Averscan populism had its roots firmly planted in the troubled years of World War I, and was a direct answer to the military disaster of 1917. In summer 1916, keeping up with the orthodox irredentist ("Greater Romanian") agenda, a PNL-governed Romania had joined the Entente Powers. The general mood was one of romantic optimism, which cast away Romania's endemic social problems, including the stringent issues of electoral and land reform: the majority of Romanian conscripts were landless peasants, rendered politically marginal by the census suffrage.