Romania, country of southeastern Europe.
The national capital is Bucharest. Romania was occupied by Soviet troops in 1944 and became a satellite of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1948.
The country was under communist rule from 1948 until 1989, when the regime of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu was overthrown. Free elections were held in 1990.
In 2004 the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 2007 it became a member of the European Union (EU).
The Romanian landscape is approximately one-third mountainous and one-third forested, with the remainder made up of hills and plains.
The climate is temperate and marked by four distinct seasons. Romania enjoys a considerable wealth of natural resources: fertile land for agriculture; pastures for livestock; forests that provide hard and soft woods; petroleum reserves; metals, including gold and silver in the Apuseni Mountains; numerous rivers that supply hydroelectricity; and a Black Sea coastline that is the site of both ports and resorts.
The Romanian people derive much of their ethnic and cultural character from Roman influence, but this ancient identity has been reshaped continuously by Romania’s position astride major continental migration routes. Romanians regard themselves as the descendants of the ancient Romans who conquered southern Transylvania under the emperor Trajan in 105 CE and of the Dacians who lived in the mountains north of the Danubian Plain and in the Transylvanian Basin. By the time of the Roman withdrawal under the emperor Aurelian in 271, the Roman settlers and the Dacians had intermarried, resulting in a new nation.
Both the Latin roots of the Romanian language and the Eastern Orthodox faith to which most Romanians adhere emerged from the mixture of these two cultures.