Bukovina

Bukovina within the historical region of Moldavia over the passing of time.

The Moldavian state had appeared by the mid-14th century, eventually expanding its territory all the way to the Black Sea. Bukovina and neighboring regions were the nucleus of the Moldavian Principality, with the city of Iasi as its capital from 1388 (after Baia and Siret). The name of Moldavia (Romanian: Moldova) is derived from a river (Moldova River) flowing in Bukovina.

In the 15th century, Pokuttya, the region immediately to the north, became the subject of disputes between the Principality of Moldavia and the Polish Kingdom. Pokuttya was inhabited by Ruthenians (the predecessors of modern Ukrainians and Rusyns) and Hutsuls; the latter also reside in western Bukovina. In 1497 a battle took place at the Cosmin Forest (the hilly forests separating Chernivtsi and Siret valleys), at which Stephen III of Moldavia (Stephen the Great), managed to defeat the much-stronger but demoralized army of King John I Albert of Poland. The battle is known in Polish popular culture as "the battle when the Knights have perished".

View over the western side of the Suceava medieval seat fortress.

In this period, the patronage of Stephen the Great and his successors on the throne of Moldavia saw the construction of the famous painted monasteries of Moldoviţa, Suceviţa, Putna, Humor, Voroneţ, Dragomirna, Arbore and others. With their renowned exterior frescoes, these monasteries remain some of the greatest cultural treasures of Romania; some of them are World Heritage Sites, part of the painted churches of northern Moldavia.

In 1513, Moldavia started to pay an annual tribute to the Ottoman Empire, but remained autonomous and was governed as before by a native Voivod (the medieval Eastern European equivalent of Prince). In May 1600 Mihai Viteazul (Michael the Brave), became the ruler the two Romanian principalities and Transylvania.

For short periods of time (during wars), the Polish Kingdom occupied parts of northern Moldavia. However, the old border was re-established each time, as for example on 14 October 1703 the Polish delegate Martin Chometowski acknowledged "Between us and Wallachia (i.e. Moldavia) God himself set Dniester as the border" (Inter nos et Valachiam ipse Deus flumine Tyras dislimitavit).

Monument in Iași (1875) dedicated to Grigore III Ghica and Moldavia's loss of Bukovina.

In the course of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, the Ottoman armies were defeated by the Russian Empire, which occupied the region from 15 December 1769 to September 1774, and previously during 14 September–October 1769. Bukovina was the reward the Habsburgs received for aiding the Russians in that war. Prince Grigore III Ghica of Moldavia protested and was prepared to take action to recover the territory, but was assassinated, and a Greek-Phanariot foreigner was put on the throne of Moldavia by the Ottomans.

The coat of arms of Bukovina, a constituent country of the Imperial Austrian Council, depicted at the Assembly Hall in the Viennese Justice Palace.

The Austrian Empire occupied Bukovina in October 1774. Following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the Austrians claimed that they needed it for a road between Galicia and Transylvania. Bukovina was formally annexed in January 1775. On 2 July 1776, at Palamutka, Austrians and Ottomans signed a border convention, Austria giving back 59 of the previously occupied villages, retaining 278 villages.

Bukovina was a closed military district (1775–1786), then the largest district, Kreis Czernowitz (after its capital Czernowitz) of the Austrian constituent Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1787–1849). On 4 March 1849, Bukovina became a separate Austrian Kronland 'crown land' under a Landespräsident (not a Statthalter, as in other crown lands) and was declared the Herzogtum Bukowina (a nominal duchy, as part of the official full style of the Austrian Emperors). In 1860 it was again amalgamated with Galicia but reinstated as a separate province once again on 26 February 1861, a status that would last until 1918.[7]

In 1849 Bukovina got a representative assembly, the Landtag (diet). The Moldavian nobility had traditionally formed the ruling class in that territory. In 1867, with the re-organization of the Austrian Empire as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it became part of the Cisleithanian or Austrian territories of Austria-Hungary and remained so until 1918.

Topographic map of Bukovina, also with settlement place names, as depicted in 1791.

Map of the Austrian crownland of Bukovina at the turn of the 20th century.

Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz)

The 1871 and 1904 jubilees held at Putna Monastery, near the tomb of Ştefan cel Mare, have constituted tremendous moments for Romanian national identity in Bukovina. Since gaining its independence, Romania envisioned to incorporate this historic province which, as a core of the Moldavian Principality, was of a great historic significance to its history and contained many prominent monuments of its art and architecture.[8]

Despite the influx of migrants encouraged under Austrian rule, Romanians continued to be the largest ethnic group in the province in the first part of the 19th century. However, according to the 1880 census, there were 239,690 Ruthenians and Hutzuls, or roughly 41.5% of the population of the region, while Romanians were second with 190,005 people or 33%, a ratio that remained more or less the same until World War I. Ruthenians is an archaic name for Ukrainians, while the Hutsuls are a regional Ukrainian subgroup.

Under Austrian rule, Bukovina remained ethnically mixed: Romanians were predominant in the south, Ukrainians (commonly referred to as Ruthenians in the Empire) in the north, with small numbers of Hungarian Székelys, Slovak, and Polish peasants, and Germans, Poles and Jews in the towns. The 1910 census counted 800,198 people, of which: Ruthenians 38.88%, Romanians 34.38%, Germans 21.24% (Jews 12.86% included), Polish people 4.55%, Hungarian people 1.31%, Slovaks 0.08%, Slovenes 0.02%, Italian people 0.02%, and a few Croats, Romani people, Serbs and Turkish people. Romanians were still present in all settlements of the region, but their number decreased in the northern villages. Many of Bukovina's Germans and Jews, as well as a number of Romanians and Hungarians, emigrated in 19th and 20th century to North America.[9][10][11]

In 1783, by an Imperial Decree of Joseph II, local Eastern Orthodox Eparchy of Bukovina (with its seat in Czernowitz) was placed under spiritual jurisdiction of the Metropolitanate of Karlovci.[12] Some friction appeared in time between the church hierarchy and the Romanians, complaining that Old Church Slavonic was favored to Romanian, and that family names were being slavicized. In spite of Romanian-Slav frictions over the influence in the local church hierarchy, there was no Romanian-Ukrainian inter-ethnic tension, and both cultures developed in educational and public life. After the rise of Romanian nationalism in 1848, Habsburg authorities awarded additional rights to Ukrainians in an attempt to temper Romanian ambitions of independence.[13] At the end of the 19th century, the development of Ukrainian culture in Bukovina surpassed Galicia and the rest of Ukraine with a network of Ukrainian educational facilities, while Dalmatia formed an Archbishopric, later raised to the rank of Metropolitanate.

In 1873, the Eastern Orthodox Bishop of Czernowitz (who was since 1783 under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Karlovci) was elevated to the rank of Archbishop, when a new Metropolitanate of Bukovinian and Dalmatia was created. The new Archbishop of Czernowitz gained supreme jurisdiction over Serbian eparchies of Dalmatia and Kotor, which were also (until then) under the spiritual jurisdiction of Karlovci.

In the early 20th century, a group of scholars surrounding the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand created a plan (that never came to pass) of United States of Greater Austria. The specific proposal was published in Aurel C. Popovici's book “Die Vereinigten Staaten von Groß-Österreich“ [The United States of Greater Austria], Leipzig, 1906. According to it, most of Bukovina (including Czernowitz) would form, with Transylvania, a Romanian state, while the north-western portion (Zastavna, Kozman, Waschkoutz, Wiznitz, Gura Putilei, and Seletin districts) would form with the bigger part of Galicia a Ukrainian state, both in a federation with 13 other states under the Austrian crown.[14][15]

Romanian takeover of Bukovina
Part of the Polish–Ukrainian War
Date 11–12 November 1918 Location Bukovina, now part of Romania and Ukraine Result Romanian victory Territorial changes Bukovina subsequently united with Romania on 28 November
Belligerents
West Ukrainian People's Republic	Romania
Commanders and leaders
Yevhen Petrushevych	Ferdinand I

In World War I, several battles were fought in Bukovina between the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian armies, which resulted in the Russian army being driven out in 1917.

With the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, both the local Romanian National Council and the Ukrainian National Council based in Galicia claimed the region. A Constituent Assembly on 14/27 October 1918 formed an Executive Committee, to whom the Austrian governor of the province handed power. After an official request by Iancu Flondor, Romanian troops swiftly moved in to take over the territory, against Ukrainian protest.[16] Although local Ukrainians attempted to incorporate parts of northern Bukovina into the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic, this attempt was defeated by Polish and Romanian troops.

Under the protection of Romanian troops, the Romanian Council summoned a General Congress of Bukovina for 15/28 November 1918, where 74 Romanians, 13 Ruthenians, 7 Germans, and 6 Poles were represented (this is the linguistic composition, and Jews were not recorded as a separate group). According to Romanian historiography, popular enthusiasm swept the whole region, and a large number of people gathered in the city to wait for the resolution of the Congress.[17][18]

Coat of arms of interwar Suceava county in the Kingdom of Romania

The Congress elected the Romanian Bukovinian politician Iancu Flondor as chairman, and voted for the union with the Kingdom of Romania, with the support of the Romanian, German, and Polish representatives; the Ukrainians did not support this.[19] The reasons stated were that, until its takeover by the Habsburg in 1775, Bukovina was the heart of the Principality of Moldavia, where the gropniţele domneşti (voivods' burial sites) are located, and dreptul de liberă hotărâre de sine (right of self-determination).[nb 2] Romanian control of the province was recognized internationally in the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919.

During the interwar period, Romanian authorities oversaw a programme of Romanianization aiming its assimilationist policies at the Ukrainian population of the region. The Romanian language was introduced into ethnic minority schools in 1923, and, by 1926, all public Ukrainian schools in Bukovina were closed (private schools were still allowed to exist).[19]

At the same time, Ukrainian enrollment at the Cernăuţi University fell from 239 out of 1671, in 1914, to 155 out of 3,247, in 1933, while simultaneously Romanian enrollment there increased several times to 2,117 out of 3,247.[20] In part this was due to attempts to switch to Romanian as the primary language of university instruction, but chiefly to the fact that the university was one of only five in Romania, and was considered prestigious.

In the decade following 1928, as Romania tried to improve its relations with the Soviet Union, Ukrainian culture was given some limited means to redevelop, though these gains were sharply reversed in 1938.

According to the 1930 Romanian census, Romanians made up 44.5% of the total population of Bukovina, and Ukrainians (including Hutsuls) 29.1%.[21] In the northern part of the region, however, Romanians made up only 32.6% of the population, with Ukrainians significantly outnumbering Romanians.

On August 14, 1938, Bukovina officially disappeared from the map, becoming a part of Ținutul Suceava, one of ten new administrative regions. At the same time, Cernăuți, the third most populous town in Romania (after Bucharest and Chișinău), which had been a mere county seat for the last 20 years, became again a (regional) capital. Also, Bukovinian regionalism continued under the new brand. During its first months of existence, Ținutul Suceava suffered far right (Iron Guard) uproars, to which the regional governor Gheorghe Alexianu (the future governor of Transnistria) reacted with nationalist and anti-Semitic measures. Alexianu was replaced by Gheorghe Flondor on February 1, 1939.

Bukovina as divided in 1940: Soviet to the north, Romanian to the south.

As a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR demanded not only Bessarabia but also the northern half of Bukovina and Hertza regions from Romania on June 26, 1940 (Bukovina bordered Eastern Galicia, which the USSR had annexed during the Invasion of Poland). Initially, the USSR wanted the whole of Bukovina. Nazi Germany, which was surprised by the Soviet claim to Bukovina, invoked the German ethnics living in the region. As a result, the USSR only demanded the northern, overwhelmingly Ukrainian part, arguing that it was a "reparation for the great loss produced to the Soviet Union and Bassarabia's population by twenty-two years of Romanian domination of Bassarabia". Following the Soviet ultimatum, Romania ceded Northern Bukovina, which included Cernăuți, to the USSR on June 28, 1940. The withdrawal of the Romanian Army, authorities, and civilians was disastrous. Mobs attacked retreating soldiers and civilians, whereas a retreating unit massacred Jewish soldiers and civilians in the town of Dorohoi. The Red Army occupied Cernăuți and Storojineț counties, as well as parts of Rădăuți and Dorohoi counties (the latter belonged to Ținutul Suceava, but not to Bukovina). The new Soviet-Romanian border was traced less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Putna Monastery. Until September 22, 1940, when Ținutul Suceava was abolished, the spa town Vatra Dornei served as the capital of Ținutul Suceava.[22]

In 1940, Chernivtsi Oblast (⅔ of which is Northern Bukovina) had a population of circa 805,000, out of which 47.5% were Ukrainians and 28.3% were Romanians, with Germans, Jews, Poles, Hungarians, and Russians comprising the rest. The strong Ukrainian presence was the official motivation for the inclusion of the region into the Ukrainian SSR and not into the newly formed Moldavian SSR. Whether the region would have been included in the Moldavian SSR, if the commission presiding over the division had been led by someone other than the Ukrainian communist leader Nikita Khrushchev, remains a matter of debate among scholars. In fact, some territories with a mostly Romanian population (e.g., Hertza region) were allotted to the Ukrainian SSR.

Administrative map of the Bukovina Governorate as of May 1942

After the instauration of Soviet rule, under NKVD orders, thousands of local families were deported to Siberia during this period,[23] with 12,191 people targeted for deportation in a document dated 2 August 1940 (from all formerly Romanian regions included in the Ukrainian SSR),[23] while a December 1940 document listed 2,057 persons to be deported to Siberia.[24] The largest action took place on 13 June 1941, when about 13,000 people were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.[25] The majority of those targeted were ethnic local Romanians, but there were (to a lesser degree) representatives of other ethnicities, as well.[26]

Until the repatriation convention of 15 April 1941, NKVD troops killed hundreds of Romanian peasants of Northern Bukovina as they tried to cross the border into Romania in order to escape from Soviet authorities. This culminated on 1 April 1941 with the Fântâna Albă massacre.

Almost the entire German population of Northern Bukovina was coerced to resettle in 1940–1941 to the parts of Poland then occupied by Nazi Germany, during 15 September 1940 – 15 November 1940, after this area was occupied by the Soviet Union. About 45,000 ethnic Germans had left Northern Bukovina by November 1940.[27]

In the course of the 1941 attack on the Soviet Union by the Axis forces, the Romanian Third Army led by General Petre Dumitrescu (operating in the north), and the Fourth Romanian Army (operating in the south) regained Northern Bukovina, as well as Hertza, and Bassarabia, during June–July 1941.

The Axis invasion of Northern Bukovina was catastrophic for its Jewish population, as conquering Nazi soldiers immediately began massacring its Jewish residents. Surviving Jews were forced into ghettoes to await deportation to work camps in Transnistria where 57,000 had arrived by 1941. Bukovina's remaining Jews were spared from certain death when it was retaken by Soviet forces in February 1944. In all, about half of Bukovina's entire Jewish population had perished. After the war and the return of the Soviets, most of the Jewish survivors from Northern Bukovina fled to Romania (and later settled in Israel).[28]

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Northern Bukovina within Ukraine

Southern Bukovina within Romania

In 1944 the Red Army drove the Axis forces out and re-established Soviet control over the territory. Romania was forced to formally cede the northern part of Bukovina to the USSR by the 1947 Paris peace treaty. The territory became part of the Ukrainian SSR as Chernivtsi Oblast (province). After the war the Soviet government deported or killed about 41,000 Romanians.[29] As a result of killings and mass deportations, entire villages, mostly inhabited by Romanians, were abandoned (Albovat, Frunza, I.G.Duca, Buci—completely erased, Prisaca, Tanteni and Vicov—destroyed to a large extent).[30] Men of military age (and sometimes above) were conscripted into the Soviet Army. That did not protect them, however, from being arrested and deported for being "anti-Soviet elements".

As a reaction, partisan groups (composed of both Romanians and Ukrainians) began to operate against the Soviets in the woods around Chernivtsi, Crasna and Codrii Cosminului.[31] In Crasna (in the former Storozhynets county) villagers attacked Soviet soldiers who were sent to "temporarily resettle" them, since they feared deportation. This resulted in dead and wounded among the villagers, who had no firearms.

Spring 1945 saw the formation of transports of Polish repatriates who (voluntarily or by coercion) had decided to leave. Between March 1945 and July 1946, 10,490 inhabitants left Northern Bukovina for Poland, including 8,140 Poles, 2,041 Jews and 309 of other nationalities.

Overall, between 1930 (last Romanian census) and 1959 (first Soviet census), the population of Northern Bukovina decreased by 31,521 people. According to official data from those two censuses, the Romanian population had decreased by 75,752 people, and the Jewish population by 46,632, while the Ukrainian and Russian populations increased by 135,161 and 4,322 people, respectively.

After 1944, the human and economic connections between the northern (Soviet) and southern (Romanian) parts of Bukovina were severed. While the northern part is the nucleus of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast, the southern part is tightly integrated with the other Romanian historic regions.

In Romania, 28 November is a holiday observed as the Bukovina Day.[32]

Demographic composition of Bukovina in 1930

According to the 1775 Austrian census, the province had a total population of 86,000 (this included 56 villages which were returned to Moldavia one year later). The census only recorded social status and some ethno-religious groups (Jews, Armenians, Roma, and German colonists). In 1919, the historian Ion Nistor stated that the Romanians constituted an overwhelming majority in 1774, roughly 64,000 (85%) of the 75,000 total population. Meanwhile, about 8,000 (10%) were Ruthenians, and 3,000 (4%) other ethnic groups.[33] On the other hand, just four years before the same Nistor estimated that the 1774 population consisted of 52,750 Romanians (also called Moldavians) (73.5%), 15,000 Ruthenians and Hutsuls (20.9%) (of whom 6,000 were Hutsuls, and 9,000 were Ruthenian immigrants from Galicia and Podolia settled in Moldavia around 1766), and 4,000 others who "use the Romanian language in conversation" (5.6%), consisting of Armenians, Jews and Roma.[34] In 2011, an anthroponimical analysis of the Russian census of the population of Moldavia in 1774 asserted a population of 68,700 people in 1774, out of which 40,920 (59.6%) Romanians, 22,810 Ruthenians and Hutsuls (33.2%), and 7.2% Jews, Roma, and Armenians.[35]

Based on the above anthroponimical estimate for 1774 as well as subsequent official censuses, the ethnic composition of Bukovina changed in the years after 1775 when the Austrian Empire occupied the region. The population of Bukovina increased steadily, primarily through immigration, which Austrian authorities encouraged in order to develop the economy.[36] As reported by Nistor, in 1781 the Austrian authorities had reported that Bukovina's rural population was composed mostly of immigrants, with only about 6,000 of the 23,000 recorded families being "truly Moldavian". In Nistor's view, this referred only to the Moldavian population native to the region, while the total population included a significant number of Romanian immigrants from Moldavia and Transylvania. Another Austrian official report from 1783, referring to the villages between the Dniester and the Prut, indicated Ruthenian-speaking immigrants from Poland constituting a majority, with only a quarter of the population speaking Moldavian. The same report indicated that Moldavians constituted the majority in the area of Suceava.[37] H.F. Müller gives the 1840 population used for purposes of military conscription as 339,669.[38] According to Alecu Hurmuzaki, by 1848, 55% of the population was Romanian. At the same time, the Ukrainian population rose to 108,907 and the Jewish population surged from 526 in 1774, to 11,600 in 1848.[33]

In 1843 the Ruthenian language was recognized, along with the Romanian language, as 'the language of the people and of the Church in Bukovina'.[39]

During the 19th century the Austrian Empire policies encouraged the influx of many immigrants, primarily Ukrainians ("Ruthenes") from Galicia and Romanians from Hungary and Transylvania, as well as smaller numbers of Germans, Poles, Jews and Hungarians.[39] Official censuses in the Austrian Empire (later Austria-Hungary) did not record ethnolinguistic data until 1850–1851. The 1857 and 1869 censuses omitted ethnic or language-related questions. 'Familiar language spoken' was not recorded again until 1880.

The Austrian census of 1850–1851, which for the first time recorded data regarding languages spoken, shows 48.50% Romanians and 38.07% Ukrainians.[40] Subsequent Austrian censuses between 1880 and 1910 reveal a Romanian population stabilizing around 33% and a Ukrainian population around 40%.

According to the 1930 Romanian Census, Bukovina had a population of 853,009.[41] Romanians made up 44.5% of the population, while 27.7% were Ukrainians/Ruthenians (plus 1.5% Hutsuls), 10.8% Jews, 8.9% Germans, 3.6% Poles, and 3.0% others or undeclared.[42]

According to estimates and censuses data, the population of Bukovina was:

Note: e-estimate; c-census

Ethnic divisions in modern Bukovina with Ukrainian Romanian and Russian areas depicted in light yellow, green, and red respectively. The Moldovans, counted separately in the Ukrainian census, are included in this map as Romanians.

The present demographic situation in Bukovina hardly resembles that of the Austrian Empire. The northern (Ukrainian) and southern (Romanian) parts became significantly dominated by their Ukrainian and Romanian majorities, respectively, with the representation of other ethnic groups being decreased significantly.

According to the data of the 2001 Ukrainian census,[49] the Ukrainians represent about 75% (689,100) of the population of Chernivtsi Oblast, which is the closest, although not an exact, approximation of the territory of the historic Northern Bukovina. The census also identified a fall in the Romanian and Moldovan populations to 12.5% (114,600) and 7.3% (67,200), respectively. Russians are the next largest ethnic group with 4.1%, while Poles, Belarusians, and Jews comprise the rest 1.2%. The languages of the population closely reflect the ethnic composition, with over 90% within each of the major ethnic groups declaring their national language as the mother tongue (Ukrainian, Romanian, and Russian, respectively).

The fact that Romanians and Moldovans were presented as separate categories in the census results, has been criticized by the Romanian Community of Ukraine – Interregional Union, which complains that this old Soviet-era practice, results in the Romanian population being undercounted, as being divided between Romanians and Moldovans.

The Romanians mostly inhabit the southern part of the Chernivtsi region, having been the majority in former Hertsa Raion and forming a plurality together with Moldovans in former Hlyboka Raion. Self-declared Moldovans were the majority in Novoselytsia Raion. In the other eight districts and the city of Chernivtsi, Ukrainians were the majority. However, after the 2020 administrative reform in Ukraine, all these districts were abolished, and most of the areas merged into Chernivtsi Raion, where Romanians are not in majority anymore.

The southern, or Romanian Bukovina has a significant Romanian majority (94.8%), largest minority group being the Romani people (1.9%) and Ukrainians, who make up 0.9% of the population (2011 census). Other minor ethnic groups include Lipovans, Poles (in Cacica, Mănăstirea Humorului, Mușenița, Moara, and Păltinoasa), Zipser Germans (in Cârlibaba and Iacobeni) and Bukovina Germans in Suceava and Rădăuți, as well as Slovaks.