Autonomy of Transcarpathia (Subcarpathia)
At the beginning of the 20th century, the northeastern mountainous region of the Kingdom of Hungary, with its mainly Rusyn, Hungarian, Jewish, Slovak and Romanian population, was one of the most underdeveloped areas of the country (In 1910, more than 55% of the population of present-day Transcarpathia was made up of Ruthenians and nearly 31% of Hungarians). At the time of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of 1918, several Rusyn groups expressed their ideas: one wanted to join Czechoslovakia, another wanted to join the independent Ukraine, others insisted on Hungary. The Károlyi government sought to ensure the loyalty of the nationalities and the territorial integrity of Hungary, at least until the Peace Conference, and thus elaborated the territorial autonomy of “Ruska Kraina”. However, the December 1918 act could not be applied, as the region came under foreign occupation. By the end of the war, Czech and Slovak politicians in exile working to create Czechoslovakia had won the support of the representatives of the American Rusyns and the victorious powers to annex the area to the new republic and to establish an autonomous administrative unit in its territory. However, this was not put into practice by the Prague government, and only after the Munich decision, at the end of 1938, declared the autonomy of “Carpathian Ukraine”, with Khust as its centre. Finally, in March 1939, the autonomous region was also occupied by the Hungarian army. Although the Teleki government had seriously considered the creation of a self-governing “Subcarpathian Voivodeship”, the war caused the withdrawal of the bill. After the Soviet army reached the Carpathians, the Czechoslovak government formally ceded Transcarpathia to the Soviet Union in 1945, and the region was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR as “Transcarpathian Oblast” (in 1989 the proportion of Ruthenians/Ukrainians was 78% of the total population and about 13% of Hungarians). It was only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that autonomy could be resumed, but – although in a referendum held at the end of 1991 a majority supported both regional and Hungarian self-government – it could not be realised.