Abstract:

The end of the First World War positioned Romania among the victorious states. Its territory doubled in size, incorporating new provinces that brought with them industrial infrastructure, a developed working class, and labor organizations shaped by the traditions of the former Habsburg Monarchy. This reconfiguration of state borders disrupted the existing orientations of the labor movement and, in several respects, shifted it into a semi-peripheral position.

In response to the growing distance from Western models of democratization, socialists promoted demands for decentralization and autonomy in order to prevent the “new provinces” from regressing into an “Ottoman pashalik,” a term Social Democrats frequently used to criticize Greater Romania. This was accompanied by efforts to recognize the plurinational character of the Romanian state, along with demands for the cultural and political rights of national minorities.

A key component of Social Democratic visions of decentralization and autonomy appears to have been a practice oriented towards multilingual participation and regionally balanced representation. In this regard, Romania seems to be an exception: unlike other successful states of the Habsburg Empire, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, no separate minority socialist parties were established. The extent to which these multilingual and integrative practices were successfully implemented, and the limits they encountered, will be at the center of this presentation.

Speaker bio:

Manuel Lautenbacher is a doctoral candidate in East European History at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His dissertation examines social democracy in interwar Romania, with a focus on labor movements and the politics of national diversity. From 2020 to 2023, he received a doctoral scholarship from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He holds degrees in history, German, and education from Mainz and Jagiellonian University in Kraków and has taught courses on Eastern European history.

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