History
The region was part of the Principality of Moldavia since its founding in the 14th century and after the union of Moldavia with Wallachia in 1859 it became part of Romania, which gained its formal independence in 1877.
Hertza region was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, and was added to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was recaptured by Romania in 1941 in the course of Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the Second World War, but was recaptured again by the Soviet Army in 1944. The annexation was confirmed by the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947 between the USSR and the Communist Romania.
The fact that neither the secret protocol (appendix) of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which specified the expansionist claims of both sides, nor the June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanding from Romania the adjacent territory of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia included Hertsa makes the capture by the Soviets especially controversial. Furthermore, unlike Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the region had not been a part of Imperial Russia or Austria-Hungary before World War I, but had been a part of Romania and one of its predecessor states, Moldavia, before that.
In 1962, the region was merged into the Hlybotskyi Raion, and in 1991, was reinstated again.
Read more about this topic: Hertsa Raion
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