"The Awakening of the National Consciousness in the Carpathian Ukraine" by Th. Adamczyk
From the magazine Osteuropa, Feb. 1939 issue, Vol. 14, No. 5
With the appearance of the “Subcarpathian Ruthenians” in October 1918 in the “Mid-European Democratic Union” in Philadelphia, a new “political nation” of Eastern Europe appeared before the international public. Claiming to embody a particular nationality, they positioned themselves alongside the other nationalities of the Union, which also included the Ukrainians. The movement to create an independent political territory for the new nation, the core area of which was supposed to encompass the four north-eastern upper Hungarian pre-war counties of Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa and Máramaros between the upper Theiss1 and the Wooded Carpathians, had had their champions in the past, who remained almost unknown. But the traces of these efforts were lost in the second half of the 19th century. Now, in 1918, at the time of the great upheaval, the national movement was reemerging from two sources: American emigration and the country itself.
The young Ruthenian movement in America received an impetus from Masaryk2, who arrived in America in May 1918. As chairman of the “Mid-European Union” he established relations with the Ruthenian leaders. These were above all Dr. Zatkovic, behind whom stood a group of Ukrainians united in political and religious direction, and who took over the representation of his nationality in the “Mid-European Union,” and Pacuta, whose followers fought for Greater Russian and Greek Orthodox goals.
The American events of this time are probably the most well-known episode in the history of the country that today bears the name of Carpathian Ukraine: on July 23rd, 1918, the first congress of the “Hungarian Ruthenians in America,” as they called themselves, met in Homestead3 and summarized the three points to be fulfilled as far as possible:
1. Complete independence of Ruthenian territory.
2. Union with Galicia and Bukovina.
3. Autonomy (no indication in which country)
Following entry into the “Mid-European Union” and after Wilson rejected the formation of an independent state, the second congress in Scranton followed on November 19th with the decision to join the Czech state association as an autonomous state. The result of the plebiscite, which preceded the resolution, already contained in its leanings towards different states some of the elements which were to make the foreign-political situation of the country difficult in the future.
The events of the years of upheaval in the country itself also give the impression of such diverging currents. The “Russian Central National Council” (Tsentralnaya Russkaya Narodnaya Rada) that met on May 8th, 1919 in Uzhorod included several movements that had appeared around November 1918 in the formation of national councils with different objectives. The “National Council” of Preshov (November 11th, 1918) and the “Council” of Uzhorod (November 9th, 1918) met almost simultaneously.4 The Preshov Movement arose following the Slovak declaration5 in Martin6 (October 30th, 1918). It contained, alongside pro-Czech tendencies, which were dominant and culminated in the declaration of union with the new Czecho-Slovak state, a less powerful Ukrainian current, developed through western Galician influence. The attacks of the fighters for a Greater Ukrainian state, both communist and anti-communist, were directed against the Preshov Movement leader, Antonin Beskid7. It is not clear whether religious influences were at work within the Preshov National Council, as was the case in the Uzhorod National Council. They made their declaration for Hungary with the active participation of the united clergy.8
On the other hand, the third of the National Councils that met in Khust9 in January 21st, 1919, which later united in the Uzhorod Central Council, was moved by religious fighting spirit, namely for the Greek Orthodox Church.10 They spoke out in favor of joining the West Ukrainian Republic and at that time expressed the idea of a Greater Ukrainian state on the territory of Carpathian Ukraine.
During these processes, the country still belonged to the Hungarian state. Naturally, the Hungarian government intervened. But their late action to save the old “marcha Ruthenorum”11 met with little response. The well-known People's Law No. 10, really “an offer under the guillotine,” recognized for the first time from the Magyar side the national specificity of the four north-eastern counties and made the area of the “Ruthenian nation” an autonomous region as “Ruszka-Krajna,” which was to conduct its affairs through its own organs and those in common with the Hungarian People's Republic through joint organs. Common issues mentioned were: foreign policy, military affairs, finance, private and criminal legislation, transport and social policy; strictly speaking, what remains is a “cultural autonomy.” The following legislative bodies were created: the Ruthenian National Assembly for autonomous matters, and the joint Hungarian Diet for general matters. Government organs should be the ministry of the “Ruszka-Krajna,” the seat in Budapest, and the governorship. The governor's residence was in Munkacs12, it was under the control of the minister. The law actually came into force with the governor A. Stefan and the minister Oreszt Szabo, a magyarised Carpathian Ukrainian at the head, and the “Ruszka-Krajna” existed until the time of Bela Kun, who made the governor “People’s Commissar”.
The Central Council of Uzhorod didn’t just include the movement from within the country. The delegation of American Ruthenians came to Uzhorod from Paris, where they had negotiated the Scranton decisions with the Peace Conference, and the united National Council on May 15th, 1919 completed the union with the Czecho-Slovak Republic. The Carpathian-Ukrainian people only now entered into internal political life and at the same time into the great struggle for a political fatherland. For here the struggle really only began, while there was still unity in the more specific goal of rounding off the immediate ethnic area. The territorial demands of the years of upheaval are representative of these national ideas: the territory of the four northeastern original counties of Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa and Máramaros was not enough for the hardly felt sense of unity. It demanded the “original” Carpathian-Russian districts, quite apart from the protests that rose in various places against the occasional planned separation of the Sevlus13 basin in the course of the negotiations or against the demolition of the southern Máramaros country, which then came into force. In addition, the Preshov National Council made a claim to the Galician Lemk region, i.e. the Polish settled part of the most western and most cultivated of the three largest Ukrainian tribes in the country (Lemks, Boykos, Hutsuls) on the basis of the aforementioned western Galician connection. This is the only time when a demand based on ethnography reached beyond the Carpathian border, apart from the all-Ukrainian idea. The “original” districts were the eastern counties of Slovakia, the “greater Carpathian Ukraine,” the “Slovak Ukraine.” Szepes, Zemplin, Sáros, even Abaúj-Torna, Gömör and Borsod were mentioned. At least in the northern part of Zemplin and Sáros such a ethnic community can be recognised. During the months of fighting, the claimed Carpathian-Ukrainian land was recognized only once as a unified area with the “ideal border from the Poprad to the Theiss”: from the People's Commissariat of “Ruszka-Krajna” when it spent its last days in Munkacs, while Czech troops had already crossed the Uh and the Romanians were approaching from the east.
Such notions of volksboden14 are not something entirely new here in this country. As everywhere else, they were part of the national consciousness, the manifestations of which, however, are difficult to grasp here. As has been said so far, it did not appear in political form until the middle of the 19th century. Much earlier, national sentiment found nothing unusual in the struggle for its language in the domain of the Holy Crown of Hungary.15 Here the struggle of a strangely backward people for their spiritual consciousness can be traced up to the present: We are something particular.16 Who are we? Where do we belong? For the struggle was not only about the formation and preservation of the vernacular against the pressure of the respective state language, but within the national community trends had formed relatively earlier that fought over the definition of the cultural language of their people: that of the “Greater Russian” and that of the Ukrainian. The main argument of the Greater Russian direction was: we in the country speak Russian, our language is a branch of the greater Russian. Just as the Moscow vernacular or that of Samara is not the Russian written language, neither is our dialect; the literary language builds on the dialects as in all language areas.
The Ukrainian direction wants to align the local language of Carpathian Ukraine with the written language of all of Ukraine. They give this the same place as their opponents.
In addition to them, autochthonous efforts have always been noticeable, with each language entrepreneur wanting to inflate his native local dialect, one distinguishes mostly three large dialect groups, into a written language. Naturally, there was a development that brought the autochthonous language creators to the Ukrainian camp. A review of the development of the country's literary language, which brings to light the emergence of the various tendencies and in which the main emphasis must be placed on cultural influences, almost inextricably linked with political intentions, leads to the hard-fought language-political problems of the recent past. From it, of course, comes the account of the present Ukrainian victory.
The language of the oldest literary monuments is Old Church Slavonic in a Russian guise, as brought by the Eastern Church and which was understandable to the people. From the 14th century there are very rare fragments of the Carpathian-Ukrainian dialect (from various regions) up to a manuscript from the 16th century: “Vyklady” (readings) or also called "Postila Nagovske.” It is written in the southern Máramaros dialect and is the first independent literary monument of the Carpathian Ukraine. There was a propaganda text supporting Protestantism against the Latin Western Church as well as against the Eastern Church, and at the time a political pamphlet of the Principality of Transylvania17, to which the eastern part of the Carpathian Ukraine belonged for a long time, the author, due to the lack of dialect vocabulary, uses Hungarian words to a large extent! Thus the fate of the national language is already formed here: to be made to serve foreign political purposes.
The first attempt at a language of its own, which did not emerge from the people, could not find any followers. In the stormy times of the 17th century, when Carpathian Ukraine was only suffering, the country was probably the scene of the struggle of the Eastern Church against Union and Protestantism. But the originals of the orthodox pamphlets were written in a language foreign to the country, mixed with polonised “Little Russian” with a touch of Church Slavonic, while the opposite side was in Latin, or in the one famous case claimed by the modern Ukrainian tendency, the Catechism of Kornicki (1698), writing in Ukrainian-Polish (more Polish). Only the “zborniki” (collections) of different content that were created in the country itself and had no influence on the great development were written in the country language. That meant: each and all in a different dialect.
However, the actual stream of national, i.e. Slavic-national language development led up to the 18th century in Russian-Church Slavonic, in some cases already heavily harassed, even overshadowed by the cultural language of the West and the Union, Latin, and also by the state language , the Magyar. A new phase marked the time of the bishop of Munkacs, Andrei Bacinskij (1732-1809), who, supported by certain political, anti-Magyarist intentions of Maria Theresa, endeavored to direct the stream of national development through the detailed work of his clergy throughout the country. He also made an approach that could possibly have changed the whole development: he tried to transfer the “language of Lomonosov18” to his country as a new written language. He did not follow Lomonosov by going back to his own native dialect analogously to Church Slavonic, but adopted Moscow “Russian.” A whole generation of his students followed him. However, the double pressure of the latinisation carried out by the church and, above all, the growing political power of the state language could not be resisted. It is also impossible to tell what role the deep separation between the people and the thin upper class played in this.
The noteworthy picture emerged that scholars wrote their books mainly in Latin, but also in Magyar. Letters to friends among educated people were written in Russian, but the actual written language was still Church Slavonic, which occasionally appeared in poetry mixed with local dialects. The people continued to speak their “unknown” language.
Despite the hatred of Russia that flared up around 1809 and the growing Magyar nationalism, national consciousness, which yielded to the Great Russian current, did not die out. The wave of revolutions of 1848 gave opportunity to a whole series of men who found their place in the country's history as the “innovators.” They had to follow the Great Russian trend that had been set in motion, the last offshoots of which have reached the present. Only now did people free themselves from Church Slavonic and, a hundred years later than in Russia, they began to speak Russian. The Russian language emerged as the “national” language. But how strong the hope was for a real political union with Russia, which was talked about from now on and which was allegedly further strengthened by the march through of Russian troops in 1849, cannot be determined. Certainly the idea of the “Russian miracle” came to light in the writings of the “awakeners.” But for its foremost representative, Adolf Dobryansky, the country's first modern politician who wrote and spoke pure Greater Russian and who supported Russian cultural work in his country, unification was considered a “political dream.” And with Alexander Duchnovich, the apolitical priest working among the common people, the thought is found as an unrealistic mood and hope for any salvation.
The Great Russian movement, however, receded in the overtaking waves of attempts at germanisation (until 1867) and (since Dualismus19) the more successful magyarisation. Around 1871, at the time of the overall national decline, it is of no importance. The people, the “Magyars with Greek-Catholic rites,” lived on in the dark, and yet there remained a reservoir of peoplehood.
The pre-war period has returned to the conditions of 1848. Magyar alone is the state language. However, the steadily intensifying policy of magyarisation used what it intended as a transitional measure, paving the way for the eventual victor. It introduced the “local vernacular” in schools in the 1880s, with the intention of stifling it through increasing Magyar prevalence. In fact, it strengthened the “vernacular” movement that had existed to some extent for some time. It is nothing other than the forerunner of the Ukrainian movement. Since the turn of the century, the current Prime Minister of Carpathian Ukraine, Augustin Voloschyn20, has been at the centre of it.
German for the Tisza river in Hungary.
Tomáš Masaryk, who would later go on to be a founder and President of Czechoslovakia.
Homestead, Pennsylvania.
I took the liberty of editing the text of this sentence somewhat, as it read rather clumsily but the meaning remains the same.
This references the Martin Declaration which was the Slovak declaration of independence in 1918.
Turčiansky Svätý Martin, Slovakia.
Beskid doesn’t have an English or German wikipedia page, and his most detailed one seems to be the Russian one here.
I think this sentence came across a little weird but I tried to translate it to the best of my ability.
Currently Khust, Ukraine.
I edited the text of this sentence for smooth reading, but the meaning stays the same.
Latin for “March of the Ruthenians”
Currently Mukachevo, Ukraine.
Currently Vynohradiv, Ukraine.
I have retained the German here as I don’t believe an English translation adequately expresses the meaning. I could best translate it as “national soil” but this doesn’t really express it right.
Stephenskrone, or Crown of Saint Stephen. I figured it smoother to simply write it as the Holy Crown of Hungary, which it is also known as.
besonderes
siebenbürgisch-ungarisch Reiches. Honestly wasn’t sure what the author was referring to, but I believe it to be the Principality of Transylvania which was ruled by Hungarian nobles.
Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov.
Retaining the German here as I don’t believe the English translation expresses it properly. Dualismus refers to Austro-Prussian relations, both rivalry and cooperation, from essentially the mid 18th century to the North German triumph over Austria.