After completing my survey of Liechtenstein correspondence franked with the 1850 first issue of Austria (GSM, May 2005), I decided to produce a similar survey for Carpatho-Ukraine. Carpatho-Ukraine is a forgotten part of Europe with a very chequered history and it is important to know a little of that history in order to make sense of its postal history and why it also used the stamps of Austria.

Carpatho-Ukraine has an area of 12,500 square kilometres, and in 1850 its population was about 700,000. Today it has reached about 1,250,000. The Turks defeated the Hungarians at the battle of Mohács in 1526, but they never penetrated as far north as Carpatho- Ukraine. As a consequence, the Carpatho- Ukraine region became part of Transylvania, ruled in the 17th century by the R’kozácys, who spent much time in fighting the Habsburgs in Vienna. The native population are Ruthenians, speaking a language close to Ukrainian, using the Cyrillic alphabet.

All the top official posts were held by Hungarians and efforts were made to Magyarise the country. There was also a sprinkling of Jews, just as poor as their neighbours, but some were beginning to develop businesses. Some Hungarians and even a few Austrians and Germans saw investment possibilities and bought land cheaply, mainly woodland.

Backward and Underdeveloped

Until 1918 Carpatho-Ukraine was part of the Austrian Empire ruled by Hungary. It was backward and underdeveloped, mountainous and thickly wooded, with wolves and bears in the mountains. In 1850 there was no industry, with the exception of some sawmills, the main export was timber, and in the east, at Akna Slatina, there was a large salt mine. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered. Austria became a small country surrounded by newly independent nations—Czechoslovakia and Poland in the north, while Italy won its northern provinces. Worst hit was Hungary, which lost about half its territory. In the north Slovakia, in the east Transylvania went to Romania, in the south Croatia, Slovenia and the Dalmatian coast to Yugoslavia, Trieste to Italy and in the west some land bordering Austria. I remember, before World War II seeing a square in Budapest with four statues—North, East, South and West—representing the lost territories, and in the centre of the square was a flagpole with the Hungarian tricolour always flying at half-mast mourning the losses.

The peace conference at Trianon (1920) which dealt with Hungarian territories, had a problem with the Carpatho-Ukraine. ethnically, its closest relative was Ukraine but the two countries did not have a common border.The Carpatho-Ukraine was cut off from it by newly formed Poland and as a consequence it was attached to Czechoslovakia, also a Slav country, with the aim of ultimately obtaining autonomy.

Short-lived peace

The peace after World War I was shortlived in this area, however. The Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 led by Béla Kun rejected the treaty and attacked Slovakia and the Carpatho-Ukraine in the north. After initial successes, an allied offensive launched by Romania led to the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The northern Romanian army occupied the easternmost part of the Carpatho-Ukraine and a narrow strip in the south east, until 1920. Czechoslovak Legions, which had fought in Russia, France and Italy, with some French help, defeated the Hungarians, who had succeeded, by invading Slovakia, in cutting off the Czechoslovak forces in the east.

In 1938, following the Munich meeting of Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain, when Neville Chamberlain, returning to London, descended from his aircraft waving a paper and proclaiming ‘Peace for our time’, Hitler occupied the Sudetenland and on 14 March Slovakia declared its independence. Now separated geographically from Prague, Carpatho- Ukraine became de facto independent.

The first stamp

In the early evening of the 14th, it was announced on the Khust radio that Carpatho-Ukraine had declared its independence. The following morning a handwritten decree was handed to the Khust post office authorising the sale of stored stamps (issued by Czechoslovakia to mark the inaguration of the first Carpatho-Ukrainian Parliament—SG 393c) as the new country’s first postal issue. A telegram was sent to Prague around at 10.30 a.m. informing postal officials of the stamp release, and the 600,000 stamps at the Philatelic Section in the Czech capital went on sale later that day. Around midafternoon on the 15th, the elected deputies met in Khust and passed a bill officially declaring Carpatho-Ukraine a sovereign republic. Hungary now invaded Carpatho-Ukraine and, although a formation known as the Karpatska Sich (Carpathian Sich) put up a fight, it was inadequately armed and trained and could not stop the Hungarian advance. By 4.30 p.m. on 16 March the Khust post office was captured and by 6.00 p.m. the rest of the town was occupied and the Carpatho-Ukrainian Government fled. The National Assembly issue was valid 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.

In 1944 Soviet troops, accompanied by the Czechoslovak Brigade, liberated the Carpatho-Ukraine. Officials sent by the Czechoslovak government in exile in London tried to take over, but the Soviets had other ideas. In every town and village People’s Committees were formed and on 26 November their Congress elected a National Council of the Carpatho-Ukraine, in effect, its government, which also ran the postal service and issued the first Carpatho-Ukrainian stamps in 1945. Finally, on 29 June 1945 Czechoslovakia signed, in the Kremlin, a treaty ceding the Carpatho-Ukraine to the Soviet Union. It was incorporated into the Ukraine and is now the south western corner of that country.

The philatelic story

The break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire also changed the philatelic picture of central Europe. Hungary had had its own stamps before World War I and so had Romania, but most of the new countries had to take emergency steps such as overprinting the stamps of other countries. Another big task was the provision of new handstamps—and that leads me to postal history.

Postal historians in all the successor countries were taking a new look at their collections. A considerable demand arose for forerunners of the newly formed nations. This also applied to Carpatho- Ukraine, but life was very difficult there. The destruction caused by two world wars and a civil war was great. There were never many philatelists in that part of the world, and not many survived or returned.

There was a shortage of food and other necessities, like paper. Offices had to use whatever they found, and when the Hungarian stationery ran out they took pre-war files, even old Czech ones, and wrote at a right angles across the typing. The Russian soldiers were also short of paper, and there were no envelopes. So they neatly folded their letters home into a nice triangle. These are the so-called ‘scarf ’ letters. It did not take long for the new postal service of the National Council to get to work. The first available stamps were the ones with the overprint ‘CSP 1944’ on Hungarian stamps found at post offices. These overprints were produced on 4 December 1944 in Khust for the Czechoslovak officials who came from London, and they were used in five districts under their authority, but shortly afterwards the National Council Post Office took over. They also overprinted Hungarian leftovers and even stamps with the ‘CSP 1944’ overprint with ‘Pochta Zakarpatska Ukraina’ and new values. The Michel catalogue says that this overprint was issued on 10 February 1945, but Dr Béla Simády, the author of the basic book on the Carpatho- Ukraine, says that it was 1 February.

No currency

There is no currency shown in the overprints, and there was a good reason for this. At that time in the Carpatho-Ukraine three currencies were valid—the Hungarian Pengö, the Russian Rouble and Czech Crown. On 1 May 1945 their own stamps were issued, a set of three symbolic designs for the liberation. These were followed in June 1945 by a set of six values of identical design showing a five-pointed star with hammer and sickle. A month later a reprint of the 10 and 20 values followed, with the year 1945 added. The Soviet Post Office took over in November, and these stamps lost their postal validity on 15 November 1945.

Surprisingly enough, pre-philatelic mail from the Carpatho-Ukraine is fairly freely available. For this thanks must go to one man—the Catholic Bishop of Munkács, Basil Popovics, whose seat was in Ungvár. Popovics was in office for at least 25 years before stamps were issued in 1850, and from a cover I have seen addressed to him, he was still there in 1867. Popovics was a Ruthenian, and as his name shows, one of his forefathers must also have been a priest (Popovic = Son of a priest), but of the Orthodox Church, otherwise he could not have been married. His mail is addressed in Hungarian, some in Ruthenian, but a large part also in Latin. This is logical: first of all he was a Catholic Bishop, and second, until after the middle of the 19th century Latin was the official language in Hungary, used in the courts, etc.

Archives plundered

Popovics was a strict disciplinarian. Every priest in his diocese had to send him a monthly report. All these reports were, naturally, filed in the archives of the Munkács bishopric. Thus there were there letters from practically every village in the Carpatho-Ukraine; nicely written letters, with neat addresses and the local handstamp. For the clergy letter writing was no problem, because ecclesiastical mail was on the same level as official mail—free of charge. And that had to be stated in the left bottom corner of every such letter.

Bishop Popovics did not have philatelists in mind, but someone else did. Shortly after the liberation of the Carpatho- Ukraine in 1944, the Bishop’s archives were plundered. It is not known by whom, but thanks to the thieves there was a flood of beautiful pre-philatelic covers with neat handstamps on the market after the war.

The original supply must have dried up by now, but covers continue to appear, on the market as collections are broken up. The postal service functioned very well, considering the problems, but very little mail went abroad, some to Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania, but not to other countries. Also, mail abroad was censored, as was some inland mail.

Post Office history

Under Austrian rule the Post Office was very slow to open post offices in the Carpatho-Ukraine. The first three offices were opened in 1786, in Munkács, Szerednye and Ungvár. Other offices followed but in 1850-58, when the first stamps were issued, Carpatho-Ukraine still had only 13 post offices, listed in the table at left.

These were the post offices which received supplies of the first issue of Austria in 1850. Actually, there was a 14th office. It was opened in Kazony (Mezö-Kaszony), north-west of Beregszåsz, on 1 October 1858, just one month before the period of the 1850 stamps came to an end. Gary Ryan mentions in his book on the cancellations of Hungary on Austrian stamps the possibility of the 1850 issue having been used there as well.

In the last part of this article Otto Hornung will list all the known covers to and from Carpatho-Ukraine which utilised the 1850 first issue of Austria.