Uzhhorod

The city gets its name from the Uzh River, which divides the city into two parts (the old and new sections), while horod (город) is Rusyn for city, coming from Old Slavonic grad (градъ).

Ungvár, also spelled Ongvár, Hungvár, and Unguyvar, is derived from Ung, the Hungarian name for the Uzh (as well as the surrounding county) and vár, meaning castle, fort.

The best known of the first city founders are early Slavs. One of their tribes – White Croats – settled the area of the modern Uzhhorod in the second half of the first millennium AD.[4] During the 9th century a fortified castle changed into a fortified early feudal town-settlement, which became the center of a new Slavic principality, at the head of which was a mythical prince Laborec, who was vassal of Great Moravia .[4] Great Moravia, according to historians and experts did not extend as far east as Uzhgorod, in fact, it was west of what is now the City of Bratislava, Slovakia. According to Gesta Hungarorum, the city was under the rule of Salan, the Bulgarian Prince.[5]

In 895 AD, Magyar tribes, headed by their leader Árpád, stormed the Hungvar fortress. The forces were not equal and Laborec was defeated and beheaded on the banks of the river that still carries his name. Again, this is mythical. There was not much of a settlement when the Magyar tribes arrived, having left Kiev (then known as Kevevara) and encountering no resistance.

11th-century Rotunda in Horiany

After the arrival of the Hungarians, the small town began to extend its borders. In 1241–1242 the Mongols of Batu Khan burnt the settlement. After, in 1248 the city was granted town privileges by the King Béla IV of Hungary. In the early 14th century, Uzhhorod showed strong resistance to the new Hungarian rulers of the Anjou dynasty. Although the majority of inhabitants were Hungarians, they wanted more freedom. From 1318 for 360 years, the Drugeths (Italian counts from the Kingdom of Naples) owned the town. During that period Philip Drugeth built Uzhhorod Castle. Together with the castle, the city began to grow. From 1430, Uzhhorod became a free royal town.

Uzhhorod Castle

During the 16–17th centuries there were many handicraft corporations in Uzhhorod. In this period the city was engaged in the religious fight between primarily Protestant Transylvania and Catholic Austria. In 1646 the Union of Ungvár was proclaimed and the Greek-Catholic church was established in Subcarpathia, in a ceremony held in the Ungvár castle by the Vatican Aegis. In 1707 Ungvár was the residence of Ferenc II Rákóczi, leader of the national liberation war of Hungarians against Vienna. From 1175 the city became the capital of the Greek Catholic Eparchy and from 1776 the center of new created school district.[6]

Maria Theresia Garden Square

The beginning of the 19th century was characterized by economic changes, including the first factories in the city. The greatest influence on Ungvar among the political events of the 19th century was made by the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849, during which the native Hungarian nobility sought both shake off the suzerainty of the Austrian Empire and to have authority over their own people. 27 March 1848 was officially celebrated in the city as the overthrow of the monarchy in Hungary. It is now celebrated in Hungary on 15 March.

In 1872 the first railway line opened, linking the city to the important railway junction of Chop, then known as Csap.

According to the 1910 census, the city had 16,919 inhabitants, of which 13,590 (80.3%) were Magyars, 1,219 (7.2%) Slovaks, 1,151 (6.8%) Germans, 641 (3.8%) Rusyns and 1.6% Czechs.[7] Since Jews were not counted as ethnicity (as defined by language), rather only religious group, this Austrian-Hungarian census does not specifically mention the Jewish population, which was significant, and represented about 31% of the total population in 1910.[8] In the same time, the municipal area of the city had a population composed of 10,541 (39.05%) Hungarians, 9,908 (36.71%) Slovaks, and 5,520 (20.45%) Rusyns.[9]

The First World War slowed down the tempo of city development. On 10 September 1919, Subcarpathia was officially allocated to the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Uzhhorod became the administrative center of the territory. During these years Uzhhorod developed into an architecturally modern city.[10] After the Treaty of Trianon 1920, Uzhhorod became part of the eastern half of the new Czecho-Slovak state.

After the First Vienna Award in 1938, Uzhhorod was given back to Hungary from which it was separated after WWI.

In 1941 the Jewish population reached 9,576. On 19 March 1944, Germans troops entered the city. They established a Judenrat (Jewish council) and set up two ghettos, at the Moskovitz brickyard and Gluck lumberyard. During May 1944, all Jews were deported to Auschwitz in five different transports and subsequently murdered. Only a few hundred Jews survived.[11]

The former Uzhhorod Synagogue, now the Philharmonic Orchestra

On 27 October 1944, the city was captured by the troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front of the Red Army. Thousands of ethnic Hungarians were killed, expelled, or else taken to work in Soviet forced labor camps. The Hungarian majority population was decimated in order to strengthen the Soviet and Ukrainian right to the city.

This period brought significant changes. On the outskirts of Uzhhorod new enterprises were constructed and the old enterprises were renewed. On 29 June 1945, Subcarpathian Ukraine was annexed by the Soviet Union and became a westernmost part of the Ukrainian SSR. That year the Uzhhorod State University (now Uzhhorod National University) was also opened. Since January 1946 Uzhhorod was the center of newly formed Zakarpatska oblast.

Since 1991 Uzhhorod has become one of 24 regional capitals within Ukraine. Of these, Uzhhorod is the smallest and westernmost.

In 2002, after some controversy, a bust of Tomáš Masaryk, Czechoslovakia's first president, was unveiled in a main square of the city. A similar bust was unveiled in 1928 on the 10th anniversary of Czechoslovak independence, but was removed by the Hungarians when they took over the region in 1939.[12]

Uzhhorod is currently twinned with: