Ruthenian People's Council in L’ubovňa

Ruthenian People's Council in L’ubovňa. A political assembly that sought to exercise self-determination for Transcarpathia after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. On 8 November 1918 several hundred Transcarpathian Ukrainians under the leadership of Rev Omelian Nevytsky convened in Stará L’ubovňa, in the westernmost part of the Prešov region, to discuss the future of their region in the light of the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. The council declared that the Ruthenians of Transcarpathia were of the same nationality as Ruthenians across the Carpathian Mountains, and that they no longer wanted to be united with Hungary. The council then drew up a questionnaire for distribution to the villages, asking particularly if the villagers ‘want[ed] to join Rus’ (Ukraine).’ The original leadership of the L’ubovňa council favored union with the Western Ukrainian National Republic and opposed union with Czechoslovakia. But when the council reconvened in Prešov on 19 November, leadership had been wrested from Nevytsky and his supporters by Antin Beskyd and other Russophiles who wanted Transcarpathia to join Czechoslovakia.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]