BUKOVINA

Bukovina is a region that straddles north-central Romania and southwestern Ukraine. First records of the region date back to the fourteenth century, when the whole territory was a constituent part of the Moldovan Principality.

From 1504, the region was drawn under indirect Ottoman rule. However, following the Russo-Turkish war of 1768–1774, the Hapsburg Empire annexed the region, in accordance with the 1775 Convention of Constantinople.

During the initial stages of Austrian rule, Bukovina's population expanded rapidly. The region's reputation for religious toleration and relaxed feudal obligations saw a wave of German, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Romanian immigrants flood into the area.

The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the aftermath of World War I gave rise to a brief period of dispute concerning rights to the region, with both Romania and briefly independent Ukraine claiming sovereignty. The Treaty of Saint Germain awarded the territory to a newly enlarged Romania.

Control over the region shifted following the enactment of the clandestine Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, as the Soviet Union seized northern Bukovina (to the Sereth River) on June 29, 1940. This move precipitated an exodus of the region's German settlers.

Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 saw the whole territory temporarily revert to Romania. Bukovina's sizable Jewish population suffered during this period. However, the region was retaken by advancing Soviet troops, and in September 1944 northern Bukovina was officially incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

After a period of territorial stability under Communist rule, focus on the area returned during the 1990s. With an estimated 135,000 ethnic Romanians living in Ukrainian Bukovina, tentative calls were made by the Romanian government for a reversion to territorial arrangements that had existed prior to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. The Ukrainian government's unwillingness to engage Romanian demands meant the issue initially reached a stasis. However, Romania's application to join NATO forced a resolution of the dispute and, as such, a 1997 treaty mutually recognized the territorial integrity of the two states.

See also: moldova and moldovans; ukraine and ukrainians

bibliography

Fischer-Galati, Stephen. (1991). Twentieth Century Rumania. New York: Columbia University Press.

Roper, Steven D. (2000). Romania: The Unfinished Revolution. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

John Gledhill

Bukovina , Rom. Bucovina, Ukr. Bukovyna, historic region of E Europe, in SW Ukraine and NE Romania. Traversed by the Carpathian Mts. and the upper Prut and Siretul rivers, it is heavily forested [ Bukovina means "beechwood" in Romanian] and produces timber, textiles, grain, and livestock. Salt is produced in quantity; other mineral resources include manganese, iron, and copper. Chernivtsi , in Ukraine, is the chief city. The population is largely Romanian in S Bukovina and Ukrainian in the north. Most of the region's Jews were exterminated during World War II. A part of the Roman province of Dacia, Bukovina was overrun after the 3d cent. AD by the Huns and other nomads. It later (10th-13th cent.) belonged to the Kievan state (see Kiev ) and the Halych and Volhynia principalities. After the Mongols withdrew from Moldavia, Bukovina became (14th cent.) the nucleus of the Moldavian principality. The term Bukovina was first mentioned in an agreement concluded in 1412 between King Ladislaus II of Poland and Sigismund of Hungary. In 1514, Bukovina, then part of Moldavia, became tributary to the Turkish sultans. Ceded by the Ottoman Empire to Austria in 1775, it was at first a district of Galicia but in 1848 was made, as a titular duchy, a separate Austrian crownland. The region won limited autonomy from Austria, and in 1861 Chernivtsi was made the seat of a provincial diet. Bukovina became an object of irredentism when Romania achieved full independence in 1878. The country's boundaries encompassed Suceava , the ancient capital of Moldavia, but Chernivtsi was incorporated into Austria. With the dissolution of the Austrian empire in 1918, the Ukrainian national council at Chernivtsi voted the incorporation of N Bukovina into the West Ukrainian Democratic Republic. The Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919) gave only the southern part of Bukovina to Romania, but the subsequent Treaty of Sèvres awarded Romania the entire region. In a treaty of June, 1940, Romania ceded the northern part of Bukovina (c.2,140 sq mi/5,540 sq km) to the USSR, which incorporated it into the Ukrainian SSR. Although Romanian troops reoccupied N Bukovina during World War II, the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed Soviet possession of the area. N Bukovina now forms part of the Chernivtsi oblast in Ukraine. The remainder of the area (c.1,890 sq mi/4,895 sq km) forms one of the historical provinces of Romania and is part of the administrative region of Suceava.

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).

Bukovina, Romania‐Ukraine ‘Land of the Beech Trees’ from the Slavonic buk ‘beech tree’. A principality of Moldavia in the 14th century, it only acquired its own name and identity in 1775. Two years later it was ceded by the Ottoman Turks to Austria which made it a duchy in 1849 and a crown land. It was incorporated into Romania in 1918–40 after the collapse of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire and again, as the German Army invaded the Soviet Union, in 1941–4. After the Second World War the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was awarded the northern part and Romania the southern.

Bukovina Meaning ‘Beech-Tree Country’, it is a disputed area in the Carpathian foothills. It was part of Austria and then Austria-Hungary from 1775, inhabited mostly by Ukrainians. After World War I it became part of Romania. Northern Bukovina was occupied by the Soviet Red Army in June 1940, as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. When Romania joined Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, its troops reoccupied the territory. It finally came under Soviet control in 1944, and was formally recognized as part of the Soviet Union in 1947.

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