Subcarpathian Scientific Society

Subcarpathian Scientific Society (Russian: Подкарпатское общество наук; Podkarpatskoe obshchestvo nauk; Hungarian: Kárpátaljai Tudományos Társásag). A scholarly institution in Uzhhorod, created and supported by the Hungarian occupational regime in the years 1941–4. Its goal was to counter the influence of the Transcarpathian Russophiles by fostering an independent, pro-Hungarian ‘Ruthenian’ national identity, culture, and language (see Ruthenians). The society had 35 scholarly members (some of them Hungarians nominated by the regime) in three sections, science, literature and linguistics, and art and ethnography. Its presidents were Antonii Hodinka (in Budapest) and Rev Oleksander Ilnytsky, and the de facto director and editor in chief was I. Haraida. Using etymological spelling the society published the semimonthly Lyteraturna nedilia (1941–4), the monthly Rus’ka molodezh (1942–4), I. Haraida’s officially sanctioned Ruthenian school grammar (1940), 29 books of short stories, 8 children’s books, 2 agricultural almanacs, a bibliography of Transcarpathia (1944), a few collections of folktales and folk songs, and popular educational books and translations of world classics by Transcarpathian writers (eg, of William Shakespeare’s Richard III [1942]). Using the local Transcarpathian dialect and Hungarian it also published the bilingual scholarly quarterly Zoria/Hajnal (1941–3). To acquaint the Hungarian public with Ruthenian culture, it also published a few monographs and an anthology of Transcarpathian short stories (1943) in Hungarian translation.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]