2 Nomenclature

The region was officially called Subcarpathia (Kárpátalja) or North-Eastern Upper Hungary as part of Hungary; Subcarpathian Rus/Ruthenia/Russia or Subcarpathian Ukraine (Podkarpatská Rus) or since 1927 also Subcarpathian Land (Zeme/Zem podkarpatskoruská) after Trianon until 1938 as part of Czechoslovakia; Carpatho-Ukraine from November 1938 to March 1939, autonomous within Czechoslovakia; Subcarpathia again when it was reannexed by Hungary 1939-1945; and since then, as part of the Ukrainian SSR and later by an independent Ukraine it is called Transcarpathia.

Alternative unofficial names used in Czechoslovakia before WWII were: Subcarpathia (Podkarpatsko), Carpathian Rus/Ruthenia/Russia (Karpatská Rus), Hungarian Rus/Ruthenia/Russia (Uherská/Uhorská Rus, rare). In a Ukrainian context, has been known as Transcarpathia or Transcarpathian Ukraine (Zakarpattia, Zakarpats'ka Ukraina; Slovak: Zakarpatsko, Zakarpatská Ukrajina), after which the modern province Zakarpats'ka oblast' is named.

3 Ruthenians of Carpathian Ruthenia

The area of present-day Carpathian Ruthenia was probably settled by Slavic tribes in the 6th century. The Ruthene population was ethnically the same as the population of the areas north of the Carpathian Mountains.

However, because of geographical and political isolation from the main Ukrainian-speaking territory, the inhabitants developed some distinctive features. In addition, between the 12th and 15th centuries, the area had been colonized by groups of Vlach highlanders. They were assimilated into the local Slavic population, but strongly influenced the culture, making it more distinctive from the culture of other Ruthenian-speaking areas.

In 19th and 20th centuries, Carpathian Ruthenia was a field of struggle between Ukrainian nationalist and pro-Russian activists. The former claimed the Carpatho-Ruthenians were part of the Ukrainian nation, while the latter claimed them to be a separate ethnicity and nationality, or part of the Russian ethnos.

The present-day inhabitants usually consider themselves Ukrainians or Rusyns.

4 Ethnic minorities

4.1 Hungarians

Carpathian Ruthenia was a part of Hungary for almost 1000 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the nobility and middle class was almost solely Hungarian-speaking. Following separation of Carpathian Ruthenia from Hungary, the Hungarian population decreased slightly; the Hungarian census of 1910 shows 185,433, the Czechoslovak census of 1921 shows 111,052, but much of this difference presumably reflects differences in methodology and definitions rather than such a large decline in the region's ethnic Hungarian ( Magyar) or Hungarian-speaking population. Even according to the 1921 census, Hungarians still constituted about 18% of the region's total population.

On the eve of World War II, the First Vienna Award allowed Hungary to re-annex Carpathian Ruthenia. However, the end of the war was a cataclysm for the ethnic Hungarian population of the area: 10,000 fled before the arrival of Soviet forces. Many of the remaining adult men (25,000) were deported to the Soviet Union; about 30% of them died in Soviet gulags. As a result of war losses, emigration and extermination of Hungarian-speaking Jews, the Hungarian-speaking population of Carpathian Ruthenia decreased to from 161,000 in 1941 (Hungarian census) to 66,000 in 1947 (Soviet census); the low 1947 number is doubtless in part a result of Hungarians' fear to declare their true nationality.

As of 2004, about 170,000 (12-13%) inhabitants of Transcarpathia declare Hungarian as their mother tongue.

4.2 Jews

See main article History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia.

Memoirs and historical studies provide much evidence that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Rusyn-Jewish relations were generally peaceful. In 1939, census records showed that 80,000 Jews lived in the autonomous province of Ruthenia.

During the Holocaust 17 main ghettos were set up in cities in Ruthenia, from which all Jews were taken to Auschwitz for extermination. Almost all the Jews of Carpathian Ruthenia were killed and the handful who survived, were hidden by their neighbours.

4.3 Germans

to be written

4.4 Gypsies

to be written

5 Western view on Ruthenia

For urbane European readers in the 19th century, Ruthenia, whether seen as at the far end of Slovakia, or in the distant corner of the Ukraine or as a forgotten piece of Hungary, was one original of the 19th century's imaginary " Ruritania" the most rural, most rustic and deeply provincial tiny province lost in forested mountains that could be imagined. Conceived sometimes as a kingdom of central Europe, Ruritania was the setting of several novels by Anthony Hope, especially The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).

Recently Vesna Goldsworthy, in Inventing Ruritania: the imperialism of the imagination (1998) has explored the origins of the ideas that underpin Western perceptions of the “Wild East” of Europe, especially of Ruthenian and other rural Slavs in the upper Balkans, but ideas that are highly applicable to Carpathian Ruthenia, all in all "an innocent process: a cultural great power seizes and exploits the resources of an area, while imposing new frontiers on its mind-map and creating ideas which, reflected back, have the ability to reshape reality."

6 Cities in Carpathian Ruthenia

• Uzhhorod
• Mukacheve

7 See also

• Rusyns
• Ruthenians and Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938)
• Ruthenia
• History of Hungary
• History of Czechoslovakia

Ukrainian historical regions

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