Ukrainians under Romanian Rule
Another state that acquired a significant number of Ukrainians during the chaotic 1918–19 period was Romania. According to Romania’s statistics, in 1920 there were about 790,000 Ukrainians within its borders, constituting 4.7% of the population.
Ukrainians formed three distinct subgroups. One group – about 450,000 Ukrainians – lived in the southeast corner of the country, in the former Russian province of Bessarabia (present-day Moldavia), which bordered on the Black Sea. In 1919, near Khotyn, these poor peasants staged a Bolshevik-led uprising against the Romanian government; but after its failure, they showed little political activity. Another small group of Ukrainians lived in Maramorosh, a former Hungarian territory, and were also politically inactive.The third group was the most vibrant Ukrainian community: the approximately 310,000 Ukrainians of Bukovyna. Romanian occupation resulted in a drastic political decline for the Bukovynians. Under Austrian rule, Bukovyna had been an autonomous province and Ukrainians, its largest national group, had relatively strong political representation in Vienna, extensive local self-government, and a well-developed system of Ukrainian-language education. All this was lost when the Romanians annexed the region. From being the most favored West Ukrainian community, the Bukovynians became the most oppressed.
Romanian intolerance of its numerous minorities was even greater than that of the Poles. After 1920, when the Western allies formally recognized the Romanian claim to all of Bukovyna, the Romanian government shut down all Ukrainian schools and even refused to recognize the Ukrainians as a distinct nationality. The educational measures of 1924, which Romanized the schools, referred to Ukrainians as “citizens of Romanian origin who had forgotten their native language.” By 1927, all traces of Bukovyna’s former autonomous administration had been removed and it was treated like any other Romanian province.
There were three distinct phases in the twenty-two years that Ukrainians spent under Romanian rule.
During the first phase, which lasted from 1918 to 1928, the Romanian government imposed martial law on the province. For the Bukovynian Ukrainians, who were accustomed to the well-ordered constitutional Austrian system, the brutal liquidation of their rights and the Romanization of their cultural life represented a disorienting shock. They recovered somewhat during the relatively liberal period between 1928 and 1938. But when the military came to power in Romania in 1938, as it did in Poland, a period of harsh, almost totalitarian, rule ensued.Under the circumstances, it was only during the brief period of 1928–38 that Ukrainian organizational life could be revived, and only modestly at that. Essentially, the members of the small Bukovynian community responded to Romanian rule in a fashion similar to their compatriots in Poland. The older, more-established members opted for legal “organic” work and compromise with the regime. They reestablished cultural societies, choirs, theatrical troupes, student groups, and several publications. In 1927, under the leadership of Volodymyr Zalozetsky, they even formed the Ukrainian National party. However, by 1938, both the party and many Ukrainian organizations had been disbanded. The “revolutionary” or Nationalist camp, led by Orest Zybachynsky, Petro Hryhorovych, and Denys Kvitkovsky, emerged in the mid 1930s. More selective in recruiting its membership than the OUN in Galicia, the organization, while not large numerically, soon dominated the student, youth, and sports societies. Because of its conspiratorial structure, OUN was the only Ukrainian organization in Bukovyna not only to survive government repression but also to expand on account of it.