In 1944 and 1945, the Red Army pushed out the Royal Hungarian Army and took control of Carpathian Ruthenia, also called Transcarpathia. In 1945 and 1946, the region was annexed by the Soviet Union from the (Third) Czechoslovak Republic, which the Allies considered to be the legal owner of the territory beforehand.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the population of the mountainous, economically underdeveloped region known as Carpathian Ruthenia consisted mainly of Ruthenians and Hungarians. The region of Transcarpathia was part of Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the end of the 9th century to 1918. Historically it was one of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown before it was detached from the Kingdom of Hungary and attached to the newly created Czechoslovakia in 1918, following the disintegration of Austria-Hungary as a result of World War I. This was then confirmed by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. However, the autonomy of Carpathian Ruthenia, which was also formally agreed upon in the Treaty of Saint-Germain, was not fully recognized by the Czechoslovak government. When Czechoslovakia came under pressure from Nazi Germany during the Sudeten crisis, nationalists of all stripes seized the opportunity and, beginning in the spring of 1938, [1] attempted to impose full autonomy for Carpatho-Ukraine within the Czechoslovak Republic. About a month after the Munich Agreement of September 1938, an autonomous government was formed under Avgustyn Voloshyn. Hungary had sought to restore its historical borders and the revision of the Treaty of Trianon, on 2 November 1938, the First Vienna Award separated territories from Czechoslovakia, including the southern Carpathian Rus' that were mostly Hungarian-populated and returned them to Hungary. In the dispute between the various ethnic groups, the "Ukrainophiles" now prevailed in Carpathian Ruthenia, who increasingly favored the option of annexation to an independent Ukraine. [2] All political parties except the Ukrajinské národní sjednocení were banned. On March 14, 1939, Jozef Tiso proclaimed the independence of Slovakia. Carpathian Ruthenia also declared itself independent. The Hungarian Teleki government and Miklós Horthy were informed by Hitler on March 12 that they had 24 hours to resolve the Ruthenian question. Hungary responded immediately with the military occupation of the entire Carpathian Ruthenia. As a result of the annexation, Hungary gained a territory with 552,000 inhabitants, 70.6% of whom were Ruthenian, 12.5% Hungarian, and 12% were Carpathian Germans. [3]
The region remained under Hungarian control until the end of World War II in Europe, after which it was occupied by the Soviet Union. Hungary had to renounce the territories won in the Vienna Awards in the Armistice Agreement signed in Moscow on January 20, 1945, which stated that "Hungary has accepted the obligation to evacuate all Hungarian troops and officials from the territory of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania occupied by her within the limits of the frontiers of Hungary existing on December 31, 1937, and also to repeal all legislative and administrative provisions relating to the annexation or incorporation into Hungary of Czechoslovak, Yugoslav and Rumanian territory." [3] The renunciation was reconfirmed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and recorded in the Peace Treaty of 1947, which stated that "The frontier between Hungary and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, from the point common to the frontier of those two States and Rumania to the point common to the frontier of those two States and Czechoslovakia, is fixed along the former frontier between Hungary and Czechoslovakia as it existed on January 1, 1938". [4]
The London government-in-exile under Edvard Beneš negotiated the restoration of the state of Czechoslovakia with the Soviet Union, with which it had been allied since 1943, in Moscow. On May 8, 1944, Beneš and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin signed a treaty of alliance that guaranteed that the territory of Czechoslovakia would be liberated by the Red Army and returned to Czechoslovak civilian control. Carpathian Ruthenia was to be reincorporated into Czechoslovakia while maintaining this status. In October 1944, Carpathian Ruthenia was liberated by the Red Army and occupied by the Soviet Union. The Czechoslovak government delegation led by minister František Němec arrived in Khust to establish the provisional Czechoslovak administration, [5] according to the treaties between the Soviet and Czechoslovak governments on 8 May 1944. [5] According to the Soviet–Czechoslovak treaty, it was agreed that once any liberated territory of Czechoslovakia ceased to be a combat zone of the Red Army, those lands would be transferred to full control of the Czechoslovak state. [5] However, after a few weeks, the Red Army and NKVD started to obstruct the Czechoslovak delegation's work. Communications between Khust and the government center in exile in London were obstructed and the Czechoslovak officials were forced to use underground radio. [5] Furthermore, the delegation had to win the support of the population to remain with Czechoslovakia, because the loyalty of Carpathian Ruthenia to a new Czechoslovak state was weak as a result of World War II. In April 1944, all former collaborators were excluded from the political arena. Collaborators included Magyars, Germans, and those Ruthenians who were supporters of István Fencik's party (which had collaborated with the Magyars). This concerned about one third of the population. Another third were Communists, so that only a third of the Ukrainian population probably sympathized with the Czechoslovak Republic.
After arriving in Carpathian Ruthenia, the Czechoslovak delegation announced its planned mobilization at its headquarters in Khust on October 30. The Red Army prevented the dissemination of this news and instead began to rally popular support. Protests from Beneš's government were ignored. The Czechoslovak delegation was also allegedly hindered in building relations with the Ukrainian minority, which caused the disappointment of the population. Soviet activities resulted in 73% of the population being in favor of annexation. [6]
On November 26, 1944, the first meeting of the newly elected People's Committee, organized by representatives of the Communist Party of Carpathian Ruthenia, was held in Mukachevo. It proclaimed withdrawal from Czechoslovakia and "unification with its great mother, Soviet Ukraine." [7] The Czechoslovak delegation was asked to leave the area. After two months of conflicts and negotiations the Czechoslovak government delegation departed from Khust on February 1, 1945, leaving Carpathian Ruthenia under Soviet control.
Nevertheless, negotiations between the Czechoslovak government and the Soviet government were not concluded. While the right-wing conservative Czechoslovak parties voted against a cession, the KSČ promoted a cession of Carpathian Ruthenia. At the end of 1945, Beneš also confirmed the cession. An agreement was reached with the Soviet Union to postpone the annexation until 1946; the cession to the Soviet Union was agreed by treaty in Moscow on June 29, 1945, and the agreement entered into force on January 30, 1946. [8] [9] Czechoslovaks and Ukrainians living in Carpathian Ruthenia were given the choice between Czechoslovak and Soviet citizenship.
Over 120,000 people emigrated from the former part of the country. Of the 15,800 Ruthenian Jews, 8,000 emigrated. As a result of the cession, Czechoslovakia lost 12,777 km2 of its territory and about 450,000 inhabitants.
Czechoslovakia was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed in the remainder of the Czech Lands. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Kievan Rus'. It is used to refer to Rus' region, a triangular area which mainly corresponds to the tribe of Polans in Dnieper Ukraine. It is also used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria-Hungary, mainly to Ukrainians and sometimes Belarusians, corresponding to the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Poland and some of western Russia.
Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for Ukrainians and partially Belarusians, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in medieval sources to describe Eastern Slavs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as an exonym for people of the former Kievan Rus', thus including ancestors of the modern Belarusians, Rusyns and Ukrainians. The use of Ruthenian and related exonyms continued through the early modern period, developing several distinctive meanings, both in terms of their regional scopes and additional religious connotations.
The First Czechoslovak Republic emerged from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in October 1918. The new state consisted mostly of territories inhabited by Czechs and Slovaks, but also included areas containing majority populations of other nationalities, particularly Germans (22.95 %), who accounted for more citizens than the state's second state nation of the Slovaks, Hungarians (5.47 %) and Ruthenians (3.39 %). The new state comprised the total of Bohemia whose borders did not coincide with the language border between German and Czech. Despite initially developing effective representative institutions alongside a successful economy, the deteriorating international economic situation in the 1930s gave rise to growing ethnic tensions. The dispute between the Czech and German populations, fanned by the rise of Nazism in neighbouring Germany, resulted in the loss of territory under the terms of the Munich Agreement and subsequent events in the autumn of 1938, bringing about the end of the First Republic.
The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia.
Transcarpathia is a historical region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast.
Jews settled in this small region variously called Ruthenia, Carpathian Ruthenia, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia or simply Transcarpathia as early as the 15th century. Local rulers allowed Jewish citizens to own land and practice many trades that were precluded to them in other locations. Jews settled in the region over time and established communities that built great synagogues, schools, printing houses, businesses, and vineyards. By the end of the 19th century there were as many as 150,000 Jews living in the region.
Carpatho-Ukraine or Carpathian Ukraine was an autonomous region, within the Second Czechoslovak Republic, created in December 1938 and renamed from Subcarpathian Rus', whose full administrative and political autonomy had been confirmed by constitutional law of 22 November 1938.
Zakarpattia Oblast, also referred to as simply Zakarpattia or Transcarpathia in English, is an oblast located in the Carpathian Mountains in west Ukraine, mostly coterminous with the historical region of Carpathian Ruthenia. Its administrative centre is the city of Uzhhorod. Other major cities within the oblast include Mukachevo, Khust, Berehove, and Chop, the last of which is home to railroad transport infrastructure.
Rusyns, also known as Carpatho-Rusyns, Ruthenians, or Rusnaks, are an East Slavic ethnic group from the Eastern Carpathians in Central Europe. They speak Rusyn, an East Slavic language variety, treated variously as either a distinct language or a dialect of the Ukrainian language. As traditional adherents of Eastern Christianity, the majority of Rusyns are Eastern Catholics, though a minority of Rusyns practice Eastern Orthodoxy. Rusyns primarily self-identify as a distinct Slavic people and they are recognized as such in Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia, where they have official minority status. Alternatively, some identify more closely with their country of residence, while others are a branch of the Ukrainian people.
The First Vienna Award was a treaty signed on 2 November 1938 pursuant to the Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The arbitration and award were direct consequences of the previous month's Munich Agreement, which resulted in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.
The Rt Rev. Avgustyn Ivanovych Monsignor Voloshyn , also known as Augustin Voloshyn, was a Carpatho-Ukrainian politician, teacher, essayist, and Greek Catholic priest of the Mukacheve eparchy in Czechoslovakia.
Carpathian Ruthenia was a region in the easternmost part of Czechoslovakia that became an autonomous region within that country in September 1938. It declared its independence as the "Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine" in 15 March 1939; however, it was occupied and annexed by Hungary the same day. Starting with October 1944, the Soviet Red Army occupied the territory and short period the territory of the region was organised as Transcarpathian Ukraine (1944—1946), until it was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1946. In total, between 1939 and 1944, 80,000 Carpathian Ukrainians perished.
The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian and Hungarian territories.
Maramureș is a historical region in the north of Transylvania, along the upper Tisa River. The territory of the southern part of this region is now in the Maramureș County in northern Romania, whereas its northern section is included in the Zakarpattia Oblast of western Ukraine.
During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland, as well as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland and eastern Romania. Apart from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and post-war division of Germany, the USSR also occupied and annexed Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia in 1945.
The Hungarians in Ukraine number 156,600 people according to the Ukrainian census of 2001 and are the third largest national minority in the country. Hungarians are largely concentrated in the Zakarpattia Oblast, where they form the largest minority at 12.1% of the population. In the area along the Ukrainian border with Hungary, Hungarians form the majority.
The Hutsul Republic was a short-lived state formed in the aftermath of World War I. Inhabited by Hutsuls, the republic was declared on 8 January 1919, when original plans to unite this area with the West Ukrainian People's Republic failed and the territory was occupied by Hungarian police.
Magyaron, also Magyarons , is the name of a Transcarpathian ethno-cultural group, which has an openly Hungarian orientation. They renounced their native language, culture and religion and promoted Magyarization of the Rusyn and Ukrainian population. The Magyarons did not embrace the Ukrainian identity of the Ruthenians in Carpathian Ruthenia but maintained their separate Rusyn identity. From 1920 to 1940, the group promoted the idea of rejoining Subcarpathian Rus' to Hungary, where about 185 000 ethnic Hungarians lived at the time.
The Hungarian invasion of Carpatho-Ukraine was a 1939 military conflict between the Kingdom of Hungary and Carpatho-Ukraine. During the invasion a series of clashes took place between the Hungarian and Polish troops against the paramilitary formations of the Carpathian Sich of Carpathian Ukraine and some Czech troops who remained in the region after the Czechoslovak army was disbanded. The war ended with the occupation and subsequent annexation of the territory of Transcarpathian Ukraine to the Kingdom of Hungary.
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