[1] 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.
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.
[2] 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.
[5] 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.
[10] 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.
[9][11] 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.
[14] 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.
[8] 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.
[18] 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.
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.
[22] 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.
[23] 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.
[30] A Bukovinian telegram, published by the central and regional press on November 7, informed: "The candidates of the Democratic Union Party under Mr. Nistor's leadership have won seats everywhere, in Cernăuți as well as in the other parts of Bukovina.
[34][35] The bloc held power, with Alexandru Vaida-Voevod as Prime Minister, but King Ferdinand's refusal to accept its land reform project brought down the cabinet.
[38] Elected to Parliament as an ethnic German PP candidate, Kohlruss rekindled the campaign for cultural autonomy, and received virulent replies from the PDU, through Glasul Bucovinei.
[34] By then, the PDU and it paper were primarily supporters of the centralist policy on education, and applauded the disestablishment of German, Jewish or other schools, noting that they overrepresented their respective minority groups.
The PDU took a stance on the issue of logging rights, giving support to peasants who complained that the PP had been arbitrarily handing out major grants of forest terrain to its clientele.
[52] In so doing, Brătianu's Bukovinian allies helped the PNL overcome a crisis of confidence: the National Liberal group was strengthened by arrivals from the PDU and the Bessarabian Peasantists.