The article studies the „afterlife“of the former Subcarpathia, the present-day Transcarpathia, within the Czech society after 1989. The discourse about the region was framed by the understanding of the Czech society of their revolution of 1989 primarily in terms of political and cultural return to the inter-war Masarykian Republic. It maps the different ways the Czech society coped with this deficit in its restoration endeavours in the early 1990s. Within the Czech public discourse uncritical conception of selfless and successful civilising mission in the East still prevails, based on a belief that local population gratefully accepted and now nostalgically longs for such input. For some time after 1989, the theme became one of the key components of Czech debates concerning the past, its neighbours and own identity within the integrating Europe.