Transcarpathia

Lying south of the Carpathian Mountains, Transcarpathia was long isolated, both geographically and politically, from other ethnically Ukrainian lands. A domain of Kyivan Rus, after 1015 Transcarpathia was absorbed by Hungary, of which it remained a part for almost a millennium. With Hungary, it…

Transcarpathia was joined to the new country of Czechoslovakia. Poland incorporated Galicia and western Volhynia, together with smaller adjacent areas in the northwest. The lands east of the Polish border constituted Soviet Ukraine.

On the basis of a negotiated agreement, Transcarpathia voluntarily joined the new country of Czechoslovakia in 1919 under the official name of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (see Czechoslovak history). Its promised autonomy, however, was not implemented until 1938, and

Transcarpathia, which had reverted from Hungary to Czechoslovakia in 1944, was ceded to Ukraine in 1945 by a Czech-Soviet government agreement. In 1945 Ukraine became a charter member of the United Nations and subsequently became a signatory of peace treaties with Germany’s wartime allies—Italy, Finland,…

In Transcarpathia and near the cities of Lviv, Vinnytsya, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Poltava, and Kharkiv are health spas noted for their mineral springs. Spas near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov specialize in mud baths.