The Interest of Carpatho-Ukrainian History
In reviewing the state of research on Eastern Europe at the 1960 meeting of the American Historical Association, the late Henry L. Roberts referred to the dearth of regional and local studies: “On the whole I have found in Eastern European history comparatively little of what one might call the ‘flower in crannied wall’ approach to history: the sense that a single community, or a particular episode, warrants affectionate recording...
and also contains within it much of universal value.’’1 A region of Eastern Europe which appears particularly well suited to serve as an illustration of Professor Roberts’s observations is Carpatho-Ukraine-a small land known also under several alternative names: Transcarpathian Ukraine, Transcarpathia, Subcarpathia, Subcarpathian Ruthenia or Subcarpathian Rus’, and, in earlier times, Hungarian Ruthenia (Rus’). The interest of Carpatho-Ukrainian history consists in its being a typical borderland or transitional territory, where for centuries various political, social, and cultural forces have met and clashed. Thus it is possible to study there, in an almost Iaboratory-Iike fashion, the interaction of factors which have shaped the evolution of that part of the world as a whole.The term Carpatho-Ukraine designates the area inhabited by Ukrainians on the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountain range and the adjacent foothills. All of Carpatho-Ukraine is contained within the basin of the upper Tisza River with its numerous tributaries, ultimately flowing into the Danube. The crest of the Carpathians is the territory’s border with Galicia in the north; toward the south, Carpatho-Ukraine merges into the Hungarian plain. The western and eastern neighbouring lands are, respectively, Slovakia and Transylvania. The contemporary popula- *This paper was left unfinished by the author at the time of his death.
It has been edited under the supervision of Peter L. Rudnytsky.tion of the Transcarpathian province (oblast), an administrative unit of the Ukrainian SSR, is in excess of 1,100,000,2 of whom c. 75 per cent are ethnic Ukrainians. In addition, some tens of thousands of Carpatho- Ukrainians live as a minority in the Presov (Priashiv) region of eastern Slovakia.
Ethnically and religiously the people of Carpatho-Ukraine belong to the East Slavic and Byzantine sphere. The traditional political ties of the territory, however, have been with East-Central Europe: Hungary, the Habsburg Empire, and Czechoslovakia. The early medieval history of Carpatho-Ukraine is moot, owing to the scarcity of reliable sources, and the question of the origins of Slavic settlement in the region has been much debated.3 But it is certain that since the eleventh century the territory of Carpatho-Ukraine found itself permanently included in the Hungarian kingdom. In the course of the late Middle Ages, Hungarian Iatifundialism and serfdom were imposed on the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) peasantry, and this was to determine the social structure of the land until the twentieth century. As an organic part of Hungary, Carpatho-Ukraine passed under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty in 1526. From the sixteenth until the early eighteenth century, it was the ground on which Habsburg absolutism and the recurrent frondes of the Hungarian nobility fought out their battles. The land was affected by Turkish invasions from the south, while the eastern section was for some time controlled by the principality of Transylvania. During the same period, the conflict between the Orthodox and Greek Catholic (Uniate) churches in Carpatho- Ukraine was closely connected, on the one hand, with religious developments in Polish Ukraine, and, on the other hand, with the struggle between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in Hungary. In the second half of the eighteenth century, during the reigns of Maria Theresa (1740-80) and Joseph II (1780-90), Carpatho-Ukraine became the object of the policies of Austrian enlightened despotism, especially in the ecclesiastical and agrarian spheres.
In the nineteenth century, Magyar nationalism came to grips here with the influences of Russian Pan-Slavism.In the course of the present century, virtually all powers active on the East European scene have had, at one time or another, a stake in this land: most obviously Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but also Russia (both tsarist and Soviet), and, to a lesser extent, Germany, Poland, and Romania. The political status of Carpatho-Ukraine changed several times in this century. It belonged to the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy until 1918. As a result of the post-World War I peace settlement, it became a province of the newly created Czechoslovak Republic. Reannexed by Hungary in 1939, it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1945.
The purpose of the preceding remarks has been to give a glimpse of the rich texture of Carpatho-Ukrainian history and to intimate that this history may indeed contain “much of universal value.”