Bukovina
Bukovina (
Ukrainian:
Буковина,
Bukovyna;
Romanian:
Bucovina;
German and
Polish:
Bukowina; see also
other languages) is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern
Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains. It is currently split between
Romania and
Ukraine.
The name
Bukovina came into official use in
1775 with the region's annexation to the possessions of the
Habsburg Monarchy, later known as the
Austrian Empire, and
Austria-Hungary. The name has a
Slavic origin and is derived from the word for
beech tree (
бук [buk] in
Ukrainian)
The standard
German name,
die Bukowina, which was the official German-language name for the province under Austrian rule, is derived from the Slavic original, via the
Polish form of the name which is
Bukowina. This was due to the fact that, for roughly the first half of the
19th century, and for some years prior, Austrian
Bukovina was administered as an integral part of neighboring
Galicia, whose internal government was, by active Austrian policy, controlled by Polish bureaucrats and nobles (
szlachta). Another German name for region,
das Buchenland is mostly used in poetry, means, literally, "beech land", or, more poetically, "land of beech trees".
The original name of the region during the rule of the
Moldavian Principality was "Ţara de Sus" (Upper Country in Romanian), referring to the altitude, as opposed to the lower plains called "Ţara de Jos" (Lower Country).
Nowadays in Ukraine it is common to use the terms
Chernivtsi Oblast and
Bukovina as synonymous words, which originated from the fact that Chernivtsi Oblast and the Northern Bukovina (as of 1910 Austrian border) refer to about the same territory.
In English, an alternate form is
The Bukovina, increasingly an archaism, which, however, is to be found in older literature.
Before the 14th century
During
Stone age Bukovina was densely populated by
Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of early
settlers (
4500 BC –
3000 BC).
Since the
Roman times,
Dacian peoples inhabited the territory. In the
5th century, the territory came under the rule of the
Avars. Around
7th century,
Slavic populations settled in the region and influenced the local proto-Romanians. From
9th to early
14th century a small part of the territory was (although not well-proved) under the indirect rule of
Kievan Rus.
Moldavian Principality
From the mid-
14th century, the local Romanian population united under rulers that passed the
Carpathians from
Maramureş (being downtrodden by the Hungarian kings who ruled over their lands). The region became the nucleus of the
Moldavian Principality, with the city of
Suceava as its capital from
1388 (after
Baia and
Siret). In the
15th century, parts of the region became the subject of disputes between the Moldavian state and the
Polish Kingdom. In this period, the patronage of
Stephen III of Moldavia and his successors on the throne of Moldavia saw the construction of the famous painted
Monasteries of
Moldoviţa,
Putna,
Suceviţa and
Voroneţ. 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. Stephen also settled
Ruthenians in
Bukovina with the hope of having a loyal population that would contribute with taxes. In
Suceava alone, in the 16th century, two percent of the population was Ruthenian.
In the
1541, the
Moldavian Principality came under the control of the
Ottoman Turks, but it remained autonoumous and was govered by a
Voievod. For short periods of time, the Polish Kingdom occupied the northern part of Bukovina. However on
14 october 1703 the old border is re-established, as the Polish delegate Martin Chometowski acknowledges
Inter nos et Valachiam ipse Deus flumine Tyras dislimitavit (Between us and Moldavia God himself set
Dniester as the border).
In the course of the
Russo-Turkish War the Ottomans were driven out by the
Russian Empire (occupied 14 September-October 1739 and
15 December 1769 - September 1774).
The
Moldavian nobility had traditionally formed the ruling class in that territory before the Habsburgs acquired it for Austria under the
partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the last quarter of the
18th century.
Austrian empire
|
Ethnic map of the Austrian province of Bukowina |
The
Austrian empire occupied Bukowina in October of 1774 (following the first
partition of Poland in 1772), claiming that they needed it for
a road between Galicia and Transylvania, and was formally annexed in january 1775. On
2 july 1776, at Palamutka, Austrians and Ottomans sign a border convention, Austrians giving back 59 of the previously occupied villages, and remaining with 278 villages. It remained part of the
Cisleithanian or Austrian territories of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire until
1918, initially as a closed military district (
1775 -
1786), then as the largest district,
Kreis Czernowitz (after its capital
Chernivtsi) of the Austrian constituent
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (
1787 -
1849), and, finally, on
4 March 1849, became a separate Austrian
Kronland 'crown land' (though August 1849 -
26 February 1861 amalgamated with Galicia), since
4 March 1849 under a
Landespräsident (not a
Stadthalter, as in other crown lands) and declared
Herzogtum Bukowina (nominal duchy, as part of the official full style of the Austrian Emperors). It got a representative assembly, the
Landtag (diet).
According to the
1775 Austrian census, the province had the total population of 86,000 made up of Romanians (Moldovans) and Ukrainians (Ruthenians and Hutzuls). During the 19th century the Austrian Empire policies encouraged the influx of many immigrants such as Germans, Poles, Jews, Hungarians and
Ruthenian from
Galicia.
End-19th to early-20th centuries
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
Bukowina. Since gaining its independence,
Romania envisioned to incorporate this historic province which, as a core of
Moldavian Principality, was of a great historic significance to its
history and contained many prominent monuments of its
art and architecture. [
1]
Despite the influx of migrants encouraged under the Austrian rule, Romanians continued to be the largest ethnic group in the province until
1880, when Ruthenians (Ukrainians) outnumbered the Romanians 5:4. 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 unchanged until
WWI.
Ruthenian is an archaic name for
Ukrainian, while
Hutzul is considered as an ethnic group of Ukrainian stock (in fact
Vlach slavised shepperds).
Under the Austrian rule Bukovina remained ethnically mixed: predominantly
Romanian in the south,
Ukrainian (commonly referred to as
Ruthenians in the Empire) in the north, with small numbers of Hungarian
Székely,
Slovak and
Polish peasants, and
Germans,
Poles and
Jews in the towns; the 1910 census counted 800 198 people, of which: Ruthenian 38.88%, Romanian 34.38%, German 21.24%, Jews 12.86%, Polish 4.55%, Hungarian 1.31%, Slovak 0.08%, Slovenian 0.02%, Italian 0.02%, and a few Serbian, Croat, Turkish, Armenian,
Gipsy.
In spite of some frictions between Romanian and Ukrainian populations at the time over the influences in the
Orthodox hierarchy, the inter-ethnic conflicts did not reach a significant level and both cultures developed in educational and public life. Moreover, 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.
Kingdom of Romania
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 the
National Council of Bukovina, which represented mainly the Romanian population of the province, but also the Germans, Jews, Poles and some Ukrainians voted for union with the
Kingdom of Romania, on
November 28, and Romanian troops swiftly moved in to occupy the territory.
Although local Ukrainians have unsuccessfully attempted to incorporate parts of northern
Bukovina into the short lived
West Ukrainian National Republic, the Romanian control of the province was finally formalized in the
Treaty of St. Germain in
1919 and the policies of
Romanianization were carried in the
interwar period.
Romanian language was introduced to ethnic minority schools in
1923 and by
1926 all Ukrainian schools in Bukovina were closed. Although in the
1928 -
1938 period, as Romania tried to improve its relations with
Soviet Union, Ukrainian culture has given some limited means to redevelop, any gains were sharply reversed in
1938.
According to the
1930 Romanian census,
Romanians made up almost 45% of the total population of Bukovina and Ruthenians(Ukrainians) 29.2%. However in the northern region which subsequently was occupied by the
USSR in 1940, Romanians made up only 32.6% of the population, while Ukrainians slightly outnumbered Romanians.
Bukovina should not be confused with
Chernivtsi Oblast, as the latter included not only northern
Bukovina and
Hertsa region but also the northern part of
Khotin county, thus totaling a population of circa 805,000 in 1940, out of which 47.5% were Ukrainians in 1940 and 28.3% were Romanians, with Germans, Jews, Poles, Hungarians and Russians comprising the rest.
Preceding events and Second World War
Following the
Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the
June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanded the northern part of Bukovina, a province connected with
Galicia annexed by the
Soviet Union at
1939 Poland's partition. Soviet demand for Bukovina surprised
Germany, though it didn't formally oppose it. In the first Soviet ultimatum addressed to the Romanian government, the largely Ukrainian populated northern part of Bukovina was "demanded" as a minor
"reparation for the great loss produced to the Soviet Union and Bessarabia's population by twenty-two years of Romanian domination of Bessarabia". At the end of June, 1940, the Romanian government evacuated Northern
Bukovina, and the
Red Army moved in, with the new Soviet-Romanian border being traced 20 km north of
Putna Monastery.
In the course of the
1941 attack on the Soviet Union by the
Axis forces the
Romanian Third Army led by General
Petre Dumitrescu occupied the region along with
Hertsa,
Bessarabia,
Odessa region and other territories in the south of Ukraine.
During the
Second World War, major demographic changes occurred in northern
Bukovina. In the first year of Soviet occupation, the population of the region decreased by more than 250,000. These demographic shifts are explained by three separate but concurrent phenomena:
#fleeing of a part of the population to Romania (mainly, but not exclusively, ethnic Romanians)#repatriation of Germans, Hungarians and Poles#systematic repression, mass deportation and exterminations by the Soviet regime (again mainly, although not exclusively, directed against Romanians)
According to
NKVD orders, tens of thousands of Romanian families were deported to
Siberia during this period.[
2], with 12,191 people deported on August 2, 1940, (less than a month after the occupation), [
3]and another 2,057 persons, deported to Siberia in December 1940, together with their families [
4]. The largest action took place on June 13, 1941, when about 13,000 people were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Until the repatriation convention of
15 April 1941, the
NKVD troops killed hundreds of Romanian peasants of the northern Bukovina as they tried to escape to Romania away from the Soviet authorities[
5], which culminated on April 1 with the
Fantana Alba massacre.
Almost the entire German population of northern
Bukovina established during Austrian rule emigrated to the
Reich. According to Ukrainian sources, about 45, 000 ethnic Germans had left Northern Bukovina by November 1940.
[Leonid Ryaboshapko. Pravove stanovishche nationalinyh mensyn v Ucraini (1917-2000) - P. 259 (in Ukrainian)]In July 1941, the new Romanian military government counted at least 36,000 missing persons apart of
the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. After the war the
Soviet government deported or killed about 41,000
Romanians.
Under the occupation, almost entire Jewish community of the northern Bukovina was
destroyed by the deportations to the
death camps (see
Bogdanovka) over the
Dniester and
Bug rivers. Despite his promise that he would treat the Old Kingdom Jews differently than non-Regat Jews, Romanian leader
Ion Antonescu ordered deportation of Jews from
Suceava county. In 1941 and 1942, 21,229 Jews from southern Bukovina were deported.
In
1944 the
Red Army drove the
Axis forces out and re-established the 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. That territory became part of the
Ukrainian SSR as
Chernivtsi Oblast (
province). After the war, the
Soviet government deported or killed about 41,000
Romanians. 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).
[Ṭara fagilor: Almanah cultural-literar al românilor nord-bucovineni. Cernăuţi-Târgu-Mureş, 1994, p. 160. ] 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
Cernăuţi, Crasna and
Codrii Cosminului.
[Dragoş Tochiţă. Români de pe Valea Siretului de Sus, jertfe ale ocupaţiei nordului Bucovinei şi terorii bolşevice. - Suceava, 1999. - P. 35.(in Romanian)] In Crasna (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 Romanian historic regions.
|
Ethnic divisions in modern Bukovina with Ukrainians, Romanians and Russians 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 the one of the times 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
Ukrainian Census (2001) data [
6], 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% (114.6 thousand) and 7.3% (67.2 thousand), respectively.
Russians are the next largest ethnic group with 4.1%, while
Poles,
Belarusians, and
Jews comprise the rest. 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,
Moldovan and
Russian, respectively).
The appearance of
Romanians and
Moldovans in the census as two separate ethnic groups has been criticized by the
Romanian Community of Ukraine - Interregional Union which complain that this old
Soviet-era practice results in the Romanian population being undercounted. However, the census respondents were free to claim their ethnicity as they wished with no predermined set of choices, not to respond to any particular census question or not answer any questions at all. Some have chosen to claim to be
Rusyns or
Hutsuls, which are ethnic groups that were not previously recognized.
A compact
Romanian minority inhabits the southern part of Chernivtsi region, in
Hertsa,
Novoselitsa (Noua Suliţă),
Hlyboka (Adâncata),
Storozhinets (Storojineţ). In every other part of northern Bukovina, including the city of
Chernivtsi,
Ukrainians are in the majority.
The southern, or Romanian
Bukovina has a significant Romanian majority (97.5%), largest minority group being the Ukrainians, who make up 1.2% of the population (2002 census). The Romanian
2002 census was subject to a criticism of undercounting of ethnic minorities in Romania brought up by the Ukrainian communities inside and outside
Romania [
7], [
8].
Northern Bukovina
*
Berehomet (Romanian: Berhomete pe Siret)
*
Boyany (Romanian: Boian)
*
Chernavka (Romanian: Cernauca)
*
Chernivtsi (Romanian: Cernăuţi)
*
Hlyboka (Romanian: Adâncata)
*
Kitsman (Romanian: Cozmeni; German: Kotzman)
*
Krasnoilsk (Romanian: Crasna)
*
Luzhany (Romanian: Lujeni)
*
Nepolokivtsi (Romanian: Nepolocăuţi/Grigore-Ghica Vodă)
*
Novoselytsia (Romanian: Suliţa-Târg/Suliţa Nouă)
*
Putyla (Romanian: Putila)
*
Sadhora (Polish: Sadagóra; Romanian: Sadagura)
*
Storozhynets (Romanian: Storojineţ)
*
Vashkivtsi (German: Waschkautz; Romanian: Văşcăuţi)
*
Vyzhnytsia (German: Wiznitz; Romanian: Vijniţa)
*
ZastavnaSouthern Bukovina
*
Broşteni*
Cajvana*
Câmpulung Moldovenesc*
Dolhasca*
Frasin*
Fălticeni*
Gura Humorului*
Liteni*
Milişăuţi*
Rădăuţi*
Salcea*
Siret*
Solca*
Suceava*
Vatra Dornei*
Vicovu de Sus:
Inline*[
9] (original version, in German - use English and French versions with caution)
*
WorldStatesmen (under Ukraine)* Dumitru Covălciuc. Românii nord-bucovineni în exilul totalitarismului sovietic
* Victor Bârsan "Masacrul inocenţilor", Bucuresti, 1993, pp.18-19
* Ştefan Purici. Represiunile sovietice... P. 255-258;
* Vasile Ilica. Fântâna Albă: O mărturie de sânge (istorie, amintiri, mărturii). - Oradea: Editura Imprimeriei de Vest, 1999.
* Marian Olaru. Consideraţii preliminare despre demografie si geopolitica pe teritoriul Bucovinei. Analele Bucovinei. Tomul VIII. Partea I. Bucuresti: Editura Academiei Române, 2001
* Ţara fagilor: Almanah cultural-literar al românilor nord-bucovineni. Cernăuţi-Târgu-Mureş, 1994
* Aniţa Nandris-Cudla. Amintiri din viaţă. 20 de ani în Siberia. Humanitas, Bucharest, 2006 (second edition),(in Romanian)
ISBN: 973-50-1159-X*
The Bukovina Society of the Americas*
Moldavian Principality*
Galicia (Central Europe)*
Székelys of Bukovina*
Bukovina, in
Encyclopædia Britannica*
Bukovina Society of the Americas*/
The Metropolitanate of Moldavia and Bukovina (Romanian Orthodox Church)*/
Ukrainian Census*
Soviet Ultimatum Notes (University of Bucharest site)*
Romanian Bucovina's Association for Tourism*/
Chernivtsy city sport and tourism*
Ukrainians in Bukovina (map)
*
detailed article about WWII and aftermath*
Short movie about the romanian culture in Bukovina
