Union of Bukovina with Romania

On 28 November 1918 (15 November by the Julian calendar, which Romania used at the time) the General Congress of Bukovina, convened by the Romanian National Council, met in Czernowitz. Under the chairmanship of the Council’s president, the landowner and politician Iancu Flondor, the congress unanimously resolved on the “unconditional and everlasting union of Bukovina, within its old borders up to the Cheremosh, Colacin and the Dniester, with the Kingdom of Romania”. Bukovina was the second land, after Bessarabia, to proclaim union with Romania in 1918.

A land of two nations

The Duchy of Bukovina had belonged to the Habsburg monarchy since 1775. It was a multinational land. According to the 1910 census, of about 800,000 inhabitants nearly 39 per cent were Ruthenians, that is Ukrainians, more than 34 per cent Romanians, and there were also many Germans, Jews and Poles. Romanians predominated in the south, Ukrainians in the north, and in Czernowitz itself, a multilingual city, everyone lived. In 1916 the Entente promised Bukovina to Romania in a secret treaty.

When the monarchy was falling apart in the autumn of 1918, both nations put forward their claims. On 27 October the Romanians gathered an assembly in Czernowitz, which elected a National Council headed by Flondor. The Ukrainian regional committee demanded the annexation of the northern part of Bukovina to the Ukrainian state, which took power in Lviv on 1 November and soon adopted the name of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic. On 6 November the Ukrainians took power in Czernowitz, and the Austrian governor handed the administration over to their leader Omelian Popovych and to the Romanian politician Aurel Onciul, who acted without the National Council’s authority. The Romanian leaders took refuge in the metropolitan’s residence and asked the Romanian army for help.

The army moves in

The Marghiloman government sent frontier guards and gendarmes to Suceava and other towns in the south of the land. On 11 November the Romanian 8th Division of General Iacob Zadik entered Czernowitz. The Ukrainian troops and authorities left the city without a fight. The next day the National Council adopted a provisional law on the government of the land and appointed a government headed by Flondor. Over the following days the Romanian army occupied the whole of Bukovina.

The congress

The General Congress met in the synod hall of the metropolitans’ residence in Czernowitz. It numbered about a hundred delegates, most of them Romanians. Representatives of the Bukovina Germans and six representatives of the local Poles also voted for union. Most representatives of the Ukrainians and Jews refused to take part in the proceedings, which they considered unrepresentative. Guests from Bessarabia, among them Pantelimon Halippa, and from Transylvania were present in the hall.

The congress sent a message of homage to King Ferdinand I, asking him to take Bukovina under his sceptre, and telegrams to the governments of France, Great Britain, the United States and Italy. After the proceedings closed, a procession went to the town hall, where Flondor announced the union of the land with Romania to the inhabitants. The mayor announced that the square in front of the town hall would henceforth be called Union Square.

What came next

A few days later a delegation headed by Flondor went to Iași to hand the resolution over to the Romanian authorities. The king confirmed the union by a decree of 31 December 1918. The Ukrainians did not accept the loss of northern Bukovina, but, occupied with the fight against the Poles for Lviv, they were unable to recover it. International recognition came with the peace treaty with Austria, signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919. Bukovina remained within Romania until 1940, when its northern part was occupied by the Soviet Union.