BEREHOVE, UKRAINE – On arriving in Berehove, a city of 24,000 people in Zakarpattya Oblast some 800 kilometers west of Kyiv, a person could be forgiven for thinking they’d crossed the border into Hungary by mistake.
Most of the street signs in Berehove (or Beregszasz, as the city is named in Hungarian) are in both Ukrainian and Hungarian, the Hungarian language can frequently be heard being spoken on the streets, and 50 percent of the population identifies as ethnic Hungarian.
Out of a population of more than 1 million people in Zakarpattya Oblast, more than 150,000 belong to Ukraine’s Hungarian-speaking minority, living mostly in the oblast’s Mukacheve, Tyachiv, Hust, Vynogradiv, Berehivsky and Uzhhorod districts. Berehivsky district has the highest concentration of Hungarians – 80 percent of the population.
In fact, the territories of modern Zakarpattya Oblast (12,777 square kilometers) belonged to Hungary until 1945, when, as a wartime ally of Nazi Germany, Hungary was on the losing side of World War II. After the war, the Soviet Union included the territories of Zakarpattya in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Zakarpattya became part of modern, independent Ukraine.
But despite changing countries three times in the last 70 years without moving an inch, Ukraine’s Hungarian population has no desire to separate from the rest of Ukraine today, local experts say.
“This is a multicultural land of peace. It’s a very big mistake to think that we’re separatists,” said Karolina Darcsi, a political scientist and a professor at the Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian Institute, told the Kyiv Post.
Rumors of Hungarian separatist feelings in Zakarpattya began to spread in 2014, when the radical Hungarian party Jobbik declared in its party program that the lands of Zakarpattya should be returned to Hungary.
“We continue to demand full territorial autonomy and the related rights of self-governance in terms of language use, education and culture in Zakarpattya,” read the policy statement on Jobbik’s website.
But Darcsi and her fellow Hungarian Ukrainians aren’t Jobbik supporters.
“There is a miscommunication problem,” said Dorcsi. “Jobbik is a radical pro-Russian party. Here in Zakarpattya they have no support. (Jobbik) are in opposition in the current Hungarian parliament.”
Jobbik won 23 seats in the 199-seat Hungarian parliament in the last elections to the legislature, in 2014.
Endre Szalipszki, the Hungarian consul general in Berehove, also dismissed fears of separatism.
“See if those who scream about separatism actually have any power,” Szalipszki told the Kyiv Post. “Every country has its radicals,” he added.
He also said that since Hungary is a member of the European Union and NATO, nobody could seriously believe that Budapest could have any territorial claims against Ukraine.
“There’s no such thing as Hungarian separatism,” he added.
Yaroslav Galas, a spokesperson of Zakarpattya Governor Hennadii Moskal, told the Kyiv Post many people in Zakarpattya have Hungarian and Ukrainian passports, although Ukrainian law does not allow dual citizenship.
“A couple of years ago Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban hinted that Hungary would protect the rights of its people living in Ukraine,” said Galas.
“But they’re not getting Hungarian passports for political reasons. They just want to earn money in the European Union.”
Neighbors’ help
The Hungarian authorities and their Ukrainian counterparts in Zakarpattya cooperate well, Szalipszki said. There are eight ethnic Hungarian lawmakers with seats on the oblast’s council.
During a tour of the consulate building in Berehove, Szalipszki stops to talk to dozens of Ukrainians and ethnic Hungarians who have come to fill in documents needed to obtain Hungarian citizenship, or to apply for a border zone permit, which allows them to cross into Hungary without first having to obtain a visa.
“Every Ukrainian who lives near the Hungarian border can apply for such permit, which simplifies the process of getting into Hungary and working in the EU,” said the consul general, gesturing to a meter-high stack of folders with applicants’ documents.
More and more Hungarians and Ukrainians in the area want to do just that – Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, the start of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas, and the ensuing economic turmoil in Ukraine have slashed the value of earnings in Ukraine, and made working abroad even more attractive.
“In 2016 alone, 68 health workers fom Berehove’s central hospital have left Ukraine and found work in the European Union,” said Darcsi.
“Soon there might be no one able to give us proper medical treatment here.”
The average wage in the region is only Hr 2,000 ($76) per month. Ten kilometers away, across the Hungarian border, Ukrainians can earn 100,000 forints (more than $350), she added.
To encourage people to stay and work in Zakarpattya, Hungary has set up a program of special benefits for ethnic Hungarians in the oblast.
The consul-general said the Hungarian parliament has created special business grants for people who want to start a business in Zakarpattya. With a detailed business plan, written in Hungarian, and a 20 percent contribution to the cost of setting up a business, residents of Zakarpattya can win business grants of 15,000 euros or more from the Hungarian parliament.
“Of course, all of the money has to be transferred to bank accounts. A special commission checks the applicant before giving the money, and then closely monitors the development of his or her business here,” said Szalipszki.
Hungary is also supporting Hungarian education and culture in the region. Hungary fully finances the Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian Institute, an educational institution that was created in 1994, supporting it through a special fund. Dorcsi said Hungary pays the salaries of all the staff of the institute.
“We have a license from Ukraine’s Education Ministry as a private higher education institute,” said Darcsi. “The teaching language here is Hungarian. In the first year, students can also take exams in Ukrainian. But from the second year they have to learn Hungarian. We offer special language courses for everybody.”
Szalipszki said Ukrainian health and education workers at state institutions who speak Hungarian can apply for special grants of 100,000 forints (more than $350) a year as a bonus to their wages.
There are 90 Hungarian schools and kindergartens in Zakarpattya Oblast. The parents of kids enrolled in them can also qualify for financial compensation from Hungary.
“The (Hungarian) authorities reimburse the money parents pay for school meals,” said Dorcsi. “My Ukrainian friend even put her kids into a Hungarian kindergarten because of that.”
Local power
With the new bill on the voluntary unification of communities, which was adopted in 2015 as part of the decentralization of government process in Ukraine, ethnic Hungarians in Zakarpattya Oblast asked the local government to create a special Hungarian district that would include all the main population centers where Hungarian communities live.
“All the Hungarian organizations in Zakarpattya came together, created a map for our unification, and submitted an appeal to the oblast council. They have been considering it for six months already,” said Dorcsi.
Galas, however, said that according to the decentralization reform plans the 13 districts of Zakarpattya Oblast will be re-divided into 38 unified communities. The law stipulates that towns and villages can unify with a local population center, for instance Berehove, if they lie within a 20 kilometer radius of it. But since the main population centers of the Hungarian community in Zakarpattya are more than 20 kilometers apart, it would be against the law for them to form a single unified community, according to Galas.
Darcsi said Hungarians want to be united at the local government level because they have been living in this land for a thousand years, and have a shared culture and traditions.
“We’ll see how the situation with special status for Donbas ends. If the Russian minority gets special rights, all the minorities will get them,” she said.
Szalipszki said because of the EU’s sanctions against Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine, Hungary has lost millions of dollars, and a powerful trading partner.
However, as a member of the EU, the state will continue to support Hungarians in Ukraine, just as it supports Ukraine. All Hungary wants in return is less corruption in Ukraine, and more respect for European values, such as protecting ethnic minorities’ rights, he said.
“There’s no threat of a ‘little Hungary’ (in Ukraine),” Szalipszki said. “Ukraine should grant self-rule to all the ethnic minority regions, and take into account the historical and cultural traditions of their peoples. If Crimean Tatars can be granted autonomy, why not to give more power to the Romanians of Chernivtsi Oblast, or to the Hungarians in Zakarpattya?”
