At the time of the popular uprising in Bukovina, the Romanian boyars used all means to fight for the annexation of Bukovina to Romania, and the Austrian and German barons - for the preservation of Bukovina under the rule of Austria.

The rebellious people created a new body of power-the People's Veche - and the Regional Committee, the administrative body of Bukovina.

The People's Veche, formed at the request of the people on November 3, 1918, put the question of uniting Bukovina with Soviet Ukraine on the agenda, despite the Menshevik-nationalist leadership of the Regional Committee (chairman - Menshevik Popovich Em.). At this meeting, the leaders of the Menshevik and nationalist parties diligently urged the people to join Austria or Romania, since in their opinion "anarchy" prevails in the Ukraine. However, their voice remained lonely. People's deputies from the rostrum of the People's Veche stated: "Не хочемо ні до Австрії, ні до Румунії" - мы хочемо пристати до Київа" Подавляющим большинством голосов вече вынесло решение об объединении Буковины с Советской Украиной.

Expelling didychivs, barons, lords, and capitalists from their lands and forests, the Bukovinians formed committees for the management of people's property in the hromadas. The military units of Bukovina also joined the people. The 41st and 42nd regiments occupied almost the entire Northern Bukovina with the city of Chernivtsi.

Romanian boyars and Bukovina didychs, fearing the growing revolutionary movement in the country, sent a delegation to the Romanian government with a request to speed up the occupation of Bukovina. At the same time, the Menshevik and nationalist leadership of the Regional Committee, headed by Popovich and Co., signed an agreement on behalf of the committee with Onchulov, a representative of the Romanian nationalists, to transfer to Romania those counties where the majority of the Romanian population was, and those counties where the majority of the Ukrainian population was, to Western Ukraine. In essence, it was an agreement on the occupation of the whole of Bukovina by Rumania. The National Rada formed, composed of Rumanian and Bukovinian Mensheviks and nationalists, was in fact the executive body of the Rumanian government and in every possible way contributed to the seizure of Bukovina by Rumania.

On November 6, 1918, Romania concluded an agreement with Poland, on the basis of which Poland pledged to support Romania's claims to Bukovina, receiving in return Romania's support for Polish claims to Eastern Galicia.

On November 8, 1918, Romanian planes dropped proclamations over Chernivtsi calling for an "end to Bolshevism", and on November 9 and 10, Romanian occupation forces invaded Bukovina and occupied Chernolitsy.

During the occupation period, the Menshevik and nationalist leadership of parties and institutions betrayed the people to the Romanian troops.

General Zadik, commander of the Romanian army in Bukovina, stated to the population in a proclamation: "I have come under the highest command to protect the lives and property of residents of all nationalities from criminal gangs. With the greatest severity, I will suppress attempts to cause riots, as well as punish those who do not obey my orders. " ²

Behind the Romanian occupation forces was a French military mission

¹ The newspaper "Kievskaya Mysl" of November 6, 1918 wrote:: "The class-conscious peasantry, workers, women with weapons in their hands in all the districts of Eastern Galicia and Bukovina came out unanimously in defense of the interests of the Ukrainian people"

² See Kievskaya Mysl, November 12, 1918.

led by its chief, General Berthelot. At the same time, the Romanian government also granted its territory to the German military command, which turned it into its bridgehead.

Meanwhile, echelons of German soldiers under the red flag left the Ukraine not in order to continue the fight against the Allies on the territory of Romania: they were in a hurry to end the war, since the empire of Wilhelm II was already falling apart.

During the division of the Austro-Hungarian inheritance in September 1919, the southern part of Bukovina was ceded, according to the Saint-Germain Peace Treaty, to Romania. As for Northern Bukovina, the issue of it should have been resolved after the outcome of the Russian civil War. Under the treaty with tsarist Russia, the Allies agreed to the annexation of Northern Bukovina to Russia after the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary. When the civil war ended with the victory of the Soviets, when Soviet power was consolidated in both Russia and Ukraine, the former allies of tsarist Russia secured Romania's rights to Northern Bukovina with a special treatise at the congress in Sevres on August 10, 1920.

The Romanian military established a military dictatorship in Bukovina, headed by J. Flondor. Persecution of the Bukovinian people began. Only those Bukovina community leaders who presented specially prepared "a "forms with the hromada seal, certifying the" exclusive desire " of the Bukovina people to join Romania, were allowed to enter the administrative bodies of the administration.

Meanwhile, the peasants and workers of Bukovina continued to wage a guerrilla war against the Romanian enslavers. The Hutsul partisan detachments were particularly distinguished in these battles. Military units of Bukovina-the 112th and 113th regiments-refused to go to the service of the Romanian military and moved to the territory of Soviet Ukraine.

In the summer of 1920, when the Red Army smashed the White Poles, the Bukovina peasants rebelled against the interventionists. The Romanian military brutally suppressed this popular uprising, taking advantage of the fact that the Red Army was soon distracted by the struggle against General Wrangel.

But it was impossible to drown out the voice of the people. At the national assembly on July 16, 1922, a resolution was passed stating that the constituent assembly in Bucharest was not authorized to decide issues on behalf of Bukovina. The Romanian boyars deprived the peasants of their land by force of arms, but the peasants stubbornly resisted the Romanian invaders, defending the lands, forests and crafts taken from landowners and capitalists in 1918.

The Romanian government has flooded Bukovina with spies and provocateurs. Siguranza (Romanian political police) carried out a bloody massacre of peasants, workers and representatives of the working intelligentsia who took part in the uprisings, supported the rebels or expressed dissatisfaction with Romanian slavery. Siguranza also dealt with all those who seemed to her "suspicious" or succumbed to the provocation of Romanian agents.

The peasants of the village of Nepolokivtsy still haven't forgotten how they drove 60 of their fellow villagers, chained in pairs in shackles, to Chernivtsi for execution. Rods and public executions were used as a system throughout Bukovina. There was not a single village that did not experience the atrocities and bullying of the Romanian boyars.

The vast majority of Bukovina's peasantry has remained landless and low-income since the days of Austro-Hungarian rule. According to statistical data for 1900-1919, the size of land plots on peasant farms was distributed as follows: from 0 to 1 ha - 59% of farms, from 1 to 5 ha - 31.28%, from 5 to 20 ha - 8.06%, from 20 to 1000 ha - 1.66% ¹ . If we take into account the farms that had from 0 to 5 hectares, they all accounted for about 90.28% of the total number of all farms in the country. The part of the land they occupied could only feed them for three months. In a farm that had ⁶ prozin2 for 6 people. family, people, of course, were doomed to starvation. Therefore, 90% of the population was forced to go into bondage to the landlords for a third. Meanwhile, the people of Bukovina knew that in Soviet Ukraine there was no trace of landlord bondage, and that the peasantry had been granted land and forests for perpetual use.

Under the pretext of carrying out land reform, the Romanian military began to romanize the Bukovina region. The Law on land Reform of July 30, 1921 established the norm of land ownership (not less than 100 hectares) for landowners; the rest of the land was transferred to the central land fund, which was managed by the regional land commission. The zakol was replete with many notes, and the Didychs actually retained significantly more land than was legally required. Owners who received land plots (no more than 5 hectares) had to buy it back within 20 years. But 90% of the landless and landless peasants, burdened with bondage to landlords and duties to the Romanian government, could not afford to pay for land. The law took this very circumstance into account; it followed" that if a peasant regularly pays ransom payments to the state for two years, he is deprived of land.

It is significant that the cost of 1 hectare of land in Bukovina was lower than the cost of 1 hectare in Romania; the government deliberately set such a rate in order to attract as many colonizers from Romania as possible to Bukovina lands. Bukovina was flooded with a whole horde of officials, officers,

¹ Піддубний "Земельне питания в Руминії, Буковині, Бессарабії". "Більшовик України" N4 - 5. 1925 р., стр. 80.

² Prozin = 1/76 ha.

gendarmes, police, soldiers, and wardens who have received allotments of 5 hectares, mainly in Ukrainian villages.

At a meeting of Romanian colonists in Chernivtsi in May 1925, the Minister of Bukovina explained the task of colonization as follows:: "The Romanian peasants are obliged by their hard work to teach the peasants of Northern Bukovina good Romanian patriotism" ¹ . The Romanian "land reform", like the entire system of government, became a tool for the eradication of the identity of the Bukovinian people, an instrument of their enslavement.

From the very first days of the occupation, the Romanian government banned the use of Ukrainian in state institutions, courts, churches, and even in conversation. For speaking in Ukrainian, the Romanian police beat up the "guilty person" on the street or took a fine of several thousand years. In 1926, the Ministry of Internal Affairs banned the issuance of Ukrainian books, magazines, newspapers, and even iota copies of Ukrainian musical works from abroad.

22 years of Romanian occupation have plunged the people of Bukovina into poverty and disenfranchisement, but the dream of reunification with the entire Ukrainian people has never left the Ukrainians of Northern Bukovina, who were artificially separated from their blood brothers for hundreds of years.

On June 28, 1940, with the support of the Red Army of the Soviet Union, the Bukovinian people threw off their class and national yoke and began to build a new, socialist life. In August 1940, at the seventh session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, delegates of Northern Bukovina, on behalf of the Bukovinian people, appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to include Northern Bukovina in the Ukrainian SSR: "The workers of Northern Bukovina are burning with a fervent desire to be reunited forever with the Ukrainian people in a single Ukrainian socialist state. We ask that the territory of Soviet Bukovina be incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. " ²

This request was supported by the entire Ukrainian synod, and the Soviet Union realized the desire of the Bukovinian people to reunite with the Ukrainian people.

In June 1941, German and Romanian hordes invaded the lands of the Soviet Northern Bukovina. For two years now, the Bukovinian people have been under the yoke of German and Romanian executioners. With the help of executions and gallows, mockery and abuse, Hitler's bosses established a serf, slave system in the lands of Bukovina.

But the fascist invaders cannot break the will of the freedom-loving people of Bukovina. In the distant Carpathian Mountains, Bukovina peasants, along with other Slavic peoples, are engaged in guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. In this national liberation war, the people of Northern Bukovina, together with all the peoples of the Soviet Union, at the call of our great Stalin, are defending their freedom, their honor, and their homeland with their breasts.

¹ Піддубний. Decree, op., p. 170.

² Verbatim report of the seventh session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for 1940 " p. 52. Ed. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

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