Budzhak Autonomous Oblast

The territory of the oblast

Raion subdivision of Budzhak territory

The Budzhak Autonomous Oblast is part of a proposal for a Ukrainian federal state to be created as part of the federalisation^[wp] of Ukraine.

The autonomous administrative region to be established would have an area of 12,400 square kilometres and a population of around 550,000 inhabitants. The autonomous oblast would border the Autonomous Republic of Odesa to the north-east, the Republic of Moldova^[wp] to the north-west and Romania to the south.

Budjak^[wp] refers to the southern part of the historical region of Bessarabia^[wp].

Territory

The map of the administrative division of the Ukrainian SSR from 1946-1954 shows the Izmail Oblast^[wp] and the Drohobych Oblast^[wp].

The territory of the hypothetical Budzhak Autonomous Oblast corresponds to that of the Izmail Oblast^[wp], which existed until February 1954.

In the Ukrainian SSR^[wp] and Ukraine, until July 2020, the historical territory of Budjak was subdivided into two cities and nine administrative districts (raions) of Ukraine's Odesa Oblast^[wp]. On 18 July 2020, the number of districts (raions) was reduced to three, now also incorporating the formerly independent cities.

The hypothetical autonomous administrative area would include the rayons of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi^[wp], Bolhrad^[wp] and Izmail^[wp].

Oblast centre

The region was initially organised on 7 August 1940 as Akkerman Oblast (with Akkerman^[wp] as the oblast centre). On 7 December 1940, the oblast was renamed Izmail Oblast due to the relocation of the oblast centre to the city of Izmail^[wp].

The oblast centre of the oblast could again be the city of Ismajil (70,000 inhabitants), but the centrally located city of Artsyz^[wp] (14,400 inhabitants) would also be suitable.

Status

The autonomy of an Autonomous Oblast would be less far-reaching than that of an Autonomous Republic.

Ethnic groups and demographics

Ethnic majority division of Budjak with yellow representing Ukrainians, red for Russians, purple for Bulgarians, brown for Gagauz^[wp], and green indicating Moldovan^[wp] populated villages, according to the Ukrainian census of 2001.

The main ethnic groups in Budjak today are Ukrainians^[wp], Bulgarians^[wp], Russians^[wp], Romanians^[wp] and Moldovans^[wp] (there is an ongoing controversy^[wp], in part involving linguistic definitions of ethnicity, over whether Moldovans' self-identification constitutes an ethnic group distinct and apart from Romanians, or a subset of a broader Romanian identity). The region was inhabited by Romanians and Nogai Tatars^[wp] through the Middle Ages, but became a home to several other ethnicities and religious groups in the 19th century when it was part of the Russian Empire. The examples are Bessarabian Bulgarians^[wp], Bessarabian Germans^[wp], Gagauzians^[wp] and Lipovan Russians^[wp] who settled in compact areas.

Muslim, Turkic^[wp]-speaking Nogai Tatars^[wp] inhabited Ottoman-dominated Budjak until the start of the 19th century, but were forced to abandon the region once the Russian Empire^[wp] got control over the territory. They resettled in the Caucasus^[wp], Dobruja^[wp] (both in the Romanian^[wp] and Bulgarian^[wp] parts) or in modern Turkey^[wp].

Like Moldova, Budjak is home to a small minority of Gagauzes^[wp]: an Orthodox Christian^[wp] Turkic^[wp] people who arrived from the eastern Balkans^[wp] in the early 19th century, and settled part of the area vacated by the Nogais.

The Bulgarians of the region are known as Bessarabian Bulgarians^[wp], and, like the Gagauzes, are descendants of settlers from the eastern Balkans (today eastern Bulgaria) who moved to the area vacated by the Nogais, in order to escape Muslim domination.

During the same period, Lipovan Russians^[wp] settled in the area close to the mouth of the Danube^[wp] river.

Until World War II, the region was also home to a significant number of Jews, a portion of whom were killed in the Holocaust along with other Bessarabian Jews^[wp]. Still, Jews remained a sizeable minority in several towns, first of all in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi^[wp] until mass emigration to Israel^[wp] in the 1980s and 1990s. Budjak was the only region within the former Russian Empire^[wp] where a significant number of Sephardic^[wp] Ladino^[wp]-speaking Jews could be found as late as the second half of the 19th century. These Sephardim later assimilated with the majority of local Ashkenazic Jewry, but many retained surnames of either Turkic origin or otherwise suggestive of Sephardic descent.

According to the 2001 Ukrainian census^[wp], Budjak has a population of 617,200 people, distributed among the ethnic groups as follows: Ukrainians 248,000 (40%), Bulgarians 129,000 (21%), Russians 124,500 (20%), Moldovans 78,300 (13%) and Gagauzians 24,700 (4%). (See also the table below.) Note, that the total population of the Odesa Oblast^[wp] is, by the 2001 Ukrainian Census^[wp], 2,469,000.

Although the majority of Russians and Moldovans declared the language of their ethnicity as their mother tongue, only roughly half of Ukrainians did so, while the other half indicated Russian as their native language. The Bulgarians also tend to use Russian more than Bulgarian, especially in public. The above numbers reflect the declared ethnicity, not the native language. The most common spoken language in everyday public use in Budjak is Russian.

Bulgarians are the largest ethnic group in the Artsyz^[wp] (39%), Bolhrad^[wp] (61%), and Tarutyne^[wp] (38%) raions^[wp] (districts, pre-2020), Moldovans - in the Reni Raion^[wp] (50%), Russians - in the city of Izmail^[wp] (44%), and Ukrainians - in the Kiliia^[wp] (45%), Tatarbunary^[wp] (71%), Sarata^[wp] (44%), and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi^[wp] (82%) raions, and in the city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi^[wp] (63%).

In the Izmail Raion, 29% of the population is Ukrainian, 28% Moldovan, and 26% Bulgarian. Since the previous census in 1989, its Moldovan population increased by 1% relative to the number of Ukrainian and Bulgarians, although the actual number of Moldovans has decreased in absolute terms, yet at a slower rate than that of Ukrainians, Russians and Bulgarians, probably due to the fact that a portion of the non-Moldovan population of the area were relatively recent arrivals from other regions of the former Soviet Union^[wp], and chose to return upon its dissolution.

Ethnic composition of Budjak according to the 2001 Ukrainian census^[wp]1

Raion (district) or City	Total	Ukrainians	Bessarabian Bulgarians	Russians	Moldovans	Gagauzians	Other ethnic groups2	Number of settlements3
Artsyz Raion[wp]	51,700	14,200	20,200	11,500	3,300	900	1,600	1+0+17(26)
Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi Raion[wp]	62,300	51,000	800	5,500	3,900	200	900	0+0+27(57)
Bolhrad Raion[wp]	75,000	5,700	45,600	6,000	1,200	14,000	2,500	1+0+18 (21)
Izmail Raion[wp]	54,700	15,800	14,100	8,900	15,100	200	600	0+1+18 (22)
Kiliia Raion[wp]	59,800	26,700	2,600	18,000	9,400	2,300	800	1+1+13 (17)
Reni Raion[wp]	40,700	7,200	3,400	6,100	19,900	3,200	900	1+0+7 (7)
Sarata Raion[wp]	49,900	21,900	10,000	7,900	9,400	200	500	0+1+22 (37)
Tarutyne Raion[wp]	45,200	11,100	17,000	6,300	7,500	2,700	600	0+4+23 (28)
Tatarbunary Raion[wp]	41,700	29,700	4,800	2,700	3,900	–	600	1+0+18 (35)
city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi[wp]	51,100	32,200	1,900	14,400	1,000	200	1,400	1+2+0 (0)
city of Izmail[wp]	85,100	32,500	8,600	37,200	3,700	800	2,300	1+0+0 (0)
Total	617,2001	248,0001	129,0001	124,5001	78,3001,2	24,7001	12,7001	7 cities + 9 towns + 163 incorporated administrations (250 villages) = 266 settlements
per cent	100 %	40,2 %	20,9 %	20,2 %	12,7 %	4,0 %	2,0 %

¹ All numbers are averaged to hundreds for each raion and city. The entries of the row "total" contain the sums of the respective entries for each line, hence bears a theoretical margin error of plus/minus 550. Numbers provided by other sources differ, but fit within this margin of error.

² The "Others" category includes people who declared themselves as Romanians^[wp]. For the entire Odesa Oblast^[wp] (which includes the raions that comprise historic Budjak) 724 people declared themselves as Romanians. For a discussion about Moldovan/Romanian identity controversy, see Moldovenism^[wp]. In the Republic of Moldova, "more than half of the self-proclaimed Moldovans (53.5%) said that they saw no difference" between the Romanian and Moldovan languages according to a survey conducted by Pal Kolsto and Hans Olav Melberg in 1998.

³ Certain settlements are called "cities" (7 here). Some of them are called "regional cities" (2 here), and have administrations that are financed and receive directions from the oblast administration. Others are called "raion cities" (5 here), and are component parts of raions. Raions have administrations just like regional cities, only that they consist of mainly rural areas.
Some settlements (9 here) used to have an intermediate status, between that of a village and that of a city. They were designated as urban-type settlements^[wp], but were abolished in 2024 and became rural settlements^[wp].

Local and regional authorities do not collect taxes. They are considered state institutions of the country at the local level, not institutions of local self-administration^[wp].

External links

• Wikipedia has an article about Izmail Oblast, Budjak