RUTHENIA or CARPATHIAN RUTHENIA, an au tonomous part of Hungary, from 1918-39 an autonomous part of Czechoslovakia. Its northern frontier follows the ridge of the Carpathian mountains between Hungary and Poland. Much of the province is mountainous, deeply dissected by incised valleys which often open into broad, fertile basins in their upper courses. The southern edge of the highland is heavily forested with beech on its lower levels and conifers on the higher. But the plain, largely the drainage basin of the upper Tisa and its tributaries, is the important region. Sheltered from the cold winds of the north and north-east it receives the full benefit of the moist south westerly currents and the climate is ideal for cereal and vine cultivation. Maize, oats, wheat, and potatoes, named in the order of importance, occupy the greatest acreage followed by rye, to bacco, and barley, while the lower slopes are devoted to vineyards and orchards of plum and apple trees.
Ruthenia had been a much neglected district of Upper Hun gary, inhabited by a backward population, where agricultural methods were most primitive and therefore insufficient to assure a decent standard of living to the population which in its large majority was Ruthenian, a Slav people closely related to the Ukrainians who lived on the north-eastern slopes of the Car pathian mountains. Industrial activity was therefore very small, illiteracy widespread, and the Ruthenian peasants without any in itiative as a result of centuries of servitude. The Peace Treaty of Trianon brought the country under Czechoslovak administration, guaranteeing its autonomous status. This autonomy was during the first years very much restricted in view of the fact that the Ruthenians first had to be educated to self-government. The Czech
administration founded a large number of schools with Ruthenian as the language of instruction, combatted illiteracy and the low state of public health, and helped to modernize the economic life. Gradually the autonomous rights of the province were extended.
The area of the province was 4,886 sq.mi., the population in 1930, of whom 450,925 were Ruthenians, 115,805 Mag yars, 95,008 Jews, Czechoslovaks, 13,804 Germans, and 12,777 Rumanians. The Ruthenians therefore formed 62.17%, the Magyars 15.96% of the population. With regard to religion 49.52% belonged to the Greek Catholic Church, to the Greek Orthodox Church, and 14.14% to the Jewish faith. In 1930, 30.88% above the age of ten were illiterate. There were only two towns of over 20,00o, Uhhorod (26,669), capital, and Muka6evo (26,123), both in the southern plain.
As a result of the German-Italian award of Nov. 2, 1938, at Vienna, Czechoslovakia lost the southern and more fertile part of Ruthenia to Hungary. The remaining part was constituted as one of the three autonomous governments within the new Czecho Slovakia. Its name was changed to Carpatho-Ukraine and it was regarded as the nucleus of a Pan-Ukrainian national movement the purpose of which was to create a great Ukraine embracing the Ukrainian parts of Poland and of the Soviet Union. The capital was moved to Hust, the area of the new State amounted to 4,283 sq.mi., with a population of 552,124, of whom 512,289 were Ru thenians. On March 14, 1939, Hungary, with Germany's action against Czecho-Slovakia, annexed Ruthenia. (H. Ko.)