Chernivtsi Oblast (Ukrainian:Чернівецька область,romanized: Chernivetska oblast), also referred to asChernivechchyna (Чернівеччина), is anoblast (province) in westernUkraine, consisting of the northern parts of the historical regions ofBukovina andBessarabia. It has an international border withRomania andMoldova. The region spans 8,100 square kilometres (3,100 sq mi). The oblast is the smallest in Ukraine bothby areaand population. It has a population of890,457 (2022 estimate),[2] and its administrative center is the city ofChernivtsi.
In 1408, Chernivtsi was a town inMoldavia and the chief centre of the area known as Bukovina. Chernivtsi later passed to the Turks and then in 1774 to theHabsburg monarchy. AfterWorld War I, it was ceded to Romania, and in 1940, the town was acquired by theUkrainian SSR.
The oblast has a large variety of landforms: theCarpathian Mountains and picturesque hills at the foot of the mountains gradually change to a broad partly forested plain situated between theDniester andPrut rivers.
Chernivtsi Oblast covers an area of 8,097 km2 (3,126 sq mi). It is thesmallest oblast in Ukraine, representing 1.3% of Ukrainian territory, and is only larger than the city ofKyiv itself.
In the oblast there are 75 rivers longer than 10 kilometers. The largest rivers are theDniester (290 km, in the Oblast),Prut (128 km, in the Oblast) andSiret (113 km, in the Oblast).[5]
TheSoviet occupation began on June 28, 1940. In addition to Bessarabia, the USSR demanded Northern Bukovina as compensation for the occupation of Bessarabia by Romania from 1918 to 1940. Hertsa region was not included in the demands that theSoviet Union addressed to Romania, but was occupied at the same time. Most of the occupied territories were organized on August 2, 1940, as theMoldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, while the remainder, including the Chernivtsi Oblast, which was formed on August 7, 1940, were included in theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Throughout 1940–1941 several tens of thousands of Bukovinians were deported toSiberia andKazakhstan, some 13,000 of them on June 13, 1941, alone. The total number of deportees from Soviet Moldova to Siberia in June 1941 was 31,699, while 8,374 (mostly Romanians) were deported from the Chernivtsi oblast of Ukraine and 3,767 from the Izmail oblast of Ukraine (southern Bessarabia); the total was 43,840.[8] According to Bougai, only 22,643 individuals deported from Soviet Moldova (71.43%) were still alive in September 1941, and out of those deported from the Chernivtsi and Izmail oblasts, only 9,595 (79.03%) were still alive at that time.[9] Only 1,136 of those deported from the Izmail oblast (30.16%) were still alive in 1951.[10] The number of deportees to the Soviet north and east from the present-day Hertsa raion on June 13, 1941, was 1996; according to some sources, most of the deportees died.[11] According to some sources, most of the deportees of June 1941 of all ethnicities from the region died in the Soviet east.[12] According to Dr. Avigdor Schachan, who wrote a book about the Transnistrian ghettos, and was himself brought up in the Bessarabian part of the present-day Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine, about 2,000 northern Bukovinian and 4,000 Bessarabian Jews were deported to the Soviet east.[13] About half of the Jews deported from Bessarabia to the Soviet east survived and returned to Bessarabia according to a source mentioned by Jean Ancel, the specialist on the Holocaust in Romania and Transnistria.[14] This and later deportations were primarily based on social class difference, it targeted intellectuals, people employed previously by the state, businessmen, clergymen, students, railworkers. In the winter and spring of 1941, the Soviet troops (NKVD) opened fire on many groups of locals trying to cross the border into Romania. Between September 17 and November 17, 1940, by a mutual agreement between USSR and Germany, 43,641 "ethnic Germans" from the Chernivtsi region were moved to Germany, although the total ethnic German population was only 34,500, and of these some 3,500 did not go to Germany.
Beginning with 1941, when the region returned under the control of theRomanian administration, theJewish community of the area was largely destroyed by the deportations to Transnistria, where about 60% of the Jewish deportees from the area died. About 60% of the Jewish deportees to Transnistria from the city of Chernivtsi in 1941 and 1942 died there according to the Jewish Virtual Library.[15][better source needed] According to Gali Mir-Tibon, most of the Jews deported from the city of Chernivtsi, and northern Bukovina in general, to Transnistria did not survive.[16] Despite the anti-Semitic policies of theIon Antonescu's government of Romania, the mayor ofCernăuți,Traian Popovici, now honored byIsrael'sYad Vashem memorial as one of theRighteous Among the Nations, saved approximately 20,000 Jews.[citation needed]
In 1944, when theSoviet troops returned toBukovina, many inhabitants fled toRomania, and Soviet persecutions resumed. In demographic terms, these war-time and post-war-time factors changed the region's ethnic composition. Today the number of Jews, Germans and Poles is negligible, while the number of Romanians has decreased substantially. In March 1945, 3,967 ethnic Romanians from Ukraine, mostly from the Chernivtsi Oblast, were sent to the Soviet east.[17] According to Nikolai Bougai, in March 1945, 12,852 Jews from 5,420 families with both Romanian and Soviet passports living in Ukraine, mostly originating from the Chernivtsi oblast, were relocated (as Jews) by the NKVD to the Soviet north and east.[18]
On October 11, 1942, the (Soviet) State Committee on Defense decided to extend the decrees on "the mobilization of the NKVD labour columns, German men, able to work, 17-50 years old - to the persons of other nations, being in war with USSR-Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Finns."; the order was signed by Stalin.[19] As a reult, in May 1944, in the village ofMolodiia and some other northern Bukovinian localities, those men who declared a "Moldovan" nationality were incorporated into the Soviet army, while those who declared a "Romanian" nationality were sent to the work camps in the area of Lake Onega, where most of them died.[20] The Soviet era dominance of the "Moldovan" identity in parts of northern Bukovina was due to the fact that the inhabitants of the Chernivtsi and Sadagura rural raions, and of the Bukovinian part of theNovoselytsia raion, were pressured in 1944 to adopt a "Moldovan" national/ethnic identity.[21] In March 1945, 3,967 ethnic Romanians from Ukraine, mostly from the Chernivtsi Oblast, were sent to the Soviet east.[22]
Ruthenian communities in Bukovina date back to at least 16th century. In 1775,Ukrainians (Ruthenians) represented some 8,000 out of a 75,000 population ofBukovina. By 1918, as a result of immigration of Ukrainian peasants from nearby villages inGalicia andPodolia, there were over 200,000 Ukrainians, out of a total of 730,000. Most of Ukrainians settled in the northern parts of Bukovina. Their number was especially large in the area between theDniester andPrut rivers, where they became a majority. A similar process occurred in NorthernBessarabia. Throughout the history of the region, there were no inter-ethnic clashes, while the city ofChernivtsi was known for its German-style architecture, for a highly cultivated society, and for ethnic tolerance. Small ethnic disputes were, however, present on occasion. In 1918, many Ukrainians in Bukovina wanted to join an independent Ukrainian state. After an initial period of free education inUkrainian language, in late 1920s Romanian authorities attempted to switch all education to theRomanian language. After 1944 Ukrainian anti-Soviet resistance rose up, Romanians and Ukrainians fought alongside againstNKVD.
Many Ukrainians in the south-western mountain area of the Chernivtsi region belong to theHutsul ethnic sub-group, a sophisticated cultural community inhabiting an area in theCarpathian Mountains in bothUkraine andRomania.
When theSoviet Union collapsed, Chernivtsi Oblast, then part of the Ukrainian SSR, became part of the newly independent (August 24, 1991)Ukraine. It has a Ukrainian ethnic majority. In thereferendum on December 1, 1991, 92% of the oblast's residents supported the independence of Ukraine, with wide support from both Ukrainians and Romanians.
Ethnic divisions in Chernivtsi Oblast at the end of the Soviet Period[1], withUkrainians,Romanians,Russians andJewish areas depicted in white, blue, red, and yellow respectively. Note that theMoldovans, which represented 9% of the region's population according to the last Soviet census (1989),[citation needed] are shown as Romanians.Ethnic division of the Chernivtsi Oblast according to the latest2001 Ukrainian census results. Areas inhabited byUkrainians,Romanians,Moldovans,Russians, and other ethnicities are depicted in yellow, blue, green, red, and white respectively. Circle sizes represent total population size in each area. Romanians and Moldovans form a single ethnic group.
According to the latestUkrainian Census (2001),[23]Ukrainians represent 74.98% (689,056) of the population of Chernivtsi Oblast out of 919,028 inhabitants. Moreover, 12.46% (114,555) reported themselves as Romanians, 7.31% (67,225) asMoldovans, and 4.12% (37,881) asRussians. The other nationalities, such asPoles,Belarusians, andJews sum up to 1.2%.[24] According to the 2001 census, the majority of the population of the Chernivtsi region was Ukrainian-speaking (75.57%), and there were also Romanian (18.64%) and Russian (5.27%) speakers.[25] In the last Soviet census of 1989, out of 940,801 inhabitants, 666,095 declared themselves Ukrainians (70.8%), 100,317 Romanians (10.66%), 84,519 Moldovans (8.98%), and 63,066 Russians (6.7%).[26] The decline in the number (from 84,519 to 67,225) and proportion of Moldovans (from 8.98% to 7.31%) was explained by a switch from a census Moldovan to a census Romanian ethnic identity, and has continued after the 2001 census.[27] By contrast, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians has increased and so has their proportion of the population of the oblast (from 10.66% to 12.46%), and the process has continued after the 2001 census.[27]
A 2015 survey found that 86% of respondents ascribed to theOrthodox church while 2% ascribed toGreek Catholic. Another 5% was "unspecified Christian."[28]
The use of separate categories for theMoldovans and Romanians, as well as for the Moldovan and Romanian languages in the Ukrainian census has been criticized by various Romanian organizations in Ukraine, including the Romanian Community of Ukraine Interregional Union.[29] Furthermore, it was alleged that individuals, especially, but not exclusively, in the Odessa region were threatened with dismissal from their jobs if they declared that they were "Romanians" rather than "Moldovans", and it was also claimed that the ethnicity of some individuals was listed arbitrarily by census-takers who did not even ask those individuals what their ethnicity was.[30] Nevertheless, all census respondents had to write in their ethnicity (no predetermined set of choices existed), and could respond or not to any particular census question, or not answer any questions at all.[31]
According to Kateryna Sheshtakova, a professor at the Pomeranian University of Slutsk in Poland who did field research among 15 self-identified Romanians and self-identified Moldovans in the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine, 'Some Moldovans use both names of the mother tongue (Moldovan or Romanian) and accordingly declare two ethnic affiliations.'[32] Opinion polling from the Chernivtsi oblast, as well as the discussions of the delegates of the Meeting of the Leaders of the Romanophone Organizations from Ukraine of December 6, 1996, indicated that many of the self-identified Moldovans believed that the Moldovan and Romanian languages were identical.[33] Shestakova suggests that those self-identified Moldovans who see differences between Moldovan and Romanian tend to be from "the older generation".[34] More information on the Romanian identity population and Moldovan identity population in Ukraine, including in the Chernivtsi oblast, and including detailed statistical data, may be found in the articlesRomanians in Ukraine,Moldovans in Ukraine andMoldovenism.
According to the Romanian census of 1930, the territory of the futureChernivtsi Oblast had 805,642 inhabitants in that year, out of which 47.6% wereUkrainians, and 28.2% were Romanians. The rest of the population was 88,772Jews, 46,946Russians (among them an important community ofLipovans), around 35,000Germans, 10,000Poles, and 10,000Hungarians.[29]
During the inter-war period,Cernăuți County had a population of 306,975, of which 136,380 were Ukrainians, and 78,589 wereRomanians.Storojineţ County had 77,382 Ukrainians and 57,595Romanians. (The three other counties ofBukovina, which remained inRomania, had a total of 22,368 Ukrainians). The northern part of theHotin County had approximately 70% Ukrainians and 25%Romanians. The Hertsa region, smaller by area and population, was virtually 100%Romanian.
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.
On the territory of the Chernivtsi region there are 836 archeological monuments (of which 18 have national meanings), 586 historical monuments (2 of them have national significance), 779 monuments of architecture and urban development (112 of them national significance), 42 monuments of monumental art.[citation needed]
^abВерменич Я.В. (2013).ЧЕРНІВЕЦЬКА ОБЛАСТЬ.Encyclopedia of Ukrainian History (in Ukrainian). Vol. 10.Naukova Dumka,NASU Institute of History of Ukraine.ISBN978-966-00-1359-9.У 9—11 ст. на території Ч.о. жили племена тиверців і хорватів. Із кінця 10 — в 11 ст. рівнинна частина сучасної області стала периферією Київської Русі, потім — Галицького князівства, а в 2-й пол. 14 ст. відійшла до Молдавського князівства (яке в 16 ст. стало васалом Османської імперії).
^Nikolai Bougai,The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1996), p. 153.
^See, for example, Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 160.
^See, for example, Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 160.
^Avigdor Shachan,Burning Ice: The Ghettos of Transnistria (Boulder, Colorado, Eastern European Monographs, Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1996),:p. 28, 30.
^Jean Ancel,Transnistria (Bucuresti: Atlas, 1998), vol. 3 (in Romanian), p. 301
^Gali Mir-Tibon, "Am I My Brother's Keeper? Jewish Committees in the Ghettos of the Mogilev District and the Romanian Authorities in Transnistria, 1941-1944", in Wendy Z. Goldman and Joe William Trotter, Jr.,The Ghetto in Global History, 1500 to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), p. 147.
^Nikolai Bougai, The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1996), p. 156.
^Nikolai Bougai,The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1996), p. 156.
^Nikolai Bougai,The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1996), p. 116.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 168.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 172.
^Nikolai Bougai,The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1996), p. 156.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina – intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 242.
^abIon Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina – intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 242, 257, 259, 261.
^George Coman, "SOS romanii din Ucraina!" ("SOS the Romanians of Ukraine"), in Ziua, March 4, 2003, originally accessed athttp://www.ziua.ro/archive/2003/03/04/docs/5846.html, though the link is not currently working.
^Kateryna Sheshtakova, "Ethnic Identity and Linguistic Practices of Romanians and Moldovans (On the Example of Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine), inStudia Humanistyczne AGH, Tom 12/2, 2013, p. 65.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu,Romanii din Ucraina – intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 230-231, 237–238 and passim. Popescu and Ungureanu noted that, while the leader of the Moldovans from the Odesa Oblast, Anatol Fetescu, the leader of the "Luceafarul" Society of Moldovans from Odesa, disagreed with the line that the Moldovan language should be called Romanian, the leaders of the Moldovan organizations from the Chernivtsi Oblast and five other specific oblasts agreed that the Moldovan language is, and should be called, Romanian. Previous similar congresses of the Romanian-speakers from 1992, both for the entire oblast, and by raion, from the region had unanimously supported the same position, including the president of the raion administration of theNovoselytsia Raion, with a mostly Moldovan ethnic identity population, in 1992, Gheorghe Ciubrei and other leaders from the raion. See Popescu and Ungureanu, p. 237-238.
^Kateryna Sheshtakova, "Ethnic Identity and Linguistic Practices of Romanians and Moldovans (On the Example of Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine), inStudia Humanistyczne AGH, Tom 12/2, 2013, p. 72, second paragraph, first sentence.
