alternatehistory.com

Challenge: Independent Bukovina, "the Switzerland of the East" with power shared by Romanians, Ukrainians, Germans (including Jews), and Poles. "The 1910 census counted 800,198 people, of which: Ruthenian 38.88%, Romanian 34.38%, German 21.24% (Jews 12.86% included), Polish 4.55%, Hungarian 1.31%, Slovak 0.08%, Slovene 0.02%, Italian 0.02%, and a few Croat, Romani, Serbian, and Turkish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukovina

"...Hans Prelitsch saw in the province’s multi-national, multi-religious symbiosis 'a model for a united Europe'3, while Oskar Beck hypothesized that following the First World War Austria’s eastern-most crown land might well have become the 'Switzerland of the East'4. Here during the Habsburg period a dozen or so ethnic groups including Romanians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Armenians, Germans and Gypsies among others, lived side by side in a spirit of toleration and cooperation unique in a Europe increasingly torn by nationalistic dissension. Diverse, too, were the religious preferences of its inhabitants. While the majority affiliated either with the Romanian or Ukrainian Orthodox Church, members of the Hebrew, Lutheran, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic persuasion worshipped freely and unmolested..." http://feefhs.org/journal/10/bukovina.pdf

"Given the diverse ethnic and religious environment of Bukowina, Jewish notables were able to arbitrate among various private interests as 'Germans,' yet also as allies of the authorities. This gave them privileged access-—unimaginable elsewhere in Eastern Europe at the time-—to key positions in cultural and political spheres. Between 1860 and 1918, Jews were elected to almost every municipal council and to the Landtag. The electoral reforms of 1909-1910 guaranteed Jews 9 mandates out of a total of 63 in the Landtag. Jews also served as deputies of the province in the Reichsrat." http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Bucovina

"Bukovina was held up as a kind of model for other Habsburg provinces, and for a while the term *homo Bukovinensis* was used in Austro-German literature to desctibe a person of tolerance and of a high and varied culture." Paul R. Magocsi, *A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples* (University of Toronto Press 2010), p. 485. https://books.google.com/books?id=TA1zVKTTsXUC&pg=PA485

I am not an expert on inter-ethnic relations in Habsburg Bukovina, and perhaps they were not as idyllic as these sources suggest. Still, they were doubtless better than in most of the rest of eastern Europe at the time--or than they became in Bukovina itself after World War I. Can anyone see Bukovina retaining its identity and becoming an independent nation after the breakup (whether through war as in OTL or otherwise) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
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