Zakarpattia Oblast - History

History

The lands of Zakarpattia for a long time were part of the Kingdom of Hungary which eventually transformed into the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary until the latter's demise at the end of World War I. This region was briefly part of the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic in 1918. The region was soon occupied by Romania by the end of that year, mostly the eastern portion such as Rakhiv and Khust. It was later recaptured by Hungary in the summer of 1919. Under the name Subcarpathian Rus, after the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 it was annexed to Czechoslovakia with a supposedly equal level of autonomy as Slovakia, Bohemia, and Moravia.

During the World War II German occupation of Czechoslovakia, 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. After the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939 and the Slovak declaration of an independent state, Carpathian Ruthenia declared its independence as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, but was immediately occupied and later annexed by Hungary.

During the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, almost the entire Jewish population was deported; few survived the Holocaust. In October 1944 the independence of the Sub-Carpathian Ukraine was restored by the Red Army. In June 29, 1945, Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formally signed a treaty ceding the area and the next month it was united with the Ukrainian SSR through the "Manifest for unification with the Soviet Ukraine" that was accepted by the 1st Congress of People's Committees of Sub-Carpathian Ukraine. It was then incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR as Zakarpattia Oblast. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, it became part of independent Ukraine.

The province has a unique footnote in history as the only region in the former Czechoslavakia to have had an American governor: its first governor was Gregory Zatkovich, an American citizen who had earlier emigrated from the region and represented the Rusyn community in the U.S. Zatkovich was appointed governor by Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomáš Masaryk in 1920, and served for about one year until he resigned over differences regarding the region's autonomy.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held an independence referendum in which the residents of Zakarpattia were asked about the Zakarpattia Oblast Council's proposal for self-rule. About 78% of the oblast's population voted in favor of autonomy; however, it was not granted. There were also propositions of separating from Ukraine to rejoin Czechoslovakia, but after Czechoslovakia's dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993, these ideas have been rendered largely moot.

On 25 October 2008, delegates to the Congress Of Carpathian Ruthenians declared the formation of the Republic of Carpathian Ruthenia. The prosecutor’s office of Zakarpattia region has filed a case against Russian Orthodox Church priest Dmytro Sidor and Yevhen Zhupan, an Our Ukraine party deputy of the Zakarpattia regional council and chairman of the People’s Council of Ruthenians, on charges of encroaching on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.