The Hungarians in Transcarpathia

Abstract

Abstract. The general public knows but little about the Hungarian community living in Transcarpathia, Ukraine. For instance, the overall minority survey of the Minority Rights Group has a section about Ukraine in which there is only a short reference to the fact that Hungarians live in Ukraine at all (cf. Matveeva, Melvin & Pattle, 1997). Therefore we believe that it is worth reviewing the situation of the Transcarpathian Hungarian community. There were some English language surveys published about it before (e.g. Vardy, 1989; Magocsi, 1996), but these, because of their character, could not deal with all those factors in detail which, in our opinion, are important in relation to Transcarpathian Hungarians. Such a question is, for instance, the relation between the Ukrainian state language and Transcarpathian Hungarians about which the international general public has been able to read almost nothing as yet. The present volume therefore introduces the status of the Hungarian community living in Transcarpathia. By the term ‘Transcarpathian Hungarians’ we describe that indigeneous community of Transcarpathia which is made up by people of Hungarian nationality and/or people whose mother tongue is Hungarian. Transcarpathia is the Transcarpathian region of present-day Ukraine (in Ukrainian - Закарпатська область). Its territory is 12800 km2, and it borders on Poland and the Lviv region in the north, the Ivano-Frankivsk region in the east, Romania in the south, Hungary in the south-west and Slovakia in the west. It is embraced by the Carpathian Mountains as a natural boundary in the east and the River Tisza winding along the frontier in the south (Magocsi, 1996:25).