Map of the raions of Ukraine where Romanians are the main ethnic group in dark blue, where they are the second biggest in lighter blue, and where they are the third in even lighter blue.
Because of the Soviet policies of artificial division of the Romanian speakers, and the continuation of those practices by the Ukrainian authorities, there is an undergoing identity controversy among the Romanophones of Ukraine. All of those living in the former territories of Bukovina consider themselves to be Romanians, but among those living in the lands of the historical Bessarabia, there is still division as a large part of them still consider themselves to be Moldovans, while many others identify as Romanians. This problem is considered to have worsened due to the poverty, the lack of proper education and the decades long disinformation of the inhabitants.
History
Middle Ages
Beginning with the 10th century, the territory was slowly infiltrated by Slavic tribes (Ulichs and Tivertsy) from the north, by Romanians (Vlachs) from the west, as well as by Turkic nomads such as Pechenegs, Cumans and (later) Tatars from the east.
Vlachs and Brodniks are mentioned in the area in the 12th and 13th century. As characterised by contemporary sources, the area between the Southern Bug and Dniester had never been populated by a single ethnicity, or totally controlled by Kievan Rus' or other rulers. Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Antonovych writes: "Neither the right bank, nor the left bank of the Dniester have ever belonged to Galician or other Ruthenian princes."
The end of the 18th century marked Imperial Russia's colonization of the region, as a result of which large migrations into the region were encouraged, including people of Ukrainian, Russian, and German ethnicity. The process of Russification and colonization of this territory started to be carried out by representatives of other ethnic groups of the Russian Empire.
While the Ruthenian ethnic element is fundamental for Cossacks, some [who?] have claimed a considerable number of Romanians among the hetmans of the Cossacks (i.e. Ioan Potcoavă, Grigore Lobodă (Hryhoriy Loboda), who ruled in 1593–1596), Ioan Sârcu (Ivan Sirko), who ruled in 1659–1660, Dănilă Apostol (Danylo Apostol), who ruled in 1727–1734, Alexander Potcoavă, Constantin Potcoavă, Petre Lungu, Petre Cazacu, Tihon Baibuza, Samoilă Chişcă, Opară, Trofim Voloşanin, Ion Şărpilă, Timotei Sgură, Dumitru Hunu), and other high-ranking Cossacks (Polkovnyks Toader Lobădă and Dumitraşcu Raicea in Pereiaslav, Martin Puşcariu in Poltava, Burlă in Gdańsk, Pavel Apostol in Myrhorod, Eremie Gânju and Dimitrie Băncescu in Uman, Varlam Buhăţel, Grigore Gămălie in Lubensk, Grigore Cristofor, Ion Ursu, Petru Apostol in Lubensk).[citation needed]
After 1812, the Russian Empire annexed Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire. Romanians under Russian rule enjoyed privileges well, the language of Moldavians was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of Bessarabia, used along with Russian,[2] as 95% of the population was Romanian.[3][4]
The publishing works established by Archbishop Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldovan between 1815 and 1820,[5] until the period from 1871 to 1905, when Russification policies were implemented that all public use of Romanian was phased out, and substituted with Russian. Romanian continued to be used as the colloquial language of home and family, mostly spoken by Romanians, either first or second language.[citation needed]
Many Romanians changed their family names to Russian. This was the era of the highest level of assimilation in the Russian Empire.[6] In 1872, the priest Pavel Lebedev ordered that all church documents be written in Russian, and, in 1882, the press at Chișinău was closed by order of the Holy Synod.
The very term "Ukrainians" was prohibited from the official usage and some populations of disputable Ukrainian ethnicity were rather called the "citizens of Romania who forgot their native language" and were forced to change their last names to Romanian-sounding ones.[7] Among those who were Romanianized were descendants of Romanians who were assimilated to Ukrainian society in the past.
As such, according to the Romanian census, of the total population of 805,000, 74% were Romanians;[citation needed] the number included the Ukrainians and other possibly related Ukrainian ethnic groups Hutsuls referred to as "Romanians who forgot their native language"[8] Among Russians who were Romanianized in Bessarabia were descendants of Romanians who underwent Russification policies during Russian rule.
The geopolitical concept of an autonomous Transnistrian region was born in 1924, when Bessarabian-Russian military leader Grigory Kotovsky[citation needed] founded, under the auspices of Moscow, the Moldavian Autonomous Oblast, which on 12 October 1924 became the Moldavian ASSR of the Ukrainian SSR.
The intention of Soviet policy was to promote Communism in recently lost Bessarabia and surroundings, and eventually to regain the former province from Romania. (Soviet authorities declared the "temporarily occupied city of Chişinău" as de jure capital of the ASSR.) The area was 8,100 km2 (3,100 sq mi) and included 11 raions by the left bank of Dniester.
Romania occupied (August 19, 1941 - January 29, 1944) the "Transnistrian" region between Dniester, Southern Bug rivers and Black Sea coast.
In 1940, under duress from a Soviet ultimatum issued to the Romanian ambassador in Moscow and under pressure from Italy and Germany, Romania ceded Bessarabia and Bukovina to the USSR. As many as 90,000 died as the Red Army entered and occupied the territory on June 28. The official Soviet press declared that the "peaceful policy of the USSR" had "liquidated the [Bessarabian] Soviet-Romanian conflict".
The Moldavian SSR was created from Bessarabia and the western part of the Moldavian ASSR. Bessarabian territory along the Black Sea and Danube, where Romanians were in the minority, was merged into the Ukrainian SSR to ensure its control by a stable Soviet republic.[9] The Romanian population of Ukraine was persecuted by Soviet authorities on ethnic grounds, especially in the years following the annexation until 1956;[citation needed] because of this, Russification laws were imposed again on Romanian population.[citation needed] In neighboring Bessarabia the same persecution did not have a predominantly ethnic orientation, being based mostly on social, educational, and political grounds.
Transnistria (WWII)
Having allied with Nazi Germany, and having recaptured the territories occupied by the Soviets in 1940, Romanian dictator Antonescu did not heed the counsel of his advisers and continued to wage war on the Soviets beyond Romania's pre-war boundaries, invading parts of Ukraine and occupying the territory between Dniester and Southern Buh rivers. During this period the Romanian and German authorities and units deported to this region 147,000 Bessarabian and Bukovinian Jews, 30,000 Romanian Roma, and exterminated the largest part of the local Jewish population of this region. In 1944, the Soviets re-conquered the area.
In post-Soviet times, Ukrainian, the language of the historical ethnic/linguistic majority, is constitutionally the sole state language, and the state system of higher education has been switched to Ukrainian.[10]
In June 1997 Romania and Ukraine signed a bilateral treaty which included addressing territorial and minority issues.[11] By the terms of the agreement, Ukraine guaranteed the rights of Romanians in Ukraine and Romania guaranteed the rights of Ukrainians in Romania. There are schools teaching Romanian as a primary language, along with newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting in Romanian.[12]
In 2015, several news websites published a report claiming that the Romanians of Northern Bukovina had formed a "Assembly of the Romanians of Bukovina" and demanded the territorial autonomy of the region from Ukraine. However, they were claimed to be fake and a product of pro-Russian anti-Ukrainian websites.[13][14]
Since 2014, the Romanians of Ukraine have been subject to forced Ukrainization by the Ukrainian authorities, despite constant objection of the Romanian authorities,[15][16][17] with some Romanian organizations in Ukraine even calling it a cultural genocide.[18][19]
In 2022 and 2023, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted and amended laws that enshrined the rights of "national minorities" and allowed "holding public and cultural events and publishing advertisements fully in the language of national minorities within the given community."[20]
Modern mass media of the Romanians in Ukraine include the newspapers Zorile Bucovinei, Concordia, Libertatea Cuvântului, Gazeta de Herța and several more, as well as some TV and radio channels.[21]
Language and demographics
According to the Soviet 1989 census, Romanian speakers accounted for just under one percent of Ukraine's total population: 134,825 Romanians, and 324,525 Moldovans with the largest minority in Chernivtsi (approximately one fifth of the region's population). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2015, there were 1,438 ethnic Romanians born in Ukraine living in the United States of America.[22] By comparison, there were also 237,809 ethnic Ukrainians born in Ukraine living in the U.S. in that year.[23]
Romanian speakers are not, as of 28 September 2017, allowed to learn exclusively in the Romanian language in the Ukrainian state education system after four years of education, with Romanian language instruction being restricted to separate Romanian language and literature classes.[24] Whereas, the Ukrainian migrants, as well as the ethnic Ukrainians who have lived in Romania for centuries, benefit from Ukrainian language classes in Romania and their state tv is broadcast on Romanian state's television at a chosen prefixed time slot.
114,555 (12.5%) in 2001, with 67,225 self-identifying as Moldovans (7.3%), out of which 61,598 declared their native language as Moldovan, and 2,657 who declared it to be Romanian[26] Among the Moldovans whose native language was not Moldovan, 1,672 declared that they knew Romanian, and 1,391 that they knew Moldovan.[27]
32,152 mainly living in Tiachiv Raion with 21,300 (12.4% of the rayon population) and Rahiv with 10,300 (11.6% of the rayon population). Some 10,000–15,000 also live in the northern part of the oblast, far from other Romanian communities, and are referred to as volohi in Romanian. They are also controversially referred to as țigani albi ("White Gypsies") by some researchers.[28][29]
724, with 123,751 self-identifying as Moldovans[30]
Total
150,989, with 258,619 self-identifying as Moldovans, out of which 181,124 declared Moldovan as their native language, and 2,790 declared Romanian as their native language[31]
Raions with significant Romanian population (2001)[32]
32,316, including 29,554 Romanians (91.5%) and 1616 who declared themselves Ukrainians (5%), and 756 Moldovans (2.3%), out of which 511 declared their language Moldovan and of which 237 called their language Romanian[33]
72,676, of which: Ukrainians: 34,025, Romanians: 32,923, Moldovans, including 3,882 who declared their native language to be Moldovan and 56 who stated that it was Romanian: 4,425, Russians: 877, and other: 426[34]
87,461, of which: 50,329 Moldovans (out of which 47,585 self-identified their language as Moldovan and 2,264 as Romanian), 29,703 Ukrainians, 5,904 Romanians, 1,235 Russians, 290 other[35]
In 2001, population was 236,691, of which 189,021 (79.9%) are Ukrainians; 26,733 (11.3%) Russians; 10,553 (4.5%) Romanians; 3,829 (1.6%) Moldovans; 1,408 (0.6%) Polish; 1,308 (0.6%) Jews; 2,868 (1.2%) other nationalities.[36]
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 24, with the figure from the 2001 Ukrainian census. An additional 258,619 people identified themselves as Moldovans.
^(in Russian)Charter for the organization of the Bessarabian Oblast, April 29, 1818, in "Печатается по изданию: Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собрание первое.", Vol 35. 1818, Sankt Petersburg, 1830, pg. 222–227. Available online at hrono.info
^Ciobanu, Ștefan (1923). Cultura românească în Basarabia sub stăpânirea rusă. Chișinău: Editura Asociației Uniunea Culturală Bisericească. p. 20.
^Colesnic-Codreanca, Lidia. Limba Română în Basarabia. Studiu sociolingvistic pe baza materialelor de arhivă (1812–1918) ("The Romanian language in Bessarabia. A sociolinguistic study based on archival materials (1812–1918)"). Chișinău: Editorial Museum, 2003.
^Oleksandr Derhachov (editor), "Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis", Chapter: "Ukraine in Romanian concepts of the foreign policy", 1996, Kiev ISBN966-543-040-8
^Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1988, p.191
^INCONSISTENT LANGUAGE POLICY CREATES PROBLEMS IN UKRAINE, Oleg Varfolomeyev, EURASIA DAILY MONITOR, Volume 3, Issue 101 (May 24, 2006), available online at "The Jamestown Foundation". Archived from the original on 22 August 2006. Retrieved 29 August 2006.
^Dominique Arel, "Interpreting 'Nationality' and 'Language' in the 2001 Ukrainian Census," Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 18 No. 3, July–September 2002, pp. 213–249, available online in JRL #6535 at [2]
^Center for the Prevention of Conflicts and Early Warning, Nr. 704R/June 19, 2004
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 242, 266, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 266, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 42, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 33, 45, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 24, 266, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 260-261, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 257, 258, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 259, 260, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
^Ion Popescu and Constantin Ungureanu, Romanii dn Ucraina - intre trecut si viitor, vol. 1 (Romanii din Regiunea Cernauti), Cernauti, 2005, p. 246, with the figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census.
Ion Nistor. The History of Romanians in Transnistria
The Romanian Minority in Ukraine, Ionas Aurelian Rus, Center for Prevention of Conflicts and Early Warning, Policy Paper Nr. 704R, Bucharest, June 2004
