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The Uprising of Khotin also known as the Khotin Massacre was an insurrection in the former Russian province Bessarabia, followed by the ethnic cleansing of Ukrainian civilians by Romanian authorities, in January–February 1919. The city of Khotin is located now in the Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine.

In 1918 the town of Khotin, was annexed to Romania, with the rest of Bessarabia. The Khotin region had been part of the Russian Empire since 1812, had a large Ukrainian population. After the Romanian annexation, Bolshevik agitators from the Ukrainian SSR tried to use manifestos to incite a revolt:

Workers and peasants, from the rivers of blood of the old world and the ruins of the imperialist war is growing a new socialist body. We, workers and peasants of Bessarabia, are beginning the fight for the establishment of the power of the Soviets, so that they alone may have power over the land and the factories. The outer front has now changed to an inner front of civil war; but the Roumanian soldier will not raise his bayonet for the revolutionary movement.

This largely unsuccessful attempt was followed in January 1919 by the insurrection of armed bands from Podolia, reinforced by the local Ukrainian peasants. They launched a guerilla movement in order to secede from Romania and join Soviet Ukraine. On January 19, 1919 the movement broke into open rebellion against the Romanian authorities. Four days later, the guerilla fighers took Khotin and set up the Khotin Directory there.

A week later, major forces of the Romanian army arrived to Khotin to suppress the rebellion. Due to the heavy fighting that ensued, on January 29 and 30 there was a mass exodus of civilian population (estimated to 50,000 people from Khotin to Soviet Ukraine. The Romanian Commander, General Stan Poetaş, died during the battle. Out of estimated 20,000 guerilla fighters, a fifth part defected to Ukraine and joined the Red Army.

In February 1919, the insurrection was brutally suppressed by Romanian authorities. The number of people executed by Romanian authorities is estimated between 5,000 and 15,000 (the latter number is cited in Soviet sources). Thousands more were deported to forced labour camps (although some Romanian historians consider these numbers inflated). During the reign of terror that followed, dozens of Ukrainian villages in Bukovina were burned and razed to the ground. The policy of Romanization of the remaining Ukrainian population was implemented until World War Two, when the area was returned to the Soviet Union.

References

• Volodymyr Kubiiovych; Zenon Kuzelia, Енциклопедія українознавства (Encyclopedia of Ukrainian studies), 3-volumes, Kiev, 1994, ISBN 5-7702-0554-7
• Khotinskoe vosstanie: dokumenty i materialy ("Khotin Rebellion: Documents and Materials"). Kishinev, 1976.
• Charles Upson Clark, Bessarabia, Chapter XXVI: "Communist Machinations". New York, 1927.
• Дембо В. Ніколи не забути! Кривавий літопис Бесарабії. (Never forget! The bloody chronicles of Bessarabia), Kiev, 1925
• Okhotnikov J., Batchinsky N. L'insurrection de Khotine dans la Bessarabie et la Paix Europeenne. Paris, 1927;
• Героїчна Хотинщина. Матеріяли наук, сесії, присвяченої 50-річчю Хотинського повстання. (Heroic Khotyn) Leningrad, 1972.

• History of Romania
• History of Ukraine
• Rebellion
• 1919