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Once the easternmost province of Austria-Hungary, Bukovina was one of those places in Eastern Europe where a person could wake up a citizen of one country and go to bed as a citizen of another. Situated on a geopolitical fault line, the province repeatedly underwent experiments in state-building, by empires that overlapped and frequently clashed here. Today, Bukovina no longer appears on maps, its territory now divided between two states: Ukraine and Romania. Though small and often overlooked, the region holds a compelling story about both the twentieth century and the present moment. In this talk, Cristina Florea offers a preview of her forthcoming book, Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland, which traces how Bukovina became a testing ground for competing visions of statehood and governance from the late eighteenth century to the post-World War II era. Successive ruling powers - despite their stark political and ideological differences - invoked “culture” to legitimize their rule. “Culture” also shaped Bukovinans’ expectations of those in power, providing them with a powerful instrument to advance their own interests. How and why did regimes as distinct as the Habsburg Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Romanian nation-state all place such emphasis on culture? And how did this preoccupation shape Bukovinans’ experiences of some of the twentieth century’s most traumatic events? These are the questions I seek to answer in this talk.
Cristina Florea is a historian of modern Europe, with a particular focus on the intersections of nationalism, empire, and violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her forthcoming book Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland explores the history of Bukovina from the late 18th century to the post-World War II period, tracing the region’s shifting political landscapes and their impact on its diverse communities (Ukrainian, Romanian, German, Jewish). Florea has published on the history of Soviet and East European politics and culture, and teaches courses on Eastern European, Soviet, and modern European history at Cornell University.
