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Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland
The making and remaking of Bukovina, a disputed Eastern European borderland, from the eighteenth century to the present day
Bukovina, when it has existed on official maps, has always fit uneasily among its neighbors. The region is now divided between Romania and Ukraine but has long been a testing ground for successive regimes, including the Habsburg Empire, independent and later Nazi-allied Romania, and the Soviet Union, as each sought to reshape the region in its own image. In this beautifully written and wide-ranging book, Cristina Florea traces the history of Bukovina, showing how this borderland, the onetime buffer between Christendom and Islam, found itself at the forefront of modern state-building and governance projects that eventually extended throughout the rest of Europe. Encounters that play out in borderlands have proved crucial to the development of modern state ambitions and governance practices.
Drawing on a wide range of archives and published sources in Russian, Ukrainian, German, Romanian, French, and Yiddish, Florea integrates stories of ethnic and linguistic groups—rural Ukrainians, Romanians, and Germans, and urban German-speaking Jews and Poles—who lived side by side in Bukovina, all of them navigating constant reconfiguration and reinvention. Challenging traditional chronologies in European history, she shows that different transformations in the region occurred at different tempos, creating a historical palimpsest and a sense among locals that they had lived many lives.
A two-hundred-year history of a region shaped by the conflicting pulls of imperial legacies and national ambtions, Bukovina reveals the paradoxes of modern history found in a microcosm of Eastern Europe.
Bukovina, when it has existed on official maps, has always fit uneasily among its neighbors. The region is now divided between Romania and Ukraine but has long been a testing ground for successive regimes, including the Habsburg Empire, independent and later Nazi-allied Romania, and the Soviet Union, as each sought to reshape the region in its own image. In this beautifully written and wide-ranging book, Cristina Florea traces the history of Bukovina, showing how this borderland, the onetime buffer between Christendom and Islam, found itself at the forefront of modern state-building and governance projects that eventually extended throughout the rest of Europe. Encounters that play out in borderlands have proved crucial to the development of modern state ambitions and governance practices.
Drawing on a wide range of archives and published sources in Russian, Ukrainian, German, Romanian, French, and Yiddish, Florea integrates stories of ethnic and linguistic groups—rural Ukrainians, Romanians, and Germans, and urban German-speaking Jews and Poles—who lived side by side in Bukovina, all of them navigating constant reconfiguration and reinvention. Challenging traditional chronologies in European history, she shows that different transformations in the region occurred at different tempos, creating a historical palimpsest and a sense among locals that they had lived many lives.
A two-hundred-year history of a region shaped by the conflicting pulls of imperial legacies and national ambtions, Bukovina reveals the paradoxes of modern history found in a microcosm of Eastern Europe.
- GenresHistory
432 pages, Hardcover
Published December 16, 2025
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January 15, 2026
Bukovina,which is a 200-year history, tells who and how it became a testing ground for various regimes, starting with the Habsburgs,commencing with Romanians after WW1, then the Russians which got Northern Bukovina from Romania and then it was returned again to Russia, when it was divided between Russian and Ukraine.
This territory was once a buffer zone between Christianity and Islam. to elaborate: against the Turkish rotting Empire which ceased to exist after WW1.
There were many Jews living there, especially in the capital of Czernovitz, where most Jews were highly-educated. In 8 chapters describing its history, the author had written a very in-depth work of research, based on materials and original documents culled from many archives and other primary sources, showing a very good command of 6 languages.
Chapter 8, called: "War and Reconstruction" is, in my opinion, the best and tells the history of what had happened in Bukovina after Romania joined Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941,and subsequently, how Northern Bukovina was reincorporated into Romania on September of the same year, as a part of a larger governorship including both Northern and Southern Bukovina, and the Dorohoy county of historical Moldova. In miniscule details, the author describes the horrible fate which awaited most Jews who were deported to the many camps of Transnistria. Starvation, exhaustion, killings, diseases(such as typhus),rape and many more horrendous crimes were perpetrated against them. The Romanian leaders, namely Ion Antonescu and his vice-president Mihai Antonescu set out to clean Romania of foreign elements. Not just of Jews but of everyone who was not Romanian and Christian.This was ethnic cleansing par excellence.
Having realized that Nazi Germany's war would be lost towards the end of 1942 and expecially after the Batlle of Stalingrad, the Romanian authorities stopped the deporations to Transnistria, albeit it is not clear exactly why, since Romania contined to be an ally of the Nazis until August, 1944, when the Soviets liberated Romania.Maybe the pressure put on the Romanian leadership and the fact that Antonescu and his gang of criminals would be prosecuted immediately after the end of the war were some reasons. Antonescu even encouraged Jews to emigrate to Palestine and/or repatriate themselves,starting from 1943. Bukovina was again in Soviet hands in April 1944.
As Professor Florea argues, this history should be regarded as a microhistory of Eastern Europe.
I more than recommend it and thus five stars go to this excellent and riveting book which should be read by everyone who is interested to read about this fascinating and dynamic period in the annals of history in general.
This territory was once a buffer zone between Christianity and Islam. to elaborate: against the Turkish rotting Empire which ceased to exist after WW1.
There were many Jews living there, especially in the capital of Czernovitz, where most Jews were highly-educated. In 8 chapters describing its history, the author had written a very in-depth work of research, based on materials and original documents culled from many archives and other primary sources, showing a very good command of 6 languages.
Chapter 8, called: "War and Reconstruction" is, in my opinion, the best and tells the history of what had happened in Bukovina after Romania joined Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941,and subsequently, how Northern Bukovina was reincorporated into Romania on September of the same year, as a part of a larger governorship including both Northern and Southern Bukovina, and the Dorohoy county of historical Moldova. In miniscule details, the author describes the horrible fate which awaited most Jews who were deported to the many camps of Transnistria. Starvation, exhaustion, killings, diseases(such as typhus),rape and many more horrendous crimes were perpetrated against them. The Romanian leaders, namely Ion Antonescu and his vice-president Mihai Antonescu set out to clean Romania of foreign elements. Not just of Jews but of everyone who was not Romanian and Christian.This was ethnic cleansing par excellence.
Having realized that Nazi Germany's war would be lost towards the end of 1942 and expecially after the Batlle of Stalingrad, the Romanian authorities stopped the deporations to Transnistria, albeit it is not clear exactly why, since Romania contined to be an ally of the Nazis until August, 1944, when the Soviets liberated Romania.Maybe the pressure put on the Romanian leadership and the fact that Antonescu and his gang of criminals would be prosecuted immediately after the end of the war were some reasons. Antonescu even encouraged Jews to emigrate to Palestine and/or repatriate themselves,starting from 1943. Bukovina was again in Soviet hands in April 1944.
As Professor Florea argues, this history should be regarded as a microhistory of Eastern Europe.
I more than recommend it and thus five stars go to this excellent and riveting book which should be read by everyone who is interested to read about this fascinating and dynamic period in the annals of history in general.
Displaying 1 of 1 review