Chernivtsi oblast was created on August 7, 1940, in the wake of the
Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. The oblast was organized out of the northeast part of
Ținutul Suceava of
Kingdom of Romania, joining parts of three historical regions: northern half of
Bukovina, northern half of the
Hotin County county of
Bessarabia, and
Hertsa region, which was part of the
Dorohoi county (presently
Botoșani County) of proper
Moldavia. Archaeological sites in the region date back to 43,000–45,000 BC, with finds including a mammoth bone dwelling from the
Middle Paleolithic. The
Cucuteni-Trypillian culture flourished in the area. In the Middle Ages, the region was inhabited by East Slavic tribes
White Croats and
Tivertsi. From the end of the 10th century, it became a part of the
Kievan Rus', then
Principality of Halych, and in the mid-14th century of the
Principality of Moldavia (which in the 16th century became a vassal of the
Ottoman Empire). According to Bougai, 22,643 individuals from Soviet Moldova were deported in September 1941. The number of inhabitants deported during the night of June 12/13, 1941, from the Chernivtsi Oblast was 7,720. Only 1,136 of those deported from the Izmail oblast were still alive in Western Siberia, in the Tomsk region, in 1951, but others were sent to other places. The number of deportees to the Soviet north and east from the
Hertsa raion in its boundaries from early 2020 of the
Chernivtsi oblast on June 13, 1941, was 1,373; 219 (15.95%) of them would later die in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Among the 1,373 deportees from Hertsa Raion, 120 were of unknown nationality; among the 1,253 people whose nationality was known, 1090 (86.99%) were ethnic Romanians, 125 were ethnic Jews (9.98%), 31 were ethnic Ukrainians (2.474%), 4 were ethnic Russians (0.32%), 2 were ethnic Germans (0.02%) and 1 was ethnically Polish (0.08%). The number of inhabitants of the Chernivtsi Oblast who were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan was 7,720 (2,279 families). According to some sources, most of the deportees of June 1941 from the Chernivtsi oblast, who were of many ethnicities, did not return from the Soviet east. However, the fragmentary, locality-by-locality, evidence indicates that most of the deportees from 1941 survived. According to Dr. Avigdor Schachan, who wrote a book about the Transnistrian ghettos, and was himself brought up in the Bessarabian part of the present-day Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine, about 2,000 northern Bukovinian and 4,000 Bessarabian Jews were deported to the Soviet east. About half of the Jews deported from Bessarabia to the Soviet east survived and returned to Bessarabia, and the rest did not return, according to a source mentioned by Jean Ancel (Matathias Carp), the specialist on the Holocaust in Romania and Transnistria; however, Carp's estimate is not confirmed by other sources. This and later deportations were primarily based on social class difference, it targeted intellectuals, people employed previously by the state, businessmen, clergymen, students, railworkers. In the winter and spring of 1941, the Soviet troops (
NKVD) opened fire on many groups of locals trying to cross the border into Romania. Between September 17 and November 17, 1940, by a mutual agreement between USSR and Germany, 43,641 "ethnic Germans" from the Chernivtsi region were moved to Germany, although the total ethnic German population was only 34,500, and of these some 3,500 did not go to Germany. Beginning with 1941, when the region returned under the control of the
Romanian administration, the
Jewish community of the area was largely destroyed by the deportations to Transnistria, where about 60% of the Jewish deportees from the area died. About 60% of the Jewish deportees to Transnistria from the city of Chernivtsi in 1941 and 1942 died there according to the Jewish Virtual Library. According to Gali Mir-Tibon, most of the Jews deported from the city of Chernivtsi, and northern Bukovina in general, to Transnistria did not survive. Despite the anti-Semitic policies of the
Ion Antonescu's government of Romania, the mayor of
Cernăuți,
Traian Popovici, now honored by
Israel's
Yad Vashem memorial as one of the
Righteous Among the Nations, saved approximately 20,000 Jews. In 1944, when the
Soviet troops returned to
Bukovina, many inhabitants fled to
Romania, and Soviet persecutions resumed. In demographic terms, these war-time and post-war-time factors changed the region's ethnic composition. Today the number of Jews, Germans and Poles is negligible, while the number of Romanians has decreased substantially. In March 1945, 3,967 Romanian citizens from Ukraine (excluding Jews), mostly from the Chernivtsi Oblast, were sent to the Soviet east. According to Nikolai Bougai, in March 1945, 12,852 Jews from 5,420 families with both Romanian and Soviet passports living in Ukraine, mostly originating from the Chernivtsi oblast, were relocated (as Jews) by the NKVD to the Soviet north and east. On October 11, 1942, the (Soviet) State Committee on Defense decided to extend the decrees on "the mobilization of the NKVD labour columns, German men, able to work, 17-50 years old - to the persons of other nations, being in war with USSR-Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Finns."; the order was signed by Stalin. As a reult, in May 1944, in the village of
Molodiia and some other northern Bukovinian localities, those men who declared a "Moldovan" nationality were incorporated into the Soviet army, while those who declared a "Romanian" nationality were sent to the work camps in the area of Lake Onega, where most of them died. The Soviet era dominance of the "Moldovan" identity in parts of northern Bukovina was due to the fact that the inhabitants of the Chernivtsi and Sadagura rural raions, and of the Bukovinian part of the
Novoselytsia raion, were pressured in 1944 to adopt a "Moldovan" national/ethnic identity. In March 1945, 3,967 ethnic Romanians from Ukraine, mostly from the Chernivtsi Oblast, were sent to the Soviet east.
Ruthenian communities in Bukovina date back to at least 16th century. In 1775,
Ukrainians (
Ruthenians) represented some 8,000 out of a 75,000 population of
Bukovina. By 1918, as a result of immigration of Ukrainian peasants from nearby villages in
Galicia and
Podolia, there were over 200,000 Ukrainians, out of a total of 730,000. Most of Ukrainians settled in the northern parts of Bukovina. Their number was especially large in the area between the
Dniester and
Prut rivers, where they became a majority. A similar process occurred in Northern
Bessarabia. Throughout the history of the region, there were no inter-ethnic clashes, while the city of
Chernivtsi was known for its German-style architecture, for a highly cultivated society, and for ethnic tolerance. Small ethnic disputes were, however, present on occasion. In 1918, many Ukrainians in Bukovina wanted to join an independent Ukrainian state. After an initial period of free education in
Ukrainian language, in late 1920s Romanian authorities attempted to switch all education to the
Romanian language. After 1944 Ukrainian anti-Soviet resistance rose up, Romanians and Ukrainians fought alongside against
NKVD. Many Ukrainians in the south-western mountain area of the Chernivtsi region belong to the
Hutsul ethnic sub-group, a sophisticated cultural community inhabiting an area in the
Carpathian Mountains in both
Ukraine and
Romania. When the
Soviet Union collapsed, Chernivtsi Oblast, then part of the Ukrainian SSR, became part of the newly independent (August 24, 1991)
Ukraine. It has a Ukrainian ethnic majority. In the
referendum on December 1, 1991, 92% of the oblast's residents supported the independence of Ukraine, with wide support from both Ukrainians and Romanians. == Subdivisions ==