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Romanian Views on Bessarabia and Bukovina: A Ukrainian Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Theodore B. Ciuciura
Theodore B. Ciuciura*
Affiliation:
Saint Mary's University
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Extract

Nicholas Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina: The Soviet-Romanian Territorial Dispute. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982. v, 173 pp. Distributed by Columbia University Press. Maria Manoliu-Manea, ed., The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bessarabia and Bucovina. American Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Humboldt State University Press, 1983. xii, 280 pp.

Here are two good books providing detailed information on Bessarabia, until 1918 a province of the Russian Empire, and, to a lesser extent, on Bukovina, once a province within the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. They include useful theoretical though somewhat debatable considerations on the history and ethnic nature of both regions. They come to proper conclusions which seem amply justified by the data and analysis which preceded them. However, both books are inadequately edited, especially the second one, and include a few statements either based on superficial generalizations or even tinted with disturbing — though perhaps unconscious — ethnocentrism.

Type
Review Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , spring 1985 , pp. 106 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

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7 Ibid., pp. 119, 129, 179. Also “The Cossacks of the Dnieper” (129), “Russia” (170), “Western Russia” (171), etc.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 119, 129.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., pp. 171, 172.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., pp. 162, 170.Google Scholar

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13 In the book overlooked by the authors of the reviewed publications, Ion Nistor, known to be somewhat chauvinistic on the question of autochthons of Bukovina, describes these matters in some detail. Problema Ucraineana in Lumina Istoriei (Cernauti, 1934), especially Ch. VII, Românii ca prieteni si protectori ai Ucraintilor (The Romanians as Friends and Protectors of the Ukrainians), pp. 77-81; ch. X, “Bogdan Hmelnicki si Vasile Lupu,” pp. 125-40; ch. XII, “Mazepa si pribegia sa in Moldova” (Mazepa in His Exile in Moldavia), pp. 157-68.Google Scholar

14 “Les négociations de 1650 aboutissent à l'alliance entre l'Ukraine, la Moldavie et la Valachie, base d'un bloc antiottoman auquel adhérer les Grecs, les Serbes et les Bulgares.” Historie de la Roumanie, p. 192.Google Scholar

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18 Biedrzycki, Emil, Historia Polakow na Bukowinie [History of the Poles in Bukovina] (Warsaw-Cracow, 1973), p. 26, n. 6. Contrary views are expressed in a book overlooked by the reviewed publications, Octavian Lupu, Bemerkungen zum Lage der Rumanen in der Bukowina während der Habsburgischer Herrschaft (Roma: Fondation Europeenne Dragan, 1980), although in more details but with a complete neglect of the provincial Diet and the privileged position of the Romanian landed gentry; also with an evident Romanian ethnocentrism. The Ruthenians are hardly mentioned; the word “Ukrainians” is never used.Google Scholar