History of Italy

800 BC The rise of the Etruscan civilisation

750 BC The Greeks begin to found colonies in Italy

600 BC The Etruscans rule central Italy

510 Rome rebels against the Etruscans. The Romans gradually take Etruscan territory.

494 BC The Plebians (poor Romans) withdraw from Rome and found their own settlement on the Aventine Hill

396 BC The Romans capture the city of Veii

390 BC The Gauls sack Rome

272 BC Almost all of southern Italy is in Roman hands

265 BC The last Etruscan town falls to the Romans

264-241 BC The Romans fight the Carthaginians

218-202 BC The second war against Carthage. The Romans completely defeat the Carthaginians.

148 BC Macedon becomes a Roman province

135-132 BC Slaves in Sicily rebel

103-99 BC Slaves in Sicily rebel again

90 BC All of northern Italy is in Roman hands

89 BC All free Italians are granted Roman citizenship

83-80 BC Sulla is dictator of Rome

73-71 BC Spartacus leads a slave rebellion

67 BC Pompey destroys the pirates in the Mediterranean

49 BC Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon

44 BC Julius Caesar is assassinated

27 BC Octavian is granted the title Augustus

14-37 AD Tiberius rules Rome

54-68 AD Nero rules Rome

98-117 AD Under the Emperor Trajan the Roman Empire reaches its peak

169-180 AD Marcus Aurelius is emperor

212 AD All free people in the empire are granted Roman citizenship

337 Constantine the first Christian emperor dies

410 BC Alaric the Goth captures Rome

455 BC The Vandals sack Rome

476 The last Roman emperor is deposed. Odoacer is made king of Italy.

535 The Byzantine emperor Justinian sends an army to Italy

540 The Byzantines capture Ravenna

568 The Lombards invade Italy

772 The Franks conquer the Lombard kingdom

1061-1091 The Normans conquer Sicily

1176 The German emperor Frederick Barbarossa is defeated at Legnano

1266 The French conquer Sicily

1282 The Sicilians rebel

1348 Italy is devastated by the Black Death

1434-1464 Cosimo Medici rules Florence

1470 The printing press is in use in Venice

1495 The French capture Naples but soon withdraw

1515 The French capture Milan

1527 The Spanish sack Rome

1542 Alarmed by the spread of Protestantism in Italy the Pope founds the Roman Inquisition

1600 The Roman Inquisition executes an astronomer named Giordano Bruno

1707 The Austrians take Naples

1720 The Austrians take Sicily

1764 Famine in Naples

1763-66 Famine in Tuscany

1796 Napoleon invades Italy

1797 Napoleon places Venice under Austrian control

1800 Napoleon wins a victory at Marengo

1820 A rebellion takes place in Naples

1831 More rebellions take place in Italy

1837 Giuseppe Mazzini lives in Britain but stoke the fires of Italian nationalism

1848 Revolutions break out in Italy

1849 All rebellions are crushed and the old order is reimposed in Italy

1852 Camillo Cavour becomes Prime Minister of Piedmont

1858 Cavour makes a deal with the French to drive the Austrians out of Italy. In the Papal States the authorities kidnap a 6 year old Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara from his parents and raise him as a Catholic

1859 After the war with Italy Piedmont gains Lombardy

1860 Romagna, Modena, Parma and Tuscany agree to join Piedmont. Garibaldi leads a force to support a rebellion in Palermo. They capture Naples on 7 June.

1861 The king of Piedmont becomes king of all Italy

1866 The Italians join the Prussians in a war with Austria. Afterwards Italy gains Venice.

1870 Italian forces liberate Rome

1877 Compulsory primary education is introduced in Italy

1887-1891 Francesco Crispi is prime minister of Italy

1893-1896 Crispi is prime minister again

c. 1886-1915 Northern Italy industrializes

1900 King Umberto is assassinated

1908 An earthquake strikes Sicily

1912 All literate men in Italy are given the vote

1915 Italy joins the First World War

1917 The Italians are defeated at Caporetto

1918 The Italians win a victory at Vittorio Veneto

1919 Mussolini founds the Fasci di Combattimento

1920 Unrest among Italian workers

1922 A force of Fascists march on Rome. The king makes Mussolini prime minister.

1924 Giacomo Matteotti the leader of the Socialists is murdered

1925 Mussolini makes himself dictator of Italy. Mussolini begins 'the battle of the grain' to make Italy self-sufficient.

1929 The Catholic Church makes an agreement with the Fascists

1938 Mussolini introduces anti-Semitic laws

1940 Mussolini declares war on France and Britain

1943 The allies land in Sicily then in Italy

1944 On 4 June the allies enter Rome

1945 German troops in Italy surrender

1946 Italy becomes a republic

1957 Italy is a founder member of the EU

1968-69 There is labor unrest in Italy

1970 Divorce is allowed in Italy

1972 Only 35% of Italians attend church regularly

1978 In certain circumstances abortion is allowed. Aldo Moro the leader of the Christian Democrats is murdered.

1999 Italy unwisely joins the Euro

History of Spain

1492 - The Christian Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon conquer the Emirate of Granada, ending nearly 800 years of Muslim rule in the south and founding modern Spain as a united state.

Christopher Columbus arrives in the Americas, heralding the conquest of much of South and Central America. Jews and later Muslims are expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.

16th-17th centuries - Spanish Empire at its height, with Spain the predominant European power. The rise of Protestant states in northern Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean begin the country's gradual decline.

18th century - The War of the Spanish Succession loses Spain its European possessions outside the Iberian Peninsula. Bourbon dynasty, originally from France, centralises the Spanish state, shutting down many regional autonomous assemblies and modernising government and the military.

1807-1814 - Napoleon's France occupies Spain, which has been a French satellite since 1795. Fierce nationalist resistance and British intervention in the Peninsular War gradually force French troops out.

19th century - Napoleonic legacy of political division and economic dislocation leaves Spain weak and unstable, with frequent changes of government and a low-level insurgency by Carlist supporters of a rival branch of the royal family. All Latin American colonies win their independence, with Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in Asia lost during a disastrous war with the United States in 1898.

1910s - Spain sought compensation in conquering colonies in Africa, most significantly northern Morocco and the Spanish Sahara.

1920s - The trade boom achieved by neutrality in the First World War is squandered through fighting Moroccan rebels and the financial mismanagement of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship at home.

1931 - The return of democratic government leads to an electoral backlash against the monarchy and its allies, and a republic is declared. Radical policies of land reform, labour rights, educational expansion and anti-Church legislation deepen the political divide.

1936 - After two years of right-wing government, a Popular Front coalition of left-wing and liberal parties narrowly wins parliamentary elections and seeks to reintroduce the radical policies of 1931. A coup by right-wing military leaders captures only part of the country, leading to three years of civil war.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy actively support the Nationalist rebels, while only the Soviet Union provides highly conditional assistance to the Republic. Britain and France support an arms embargo that effectively dooms the Republic, despite enthusiastic volunteers from all over Europe and the Americas who join the Communist-run International Brigades.

1939 - General Francisco Franco leads the Nationalists to victory in the Civil War. More than 350,000 Spaniards died in the fighting, and Franco purges all remaining Republicans. Spain remains neutral throughout the Second World War, although the government's sympathies clearly lie with the Axis powers.

1946-50 - Francoist Spain is ostracised by United Nations and many countries sever diplomatic relations.

1950s - As the Cold War deepens the US gradually improves relations with Spain, extending loans in return for military bases. Spain is admitted to the UN in 1955 and the World Bank in 1958, and other European countries open up to the Franco government.

El Milagro Espanol - the economic miracle of the late 1950s - sees Spain's manufacturing and tourism industries take off through liberalisation of state controls over the next two decades.

1959 - The Eta armed separatist group is founded with the aim of fighting for an independent homeland in the Basque region of Spain and France. Its violent campaign begins with an attempt to derail a train carrying politicians in 1961.

1968 - West African colony of Spanish Guinea gains independence as Equatorial Guinea.

1973 December - Eta kills Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in retaliation for the government's execution of Basque fighters. Subsequent attempts to liberalise the Franco government founder on internal divisions.

Move to democracy

1975 November - Franco dies. Succeeded as head of state by King Juan Carlos. With Juan Carlos on the throne, Spain makes transition from dictatorship to democracy. Spain withdraws from the Spanish Sahara, ending its colonial empire.

1977 June - First free elections in four decades. Ex-Francoist Adolfo Suarez's Union of the Democratic Centre manages a relatively smooth transition to stable democracy.

1978 - New constitution confirms Spain as a parliamentary monarchy. Eta's political wing, Herri Batasuna, is founded. 'Galaxia' coup plot uncovered.

1980 - 118 people are killed in Eta's bloodiest year so far.

1981 February - Coup attempt; rebels seize parliament and tanks take to the streets of Valencia in an attempt to prevent the appointment of a new Union of the Democratic Centre government. Plotters surrender after King Juan Carlos makes a televised address demanding an end to the coup.

1982 - Another coup plot by right-wing extremists discovered shortly before Socialists win large majority and form a government. Spain joins Nato.

1986 - Spain joins the European Economic Community, later to become the European Union.

1992 - Summer Olympic Games held in Barcelona. Seville hosts Expo 92. Celebrations mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage to America.

Aznar years

1995 - Leader of opposition rightwing Popular Party, Jose Maria Aznar, survives a car bomb blast.

1996 March - Jose Maria Aznar becomes PM following a stability deal with moderate Catalan and Basque nationalists, who hold the balance of power, after a general election in which his Popular Party emerges as the largest party but without an outright majority.

1997 July - Eta, demanding that Basque prisoners be transferred closer to home, kidnaps and kills Basque councillor Miguel Angel Blanco. Killing sparks national outrage and brings an estimated 6 million Spaniards onto the streets in protest.

1997 December - 23 leaders of Herri Batasuna jailed for seven years for collaborating with Eta - the first time any members of the party are jailed as a result of Eta links.

1998 April - Crops destroyed and wildlife wiped out when an iron pyrite mine reservoir belonging to a Canadian-Swedish company bursts its banks causing toxic waste spillage. Waterways feeding Europe's largest wildlife reserve, the Donana national park, are severely contaminated.

1998 September - Eta announces its first indefinite ceasefire since its campaign of violence began. It calls the ceasefire off in November, claiming lack of a response from the government.

2000 - Madrid car bombs mark return to violence. Aznar's Popular Party (PP) wins landslide in general elections.

2002 June - Eta suspected of being behind bomb blasts in several tourist resorts as EU summit held in Seville.2002 January - Peseta replaced by Euro.

2002 July - Naval standoff with Morocco over disputed rocky outcrop of Perejil ends when foreign ministers agree to restore status quo.

2002 November - North-west coastline suffers ecological disaster after oil tanker Prestige breaks up and sinks about 130 miles out to sea.

2003 March - Indefinite ban imposed on Basque separatist Batasuna party.

History of Greece

Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is considered the birthplace of Western civilization, beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea at around 3200 BC, the Minoan civilization in Crete (2700–1500 BC), and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland (1900–1100 BC). These civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Myceneans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Myceneans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, during a time of regional upheaval known as the Bronze Age collapse. This ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent.

The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 8th or 7th centuries BC.

With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, Southern Italy and Asia Minor. These states and their colonies reached great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science,  mathematics and philosophy. In 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.

By 500 BC, the Persian Empire controlled territories ranging from their home of Iran all the way to what is now northern Greece.

Attempts by the Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule failed, and Persia invaded the states of mainland Greece in 492 BC, but was forced to withdraw after a defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

A second invasion by the Persians followed in 480 BC. Despite a heroic resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by King Leonidas, Persian forces sacked Athens. 

Following successive Greek victories in 480 and 479 BC at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale, the Persians were forced to withdraw for a second time. The military conflicts, known as the Greco-Persian Wars, were led mostly by Athens and Sparta. The fact that Greece was not a unified country meant that conflict between the Greek states was common.

The most devastating intra-Greek war in classical antiquity was the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was won by Sparta and marked the demise of the Athenian Empire as the leading power in ancient Greece.

 Both Athens and Sparta were later overshadowed by Thebes  and eventually Macedon, with the latter uniting the Greek world in the League of under the guidance of Phillip II, who was elected leader of the first unified Greek state in history.

Following the assassination of Phillip II, his son Alexander III ("The Great") assumed the leadership of the League of Corinth and launched an invasion of the Persian Empire. The Empire created by Alexander the Great stretched from Greece in the west to Pakistan in the east, and Egypt in the south.

History of Hungary

5 th century

The Hungarian tribes left the area of the Urals and passed along the Volga and the Caspian Sea . After several hundred years of wandering, they reached the Carpathian Basin .

896

Under the leadership of Árpád, the Hungarian tribes settled in the Carpathian Basin .

997-1038

King Stephen of the Árpád dynasty ruled the country.

1000

Stephen became converted to Christianity, and after his death, he was canonised.

1241

The Mongolian Tatars devastated the country. Their presence, which lasted a year, halted development for at least a century. After the warfare with the Hungarians, the Tatars did not continue towards the west.

1458-1490

During the rule of King Matthias, his residences (Buda and Visegrád) became cultural centres in Europe .

1526

At Mohács, the present southern frontier of the country, the Turks defeated the Hungarian army and 150 years of Turkish occupation started.

1541

The Turks occupied Buda and Hungary was split into three parts. The Habsburg governed the western part of the country, the central area was ruled by the Turks, and only the south-east Transylvanian principality remained Hungarian.

1686

Buda was recaptured from the Turks.

1703-1711

Under the leadership of Ferenc Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania, a freedom war was started against the Habsburgs. The rebels defeated the Imperial army in several battles, but did not receive the promised French support and failed.

First half of the 19 th century

A national reform movement was launched for the political and economic transformation of the country and for the support of the Hungarian language and culture. This was when the National Anthem was born, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was set up. The building of the Chain Bridge started with the support of Count István Széchenyi, one of the main characters of the Reform Ages.

1848-1849

A revolution broke out in Pest and extended over the entire country. The Habsburg Emperor was dethroned after the Hungarian army won several significant battles. Lajos Kossuth was elected Governor. Only with the help of the Russian army the Habsburgs could beat the longest European national revolution in the summer of 1849.

1867

The Hungarians concluded a compromise with the Habsburgs and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was established with Vienna and Pest-Buda as centres.

1873

Pest, Buda and Obuda were unified, Budapest became a European metropolis. Monuments like the Opera House, the National Gallery, the Parliament were built.

1918

Germany and its allies, including the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, lost the world war. The monarchy disintegrated.

1920

The Trianon Treaty reduced Hungary 's area by two thirds and the population by one third. Since then, considerable Hungarian minorities have been living in the neighbouring countries.

1938-1940

Germany concluded treaties in Munich and Vienna , according to which Southern Slovakia and Northern Transylvania were returned to Hungary .

1944

The Nazis occupied Hungary , as they did not consider it a reliable ally. During the Second World War, the Hungarians suffered grave losses on the Soviet front. At the end of the war, Fascists took over the governing of the country.

1945

The Soviet Army liberated, and then occupied Hungary . At the hastily held elections, the Communists won only 17 percent of the votes.

1956

A revolution against Stalinism started, but the uprising was defeated by Soviet troops. János Kádár, who acquired power with their assistance, promised democratic socialism; in the meantime, retaliation and executions started.

1988

The Hungarian transition period began.

1990

The Communist party voluntarily gave up its autocracy. A multi-party parliamentary democracy came into being in the country. The Soviet army left Hungary .

1999

Hungary became full member of NATO.

History of Romania

            The human remains found in Peștera cu Oase ("The Cave of the Bones"), radiocarbon dated as being from cca. 40,000 years ago, represent the oldest known Homo sapiens in Europe.

            Prior to the Roman conquest of Dacia, the territories between Danube and Dniester rivers were inhabited by various Thracian peoples, including the Dacians and the Getae.Herodotus, in his work "Histories", notes the religious difference between the Getae and other Thracians,however, according to Strabo, the Dacians and the Getae spoke the same language.Dio Cassius draws attention to the cultural similarities between the two people. There is a scholarly dispute whether the Dacians and the Getae were the same people.

         Roman incursions under Emperor Trajan between 101–102 AD and 105–106 AD led to result that about half of the Dacian kingdom became a province of the Roman Empire called "Dacia Traiana". The Roman rule lasted 165 years. During this period the province was fully integrated to the Roman Empire and a sizeable part of the population was newcomers from other provinces.The Roman colonists introduced the Latin language. According to followers of the continuity theory, the intense Romanization gave birth to the Proto-Romanian language.The province was rich of ore deposits (especially gold and silver in places like Alburnus Maior). As a result of invasions by Germanic tribes, Roman troops were pulled out of Dacia around 271 AD, making it the first province to be abandoned.

        The territory was later invaded and dominated by various peoples, including Goths,Huns,Gepids,Avars,Bulgars,Slavs, Magyars, Pechenegs,and Cumans, who have been labelled as "migratory peoples" in Romanian historiography. Many of these populations also settled, cohabitated and mixed with the locals.Several competing theories have been proposed to explain the relations (or non-relations) between ancient Dacians and present-day Romanians.

         In the Middle Ages, Romanians lived in three Romanian principalities: Wallachia (Romanian: Țara Românească – "The Romanian Land"), Moldavia (Romanian: Moldova) and in Transylvania.The existence of independent Romanian voivodeships in Transylvania as early as the 9th century is mentioned in Gesta Hungarorum,but by the 11th century, Transylvania had become a largely autonomous part of the Kingdom of Hungary.In the other parts, many small local states with varying degrees of independence developed, but only under Basarab I and Bogdan I the larger principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia would emerge in the 14th century to fight the threat of the Ottoman Empire.

            By 1541, as with the entire Balkan peninsula and most of Hungary, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania were under Ottoman suzerainty, preserving partial or full internal autonomy until the mid-19th century (Transylvania until 1711). This period featured several prominent rulers such as: Stephen the Great, Vasile Lupu, and Dimitrie Cantemir in Moldavia; Matei Basarab, Vlad the Impaler, and Constantin Brâncoveanu in Wallachia; and John Hunyadi and Gabriel Bethlen in Transylvania.In 1600, the three principalities were ruled simultaneously by the Wallachian prince Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), which was considered in later periods as the precursor of a modern Romania and became a point of reference for nationalists, as well as a catalyst for achieving a single Romanian state.

              During the period of the Austro-Hungarian rule in Transylvania and of Ottoman suzerainty over Wallachia and Moldavia, most Romanians were given few rights in a territory where they formed the majority of the population.Nationalistic themes became principal during the Wallachian uprising of 1821, and the 1848 revolutions in Wallachia and Moldavia. The flag adopted for Wallachia by the revolutionaries was a blue-yellow-red horizontal tricolour (with blue above, in line with the meaning "Liberty, Justice, Fraternity"),while Romanian students in Paris hailed the new government with the same flag "as a symbol of union between Moldavians and Wallachians".The same flag, with the tricolour being mounted vertically, would later be officially adopted as the national flag of Romania.

        After the failed 1848 revolutions not all the Great Powers supported the Romanians' expressed desire to officially unite in a single state.But in the aftermath of the Crimean War, the electors in both Moldavia and Wallachia voted in 1859 for the same leader, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, as Domnitor (prince in Romanian), and the two principalities became a personal union formally under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire.Following coup d'état in 1866, Cuza was exiled and replaced with Prince Carol I of Romania of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. During the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War Romania fought on the Russian side,and in the aftermath, it was recognized as an independent state both by the Ottoman Empire and the Great Powers by the Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin.The new Kingdom of Romania underwent a period of stability and progress until 1914, and also acquired Southern Dobruja from Bulgaria after the Second Balkan War.

        Romania remained neutral for the first two years of World War I. Following the secret Treaty of Bucharest, according to which Romania would acquire territories with a majority of Romanian population from Austria-Hungary, it joined the Entente Powers and declared war on 27 August 1916.The Romanian military campaign began disastrously for Romania as the Central Powers occupied two-thirds of the country within months, before reaching a stalemate in 1917. Total military and civilian losses from 1916 to 1918, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.After the war, the transfer of Bukovina from Austria was acknowledged by the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain,of Banat and Transylvania from Hungary by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, and of Bessarabia from Russian rule by the 1920 Treaty of Paris.

        The following interwar period is referred as Greater Romania, as the country achieved its greatest territorial extent at that time (almost 300,000 km2 or 120,000 sq mi).The application of radical agricultural reforms and the passing of a new constitution created a democratic framework and allowed for quick economic growth. With oil production of 7.2 million tons in 1937, Romania ranked second in Europe and seventh in the world.and was Europe's second-largest food producer. However, the early 1930s were marked by social unrest, high unemployment, and strikes, as there were over 25 separate governments throughout the decade.[citation needed] On several occasions in the last few years before World War II, the democratic parties were squeezed between conflicts with the chauvinistic Iron Guard and the authoritarian tendencies of king Carol II.[citation needed]

           During World War II, Romania tried again to remain neutral, but on 28 June 1940, it received a Soviet ultimatum with an implied threat of invasion in the event of non-compliance.Again foreign powers created heavy pressure on Romania, by means of the Soviet-Nazi Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of non-aggression from 23 August 1939. As a result of it the Romanian government and the army were forced to retreat from Bessarabia as well as from northern Bukovina in order to avoid war with the Soviet Union.The king was compelled to abdicate and appointed general Ion Antonescu as the new Prime-Minister with full powers in ruling the state by royal decree. Romania was prompted to join the Axis military campaign. Thereafter, southern Dobruja was ceded to Bulgaria, while Hungary received Northern Transylvania as result of an Axis powers' arbitration. Romanian contribution to Operation Barbarossa was enormous, with the Romanian Army of over 1.2 million men in the summer of 1944, fighting in numbers second only to Nazi Germany.Romania was the main source of oil for the Third Reich, and thus became the target of intense bombing by the Allies. Growing discontent among the population eventually peaked in August 1944 with King Michael's Coup, and the country switched sides to join the Allies. It is estimated that the coup shortened the war by as much as six months. Even though the Romanian Army had suffered 170,000 casualties after switching sides, Romania's role in the defeat of Nazi Germany was not recognized by the Paris Peace Conference of 1947, as the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and other territories corresponding roughly to present-day Republic of Moldova.

           The Antonescu regime played a major role in the The Holocaust in Romania, and copied the Nazi policies of oppression and genocide of Jews and Gypsies, mainly in the Eastern territories reoccupied by the Romanians from the Soviet Union in Transnistria and in Moldavia. Jewish Holocaust victims in Romania totaled more than 280,000, plus another 11,000 Gypsies ("Roma")

            During the Soviet occupation of Romania, the Communist-dominated government called for new elections in 1946, which were fraudulently won, with a fabricated 70% majority of the vote.Thus they rapidly established themselves as the dominant political force, and in 1947, forced King Michael I to abdicate and leave the country, and proclaimed Romania a people's republic.Romania remained under the direct military occupation and economic control of the USSR until the late 1950s. During this period, Romania's vast natural resources were continuously drained by mixed Soviet-Romanian companies (SovRoms) set up for unilateral exploitative purposes.

           In 1948, the state began to nationalize private firms and to collectivize agriculture. Until the early 1960s, the Communist government established a terror regime carried out mainly through the Securitate (the Romanian secret police). During this period they launched several campaigns of purges in which numerous "enemies of the state" and "parasite elements" of the society were imprisoned for political or economic reasons, tortured and eventually killed.Punishments included deportation, internal exile and internment in forced labour camps and prisons, sometimes for life; dissent was vigorously suppressed by the regime. Nevertheless, anti-communist resistance was one of the most long-lasting in the Eastern Bloc.Tens of thousands of people were killed as part of repression in Communist Romania.A 2006 Commission estimated the number of direct victims of the communist repression at two million people. This excludes civilians who died in liberty as a result of their "treatment" and malnutrition in communist prisons and those who died because of the dire economic circumstances in the country, and whose numbers remain unknown but could reach a few millions.

           In 1965, Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power and started to conduct the foreign policy more independently from the Soviet Union. Thus, communist Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country who refused to participate at the Soviet-led 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia (Ceaușescu even publicly condemned the action as "a big mistake, [and] a serious danger to peace in Europe and to the fate of communism in the world"); it was also the only communist state to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War; and established diplomatic relations with West Germany the same year. At the same time, close ties with the Arab countries (and the PLO) allowed Romania to play a key role in the Israel–Egypt and Israel–PLO peace talks. As Romania's foreign debt sharply increased between 1977 and 1981 (from US$3 billion to $10 billion), the influence of international financial organizations (such as the IMF and the World Bank) grew, gradually conflicting with Ceaușescu's autocratic rule. The latter eventually initiated a policy of total reimbursement of the foreign debt by imposing austerity steps that impoverished the population and exhausted the economy. At the same time, Ceaușescu greatly extended the authority of the Securitate secret police and imposed a severe cult of personality, which led to a dramatic decrease in the dictator's popularity and culminated in his overthrow and eventual execution, together with his wife, in the violent Romanian Revolution of December 1989.