Paul Magocsi, in Ukraine: An Illustrated History, on Bessarabia's union with Romania in 1918, and Ukrainian language education in interwar Bessarabia

Paul Magocsi, the American-Canadian specialist in Ukraine's history and Rusyn history, who holds the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, has a Rusyn rather than Ukrainian ethnic identity. Nevertheless, he is seen as a great scholar of Ukraine. In his book, Ukraine: An Illustrated History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), which is even used as a textbook in Ukrainian history classes at some Canadian universities (Canada has more than a million ethnic Ukrainians), he writes on p. 257. 'Following the 1917 revolutions in the Russian Empire, Bessarabia's majority population, the Romanians, formed an independent republic of Moldavia (January 1918), which two months later proclaimed its unity with the neighboring Kingdom of Romania. International recognition was slow in coming, until on October 28, 1920, several European states signed the Bessarabian Protocol, which recognized Romania's acquisition. Notably, Soviet Russia did not sign the protocol and therefore never accepted what it considered Romania's "occupation" of Bessarabia. Bolshevik leaders in Moscow argued that Bessarabia had been part of the Russian imperial heritage and therefore should belong to the Soviet Union. For its part, the Ukrainian population concentrated in southern Bessarabia did not have a high level of national consciousness. Nevertheless, during the interwar years the Romanian government did permit Ukrainian-language instruction in about 120 schools and the operation of some agricultural cooperatives.' (The author notes in other parts the oppression of the Ukrainians in Bukovina, about which I have written elsewhere, including in LinkedIn. The Ukrainian-language schools in that province were closed.)

One could complain that the Ukrainian authorities are not as generous toward the Moldovan/Romanian minority in southern Bessarabia in the Odessa region now. One could also complain that the Moldovan authorities are not as generous toward the Ukrainian minority in Moldova right now. Yet one could also note how multicultural-minded the elite and population in interwar Bessarabia in Romania was toward the Slavic populations. (This is not to deny the widespread anti-Semitism during that period, or that the opportunities for schooling in minority languages could have been better.) What is pushed now, masquerading as "multi-culturalism", is bi-culturalism (in Moldova, Moldovan, sometimes Moldovanist, culture and Russian-speaking culture, and in Ukraine, the Ukrainian language vs. the Russian language). As a result, facts such as that "during the interwar years the Romanian government did permit Ukrainian-language instruction in about 120 schools and the operation of some agricultural cooperatives" have been ... swept under the rug.

All the best,

Ionas Aurelian Rus