The Democratic Union Party ( or , PDU) was a political group in Romania, one of the political forces which claimed to represent the ethnic Romanian community of Bukovina province. The PDU was active in the wake of World War I, between 1919 and 1923, having for its leader the historian and nationalist militant Ion Nistor. It was formed by Nistor and other activists who wrote for the regional periodical Glasul Bucovinei, and, as a consequence, the party members were commonly referred to as Glasiști ("Glas-ists").Livezeanu, p.57; Michelson, p.121, 129; Mihai, p.81; Sîiulescu (2007), p.145
The PDU favored a centralist administration, pushed for Romanianization in public life, and was generally hostile to the centrifugal tendencies of other communities, primarily Ukrainians, Germans, Poles and Jews. These together formed a relative majority of Bukovina's population, and Nistor's agenda met with sustained opposition from all sides of the region's political spectrum, although the PDU was successful in rallying to its cause some individuals from all these communities. In addition, the PDU clashed with the moderate or autonomist Bukovinian Romanians, whose leaders were Aurel Onciul and Iancu Flondor.
Democratic Union politicians helped organize the administration of Bukovina, speeding its absorption into Greater Romania, and, in 1919, formed part of the government coalition backing Premier Alexandru Vaida-Voevod. The PDU was later allied to the dominant National Liberal Party (PNL), helping it return to power with a nationwide centralist agenda, consolidated by the adoption of a new Romanian Constitution, in 1923. The same year, Nistor merged his party into the PNL.
Origins Bukovina met World War I as an eastern province of Austria-Hungary, on the empire's border with the Kingdom of Romania. A Romanian traditional region, it had a Romanian plurality of 42 to 48% before 1918.Hrenciuc, p.160. See also Sîiulescu (2007), p.149-150 Early in the war, a nationalist faction headed by Nistor refused to join the Austro-Hungarian Army and fled to Romania, where they organized a Committee of Bukovinian Refugees, nucleus of the future PDU groups and first publisher of Glasul Bucovinei.Gafița, p.107; Michelson, p.120 Over the following years, Nistor and his men became conjectural allies of the PNL Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu, who declared war on Austria in 1916.Gafița, p.107-108
Bukovinians of all nationalities emancipated themselves as the Austro-Hungarian regime collapsed and, after war ended on all fronts, the region faced an uncertain future. Early on, the Romanians and the Ukrainians created rival representative bodies, which, in late October-early November 1918, voted each for its union project: Romanians for union with Romania, Ukrainians for merger into the West Ukrainian People's Republic.Livezeanu, p.58; Sîiulescu (2007), p.143 A partition agreement was mediated between Aurel Onciul of the Democratic Peasants' Party, who claimed to represent all Romanians, and Omelian Popovych of the Ukrainian movement.Sîiulescu (2007), p.143Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2010, p.553. This allowed the Ukrainian Galician Army to organize incursions into Bukovina.
After the Austro-Hungarian administration had dissolved and the last governor (Josef Graf von Etzdorf) renounced power in favour of the Romanian and Ukrainian committees, the Ukrainian militias gained control of the province, and established a provisional government. The National Romanian Council reacted by demanding help from the Romanian Land Forces (General Iacob Zadig). The Romanian troops swiftly occupied the region, with little armed resistance from the Ukrainians, and installed martial law. Through a Congress of Nationalities held at Cernăuți, some of the various competing factions, who supported the preservation of integral Bukovina, came to an understanding. Bukovina's preservation and its union with Romania was sealed on November 28, 1918, although only the region's Romanians, Germans and Poles agreed that this should be unconditional.Hrenciuc, p.160-161 Flavius Cătălin Sîiulescu, "Concursul Eseu despre cultura și istoria poloneză a secolului XX. Premiul III. Polonii în Bucovina: Un memoriu al polonezilor bucovineni din 1920", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 245, November 2004 The Congress, which opened with a greeting to the Romanian Army, was boycotted by the Ukrainian and Jewish representatives.Livezeanu, p.59 The Congress also renewed tensions between the two leaders of Bukovina's Romanian nationalist revival: Iancu Flondor, who supported regional autonomy and minority rights; and Nistor, who stood for ethnonationalism and welcomed centralized rule.Gafița, passim; Hrenciuc, p.160; Michelson, passim; Sîiulescu (2007), p.144-145, 151-152
Creation On January 2, a hybrid and transitional regime was instituted in the region: Romanian King Ferdinand I was recognized as sovereign; a Ministry of Bukovina, with Ion Nistor and Iancu Flondor at its helm, took over the actual administration under a Brătianu premiership.Gafița, p.107; Michelson, p.120-121, 124; Sîiulescu (2007), p.145, 147-148, 151 Flondor resigned soon after, and, although Nistor took over his office in Cernăuți, the region experienced an acute political crisis.Gafița, p.107; Michelson, p.120-121; Sîiulescu (2007), p.151 Flondor sent his complaints to the king in April 1919, implying that centralization was alienating everyone, including Romanians. The outgoing Minister-Delegate found a cautionary example in the neighboring Moldavian Democratic Republic, which had also been united with Romania a year before.Gafița, p.105 He argued: "I have avoided fast and radical changes in the belief that [...] their consequences would be compromised, perhaps beyond repair, and that the same would go for the good cause of the people, as has happened in Bessarabia, haunted to this day by deep resentments versus the national ideal." By contrast, Nistor saw his government mission as being the Romanianization of the provincial administrative, judicial and schooling systems.Michelson, p.124, 125-130
Over the next months, as the Romanian provisional military administration withdrew, Bukovina's civil society began expressing discontent. In June, General Nicolae Petala heard numerous groups expressing support for the autonomist option: Flondor's Romanian moderates and George Grigorovici of the Romanian Socialists; Ukrainian Kassian Bogatyrets; Germans Albert Kohlruss and Rudolf Gaidosch; Jews Mayer Ebner and Iacob Pistiner. Flondor, who regretted his earlier vote for unconditional union, threatened to call in international arbiters, and demanded that Romania cease its occupation of the West Ukrainian People's Republic.Hrenciuc, p.161 He was by then conceiving of a Bukovinian autonomous region extending out of the former Austro-Hungarian province and into Botoșani, Dorohoi, Hotin and Suceava territories.Gafița, p.106
Meanwhile, the Glasul Bucovinei group alone stood by the governing authority. Nistor supported centralism on principle, as a legalist, and (in agreement with the Romanian central authorities) viewed Flondor's compromise option as unsound.Gafița, p.106; Sîiulescu (2007), p.144-145 As early a December 1918, Nistor had tied the cause of autonomism with the marginalization of Romanian Bukovinians; its aim, he argued, was: "to erase all traces of the past and to smother the national consciousness of the native population."Michelson, p.121 In his view: "Provincial politics have vanished on the very day of union." The Glas-ists were thus supportive of the new electoral law. Passed in August 1919, it dissolved the Diet of Bukovina while giving the region 40 representatives in the Romanian Parliament, introduced universal male suffrage, and ended the proportional representation of ethnic groups.Mihai, p.80-81
In September 1919, Nistor and his supporters founded the PDU as the political instrument of Romanian centralists.Michelson, p.120; Sîiulescu (2007), p.152 Its leading militants were folklorist Dimitrie Marmeliuc, historian Vasile Grecu, schoolteacher George Tofan (d. 1920), and, before December 1919, linguist Sextil Pușcariu.Michelson, p.120-121
Nationalist clashes and 1919 elections The PDU was confrontational on the national issue, as noted in Nistor's letter to Pușcariu: "As soon as the external threats cease, internal political struggles will break out with unprecedented vehemence. [...] The new will triumph." Their position was initially supported by the Polish community, who, at 4.2% of Bukovina's population, did not take issue with Romanian nationalism (see Polish–Romanian alliance). By contrast, the PDU was in conflict with the more sizable minorities. The Ukrainians tended to view Romanian rule as accidental, and expected assistance from the Ukrainian People's Republic.Mihai, p.82-83 They were therefore apathetic when it came to the electoral battle, and some of the leading Ukrainian nationalist militants (Hierotheus Pihuliak, Stepan Smal-Stotskyi, Volodymyr Zalozetsky-Sas) even left the region in protest.Mihai, p.83 The Ukrainian, Jewish, German and socialist political groups boycotted the November 1919 legislative election. As a countering measure to this abstentionist bloc, the PDU suggested co-opting individual politicians from minority groups into alliances with the Romanian parties.
The PDU was especially critical of the National Jewish Council, a triumvirate of Jewish politicians in Bukovina: Ebner, Pistiner, Benno Straucher. When the council, reacting against Romania's failure to emancipate its Jewish communities, called for international sanctions, Glasul Bucovinei resorted to antisemitic campaigning.Hrenciuc, p.162 In the 1919 suffrage, Nistor enlisted (or, according to Flondor's supporters, coerced) Jewish inspector Heini Teller into registering in as a traveling companion of the PDU, but Teller eventually withdrew from the race when faced with his coreligionists' indignant reaction. The PDU list of Senate candidates then included Jewish entrepreneur Jakob Hecht. Hecht spoke in favor of complete and unconditional union, in statements which, at the time, infuriated the Jewish Council.Hrenciuc, p.162; Mihai, p.83 The Senate list was completed by another Jew, Iosif Vihovici of Coțmani.
There was a similar disagreement between the PDU and Bukovina's Germans. The Romanian party claimed that it had supported the creation of a German constituency, but that the Germans, being spread out between villages, were ungroupable.Mihai, p.82 The National German Council, resentful of early Romanianization attempts, refused to sign for an alliance with Nistor.Hrenciuc, p.166-167 In this case as well, the PDU was able to enlist a dissident German, Norbert Kipper (Chiper), among its own candidates for the Assembly.Hrenciuc, p.167; Mihai, p.83 The party was even able to affiliate two Ukrainians, Vasily Snyatynchuk of Orășeni (Coțmani) and the Mayor of Ocna. Stanisław (Stanislaus) Kwiatkowski, the first Bukovina Pole to serve in Parliament, was also close to Nistor and, after taking his seat, became a PDU member.