1.1. Transcarpathia as an independent geographical and political entity
We can speak about Transcarpathia as an independent geographical and political entity since the 21 December, 1918, when the Ruska Kraina autonomous region was formed in the territories of Bereg, Maramaros, Ung and Ugocsa Counties of Hungary, inhabited by Rusyns.
After World War I, on 10 September, 1919 the Saint-Germain Convention declares Transcarpathia's annexation to the Czecho-Slovakian Republic under the name 'Podkarpatska Rus'. On 2 November, 1938, in accordance with the first Vienna Award, the area of Transcarpathia inhabited by Hungarians became part of Hungary again.
The Allies invalidated the territorial changes made between 1938 and 1940 under the auspices of Germany and Italy, and in 1944 the Soviet army liberated Transcarpathia as part of the Czecho-Slovakian Republic. On 19 November, 1944 the Transcarpathian Ukrainian Communist Party was founded in Mukachevo and its members passed a resolution about Transcarpathian Ukraine's reunion with the Soviet Ukraine.
On 29 June, 1945 the Soviet Union and Czecho-Slovakia signed the treaty concerning the Soviet annexation of Transcarpathia. On 22 January, 1946 the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union rearranged Transcarpathian Ukraine to be the Transcarpathian Region of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Закарпатскa область). According to its administrative structure, it now consists of thirteen districts (район): Berehovo, Khust, Irshava, Mukachevo, Velyka Berezna, Vinohradiv, Mizhhirya, Perechen', Rakhiv, Svalyava, Tyachiv, Volovets and Uzhhorod Districts and the regional centre - the city of Uzhhorod.
When Ukraine became independent in 1991, Transcarpathia remained one of the administrative regions of Ukraine (Закарпатська область).
1.2. The size of the language and ethnic groups living in Transcarpathia, and their proportio within the entire population from the turn of the century.
There are no exact and reliable retrospective data about the nationalities living in the territory of today's Transcarpathia. Some of the reasons for this are as follows:
Transcarpathia as an independent geographical and political entity was formed only in 1918, therefore statistical and demographic surveys concerning this region could not be made before.
Transcarpathia's population experienced several changes of government of various states between 1918 and 1991, and the census data of certain states - because of their attitudes and methods - can only be compared with reservations.
Due to the change of various states within the region, the territory of Transcarpathia was also altered, though in a small degree.
Certain states manipulated the demographic data in their own interests, therefore such data do not always show the real situation.
In the former Soviet Union the statistical data concerning nationalities were kept secret.
Though it is very difficult to compare the different census data (because of the different methods, questions etc.) show that thecensuses carried out after changes in national affiliation display great differences compared to the previous ones, thus the political changes greatly influenced the region's nationality composition.
In both 1880 and 1910 Hungarian statistics, mother tongue data are given. Then the Jewish inhabitants were mainly considered to be people whose mother tongue was either German or Hungarian.
According to the 1921 and 1930 census data, the ratio of Hungarians in Transcarpathia decreased which can be explained by the migration of people due to the change in the policy (on the one hand Hungarian civil servants and brain-workers emigrated to Hungary, while on the other hand Czech and Slovakian officials settled down in Transcarpathia). The Czecho-Slovakian census examining nationalities states that the Jews and Gypsies whose mother tongue is mainly Hungarian make up separate nationalities. Besides, in this period several Slavic settlements were formed within the homogeneous Hungarian settlement area near the Trianon frontier as a result of the agrarian reform.
The 1941, again Hungarian, census produced another change in the nationality ratios.
The first Soviet census in Transcarpathia was carried out in 1959, in which the nationality composition of the population was examined. The census data greatly disguised the real situation. The Soviet army occupying Transcarpathia had carried off the Hungarian and German male population between the ages of 18 and 50 for what was called ‘malenkij robot' (‘little forced labour') to the inner territories of the Soviet Union pursuant to Decree No 0036 of 13 November, 1944. In accordance with the above decree about 40,000-60,000 men were carried off.
It is not surprising that we do not have exact data about the number of those carried off and those who perished because these events were kept strictly secret. However, it is true that these deportations influenced the results of later censuses because retorsions were made on a nationality basis and a lot of Hungarians declared themselves to be Slovakians, Ukrainians, etc. in order to escape from deportation.
The 1970 and 1979 censuses indicate growth in the number of Hungarian population, but the 1989 census registers a decrease. The decline can be explained by the emigration of Hungarians on the one hand, while on the other hand it is due to the fact that the Gypsies, who declared themselves to be Hungarians before, in 1989 admitted their own nationality. That is why the number of Gypsies was doubled by 1989 compared to 1979 while the number of Hungarians showed a relative decrease.
Besides the nationality indices we have at our disposal the data about mother tongue.
From the indices containing mother tongue data one can see that mother tongue and nationality are not always identical in Transcarpathia. The majority of those whose mother tongue is not identical to their nationality consider the Hungarian language to be their mother tongue, hence the number and ratio of people whose mother tongue is Hungarian is higher than the number of people of Hungarian nationality. According to the 1989 census data based on the people's own admission, the number of people in Transcarpathia whose mother tongue is Hungarian is 166,700, that is 13.3 % of the entire population of the region, opposed to the 12.5 % of Hungarian nationality. The mother tongue and nationality are identical for 97.2 % of Transcarpathian Hungarians. We can state the same fact about 98.4 % of Ukrainians, 98.2 % of Rumanians and 95.7 % of Russians.
It is worth observing the 1989 census data separately with respect to Transcarpathia.
Examining the Transcarpathian data one can see that the Hungarian minority is the largest one in the region.
27.3 % of Ukraine's population was not of Ukrainian nationality in 1989. If we take into account the mother tongue data, we can see that it was only 64.6 % of Ukraine's population (33,271,865 people) whose mother tongue was Ukrainian.
The ratio of Hungarians within Ukraine was 0.3 %. Nationally it was 98.4 % of the Russian population, 95.6 % of the Hungarian population and 87.8 % of the Ukrainian population whose mother tongue and nationality was identical.
1.3. The geographical position of the Hungarian community living in Transcarpathia
According to the 1989 census data (this is the latest census in the country) out of the 163,111 Hungarians living in Ukraine 155,711 (95.4 %) live in Transcarpathia, the Hungarians are indigenous only in this region. Though there are some smaller colonies for example in L'viv or Dnipropetrovsk, one cannot prove that there are significant Hungarian communities in Ukraine having more than 1,000 members outside Transcarpathia.
1.4. The structure of settlement of the Transcarpathian Hungarians, the degree of lingual and ethnic variances within the regions inhabited by them, characteristic settlement types
Transcarpathia is lingually and ethnically heterogeneous.
The Hungarians living in Transcarpathia formed a relatively homogeneous block till the end of the 20th century, and the contiguous settlement area has not been completely broken yet. Before the 20th century due to the different way of life of the Hungarian and Slavic ethnic groups, the Hungarian and Slavic settlement areas overlapped each other only in a narrow band. The contiguous structure of settlement of the Hungarians living in the southern flat lands of the region began to be diluted in a significant way by means of the settling of the Slavic population.
Though the Hungarian settlement area is a relatively exactly confinable unit even today, we can find a number of settlements with mixed population in Transcarpathia, not only among the towns, but the villages, too. However, segregation is characteristic of nationalities living together. It is also proved by the investigation of a Soviet ethnographer, according to whom „certain nationalities form a compact group within villages of mixed population, too: some quarters or streets are inhabited by Hungarians, others - by Ukrainians. (...) Such distribution of the settlement is characteristic of villages of town type and even towns themselves”.
There are ten settlements of town status in present-day Transcarpathia: Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, Khust, Berehovo, Vinohradiv, Svalyava, Rakhiv, Tyachiv, Irshava, Chop. In these ten towns the ratio of the Hungarian population was the highest at the turn of the century and at the beginning of it.
The change of the ratio of the Hungarian population in the towns of Transcarpathia is summed up in. According to the census of 1989 Transcarpathia had 1,245,618 inhabitants among whom 346,791 people (27.8 %) lived in towns and 898,827 (72.2 %) lived in villages.
According to the nationality composition of Transcarpathia's village population the ratio of Hungarians in villages is approximately the same as the ratio in comparison to the total population of the region, but that of the Ukrainians is higher, and the ratio of the Russians is considerably lower.
If we examine the ratio of town and village inhabitants within certain nationalities we will see that the characteristic settlement type of the Transcarpathian Hungarians is the village, the case is the same with the Ukrainians, but the majority of the Russians live in towns. The Soviet censuses' data broken down according to settlements are inaccessible even in 1998, that is why we can only examine (by the indices of the 1989 census) how the Transcarpathian Hungarians are distributed between certain districts.
According to the table, 89 % of the Transcarpathian Hungarians live in four districts (the Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, Berehovo and Vinohradiv Districts). These four adjacent districts are situated next to the Ukrainian-Hungarian border. 85.3 % of Hungarians living in Ukraine can be found in these four districts. The only district of the region where the Hungarians live in majority is the Berehovo District. In the Vinohradiv District every fourth person is Hungarian, in the Uzhhorod District every fifth is a Hungarian national. The total population of the four districts mentioned above is 575,267 people, out of this number 139,197 (24.2 %) are Hungarian.
The total number of inhabitants of the Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, Berehovo and Vinohradiv Districts without the towns of county rank (Uzhhorod and Mukachevo) is 375,858 people, out of them 123,305 (32.8 %) people are Hungarian national. About one third of the total population of the four districts of Transcarpathia (without the two biggest cities) is Hungarian. These 123,305 Hungarians make up 75.6 % of the Hungarians living in Ukraine, and 79.2 % of the Hungarians living in Transcarpathia. Thus, three quarters of the Hungarians living in Ukraine and almost four fifths of the Transcarpathian Hungarians live in one block, in a contiguous settlement area.
Those registered as Hungarians live in settlements with 1,000-2,000 inhibitants (24 %) and 2,000-5,000 (23 %). Only one quarter of Hungarians lived in settlements with more than 10 thousand inhabitants and 5.6 % in towns over 100 thousand. In 1989 71.8 % of Hungarians lived in settlements where they formed an absolute majority. To maintain their ethnic awareness this may be positive: 46.8 % of them live in settlements where they constitute over 75 % of the population and only 16.1 % of them live in places where the Hungarian population makes up less than 25 % .
1.5. Migration within the region
The number of people emigrating from Transcarpathia has increased by 1989 compared to 1979, and this number is gradually growing. The table shows that the period till 1979 was characterized by immigration, but beginning with 1989 the ratio of emigrants is much higher.
Since 1989 (i.e. the year when the borders became traversable) the Transcarpathians do not only go to the eastern regions beyond the Carpathians, but (mainly the Hungarians) go to Hungary to get illegal seasonal employment. The increase in the number of people wishing to get employment in Hungary is mainly caused by the fact, that it is difficult for the people of Transcarpathia to travel to work to the former Soviet republics because the borders between the succession states after the collapse of the Soviet Union make it problematic. Unemployment appears as a result of the Ukrainian economic breakdown which forces part of the Transcarpathian population to get seasonal employment in Hungary which has been necessary for more people since 1989 than before.
Earlier the number of the region's population was gradually increasing because of the immigrants, but today Transcarpathia's migration loss goes beyond the total number of settlers and the natural growth of population. In 1995 the number of those who left Transcarpathia never to return exceeded the number of settlers in the region by 2,500 people. In 1996 there were 11,444 emigrants and 9,610 people settled down in the region so the migration loss was 1,834 people. In the first half of 1997 the number of inhabitants of Transcarpathia decreased by 858 people.
49.3 % of those who leave Transcarpathia never to return is Ukrainian, 26.1 % of them is Russian, 13.8 % - Hungarian, 6.5 % - German, 2.8 % - Jewish. 85.6 % of the Russian emigrants and 85.4 % of the Hungarian emigrants settle down in Russia and Hungary respectively, 79.9 % of the Jewish emigrants go to live in Israel or the USA.
There are people who consider that the emigration of the Transcarpathian Hungarians is so numerous that it is a real danger for the community's survival.