Carpatho-Ukraine

Carpatho-Ukraine was a short lived republic in Central Europe during the interbellum period. It had been a region of Czechoslovakia since 1919 and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before that. After the Munich Agreement in September of 1938, when Czechoslovakia was stripped of the Sudetenland, the two other major minorities began to distance themselves from the doomed Czech dominated state. The Slovaks, who were in the center of the state, and the Ruthenians (Ukrainians) who dominated the east. This culminated in Slovakia declaring its independence from Czechoslovakia on March 14, 1939 as Germany moved to annex the remainder of the Czech Lands. With no other options in sight, on March 15 Carpatho-Ukraine declared independence, effectively dissolving Czechoslovakia. It was one of the shortest lived states in history, as one day after it declared independence it was invaded and annexed into the Kingdom of Hungary, where it remained a conquered territory until 1945. After the Red Army has swept through Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R annexed Carpatho-Ukraine into the Ukraine S.S.R. After the fall of the U.S.S.R in 1991, it became a region of the current Republic of Ukraine.