Carpathian Ruthenia

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Carpathian Ruthenia or Carpatho-Ukraine (Karpatskaya Rus) is a name for a small part of Central Europe that was a part of the Hungarian kingdom (since 1526 under Habsburg rule). It is located in western Ukraine and easternmost Slovakia, mostly in the Trans-Carpathian district (Zakarpatskaya Oblast).

It is inhabited mainly by Ruthenian-speaking population (Ukrainians, Rusyns). Note that the places inhabited by Rusyns also span other adjacent regions of the Carpathian Mountains.

Table of contents

1 Historic overview
2 Ruthenians of Carpathian Ruthenia
3 Ethnic minorities

3.1 Hungarians
3.2 Jews
3.3 Gypsies

4 Western view on Ruthenia
5 Cities in Carpathian Ruthenia
6 See also

Historic overview

The first Slavs came to the central part of Carpathian Ruthenia in the 6th century. A more dense Slavic population followed in the 8th century. Then, the western part of the territory was part of Great Moravia in the 9th century, and in the 10th and 11th century was a border region between the newly created Hungary and the Kievan Rus'. Since the mid-11th century part of the Kingdom of Hungary (counties Maramaros, Ugocsa, Bereg, Zemplen, Saros).

After World War I and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, it became part of Czechoslovakia.

In November 1938, under the Vienna Arbitration, which was a result of the Munich agreement, Czechoslovakia (and later Slovakia) was forced by Germany and Italy to cede southern third of Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary.

Following Adolf Hitler's seizure of the country in 1939, on March 15 the Carpatho-Ruthenia declared its independence and was immediately invaded and annexed by Hungary. On March 23, Hungary invaded and occupied from the Carpatho-Ukraine some further parts of eastern Slovakia.

After World War II, in June 1945 a treaty ceding Carpatho-Ruthenia to the Soviet Union was signed between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. In 1946, the area was included into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The latter became the independent state of Ukraine in 1991, with Carpato-Ruthenia as a part of that state.

Ruthenians of Carpathian Ruthenia

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

However, because of geographical and political isolation from the main Ukrainian-speaking territory the inhabitants developed some distinctive features. Besides, between 12th and 15th centuries the area has 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 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.

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

Ethnic minorities

Hungarians

to be written

Jews

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 murdered and the handful who survived, were hidden by their neighbours.

Gypsies

to be written

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."