Romania PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
Figure 3. Topography and Drainage
Boundaries and Geographical Position
With an area of 237,499 square kilometers, Romania is
slightly
smaller than the Federal Republic of Germany (West
Germany) and is
the twelfth largest country in Europe. Situated in the
northeastern
portion of the Balkan Peninsula, the country is halfway
between the
equator and the North Pole and equidistant from the
westernmost
part of Europe--the Atlantic Coast--and the most
easterly--the Ural
Mountains. Of its 3,195 kilometers of border, Romania
shares 1,332
kilometers with the Soviet Union to the east and north.
Bulgaria
lies to the south, Yugoslavia to the southwest, and
Hungary to the
west. In the southeast, 245 kilometers of Black Sea
coastline
provide an important outlet to the Mediterranean Sea and
the
Atlantic Ocean.
Traditionally Romania is divided into several historic
regions
that no longer perform any administrative function.
Dobruja (see Glossary)
is the easternmost region, extending from the
northward
course of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea.
Moldavia (see Glossary)
stretches from the Eastern Carpathians to the
Prut River
on the Soviet border.
Walachia (see Glossary)
reaches south from
the Transylvanian Alps to the Bulgarian border and is
divided by
the Olt River into Oltenia on the west and Muntenia on the
east.
The Danube forms a natural border between Muntenia and
Dobruja. The
west-central region, known as
Transylvania (see Glossary),
is
delimited by the arc of the Carpathians, which separates
it from
the Maramures region in the northwest; by the Crisana
area, which
borders Hungary in the west; and by the
Banat (see Glossary)
region
of the southwest, which adjoins both Hungary and
Yugoslavia. It is
these areas west of the Carpathians that contain the
highest
concentrations of the nation's largest ethnic minorities--
Hungarians, Germans, and Serbs.
Romania's exterior boundaries are a result of
relatively recent
events
(see
fig. 2). At the outbreak of World War I, the
country's
territory included only the provinces of Walachia,
Moldavia, and
Dobruja. This area, known as the Regat or the Old Kingdom,
came
into being with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
in the
mid-nineteenth century. At the end of World War I, Romania
acquired
Transylvania and the Banat. Some of this territory was
lost during
World War II, but negotiations returned it to Romania.
Although
this acquisition united some 85 percent of the
Romanian-speaking
population of Eastern Europe into one nation, it left a
considerable number of ethnic Hungarians under Romanian
rule.
Disputes between Hungary and Romania regarding this
territory would
surface regularly, as both considered the region part of
their
national heritage. Questions were also periodically raised
as to
the historical validity of the Soviet-Romanian border.
Bukovina (see Glossary)
and
Bessarabia (see Glossary), former Romanian
provinces where significant percentages of the population
are
Romanian-speaking, have been part of the Soviet Union
since the end
of World War II. Despite ongoing and potential disputes,
however,
it was unlikely in 1989 that Romania's borders would be
redrawn in
the foreseeable future.
Data as of July 1989
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