The Hungarians in Ukraine (, , tr. uhortsi v Ukraini) number 156,600 people according to the Ukrainian census of 2001 and are the third largest national minority in the country. Hungarians are largely concentrated in the Zakarpattia Oblast (particularly in Berehove Raion and Berehove city), where they form the largest minority at 12.1% of the population (12.7% when native language is concerned). In the area along the Ukrainian border with Hungary (the Tisza River valley), Hungarians form the majority.
Concentrated primarily in Zakarpattia (Trans-Carpathian), in Hungarian those Hungarians are referred to as Kárpátaljai magyarok (Transcarpathian Hungarians), while Zakarpattia is referred to as Kárpátalja.
History
The region of Transcarpathia was part of Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the end of the 9th century to 1918. Historically it was one of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown before it was detached from the Kingdom of Hungary and provisionally attached to the newly created Czechoslovakia in 1918, following the disintegration of Austria-Hungary as a result of World War I. This was later confirmed by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
The Zakarpattia region was briefly part of the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic in 1918 and occupied by the Kingdom of Romania at end of that year. It was later recaptured by Hungary in the summer of 1919. After the defeat of the remaining Hungarian armies in 1919, the Paris Peace Conference concluded the Treaty of Trianon that awarded Zakarpattia to the newly formed Czechoslovakia as the Subcarpathian Rus, one of the four main regions of Czechoslovakia, the others being Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia.
Hungary had sought to restore its historical borders and the revision of the Treaty of Trianon. On 2 November 1938, the First Vienna Award separated territories from Czechoslovakia, including the southern Carpathian Rus' that were mostly Hungarian-populated and returned them to Hungary.
The remaining portion was constituted as an autonomous region of the short-lived Second Czechoslovak Republic. After the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939 and the Slovak declaration of an independent state, Ruthenia declared its independence (Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine)
The Hungarian Teleki government and Miklós Horthy were informed by Hitler on March 12 that they had 24 hours to resolve the Ruthenian question. Hungary responded immediately with the military occupation of the entire Carpathian Ruthenia. As a result of the annexation, Hungary gained a territory with 552,000 inhabitants, 70.6% of whom were Ruthenian, 12.5% Hungarian, and 12% were Carpathian Germans.
The region remained under Hungarian control until the end of World War II in Europe, after which it was occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. Hungary had to renounce the territories won in the Vienna Awards in the Armistice Agreement signed in Moscow on January 20, 1945. The renunciation was reconfirmed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and recorded in the Peace Treaty of 1947.
When the Soviet Army crossed the pre-1938 borders of Czechoslovakia in 1944, Soviet authorities refused to allow Czechoslovak governmental officials to resume control over the region, and in June 1945, President Edvard Beneš formally signed a treaty ceding the area to the Soviet Union. It was then incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, it became part of independent Ukraine as the Zakarpattia Oblast.
Situation of Hungarians in independent Ukraine
Hungary was the first country to recognize Ukraine's independence. Árpád Göncz, who was president of Hungary at the time, was invited to visit the region, and a joint declaration, followed in December 1991 by a state treaty, acknowledged that the ethnic Hungarian minority had collective as well as individual rights. The treaty provided for the preservation of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious identities; education at all levels in the mother tongue; and the ethnic Hungarians' participation in local authorities charged with minority affairs.
It is quite common among the Hungarian minority in Ukraine to hold both Ukrainian citizenship and Hungarian citizenship, although currently Ukrainian law does not recognise dual citizenship.
In the 2014 European Parliament election in Hungary Andrea Bocskor who lives in Ukraine (in the city Berehove) was elected into the European Parliament (for Fidesz). Hence, Bocskor, who is ethnically Hungarian and a citizen of Hungary, became the first elected member of the European Parliament who additionally holds a Ukrainian passport.