HUNGARIANS OF TRANSCARPATHIA IN RELATIONS BETWEEN UKRAINE AND HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE XX-XXI CENTURIES

Abstract

The article is devoted to the influence of the problem of the status and situation of the Hungarian population of the Transcarpathian region of modern Ukraine on the Ukrainian-Hungarian relations. Based on a wide range of sources - legislative acts, interstate agreements and other diplomatic documents, statements of politicians and public figures, published in the Hungarian and Ukrainian press, as well as in the media of other countries, the dynamics of changes in the approaches of the two countries to the Hungarian issue in Transcarpathia throughout the post-Soviet period is studied. The prerequisites and reasons for the aggravation of relations between Ukraine and Hungary in the 2010s are determined, including both the features of the historical, cultural and socio-economic development of Transcarpathia itself, and the transformation of the political systems of the two countries. The key factors that provoked the acute Ukrainian-Hungarian crisis in the mid-second half of the 2010s were the educational and language policy of Kiev, aimed at Ukrainization, as well as the refusal to make concessions on the autonomy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia. At the same time, the issue of Transcarpathian Hungarians is only part of a larger problem of Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy - an attempt to form an ethnocentric model in a multicultural society.