Bukovina

Bukovina, historically a Romanian territory whose northern part was demanded in an ultimatum presented by the Soviet government to Romania on 26 June 1940 (see Map 80). Despite the fact that northern Bukovina had never formed part of the Russian Empire, the USSR was able to base its claim on the fact that the predominant majority of this part of the province was Ukrainian (300,000 Ukrainians, 50,000 Romanians). This area of roughly 6,000 sq. km. (2,315 sq. mi.) was ceded by Romania and incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The recovery of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia was the principal motive for Romania's involvement in the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) and was achieved by 27 July at the cost of 10,486 Romanian dead (see Romania, 4(a)). In the winter of 1941–2 there were massive deportations of Jews and gypsies from the whole of Bukovina to camps in Transnistria, an area of the Ukraine Romania annexed in August 1941, where many died at the hands of German and Romanian units. Bukovina was overrun by the Red Army in the early autumn of 1944 and its northern part reincorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.

Dennis Deletant

Bibliography

Dima, N. , Bessarabia and Bukovina: the Soviet–Romanian territorial dispute (Boulder, Colo., 1982).
Manoliu-Manea, M. (ed.), The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bessarabia and Bucovina (Los Angeles, 1983).