Protests against the union of Bessarabia

On 13 April 1918 in Kiev the Little Rada, the standing body of the Ukrainian Central Rada that sat between its sessions, adopted a “Declaration to the Romanian government”. In it the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic protested against the union of Bessarabia with Romania, voted four days earlier by the Sfatul Țării in Kishinev. The document was signed by Prime Minister Vsevolod Holubovych and Foreign Minister Mykola Lyubynsky. Romanian historians write of a note from Kiev dated 12 April (30 March in the Julian calendar, which Romania used), and the British chronology of the war records the Ukrainian protest only under 16 April.

Kiev felt passed over. The Ukrainian People’s Republic considered that it had the right to a say in the fate of Bessarabia, because many Ukrainians lived in its northern part, around Khotyn, and in the south, on the Danube and the Black Sea. As early as March the Holubovych government had informed the Central Powers and Romania that any change to the old Russo-Romanian frontier harmed Ukraine’s interests and that the question of Bessarabia could be settled only with its participation. On 12 April, the day before the declaration was adopted, the Little Rada took up the question of the frontier with Bessarabia. The chairman of the Central Rada, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, argued that Ukraine had every right not to recognise the Kishinev resolution as the expression of the will of all the peoples living in Bessarabia.

The declaration therefore condemned the annexation and refused to recognise the decision of the Sfatul Țării. The Ukrainian government stated that it did not regard the question of Bessarabia as settled by the act of 9 April, and called on Romania to reconsider it and allow the whole population of Bessarabia to determine its fate freely. The tone of the document was nevertheless moderate. It ended with the hope that the Romanian government would find a basis for an agreement that would satisfy both sides. According to Ukrainian historians, Kiev was still hoping for a partition of Bessarabia along ethnic lines.

The protest had no real force. The republic was wholly dependent on the Germans and Austrians, who since February had been occupying its lands under the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, and Berlin had earlier promised Romania a free hand in Bessarabia. On 20 April (7 April Old Style) the Romanian foreign minister, Constantin Arion, replied with a note in which he argued the Romanian character of Bessarabia and rejected the Ukrainian arguments. Soviet Russia also lodged its protest. A note from the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Georgy Chicherin, dated 18 April in Russian studies and recorded in the British chronology under 23 April, declared that the Soviet government did not recognise the annexation of Bessarabia. Moscow considered that the Romanians had broken the March agreement in which they had promised to withdraw their troops from Bessarabia. The Soviet Union never recognised Romanian Bessarabia, and in 1940 forced Romania by ultimatum to give it up.