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Bucovina & Botoşani |
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The Bucovina region
Including counties Suceava and
Botoşani
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 The
Southern Bucovina and Botoşani regions together form the historic "Upper Country" north of
the core Moldova region, split by the River Sireţ.
Stretching from from the
north-eastern Carpathian Mountains in the
west down to the Sireţ River,
the traditional Southern Bucovina region is today's
County Suceava,
together with neighbouring
County Botoşani
comprising a population of over a million in the two upper-most of
Romania's counties.
The identity of the Bucovina region is equally influenced by the joint
influences of the neighbouring Moldova Region (the largest city,
Suceava, was
once the capital of Moldova from the late 14th to the mid-16th centuries), and the historic Bukovina region, once under Austrian rule and now split between the Ukraine and
Romania.
What is roughly County Suceava today was under Imperial Habsburg
rule from Austria from 1775 until 1919. County Botoşani, whilst
remaining more "Moldovan" in rule and character, nonetheless was
influenced subtly by the almost 150 years of rule from Vienna across the
Sireţ river. See more in the
History below! Top Tourism Destinations:
The Bucovina region features a wealth of tourist attractions related to
it's World Heritage area painted churches and monasteries, as well as the
medieval fortifications in the main cities of Suceava, Botoşani
and Rădăuţi.
Both Fălticeni and Câmpulung Moldovenesc see major tourist influxes,
and the village Ipoteşti enjoys pilgrams to Mihai Eminescu's birthplace.
The eminant George Enescu's home town is the village of Liveni, and a
great museum can be found at Săveni.
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An extact of the Voroneţ
frescoes with the distinctive shimmering blue background |
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Moldoviţa Monastery, c. 1532
Troops would gather before another campaign outside
these churches and gain inspiration from the colourful frescoes under
the ample soffits.
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The Painted Churches
The painted churches of Suceava are seven Romanian Orthodox churches
built approximately between 1487 and 1532.
The oldest in the group were built in 1487, the Church of St George of
the former Voroneţ Monastery at Voroneţ, and the Church of the Holy Rood
at Pătrăuţi.
At Arbore is the Church of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist from
1503, and at Humor is the splendid
Church of the Assumption of the Virgin of the former Humor Monastery.
Rounding out these World Heritage sites is the Church of the
Annunciation of the Moldoviţa Monastery built in 1532, the Church of St.
Nicholas and the Catholicon of the Probota Monastery built the year before
in 1531, and in the capital Suceava, the 1522 Church of St. George.
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The Humor Monastery
Humor Monastery located about 5 km north of the town of Gura
Humorului, Romania. Is a monastery for females dedicated to the
Dormition of Mary the mother of God or Theotokos.
It was constructed in 1530 by Voievod Petru Rareş (whom with his
wife is buried at the monastery) and his chancellor Teodor Bubuiog. The
monastery was built over the foundation of a previous monastery that
dated to around 1415. The Humor monastery was closed in 1786 and was not
reopened until 1990.
The Frescoes of Humor
Humor was one of the first of Bucovina's painted monasteries to be
frescoed and, along with Voroneţ, is probably the best preserved. The
dominant colour of the frescoes is a reddish brown.
The master painter responsible for Humor's frescoes, which were
painted in 1535, is one Toma of Suceava. The subjects of the
frescoes at Humor include the Siege of Constantinople and the Last
Judgement, common on the exterior of the painted monasteries of Bucovina,
but also the Hymn to the Virgin inspired by the poem of Patriarch
Sergius of Constantinople relating to the miraculous intervention of the
Theotokos in saving the city from Persian conquest in 626.
The Persians are, however, depicted as Turks which is a common
device in these monasteries, their paintings being used in part for
political propaganda in addition to their spiritual meaning.
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Sistine of the East
The vibrant Voroneţ blues at their finest
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The Sistine Chapel of the East: The Voroneţ Monastery
Voroneţ is one of the better known monasteries of the Bucovina region, not far from Gura
Humorului. It is one of the famous painted monasteries in the Bucovina region, often known as the "Sistine Chapel of the East".
The stunning frescos at Voroneţ feature an intense giddy shade of blue
known in Romania as "Voroneţ blue", hard to reproduce anywhere else!
The monastery was established in 1488, with St. George the Martyr as
its patron saint. The exterior paintings were made in 1547. It remained a
working monastery until the start of Habsburg rule in 1785, and only
became a religious retreat again after the fall of communism in 1991.
The tomb of the monastery's first abbot, St. Pious Daniil the Hermit is
found at the monastery. This fine old example of inspired
traditional painting is one of the Painted churches of northern Moldova
listed in UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites.
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Voroneţ Monastery
Exterior Frescoes
Protected under ample eaves, this masterwork has
seen time pass serenely
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Click on map locations for more information,
or
click here for a larger version with more locations!
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The Bucovina region has a total area of 8,357 square miles
(13,539km˛)
The western side of the region consists of mountains from the Eastern
Carpathians group: the Rodna Mountains, the Rarău Mountains, the Giumalău
Mountains and the three "Obcine" with lower heights. The region's
elevation decreases toward the east though a series of substantial higher
sloping hilly plains, with the lowest height in the Prut River valley on
the border with the Republic of Moldova.
The rivers crossing the region are the Siret River with its
tributaries: the Moldova River, the Suceava River and the Bistriţa River;
and the Prut River and it's affluent the Jijia River.
In 2002, it had a population of 1,141,269 and the population density
was 84.5/km˛. The majority of the population are Romanians
(97%). There are communities of Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks and Roma
(Gypsies).
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The Historic Bukovina Region
Encompassing today's Romania and Ukrainian
territories, Bukovina known throughout Europe as it's own cultural and
historic region, formalised by the Austrians in 1775
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The western half of today's Bucovina region constituted the southern
Bukovina region, all of which was part of Greater Romania for most of the
inter-bellum period of the 20th Century.
The Upper Lands of Bukovina and Botoşani
The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's
annexation to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, later known as the
Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary. The name has a Slavic origin and is
derived from the word for beech tree.
The standard German name, die Bukovina, which was the official
German-language name for the province under Austrian rule, is derived from
the Slavic original, via the Polish form of the name which is Bukovina.
This was due to the fact that, for roughly the first half of the 19th
century, and for some years prior, Austrian Bukovina was administered as
an integral part of neighboring Galicia, whose internal government was, by
active Austrian policy, controlled by Polish bureaucrats and nobles (szlachta).
Another German name for region, das Buchenland is mostly used in poetry,
means, literally, "beech land", or, more poetically, "land of beech
trees".
In the eastern portion of the Bucovina region, Botoşani gained it's name
probably from a boyar family called Botaş, that lived in this place since
the 11th century. The name of this family can be found in old records from
the time of Ştefan cel Mare as one of the most important families of the
then principality of Moldova.
Another possible origin of the Botoşani name is
that of a Tatar chief, Batus or Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, who
occupied this region in the 13th century.
"Ţara de Sus"
In Romanian the original name of the region during the rule of the
Moldovan Principality was "Ţara de Sus" (Upper
Country), referring to the altitude, as opposed to the lower plains called
"Ţara de Jos" (Lower Country). This Upper
Country included all of the hilly higher plains of the Bucovina region,
differentiating it from the lower regions further south along the Sireţ
and Prut rivers.
Nowadays in Ukraine it is common to use the terms Chernivtsi Oblast and
Bukovina as synonymous words, which originated from the fact that
Chernivtsi Oblast and the Northern Bukovina (as of 1910 Austrian border)
refer to about the same territory.
In English, an alternate form is The Bukovina, increasingly an
archaism, which, however, is to be found in older literature, similar to
the articulated naming of "The Banat" in Romania's south-west.
Before the 14th century
During Stone age Bukovina was densely populated by Cucuteni-Trypillian
culture of early settlers (4500 BC – 3000 BC). Since the Roman
times, Dacian peoples inhabited the territory. In the 5th century, the
territory came under the rule of the Avars. Around 7th century, Slavic
populations settled in the region. From 9th to early 14th century a small
part of the territory was under the rule of Kievan Rus.
The oldest item found in the area is an Armenian tombstone dated 1350
near Botoşani. The first mention of the Bucovina region in writing is The
Chronicles of Moldavia by Grigore Ureche, which records a devastating
invasion of the Tatars on 28 November 1493.
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Suceavan Monastery
One of the main reasons this is a World Heritage
area
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Suceava, the Moldovan capital
From the mid-14th century, the Bucovina region became ascendant in the
wider Moldovan principality, with the city of Suceava as its capital from 1388.
In the 15th century, parts of the region became the subject of disputes
between the Moldovan state and the Polish Kingdom. In this period, the
patronage of Stephen III and his successors on the throne of
saw the construction of the famous painted monasteries of Moldoviţa, Putna, Suceviţa and Voroneţ.
With their renowned exterior frescoes, these monasteries remain some
of the greatest cultural treasures of Romania; some of them are World
Heritage Sites, part of the painted churches of northern Moldova. Stephen
also settled ethnic Ukrainians (known as Ruthenians) in Bukovina with the hope of having a loyal
population that would contribute with taxes. In Suceava alone, in the 16th
century, two-percent of the population was Ruthenian.
In the 1541, the Bucovina region came under the control of the Ottoman
Turks as part of semi-autonoumous Moldova, govered by a Voievod.
For short periods of time, the Polish Confederation occupied the northern part
of Bukovina. However on 14 October 1703 the old border is re-established,
as the Polish delegate Martin Chometowski aknowledges Inter nos et
Valachiam ipse Deus flumine Tyras dislimitavit (Between us and Moldova
God himself set Dniester as the border).
Botoşani in the eastern portion of the Bucovina region
sported "the biggest and the oldest fair of Moldova", the region
featuring at the time large communities of Jewish and Armenian traders.
In the course of the Russo-Turkish War the Ottomans were driven out by
the Russian Empire (Occupied 14 September-October 1739 and 15 December
1769 - September 1774.)
The Polish nobility had traditionally formed the ruling class in that
territory before the Habsburg acquired it for Austria under the partitions
of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the last quarter of the 18th
century.
Austrian Empire
The Austrian empire
occupied Bukovina in October of 1774 (following the first partition of
Poland in 1772), claiming that they needed it for a road between Galicia
and Transylvania, and was formally annexed in January 1775. On 2 July
1776, at Palamutka, Austrians and Ottomans sign a border convention,
Austrians giving back 59 of the previously occupied villages, and
remaining with 278 villages.
It remained part of the Cisleithanian or Austrian territories of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, initially as a closed military
district (1775 - 1786), then as the largest district, Kreis Czernowitz
(after its capital Cernăuţi or in Ukrainian, Chernivtsi) of the Austrian constituent Kingdom of
Galicia and Lodomeria (1787 - 1849).
Galicia was the historical region currently split between Poland and
Ukraine. The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, or simply Galicia, was the
largest, most populous, and northernmost province of Austria from 1772
until 1918, with Lviv as its capital city. It was created from the
territories taken from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the
partitions of Poland and lasted until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary
at the end of the First World War.
Bukovina became somewhat cleaved off from Galicia on 4 March 1849, when
it became
a separate Austrian Kronland 'crown land' (although from August 1849 to 26
February 1861 it was again amalgamated with Galicia).
On 4 March 1849, under a "Landespräsident" (differing from the Stadthalter, as in other crown lands) and declared
Herzogtum Bukovina, a nominal duchy in the Austrian Empire. It got a representative assembly, the Landtag
parliament. During this period, the A.T. Laurian National
College was founded in 1859 in Botoşani, one of the most prestigious
pre-university educational institutions.
According to the 1775 Austrian census, the province had the total
population of 86,000 made up of Romanians and Ukrainians (Ruthenians
and Huţuls). During the 19th century the Austrian Empire policies
encouraged the influx of many immigrants such as Germans, Poles, Jews,
Hungarians and Ruthenian from Galicia.
The 1871 and 1904 jubilees held at Putna Monastery, near the tomb of
Ştefan cel Mare, have constituted tremendous moments for Romanian national
identity in Bukovina. Since gaining its independence, Romania envisioned
to incorporate this historic province which, as a core of Moldovan
Principality, was of a great historic significance to its history and
contained many prominent monuments of its art and architecture.
The Bukovina Region, 1911
Showing where ethnic Romanians lived, split between
România and the Austro-Hungarian and the Imperial Russian Empires.
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Despite the influx of migrants encouraged under the Austrian rule,
Romanians continued to be the largest ethnic group in the province until
1880, when Ruthenians (Ukrainians) outnumbered the Romanians 5:4.
According to the 1880 census there were 239,690 Ruthenians and Hutzuls or
roughly 41.5 % of the population of the region while Romanians were second
with 190,005 people or 33%, a ratio that remained unchanged until WWI.
Ruthenian is an archaic name for Ukrainian, while Hutzul is considered as
an ethnic group of Ukrainian stock.
Under the Austrian rule Bukovina remained ethnically mixed:
predominantly Romanian in the south, Ukrainian (commonly referred to as
Ruthenians in the Empire) in the north, with small numbers of Hungarian
Székely, Slovak and Polish peasants, and Germans, Poles and Jews in the
towns; the 1910 census counted 800,198 people, of which: Ruthenian 38.88%,
Romanian 34.38%, German 21.24%, Jews 12.86%, Polish 4.55%, Hungarian
1.31%, Slovak 0.08%, Slovenian 0.02%, Italian 0.02%, and a few Serbian,
Croat, Turkish, Armenian, Gipsy.
In spite of some frictions between Romanian and Ukrainian populations
at the time over the influences in the Orthodox hierarchy, the
inter-ethnic conflicts did not reach a significant level and both cultures
developed in educational and public life. Moreover, at the end of the 19th
century, the development of Ukrainian culture in Bukovina surpassed
Galicia and the rest of Ukraine with a network of Ukrainian educational
facilities.
The Split of Bukovina
In World War I, several battles were fought in Bukovina between the
Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian armies, which resulted in the
Russian army being driven out in 1917.
With the collapse of
Austria-Hungary in 1918 the National Council of Bukovina, which
represented only the Romanian population of the province, voted for union
with Romania and subsequently the province was occupied by Romanian
troops. Romania formally annexed Bukovina on November 28, 1918.
Although local Ukrainians have unsuccessfully attempted to incorporate
parts of northern Bukovina into the short lived West Ukrainian National
Republic, the Romanian control of the province was finally formalized in
the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919 and the policies of Romanianization were
carried in the interwar period. Romanian language was introduced to ethnic
minority schools in 1923 and by 1926 all Ukrainian schools in Bukovina
were closed. Although in the 1928 - 1938 period, as Romania tried to
improve its relations with Soviet Union, Ukrainian culture has given some
limited means to redevelop, any gains were sharply reversed in 1938.
Bucovina's Mixed Populations
According to the 1930 Romanian census, Romanians made up almost 45% of
the total population of Bukovina and Ruthenians (Ukrainians) 29.2%. However
in the northern region and Hertsa which subsequently were surrendered to
the USSR in 1940, Romanians made up only 32.6% of the population, while
Ukrainians slightly outnumbered Romanians.
Bukovina should not be confused with Chernivtsi Oblast, as the latter
included not only northern Bukovina and Hertsa region but also the
northern part of Khotin county, thus totaling a population of circa
805,000 in 1940, out of which 47.5% were Ukrainians in 1940 and 28.3% were
Romanians, with Germans, Jews, Poles, Hungarians and Russians comprising
the rest.
Bucovina in World War Two
Following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum
demanded the northern part of Bukovina, a province connected with Galicia
annexed by the Soviet Union at 1939 Poland's partition.
Soviet demand for
Bukovina surprised Germany, though it didn't formally oppose it. In the
first Soviet ultimatum addressed to the Romanian government, the largely
Ukrainian populated northern part of Bukovina was "demanded" as a minor
"reparation for the great loss produced to the Soviet Union and
Bessarabia's population by twenty-two years of Romanian domination of
Bessarabia". At the end of June, 1940, the Romanian government evacuated
Northern Bukovina, and the Red Army moved in, with the new Soviet-Romanian
border being traced 20 km north of Putna Monastery.
In the course of the 1941 attack on the Soviet Union by the Axis forces
the Romanian Third Army led by General Petre Dumitrescu occupied the
region along with Hertsa, Bessarabia, Odessa region and other territories
in the south of Ukraine.
Romanians Exit Bucovina
During the Second World War, major demographic changes occurred in
northern Bukovina. In the first year of Soviet occupation, the population
of the region decreased by more than 250,000. These demographic shifts are
explained by three separate but concurrent phenomena:
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fleeing of a part of the population to Romania (mainly, but not
exclusively, ethnic Romanians
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repatriation of Germans, Hungarians and Poles
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systematic repression, mass deportation and exterminations by the
Soviet regime (again mainly, although not exclusively, directed against
Romanians)
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According to NKVD orders, tens of thousands of Romanian families were
deported to Siberia during this period, with 12,191 people deported on
August 2, 1940, (less than a month after the occupation), and another
2,057 persons, deported to Siberia in December 1940, together with their
families. The largest action took place on June 13, 1941, when about
13,000 people were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Until the repatriation convention of 15 April 1941, the NKVD troops
killed hundreds of Romanian peasants of the northern Bukovina as they
tried to escape to Romania away from the Soviet authorities, which
culminated on April 1 with the Fantana Alba massacre.
Almost the entire German population of northern Bukovina established
during Austrian rule emigrated to the Reich. According to Ukrainian
sources, about 45, 000 ethnic Germans had left Northern Bukovina by
November 1940.
In July 1941, the new Romanian military government counted at least
36,000 missing persons apart of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. After
the war the Soviet government deported or killed about 41,000 Romanians.
Under the occupation, almost entire Jewish community of the northern
Bukovina was destroyed by the deportations to the death camps (see
Bogdanovka) over the Dniester and Bug rivers. Despite his promise that he
would treat the Old Kingdom Jews differently than non-Regat Jews, Romanian
leader Ion Antonescu ordered deportation of Jews from Suceava county. In
1941 and 1942, 21,229 Jews from southern Bukovina were deported.
The Post War Sovietisation
In 1944 the Red Army drove the Axis forces out and re-established the
Soviet control over the territory. Romania was forced to formally cede the
northern part of Bukovina to the USSR by the 1947 Paris peace treaty. That
territory became a part of the Ukrainian SSR as Chernivtsi Oblast
(province). After the war, the Soviet government deported or killed about
41,000 Romanians. As a result of killings and mass deportations, entire
villages, mostly inhabited by Romanians, were abandoned (Albovat, Frunza,
I.G.Duca, Buci -- completely erased, Prisaca, Tanteni and Vicov -
destroyed to large extent). Men of military age (and sometimes above) were
conscripted into the Soviet Army. That did not protect them, however, from
being arrested and deported for being "anti-Soviet elements".
As a reaction, partisan groups (composed of both Romanians and
Ukrainians) began to operate against the Soviets in the woods around
Cernăuţi, Crasna and Codrii Cosminului. In
Crasna (former
Storozhynets county) villagers attacked Soviet soldiers who were sent to
"temporarily resettle" them, since they feared deportation. This resulted
in dead and wounded among the villagers, who had no firearms.
Spring 1945 saw the formation of transports of Polish repatriates who
(voluntarily or by coercion) had decided to leave. Between March 1945 and
July 1946, 10,490 inhabitants left northern Bukovina for Poland, including
8,140 Poles, 2,041 Jews and 309 of other nationalities.
Overall, between 1930 (last Romanian census) and 1959 (first Soviet
census), the population of northern Bukovina decreased by 31,521 people.
According to official data from those two censuses, the Romanian
population had decreased by 75,752 people, and the Jewish population by
46,632, while the Ukrainian and Russian populations increased by 135,161
and 4,322 people, respectively.
After 1944, the human and economic connections between the northern
(Soviet) and southern (Romanian) parts of Bukovina were severed. While the
northern part is the nucleus of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast, the
southern part is tightly integrated with Romanian historic regions.
Current population of Bukovina
The present demographic situation in Bukovina hardly resembles the one
of the times of the Austrian Empire. Currently, the Northern (Ukrainian)
and Southern (Romanain) parts became significantly dominated by their
Ukrainian and Romanian majorities, respectively, with the representation
of other ethnic groups being decreased significantly.
According to the Ukrainian Census (2001) data [6], the Ukrainians
represent about 75% (689,100) of the population of Chernivtsi Oblast,
which is the closest, although not an exact, approximation of the
territory of the historic Northern Bukovina. The census also identified a
fall in the Romanian and Moldovan populations to 12.5% (114.6 thousand)
and 7.3% (67.2 thousand), respectively. Russians are the next largest
ethnic group with 4.1%, while Poles, Belarusians, and Jews comprise the
rest. 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 (Ukrainian, Romanian,
Moldovan and Russian, respectively).
The appearance of Romanians and Moldovans in the census as two separate
ethnic groups has been criticized by the Romanian Community of Ukraine -
Interregional Union which complain that this old Soviet-era practice
results in the Romanian population being undercounted. However, the census
respondents were free to claim their ethnicity as they wished with no
predetermined set of choices, not to respond to any particular census
question or not answer any questions at all. Some have chosen to claim to
be Rusyns or Hutsuls, which are ethnic groups that were not previously
recognized. Thus, the census official results adequately reflect the
answers freely given by the respondents as no serious allegation of the
counting fraud were ever brought up.
A compact Romanian minority inhabits the southern part of Chernivtsi
region, in Hertsa, Novoselitsa (Noua Suliţă), Hlyboka (Adâncata),
Storozhinets (Storojineţ). In every other part of northern Bukovina,
including the city of Chernivtsi, Ukrainians are in the majority.
 The southern, or Romanian Bukovina has a significant Romanian majority
(97.5%), largest minority group being the Ukrainians, who make up 1.2% of
the population (2002 census). The Romanian 2002 census was subject to a
criticism of undercounting of ethnic minorities in Romania brought up by
the Ukrainian communities inside and outside Romania
From the Rest Romania Website at
The
Bucovina Region Today
In addition to it's main tourist draw, the predominant industries in
the Bucovina region today include timber and wood products. The
Bucovina region has the largest surfaces covered with forests in Romania
and is a prime logging region as well as having metals explorations.
The region has significant food processing plants, as well as a mechanical
components and construction materials industry, with textiles, and some
leatherworking.
At Stânca-Costeşti there is one of the greatest
hydro electrical power plants in Romania.
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