The Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia was attended by eleven orators: Ștefan Cicio Pop, President of the Central Romanian National Council; Ioan Suciu, Assembly Speaker; Gheorghe Pop de Băsești, President of the Romanian National Party; Vasile Goldiș; Iuliu Maniu; Iosif Jumanca; Alexandru Vaida Voevod; Ioan I. Papp, Orthodox Bishop of Arad; Miron Cristea, Orthodox Bishop of Caransebeș; Iuliu Hossu, Greek Catholic Bishop of Gherla; and Aurel Vlad. Only the first eight gave speeches in the Hall of Union. In this brief text, for brevity’s sake, I shall not refer to all of them, and their discourses do not all carry the same importance. However, they were all inspired by the same political programme and their ideas were convergent.
It was Ștefan Cicio Pop who first made public the decision, taken by the Central Romanian National Council of Arad on 15 November 1918, to convene a Great National Assembly. Pop referred in his announcement to “the great [US President Woodrow] Wilson” as “the second Messiah”. This description was also present in the discourses of the other speakers. It was thus that Cicio Pop and his colleagues expressed their gratitude to the president of the United States of America, author and promoter of the post-war self-determination of nations.
Vasile Goldiș was the main orator of the Great National Assembly. In Arad, he already served as the primary writer of the documents adopted by the Central Romanian National Council, and it was he who gave the final shape to the Resolution of Unification. Therefore it is not surprising that he was given the task of presenting the project on 1 December 1918. He did so, after an introductory speech presenting the political and historical arguments for unification. His speech referred to the events that had unfolded over the course of 1918 in Chișinău, Cernăuți and Alba Iulia as aspects of the same national programme. He framed unification in terms of a process that had been developing for almost two millennia evolution, starting from the Dacian-Roman synthesis and transitioning through various migratory invasions, to the formation of the Romanian medieval states, touching upon the histories of Michael the Brave, Horea, Avram Iancu, the unification of the Romanian Principalities, the independence of Romania in 1877, and the First World War. He drew upon this history as an argument which favoured the emancipation of nations and the unification of Romanians into one state. This deterministic historiographical model was to have a long career, becoming generalised in the interwar period, being rediscovered in 1968, and having strong echoes up to the present day.
A pragmatic politician, Iulia Maniu, began by echoing the idealism of the moment, ending with some concrete statements regarding the social and economic development of the Romanian people. He also spoke about the “light of the freedom of nations”, presenting the Unification as a “divine charity”. He then referred to the necessity of the implementation of agrarian reform to consolidate the farming sector, and spoke on the need for the economic independence of Romania, the development of trade and industry and the emancipation of craftsmen and workers.
Iosif Jumanca introduced the discourse of his political group, the Romanian Section of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary, to the assembly. He highlighted that social democracy does not require the absence of national feeling, and that his colleagues had adhered to the cause of the unification of all Romanians. Then he discussed the political statements of the political left of the time: “class struggle”, “the proletariat” and “the Socialist International”.
Bishop Miron Cristea, Iuliu Hossu and the lawyer Aurel Vlad spoke to the public massed outside, in “Horea’s field.” Due to the huge numbers present, the number of people who could hear each speaker was rather limited, so the speeches were only audible to the group in their immediate proximity.
Bishop Miron Cristea’s discourse was not dominated by the church or religious vocabulary, but was highly political, reflecting the prelate’s deep national political involvement. Referring to the past, he condemned the “idea of a Hungarian national state”, Magyarisation, and the oppressive educational policy applied in 1917-1918 through the institution of “cultural areas” in the border counties of Transylvania. Thinking about the future, he referred to “Romanianism” and to the western border of Romania on the River Tisza.
Iuliu Hossu combined religious statements with political ones, speaking in nationalist mystical terms of the “Annunciation of the Unification”, switching to more Easter sermon language to discuss the “hour of fullness of time”. His role was to present the text of the Resolution of the Great National Assembly to the people. (V.M.)
