Vincent Shandor, Carpatho-Ukraine in the Twentieth Century (1997)

Carpatho-Ukraine is a region bordering Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, populated by members of all those ethnicities, not to mention the Ruthenians. Over the years, it has been annexed and abandoned by various powers. I forget how I first heard about it, but back in 2013, I got interested in it and read Republic for a Day, a book by a British journalist who was present during its short-lived status as its own nation: after Czechoslovakia broke up in 1939, it declared itself an independent republic, but only days later, it was annexed by Nazi-backed Hungary. Several years later, I read The Lost Embassy, a novel that fictionalizes these events.

Carpatho-Ukraine in the Twentieth Century: A Political and Legal History by Vincent Shandor

Published: 1997
Read: March 2026

Carpatho-Ukraine in the Twentieth Century is a more serious work than both of those, the work of a leading scholar of Carpatho-Ukraine who was a key figure in local politics during the 1930s. The book is published by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute, and thus very much aimed at scholars—if you're looking at a book providing a general, accessible history of the region, this is not it, nor does it intend to be it. Shandor assumes you know a lot! Unfortunately, an accessible history of Carpatho-Ukraine has never been written in English as far as I can tell, so this is what you've got to work with.

I found that Shandor is one of those scholars who gives you a lot of details, but it's sometimes hard to extract the narrative. Occasionally, he's obviously trying to settle scores against other people from the time of the events he chronicles—still, this clearly comes from a place of deep passion for the region and its people, and that resonates through its pages.

This gives the kind of context and scope you just don't get from Republic for a Day. I finished the book with a much clearer understanding of how Carpatho-Ukraine related to the other countries around it, and how it got tangled up in their political games and false promises.

Note that the book's title claims to cover "the twentieth century," but it really pretty much stops at 1945, I think because that's when Carpatho-Ukraine was absorbed into the USSR, and Shandor (I am pretty sure) was never able to go back after that. The book was published in 1997, but he lived until 2003; I hope he was able to reconnect with his homeland.