge. The circular 'core' of Romania is TRANSYLVANIA, within the Carpathian arc.
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