Transcarpathia
Carpathian Ruthenia[a] (Rusyn: Карпатьска Русь, romanized: Karpat'ska Rus')[b] is a historical region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast, with smaller parts in eastern Slovakia (largely in Prešov Region and Košice Region) and the Lemko Region in Poland.
This article is about the historical region. For the autonomous state that existed from 1938–39, see Carpatho-Ukraine. For the modern Ukrainian region, see Zakarpattia Oblast. For the geographical area, see Ukrainian Carpathians.
From the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin (at the end of the 9th century) to the end of World War I (Treaty of Trianon in 1920), most of this region was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the interwar period, it was part of the First and Second Czechoslovak Republics. Before World War II, the region was annexed by the Kingdom of Hungary once again when Germany dismembered the Second Czechoslovak Republic. After the war, it was annexed by the Soviet Union and became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
It is an ethnically diverse region, inhabited mostly by people who regard themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, Rusyns, Lemkos, Boykos, Hutsuls, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, and Poles. It also has small communities of Jewish and Romani minorities. Prior to World War II, many more Jews lived in the region, constituting over 13% of its total population in 1930. The most commonly spoken languages are Rusyn, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, and Polish.
Carpatho-Rus under western eyes[edit]
For 19th-century west-European readers, Ruthenia was an inspiration for "Ruritania", a rustic province lost in forested mountains. Conceived as a Central European kingdom, Ruritania was the setting for several of Anthony Hope's novels, including The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).
A century later Vesna Goldsworthy, in Inventing Ruritania: the Imperialism of the Imagination (1998), theorizes on ideas underpinning western views of Europe's "Wild East", especially Ruthenia and some Slavic Balkan areas. She sees these ideas as highly applicable to Transcarpathia and describes "an innocent process: a cultural great power seizes and exploits the resources of an area, while imposing new frontiers on its mind-map and creating ideas which, reflected back, have the ability to reshape reality.”