page_title: Seara (newspaper)
section_title: Bessarabia vs. Transylvania
hierarchical_section_title: Seara (newspaper) / Neutrality years / Bessarabia vs. Transylvania
caption_attribution_description: English: Greater Rumania with the border with Hungary according to the w:Secret Treaty of Bucharest, and including Bessarabia.
context_page_description: Seara was a daily newspaper published in Bucharest, Romania, before and during World War I. Owned by politician Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino and, through most of its existence, managed by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, it was an unofficial and unorthodox tribune for the Conservative Party. Its involvement in politics sparked numerous scandals, the longest of which came during the neutrality period. Strongly anti-Slavic, Seara stood out in that context for supporting the German Empire and Central Powers, and was widely alleged of having been financed by a German propaganda machine. In 1914, it was purchased by German businessmen, but continued to register mediocre success in comparison with its pro-Entente competitors. In late 1916, after Romania decided in favor of the Entente, Seara was disestablished.
  Noted for publishing the biting satirical pieces and art chronicles of Tudor Arghezi, Seara was closely associated with the Romanian Symbolist movement. Through Arghezi, Bogdan-Pitești and other contributors, it campaigned in favor Symbolism and, after 1913, popularized modern art.
context_section_description: The national dilemma confronting Romanians during the neutrality period was not just a choice of sides, but also one of irredenta: while the National Liberal overtures toward the Entente were supposed to grant Romania Transylvania and some other Romanian-inhabited regions of Austria-Hungary, the Conservatives wished to recover Bessarabia, occupied by the Russian Empire—in 1916, the two options seemed mutually exclusive. Seara and Minerva followed the principles of Marghiloman, who had reached the conclusion that the Entente did not in fact support the disestablishment of Austria-Hungary, and who postulated that Russification in Bessarabia was more serious than Magyarization in Transylvania. Ilie Bărbulescu's Seara articles, deemed "erudite and indigestible" by Boia, focused on the supposed indestructibility of Austria-Hungary, and consoled Transylvanian Romanians with the option of greater devolution (see United States of Greater Austria). Writer Ion Gorun, who hailed from an anti-Hungarian community but was also a Habsburg loyalist, was a distinct presence at Seara. His articles favored the term "Austria" instead of "Austria-Hungary", and claimed that Romania could only find "triumph" as an Austrian ally. Gorun spoke of any alliance with Russia as dangerous and absurd; the implication of such a move, he argued, caught Transylvanian Romanians in a pincer and also meant Romania's subjugation to the Russian Empire.
  The cause of Bessarabia was championed by Arbore, who at the time rejected all notion that the region could ever witness a Russian devolution, and expressed distress that Romanian intellectuals were more interested in the fate of France than in the freedoms of Bessarabian Romanians. Bogdan-Pitești's various articles also show his interest in the Bessarabian cause. Expressing regret that "most civilized" France stood by the world's "most savage, most ignorant and bloodiest oligarchy", "the Russia of pogroms and assassinations", he deemed Romania's overtures toward the Tsarist regime a "national crime". Additionally, "Dodan" suggested that Austria-Hungary was preferable as a friend, as Romania's only guarantee against the "Slavic deluge". Later, he argued that the cause of Transylvania was settled by, and within, Austria-Hungary. He mapped out an alternative strategy: neutral until the end of the war, Romania would eventually march its troops into Bessarabia, with Austrian acquiescence. In October 1915, Aderca added his voice to the Bessarabian chorus. He postulated that the Transylvanian cause was doomed, and, since the Germans were poised to win the war, constituted "a union of the losers"; instead, he urged Romania to take Bessarabia as the spoils of war. Karnabatt's own articles began by stating a minimalist objective in "the reincorporation of Bessarabia". Later, he advocated the extension of Romanian territory eastward, into Transnistria and down to the Dnieper River (as counterbalance to a foreseeable Greater Bulgaria).
  An unusually vast and, according to Boia, naïve project was sketched by the Bessarabian-born Nour, who claimed that, even if granted a military victory, Austria-Hungary would still crumble into "developed nations". Nour was confident that, with the return of peace, Romania would still have an option to annex its Austrian irredenta: Transylvania, Bukovina, the Banat, Crișana and Maramureș. He speculated that a late entry into the war could also bring Romania possession of Bessarabia, large swathes of the Ukraine, and Odessa harbor; and even that, once victorious against the Entente, the Central Powers would award her an extra-European colonial empire.
caption: The maximalist view of Greater Romania, as described by The New York Times in 1919, and alluding to the dilemmas of 1916. To the west and north of "Rumania": Transylvania, Bukovina and other regions of Austria-Hungary, promised to Romania by the Entente; to the east: Bessarabia, Russian-held and favored by the "Germanophiles"
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