Hungarians in Ukraine - History

History

Today's Zakarpattia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary since its foundation in the year 1000. From 1867, Hungary was a constituent part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until the latter's demise at the end of World War I. The Zakarpattia region was briefly part of the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic in 1918 and occupied by Romania at end of that year. It was later recaptured by Hungary in the summer of 1919. After the defeat of the remaining Hungarian armies in 1919, the Paris Peace Conference concluded the Treaty of Trianon that awarded Zakarpattia to the newly formed Czechoslovakia as the Subcarpathian Rus, one of the four main regions of that new state, the others being Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia.

During the World War II German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the southern, Hungarian majority 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 March 15, 1939 and the Slovak declaration of an independent state, Ruthenia declared its independence (Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine) but it was immediately occupied and later annexed by Hungary.

When the Soviet Army crossed the pre-1938 borders of Czechoslovakia in 1944, Soviet authorities refused to allow Czechoslovak governmental officials to resume control over the region, and in June 1945, President Edvard Beneš formally signed a treaty ceding the area to the Soviet Union. It was then incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, it became part of independent Ukraine as the Zakarpattia Oblast.