Another Short-Lived State of the Carpatho-Rusins – the Hutsul Republic

Abstract

The autumn of 1918 in Europe was quite remarkable in every respect. WWI ended, empires collapsed to give place to new state formations. New states had to form under unequal terms: those supporting the victorious side received privileges, while those who were with the vanquished were given less chance to create their own independent state. Some state formations existed for only a short time and were recognized as states only by their creators. Carpathian Rusins in Poland and Hungary made such attempts. In Hungary, they formed the Hutsul Republic, which existed from January to June 1919 in the village of Yasinia and its environs (modern Transcarpathian region of Ukraine). The article aims at describing the local context of this state entity, its uniqueness, perspectives of local political elites, and the attitude of official Hungary towards the selfproclaimed republic. The authors focus on the local circumstances that made the Hutsul Republic possible (the collapse of the Hungarian state apparatus, the state of soldiers returning from the front, supply disruptions, and epidemics) and highlight the current perception of those events in the national memory and state policy.