Carpatho-Ukraine philately
For centuries, the area of southwestern Ukraine known as Transcarpathia, Ruthenia, or Carpathian Ukraine was part of the Habsburg Empire rather than czarist Russia. Thus, prior to 1939, the stamps of Austria, Hungary, and then Czechoslovakia had been used in Transcarpathia. Russian or Ukrainian stamps were never employed.
Early in 1939, plans were drawn up to hold the First Carpatho-Ukrainian National Assembly (Soim) in Khust. The date of 2 March was agreed upon and a special regional stamp, with appropriate commemorative stationery and cancellations, was designed to mark the occasion (Figure 3). The 3-koruny blue stamp, depicting the wooden church at Yasinia, was delivered to Khust by the beginning of February.
In actuality, the new stamp was a re-engraving of a 60-haléřů, orange red stamp from the 1928 Tenth Anniversary of Czechoslovak Independence Issue. The printing sheet format consisted of two panes of 100 side-by-side. Each pane had 16 horizontal rows, with the first and last rows consisting of only one stamp at the far left along with six blank tabs. The other 14 rows had seven stamps each. The last tab at the bottom right bore the plate number, either “1″ or “1A” (Figure 4). A total of 900,000 stamps were prepared, with 300,000 forwarded to Khust and the remainder kept in Prague.
Although the semi-military formation known as the Karpatska Sich (Carpathian Sich) put up a spirited defense to the Hungarian advance, it was inadequately armed and trained. By 4:30 pm on 16 March the Khust post office was taken and by 6 pm the entire town was occupied and the Carpatho-Ukrainian Government had fled. The National Assembly Issue was valid, therefore, for only two days. Over the next several days, the remainder of Carpatho-Ukraine fell to Hungarian forces; it became the Hungarian province of Kárpátalja until late 1944.
The short duration of Carpatho-Ukraine’s existence in 1939 – and its lone stamp release – gave rise to the myth that Carpatho-Ukraine was the one country that could be collected complete simply by obtaining the 3-koruny stamp. Such is far from the case, however, as many more Carpatho-Ukrainian stamp issues were produced after the five and a half years of Hungarian occupation ended in the fall of 1944.