The Occupation of the Northern Bukovina by the USSR (June 28 – July 3, 1940). Political and Military Observations
Journal Title: Codrul Cosminului - Year 2016, Vol 22, Issue 1
Abstract
The article reviews and analyzes the international geopolitical and geostrategic context, which led to the occupation of Bukovina by the USSR in 1940, without any military resistance from Romania. Firstly, it analyzed the international geopolitical context of June 1940, that was marked by the dissolution of alliances, and the disappearance or surrender of states on which the security system of Romania was based: the self-annulment of the Little Entente (Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) and of the Balkan Entente (Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey) in 1938, the disappearance of Poland as a state in September 1939, and the fall of France on June 22nd, 1940. Following this, the article presented the political-diplomatic actions of USSR for obtaining the German neutrality, regarding the desire to occupy initially the whole Bukovina, then only the Southern Bucovina from the 23rd of August 1939 to the 26th of June 1940. The third part of the article, based almost entirely on archival sources, captures the main actions of USSR military training to the invasion of Northern Bukovina if Romania would not have willingly ceded these territories and had tried to resist militarily. At the end, the article analyzes the hypothesis, practically circulated today in Romanian historiography, and according to which it would have been better for Romania to oppose an armed resistance to the Soviet ultimatum of June 26th, 1940.
Authors and Affiliations
Cezar Ciorteanu
Keywords
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