______ Carpathian Mountains (Karpaty). Folded, young mountains of medium elevation, stretching in an arc about 1,500 km long (with a chord of almost 500 km) from the city of Bratislava in the northwest to the Iron Gate on the Danube River in the southeast and covering an area of about 200,000 sq km. The Carpathians are part of the Alpine mountain system and border on the old Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian massifs and Dobrudja, being separated from them by a band of young depressions—along the Morava River and Vistula River, the Sian Lowland and Dniester Lowland, the Subcarpathian Depression, and the Wallachian Depression. The Pannonian Basin, which cuts north into the mountains along the Tysa River and Bodrog River and their tributaries, occupies the central part of the arc.

Orography. The Carpathian Mountains consist of three geologically distinct bands: the outer flysch, the central crystalline, and the inner volcanic. Only the flysch band is continuous, connecting the Carpathians into one whole. The crystalline band is interrupted in the middle for a distance of over 200 km. Thus, the Carpathians are divided into three parts: the Western Carpathians and the Southern Carpathians, both of which consist of three bands, and the Eastern Carpathians, which are only 100-120 km in width and consist only of the flysch and volcanic bands. The Western Carpathians are settled mostly by Slovaks and Poles (with Czechs, Hungarians, and Ukrainians at the fringes), the Eastern Carpathians are settled by Ukrainians, and the Southern Carpathians, by Romanians. Sometimes the Carpathians are divided into two parts only: the Western and Eastern Carpathians are called the Northern or Slavic Carpathians, as distinguished from the Southern or Romanian Carpathians.