Hungary’s Rusyn Policy in the Early 1940s: The Subcarpathian Scholarly Society, the Journal Zoria/Hajnal, and the Rusyn Language

Abstract

The region of Transcarpathia in western Ukraine contained, according to the 1941 Hungarian census, 500,264 Rusyns/Russians/Ukrainians (they were counted as one nationality), 233,111 Hungarians, 13,222 Germans, 6,847 Slovaks, and 97,145 others. Hungarians did not count Jews as a nationality, but in the previous Czechoslovak census of 1930 there were 91,845 Jews.1 The region at that time was referred to as Subcarpathia (Kárpátalja). During the interwar years it was Subcarpathian Rus’ (Podkarpatská Rus’), a part of Czechoslovakia, and prior to that it made up four different counties in northeastern Hungary. After 1945 it became part of the Soviet Union, and today it is the Transcarpathian region of independent Ukraine (Zakarpatska/Закарпаття).In this essay I focus mainly on Hungary’s role in the Ukrainian-Russian-Rusyn struggle in Subcarpathia during the late 1930s and early 1940s, after Hungary retook the region. This conflict between Ukrainophiles, Russophiles, and Rusynophiles began already in the nineteenth century, and the best description of it can be found in Paul Robert Magocsi’s book, The Shaping of National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus’, 1848–1948.2 My objective is to point out how Hungary’s Subcarpathian Scholarly Society, founded in 1941, and its journal Zoria/Hajnal [Dawn] were active in fostering a Rusynophile position, and to suggest that this position, though not officially articulated by the society, was also meant to alienate other inhabitants of the region, mainly the Jews, by favoring the Rusyns.Prior to World War I, the Kingdom of Hungary had already taken a Rusynophile position that encouraged Slavic-speaking peoples of Subcarpathia to recognize and strengthen their unique connection to the Kingdom of Hungary. At a time when intellectuals across Europe were articulating the criteria for membership in a nation, Hungarians supported a separate Rusyn identity, but always as part of a larger Hungarian entity. This was in the spirit of the 1868 Nationalities Law that tried to define Hungary as one nation with many nationalities—a liberal policy that was in most places not put into practice.The political and intellectual leaders of the new Czechoslovak state that ruled the region after 1918 treated the area as a kind of colony and the people as unfit to govern themselves. (Czechoslovakia never granted them the autonomy that they had been promised.) From the very beginning Prague also feared any kind of Hungarian irredentism in the wider region and therefore avoided a clear Rusynophile position since many Rusynophiles remained aligned with Hungary. Czechoslovakia instead allowed the Ukrainophile, Russophile, as well as Rusynophile orientations and organizations to propagate simultaneously.By the late 1930s, however, the Ukrainophile position had taken the lead, especially with the proclamation of Carpatho-Ukraine by Avhustyn Voloshyn in the city of Khust on March 15, 1939. Yet the arrival of the Hungarians in the whole region shortly thereafter changed the discussion again, back to an almost exclusive Rusynophile position.Hungary immediately tried to establish good relations with the local Slavic population, often in opposition to other groups in the region. The Hungarian Prime Minister, Pál Teleki, took very seriously the promise that Hungary would grant Subcarpathia the autonomy that Czechoslovakia had denied it. Teleki saw the granting of autonomy to Subcarpathia as a model policy that could win back other “lost Hungarian lands,” but any form of autonomy was rejected by the Hungarian government and parts of Hungarian society. Instead Subcarpathia under the Hungarians was administered by a civil administration with a commissioner, who was always appointed by the Hungarian head of state. The commissioner was assisted by a twelve-member advisory board, headed by a Greek Catholic priest.In 1939 the Hungarian state also declared Rusyn and Magyar the two official languages of Subcarpathia.3 Hungary set up a network of its main cooperative society—Hangya—throughout the region, and it was through these local chapters that large sums of money collected in Hungary were distributed to the local people. The Hungarian government also invested in public-works projects, especially the building of roads. The locals could again, as before 1918, work as seasonal harvesters in the Hungarian lowlands, a very lucrative endeavor.Hungary also supported a Rusynophile position in Subcarpathia by creating the Subcarpathian Scholarly Society (Kárpátaljai Tudományos Társaság)—a kind of local Academy of Sciences—in 1941. The goal of the society was “to contribute toward the creation of a distinct national identity among Rusyns,” according to the words of Miklós Kozma, the commissioner at the time of the society’s inauguration.4 Hungary presented itself as the benefactor of the Rusyns and the Rusynophile position. This was, of course, in the interest of Hungary, as Hungary worked to strengthen ties between Rusyns and Hungary and to weaken ties between the people of the region and Ukrainians, many of whose communities were initially part of Poland and then, after September 1939, first in Soviet-occupied territories and then under German control. Another consequence of this policy was the alienation of non-Rusyns and non-Hungarians, specifically the Jews, who made up 9.25 percent of the population in 1941.The journal Zoria/Hajnal—the society’s academic journal— appeared in a total of ten issues, in four volumes, between 1941 and 1943. All together there were 91 articles. As articulated by the editors in the first issue, the purpose of the journal was to discuss scholarly topics concerning Subcarpathia and to cultivate and protect the mother tongue of the people of the region, specifically the Rusyn people. In many ways the articles read as a textbook—instructing readers about the history, culture, and nature of the region.At the beginning each article in the journal appeared in Rusyn and Magyar, but in the second and third year articles appeared in just one of the two languages, with a short summary in the other. There were studies about the history of the Rusyn language, Rusyn folklore, folk customs, folk songs, funeral customs, folk costume, place names, Rusyn historiography, the ancient history of Uzhhorod, Rusyn national consciousness, the flora of the Carpathians, and on many other topics. Each volume also contained a bibliography, a series of book reviews, cultural news, a list of books sent to the editorial office, as well as a short description in German and French of each article in the volume.Both the journal Zoria/Hajnal as well as the society itself were on the front lines of the struggle to strengthen a Rusyn identity and especially to standardize the Rusyn language and grammar. The historian and Slavicist Sándor Bonkaló argued that the language question was the most urgent and difficult task facing the society.5There had been earlier attempts, both before World War I (in the Kingdom of Hungary) and after the war (in Czechoslovakia) to write a Rusyn grammar for the local population, but most often these grammars were based on the Russian language, with small changes to adapt to local speech. Eumén Szabó, who taught the Rusyn language in the Uzhhorod gymnasium from 1886 to 1898, wrote a grammar in 1890. His grammar was described in Zoria/Hajnal as a parallel grammar of Rusyn and Magyar, not simply an independent grammar of Rusyn, and the foundation of Szabó’s grammar was the Russian language, with local words and phrases added. In 1940, shortly before the founding of the society, Gyula Marina, a Greek Catholic priest, wrote a new grammar based closely on the earlier grammar of Avhustyn Voloshyn. Marina’s work was criticized for being essentially a Russian grammar with traditional orthography, combined with local dialectisms and pronunciations.6To improve the situation and to standardize the language, Miklós Kozma, the commissioner, encouraged Ivan Haraida, the managing director of the Subcarpathian Scholarly Society, to write a new grammar. Haraida admitted that such an enterprise would be complicated and difficult, yet he wrote and published a new grammar in May 1941, which was based on the dialect of the lowlands (not the mountain dialects). It was heavily criticized by great Russians and Ukrainian intellectuals, and even by Kozma.7 Yet despite the new grammar’s problems, the Haraida Rusyn grammar became the standard and was widely used by the public and in schools during the early 1940s.Hungary’s position vis-à-vis Subcarpathia may not have changed very much since the nineteenth century. It had been in Hungary’s interest to foster a separate Rusyn identity and Rusyn language in order to prevent individuals who spoke the Slavic language of northeastern Hungary from drifting toward the Ukrainian sphere, especially Galicia, or toward a Russophile position. After 1939 Hungary again turned to a pro-Rusyn policy, and the Hungarian regime provided the institutional, intellectual, and even financial basis for a renewed Rusynophile orientation. Hungary’s colonialist position was meant to weaken—sometimes violently—the Ukrainophiles, who had clearly begun to dominate by 1939. Hungary’s Rusynophile position was also meant to ignore and alienate non-Rusyns and non-Hungarians, especially Jews, who lived in Subcarpathia. Jews and other religious and ethnic groups in Subcarpathia were rarely mentioned in the journal. Hungary’s policies were meant to foster an identity and a language separate from Hungarian but clearly aligned with the state of Hungary and not always in the interest of all inhabitants of the region.