Zakarpattia Oblast (), also referred to as simply Zakarpattia (Ukrainian: Закарпаття; Hungarian: Kárpátalja), Subcarpathia, or Transcarpathia in English, is an oblast located in the Carpathian Mountains in western 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.
Zakarpattia Oblast was established on 22 January 1946, following Czechoslovakia's abandonment of its claim to the territory of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Czech and also Slovak: Podkarpatská Rus) under a treaty between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The territory of Subcarpathian Ruthenia was then taken over by the USSR and became part of the Ukrainian SSR.
During the Ukrainian independence referendum held in 1991, a referendum on autonomy was also held in the region. 78% of voters voted in favor of autonomy, but the region was never granted an autonomous status.
Situated in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine, except the southwestern Hungarian-populated region that belongs to the Hungarian plain, Zakarpattia Oblast borders four countries: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Since the Carpathian Mountains have a reputation as an important tourist and travel destination (home to many ski and spa resorts), they play a major role in the oblast's economy.
With a land area of almost , the oblast is ranked 23rd by area and 15th by population; according to the 2001 Ukrainian Census, the population of Zakarpatska Oblast stood at 1,254,614. In 2022, the region's population was estimated at approximately This total includes people of many nationalities, among which Hungarians, Romanians, and Rusyns constitute significant minorities in some of the province's cities, while in others, they form the majority of the population (as in the case of Berehove).
Name The oblast's name Zakarpattia (), which translates as "Transcarpathian" or literally "beyond the Carpathians," refers to its location on the western side of the Carpathian Mountains, a major mountain range that forms an arc across Central and Southeast Europe. As a result, the oblast is also often called Transcarpathian Oblast or Transcarpathia, although the historical region of Transcarpathia also includes areas outside the oblast, specifically small parts of Slovakia (mostly in Prešov Region and Košice Region) as well as Poland's Lemko Region. Other historical names for both the oblast and broader region include Transcarpathian Ruthenia, Transcarpathian Ukraine, and Carpathian Ruthenia. The region is also sometimes referred to as "Subcarpathian" (which translates literally to "below (or "feet of") the Carpathians"), such as in Subcarpathian Rus' and Subcarpathia. This name refers to the area's location in the lower-elevation Carpathian Basin (also known as the Pannonian Basin) and is also a reference to the largely overlapping physical geographical region of Prykarpattia (the Ukrainian name for Ciscarpathia), which encompasses the northeastern foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.
Many historical names included Rus''' or Ruthenian when referring to the region because of the area's large population of Rusyns (also known as Carpatho-Rusyns, Ruthenians, or Rusnaks), an East Slavic ethnic group that speaks the Rusyn language and descends from the original East Slavic population that had inhabited the northeastern regions of the Eastern Carpathians since the Early Middle Ages. Transcarpathian/Carpathian Ruthenia, Subcarpathian Rus', and the Ukrainian diminutive name Rusinko are amongst some of the names that reference the Rusyn-speaking population.
The oblast has various names in other languages, including: ()
() (translit. ) (translit. ) Rusyn: Закарпатська область
While the name Transcarpathia is a translation of the Ukrainian version of the name, the Hungarian name translates as Subcarpathia, in line with the names of other Hungarian regions such as Alpokalja, a sub-Alpine territory in western Hungary. The Transcarpathia name and its variants instead reflect the East Slavic language practice of emphasizing the area's location "past" or "beyond" the Carpathians (as opposed to "below"). Western European languages have variously translated from the Hungarian or East Slavic language versions of the name, with the English and French names generally deriving from the Hungarian Subcarpathia.
History
Early history
According to the Chronicon Pictum, the earliest state established in Zakarpattia was Ungvari in 677 AD. The name Ungvar derives from a migration of the Onogurs"Attila and the Nomad Hordes" Dr David Nicolle, 1990 of Poltava, who were ruled by the northern Kubiar"Bulgarian contributions to European civilization" Atanas Bozhkov, 1994 sons of Kubrat. The Onogur tribes entered Etelköz through the Verecke Pass. Some of Ungvari's Kubiars under Khan-Tuvan eventually joined the Rus' to form the Rus' Khaganate. In the late 9th century, Ungvari's ruling Árpád dynasty began to fulfil their ambitions for the Carpathian basin, where, by 895, they had relocated to rule over the Magyars.
According to the Gesta Hungarorum, as Prince Álmos entered on the castle of Hung and there he appointed his son Árpád as the primary ruler, hence he was called of the leader of Hungvária, while all of his valiant soldiers were known as Hungvárus, so since then all the Magyars have been known by this name internationally.
In 895, the Hungarian tribes entered the Carpathian Basin from here through the Verecke pass, and the lands of Transcarpathia were influenced by the Principality of Hungary since 895, which transformed the Kingdom of Hungary in 1000. In Transcarpathia, the Voivodeship of Maramureș, granted to a small Romanian nobility, was established in 1343. The region was reorganized into the Máramaros County in 1402.
Since 1867, it was part of the Hungarian side of Austria-Hungary until the latter's demise at the end of World War I. It approximately consisted of four Hungarian counties (comitatus): Bereg, Ung, Ugocsa, and Maramaros. This region was briefly part of the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic in 1918. The region was occupied by Romania by the end of that year, mostly the eastern portion, such as Rakhiv and Khust. It was later recaptured by the Hungarian Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919. Finally, after the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, it became part of Czechoslovakia with a supposedly equal level of autonomy as the Slovak lands and Bohemia-Moravia-Czech Silesia (Czech lands). The province has a unique footnote in history as the only region in the former Czechoslovakia to have had an American governor: its first governor was Gregory Zhatkovich, an American citizen who had earlier emigrated from the region and represented the Rusyn community in the U.S. Zhatkovich was appointed governor by Czechoslovakia's first president, T. G. Masaryk in 1920, and served for about one year until he resigned over differences regarding the region's autonomy. In 1928, it adopted the name of Subcarpathian Rus' (). Nevertheless, such autonomy was granted as late as in 1938, after detrimental events of the Munich Conference; until then, this land was administered directly from Prague by the government-appointed provincial presidents () and/or elected governors ().
Following the Munich Agreement, the southern part of the region was awarded to Hungary under the First Vienna Award in 1938. The remaining portion was constituted as an autonomous region of the short-lived Second Czechoslovak Republic.
World War II
After the Slovak declaration of an independent state on 14 March, the next day, Carpatho-Ukraine was proclaimed as an independent republic but was immediately occupied and annexed by Hungary,Subtelny, p. 458 and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed a day after. Voloshyn asked Hitler for support and recognition in advance, but received no answer. The state is known as 'the one-day republic' because it did not exist more than one day. The military operations and the occupation of Carpatho-Ukraine were finished by the Hungarian troops on March 18.
The Hungarian invasion was followed by a few weeks of terror in which more than 27,000 people were shot dead without trial or investigation. Over 75,000 Ukrainians decided to seek asylum in the Soviet Union; of those, almost 60,000 died in Gulag prison camps. Others joined the Czechoslovak Army. Today is the 80th anniversary of the proclamation of the Carpathian Ukraine , Ukrinform (15 March 2019)
The major Jewish communities of the region had existed in Mukachevo, Ungvar, and Khust. During the German occupation of Hungary (March–December 1944), almost the entire Jewish population was deported; few survived the Holocaust.
In October 1944, the region was occupied by the Red Army. On 26 November 1944, the First Congress of People's Committees of Zakarpattia Ukraine took place in Mukachevo, and sham elections were organized on 10–25 November 1944.First Congress of People's Committees of Zakarpattia Ukraine (ПЕРШИЙ З'ЇЗД НАРОДНИХ КОМІТЕТІВ ЗАКАРПАТСЬКОЇ УКРАЇНИ) . Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia. On 29 June 1945, Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, seeking to postpone the inevitable incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet Bloc, signed a treaty formally ceding the area to the Soviet Union, and the next month it was united with the Ukrainian SSR through the "Manifest for unification with Soviet Ukraine" that was accepted by the 1st Congress of People's Committees of Sub-Carpathian Ukraine without any knowledge or approval of the common people. It was then annexed into the Soviet Union as Zakarpattia Oblast.
In the Soviet Union Between 1945 and 1947, the new Soviet authorities fortified the new borders and, in July 1947, declared Transcarpathia as "a restricted zone of the highest level", with checkpoints on the mountain passes connecting the region to mainland Ukraine.With Their Backs to the Mountains: A History of Carpathian Rus? and Carpatho-Rusyns, by Paul Robert Magocsi, Central European University Press, 2015
In December 1944, the National Council of Transcarpatho-Ukraine set up a special people's tribunal in Uzhgorod to try and condemn all collaborationists with the previous governments, both Hungary and Carpatho-Ukraine. The court was allowed to hand down either 10 years of forced labour or the death penalty. Several Ruthenian leaders, including and , were condemned and executed in May 1946. Avgustyn Voloshyn also died in prison. The extent of the repression showed to many Carpatho-Ruthenian activists that it was not possible to find an accommodation with the coming Soviet regime, as it had been with all previous ones.
After breaking the Greek Catholic Church in Eastern Galicia in 1946, Soviet authorities pushed for the return to Orthodoxy of Greek-Catholic parishes in Transcarpathia too, including by engineering the accident and death of recalcitrant bishop Theodore Romzha on 1 November 1947. In January 1949, the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo was declared illegal; remaining priests and nuns were arrested, and church properties were nationalised and parcelled for public use or lent to the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) as the only accepted religious authority in the region.