The Russian Revolution and the Rumanian Socialist Movement,1917-1918
The collapse of the Russian monarchy in February and the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917 confronted Rumanian leaders with the prospect of a violent change in their own country. Rumania’s participation in the First World War on the side of the Entente had by February 1917 resulted in a succession of military defeats and the occupation of two-thirds of the country, including Bucharest, by German and Austro-Hungarian forces. The court and most of the leading politicians had taken refuge in Iasi, the chief city of Moldavia, located only a few miles from the Russian border. A Russian army of about a million men and a reorganized Rumanian field army of some eighteen divisions manned a newly stabilized front which stretched from Bukovina in the north along the eastern slopes of the Carpathians to southern Moldavia