Habsburg Bukovina – a Colonized Entity?
Austria-Hungary (Hungarian: Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia), also known as Imperial and Royal Hungary Monarchy, was a historical state in Central and Southeastern Europe that existed from 1867 to 1918.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a federal state in south-eastern Europe. The country is inhabited by around 3 million people (2022: 3.23 million) and is divided into the political sub-regions of Republika Srpska, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Brčko district. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital is Sarajevo. The country is part of the Balkan Peninsula and borders the Adriatic Sea. The Bosnians are the largest population group alongside the Serbs and Croats.
Geographically, the country is comprised of the historical regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose eventful political history is closely linked to the various historical neighboring states and their location in the Balkans. As early as the 15th century, southern Herzegovina and large parts of Bosnia belonged to the Ottoman Empire, which bordered the Christian Habsburg Empire to the north. At the end of the 19th century, both regions initially came under Austro-Hungarian financial administration, followed by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1908, which led to a political crisis. In 1914, regional freedom movements such as „Mlada Bosna“ („Young Bosnia“) were involved in the assassination of heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914), which ultimately led to the outbreak of the First World War (1914–1918) and the collapse of Austria-Hungary.
From 1918, Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to the newly established “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes” (1918–1929), which was known as the “Kingdom of Yugoslavia” from 1929, but fell as a result of German conquest in the Second World War in 1941. From 1945, the socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the re-established, now communist Yugoslavia. In the context of the increasingly belligerent disintegration of the country during the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001), Bosnia-Herzegovina was only able to gain its 1992 declared independence as a result of the three-year Bosnian War (1992–1995).
Bukovina is a historical landscape in modern Romania and Ukraine. The northern part is situated in the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast, while the southern part is part of the Romanian Suceava County. The region once formed a part of the Principality of Moldavia and the Habsburg Monarchy.
The Principality of Moldova was a historical state in south-eastern Europe whose foundation dates back to the 14th century. It existed until 1859. Today, its territory is divided between Moldova (excluding Transnistria) and the parts of northern Romania and southern Ukraine to the west of Moldova. For centuries, the Principality thus lay at the intersection of the spheres interests of neighboring great powers, initially Hungary and Poland, in the later centuries above all the Habsburg Monarchy in the northwest, the Russian Empire in the northeast, and the Ottoman Empire in the south, which exercised sovereignty over the Principality from 1512.
In 1859, the Principality of Moldavia was united with the Principality of Wallachia, initially through the personal union of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuzas (1820-1873) and under the title of the “United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia”. In 1861, both were merged into the new “Principality of Romania”, from which the Kingdom of Romania would emerge twenty years later.
Chernivtsi (Ukra. Чернівці) is a large city in southwestern Ukraine. The city is located on the border with Romania and is widely considered to be the capital of the historic Bukovina region. Chernivtsi was an significant place of Jewish culture. In 2017 Chernivtsi had about 62,000 inhabitants.
Due to the war in Ukraine, it is possible that this information is no longer up to date.
The Kingdom of Romania was a historical state in south-eastern Europe that existed from 1881 to 1947. Its direct predecessor was the Principality of Romania, which was formed in 1861/62 from the constituent principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, but was initially still under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. It was not until the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78 that the political independence of the principality was achieved and it proclaimed itself a kingdom in 1881. The first king was Charles I (1839-1914), who, like all his successors, came from the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
Before the First World War (1914-1918), the territory only comprised the historical landscapes of Wallachia and parts of Moldavia and Dobruja. However, as a member of the victorious powers of the First World War, the territory was massively expanded and more than doubled after the end of the war. Among other regions, Bessarabia, Bukovina, Transylvania and parts of the Banat now also fell to the kingdom. This is why Romania in the interwar period is also referred to as “Greater Romania”; the state before 1918 as the “Old Kingdom”.
With the rise of nationalist and fascist groups in the 1930s, the country became increasingly unstable. By mid-1940, despite its attempt to remain neutral in the Second World War, Romania had to hand back large parts of the territories it had gained in 1918. In the same year, a military dictatorship was established, which now effectively exercised the power of government. A short time later, the country entered the war on the side of the Axis powers and in close cooperation with National Socialist Germany. In 1944, King Michael I (1921-2017) staged a coup d'état against his own government, as a result of which the country joined the Allies and declared war on the German Reich. Only around three years later, at the end of 1947, the now ruling Romanian Communist Party forced Michael to abdicate and proclaimed the Romanian People's Republic.
The Soviet Union (SU or USSR) was a state in Eastern Europe, Central and Northern Asia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It emerged from the so-called Soviet Russia, the successor state of the Russian Empire. The Russian Soviet Republic formed the core of the union and at the same time its largest part, with further constituent republics added. Their number varied over time and was related to the occupation of other countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Soviet republics that existed only for a short time (Karelo-Finlandia) or the division or merger of Soviet republics. In addition, there were numerous autonomous republics or other territorial units with an autonomy status that was essentially limited to linguistic autonomy for minorities.
Before its formal dissolution, the USSR consisted of 15 Soviet republics with a population of approximately 290 million people. At around 22.4 million km², it was the largest territorial state in the world at the time. The Soviet Union was a socialist soviet republic with a one-party system and an absence of separation of powers.