Reports of Romanian–Russian talks

A British chronology of the war records under 22 January 1916 that the government of Romania had opened negotiations with the Russian government on military aid. We have not been able to find in the available studies, Romanian, Austrian and Western, any specific diplomatic step on that day. It is worth remembering that Russia and Romania then reckoned time by the Julian calendar, in which 22 January corresponded to 9 January. The sources nevertheless allow us to reconstruct well why, at the turn of 1915 and 1916, the question of joint action by the two states came back onto the table, and how it stood in the winter of 1916.

Romania in a trap

The Prime Minister, Ion I.C. Brătianu, had been playing for time since the beginning of the war. The secret agreement with Russia of autumn 1914 had promised Romania Transylvania in return for benevolent neutrality, but did not oblige it to go to war. In October 1915 Brătianu refused to help Serbia, demanding that the Entente first send a large army to the Balkans. After Serbia’s defeat Romania’s position grew even worse. To the north and west stood Austro-Hungarian and German armies, to the south, beyond the Danube, Bulgarian ones, and the route to the Western allies through the Straits was closed.

The Central Powers, short of food, demanded Romanian grain. According to the Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu, an ultimatum was even prepared at German headquarters in Pless, in agreement with the Bulgarian command, to force Bucharest to come down on their side. The chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, preferred, however, to concentrate his forces on the planned attack on Verdun, and the economies of Germany and Turkey needed Romanian grain and oil more than another war. Brătianu gave way a step: with the Entente’s knowledge he concluded a grain supply agreement with the Central Powers, and soon afterwards, for balance, a similar agreement with Britain, which bought up Romanian wheat mainly so that it would not reach the enemy.

The Russian offensive and its failure

The Russians, too, tried to influence Bucharest. At the Chantilly conference the allies decided that the Russian army would pin down the enemy in the coming months. The new chief of staff to the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, hoped, according to the Austrian official history, that a blow in Galicia and Bukovina would bring a spectacular success that would induce wavering Romania to enter the war. From 27 December 1915 to 19 January 1916 the armies of Generals Platon Lechitsky and Dmitry Shcherbachev attacked the Austro-Hungarian positions on the Strypa and near Czernowitz. The army of General Karl Pflanzer-Baltin beat off all the attacks. According to the Austrians the Russians lost almost 70,000 men, the defenders more than 30,000.

At Russian headquarters the failure and news of the Romanian–German grain agreement aroused fears that Romania would lean towards the Central Powers. On 26 January Alekseyev ordered the attack to be halted, and General Nikolai Ivanov to withdraw some troops from the front and assemble them in Bessarabia, on the Romanian border. During the winter the French, through General Paul Pau, sent on a mission to Russia, pressed the Russians to form a strong reserve behind their left flank, capable of supporting Romania if necessary.

Talks without agreement

In the talks on military cooperation, which dragged on through the first half of 1916, the two sides were far apart. The Romanians argued that they could not on their own defend several hundred kilometres of the Carpathians, the Danube line and Dobruja as well, and wanted the Russians to take on the defence of Dobruja against the Bulgarians by sending an army of about 200,000 men there. Alekseyev replied that the outcome of the war would not be decided in Dobruja, and that he could not take such forces from the directions of Petrograd and Moscow. Instead he proposed sending about 10 divisions to Bukovina, on the left flank of his own front. According to Kirițescu, it was then said openly in Russian military circles that prolonging Romanian neutrality would be more advantageous for Russia than a new ally with a long border that was hard to defend.

Agreement was reached only in the summer, after the successes of the Brusilov offensive. On 17 August 1916 Romania signed a political treaty and a military convention with the Entente, and on 27 August declared war on Austria-Hungary. Russia then promised to send far fewer troops to Dobruja than the Romanians had demanded.