The Social Democratic Workers' Party of Romania (, PSDMR), established in 1893, was the first modern

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

political party in

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

. A Marxist organization, the PSDMR was part of the

Second International The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued th ...

and sent its representatives to the first five congresses of that organization. Never a strong organization, the RSDWP was further weakened following an organizational split in February 1900, only reviving after 1905. In February 1910 the PSDMR was absorbed into a new organization, the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR), effectively ending its existence in its original incarnation.

Organizational history

Background

The history of socialism in Romania begins in 1834, when an aristocrat named

Teodor Diamant Teodor is a masculine given name. In English, it is a cognate of Theodore (name), Theodore. Notable people with the name include: *Teodor Muzaka III, Albanian nobleman who was born in 1393. * Teodor Andrault de Langeron (19th century), President o ...

(1810-1841) established a

utopian socialist Utopian socialism is the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Utopian socialism is often de ...

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...

based on the ideas of French writer

Charles Fourier François Marie Charles Fourier (;; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical ...

in the town of Scăieni, located north of

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

.James C. Docherty, ''Historical Dictionary of Socialism.'' Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997; pp. 202-204. This experiment in agricultural communitarianism was terminated in 1836. During the decade of the 1870s, socialist ideas again began to gain attention in Romania, particularly among certain university students in

Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (born Solomon Katz; 1855, village of Slavyanka near Yekaterinoslav (modern Dnipro), then in Imperial Russia – 1920, Bucharest) was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and j ...

(1855-1920) is the best remembered among these early advocates of Marxist ideas in Romania.

Establishment

In 1893 the PSDMR was established in an effort to unite various radical individuals in a unitary political organization. The PSDMR was particularly strong in the city of Bucharest and it grew to about 6,000 members by 1897.

Split

In February 1900 the PSDMR split between a reformist wing that sought to unite all pro-democracy forces, socialist and non-socialist, in a single political party and a radical wing that sought to continue the political fight not just for political democracy but also for the cause of socialist economy. The reform wing was absorbed into the ranks of the National Liberal Party and continued their political efforts in that organization. After about five years of a weak underground existence, the radical wing of the PSDMR reemerged as the Socialist Union of Romania ''(Uniunea Socialistă din România),'' working closely with the emerging

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

movement in Bucharest.

New organization

In February 1910 the Socialist Union of Romania determined to establish a new national political organization known as the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR) and dissolved itself to join the ranks of that new organization.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party 1893 establishments in Romania 1910 disestablishments in Romania Defunct socialist parties in Romania Marxist parties Political parties disestablished in 1910 Political parties established in 1893