Czechoslovakia's Ethnic Policy in Subcarpathia

1 Czechoslovakia’s ethnic policy in Subcarpathia (Podkarpatskaja Rus or Ruthenia) 1919 – 1938/1939 József Botlik Translated and edited by P. Csermely 2 Table of Contents POLITICAL MACHINATIONS................................................................................................................................... 3 THE RUTHENIANS OF HUNGARY .......................................................................................................................... 6 FOREIGN MILITARY OCCUPATION OF SUBCARPATHIA ............................................................................ 18 ARMED OPPOSITION TO CZECHOSLOVAK RULE ......................................................................................... 29 SUBCARPATHIA ........................................................................................................................................................ 41 CZECH COLONIZATION ......................................................................................................................................... 63 THE PERIOD OF GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY, THE SOJM......................................................................... 104 THE FIRST VIENNA ARBITRAL ACCORD........................................................................................................ 124 THE REUNION OF SUBCARPATHIA WITH HUNGARY................................................................................. 138 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................................................... 145 3 Political machinations American Ruthenians and Czechoslovakians, May 1918 – November 1919 The foreign occupation, and later annexation in 1919-1920, of the four counties that constitute Hungarian Subcarpathia - Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa and Máramaros - by Romanian and Czechoslovak troops at the end of the First World War, is not without precedent. Before we briefly outline its history, we must emphatically state: the more than half million Ruthenians and over quarter million Hungarians who inhabited this territory were not consulted whether they wished to be a part of Czechoslovakia or Romania. The annexation of the major portion of Subcarpathia by the Czechoslovak state was primarily the work of American Ruthenian activism and Czech diplomacy and, not the least, the successful swaying of popular opinion, if not its formation. Its prospects were considerably improved during the propaganda tour of the United States made in May 1918 by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937), president of the Czechoslovak National Council. Here, we must make note of the Czech politician’s American connections and its background. After his university studies in Vienna, Masaryk went to Leipzig in the early 1870’s to study philosophy. Here he met his future wife, the American citizen Charlotte Garrigue, niece of Woodrow Wilson, who, as sitting American president took part in the Paris Peace Conference. The founder of the Czechoslovak state also took his wife’s maiden name and the Czech, later Czechoslovak, politician became known as Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.1 Subsequently, he spent varying lengths of time in the United States on four occasions (in 1878, 1901, 1903 and 1918). Five years after his first trip to America, in 1883, he moved from Vienna to the Czech capital where, during the previous year, the Czech-German language Carolus-Ferdinand University of Prague was separated. The Czech nationalist and political career of one Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, born of a Moravian-Slovak father and a Germanized Czech mother, was thus begun. Between 1883 and 1914, he was an instructor, then professor, at the Prague Czech-language University. At the same time, from 1891 to 1893, and after 1907, he served as representative in the Austrian Reichsrat, or Empire Council. His books, studies and articles defining the new Czech national historical perspective and socio-political program began to see the light of day from the middle years of the 1890’s. Masaryk worked out his theory of “Czechoslovakism” in this period. He began from the conviction that, as a result of the close linguistic and cultural ties, the Czechs and Slovaks were one people, the component parts of a “Czechoslovak” nation. This theory by the founder of the state proved to be wrong, as the two “people of Czechoslovakia” never considered themselves as such, then or now. The erroneous belief, however, had a long-lasting life. Czechoslovakia disintegrated first in 1938-1939 and more recently, on January 1, 1993, into the independent Czech and Slovak Republics. Returning to Masaryk’s mistaken theory about “Czechoslovakism”, his view was adopted by the Slovak ‘Hlas’-ists who came under his influence. They were young liberal intellectuals who, at the turn of the 19th-20th century, were drawn around the magazine Hlas (Voice), published in the Uplands city of Szakolca, later in Rózsahegy. [The northern crescent of mountainous territory of historical Hungary, running from the Austrian border to Romania, was variously called, then as now, Northern or Upper Hungary, the Upland-estates, the so-called Felvidék. The well-known name was widely applied after the 1920 Trianon Treaty to the formerly Hungarian parts annexed to Czechoslovakia. Hereafter, we shall refer to it by the shorter Uplands name-Ed.] Their leaders were Vavro Šrobár and Pavol Blaho. At the outbreak of the First World War, Masaryk first emigrated to France in 1914, then to Great Britain. It was during this time that he broke with the possibility of maintaining the Monarchy or its federative reorganization. Along with Eduard Beneš, he conducted a sharply anti-Monarchy political and propaganda campaign in the Allied/Entente countries. He demanded the creation of an independent Czechoslovak state, for which the Monarchy courts sentenced him to death, in absentia, for treason. Masaryk was elected to the presidency of the newly formed Czechoslovak National Council in Paris on February 13, 1916. The Council was recognized by the Allied Powers – France on June 29, Great Britain on August 9, the United 1 Masaryk Tomáš Garrigue a Podkarpatská Rus - Т. Г. Масарик та Закарпаття. Šefredaktor Ivan Latko. Ужгород. (T. G. Masaryk and Subcarpathia /in Ukrainian and Czech languages/) Užhorod, 2000, Klub T. G. Masaryka v Užhorodě. p. 6. 4 States on September 3 - as an allied combatant party and the temporary Czechoslovak government.2 Returning to the Czech politician’s fourth, and now aggressive, propaganda tour of the United States, on May 30, in Pittsburgh, the Народна Обрана (Narodna Obrana, National Defense) Ruthenian political association handed him a memorandum, in which they set out, as the main goal, the following: the unification of all the Carpatho-Russian (Ruthenian) people with the Czechoslovak state on an autonomous basis.3 The movement caused great shock among the masses of American Ruthenian emigrants loyal to the Hungarian state, especially among the ranks of the Greek Catholic clergy. They attributed the Czech-friendly Obrana to Pravoslav and Hussite influences. Two and a half months later, on June 13, 1918 they formed a counter-movement in Homestead, the center of American Ruthenian emigrants, under the name of Американська Народна Рада Угрорусинов (Amerikanska Narodna Rada Uhrorusinov, American Hungarian-Russian National Council). Of the 23 presiding members, nine were Greek Catholic clergymen, including the president, Miklós Csopey.4 This organization also wrote another memorandum, giving it not to Masaryk but sending it to President Woodrow Wilson. The memorandum outlined three possible solutions for the fate of the Ruthenian peoples: one, complete independence of the Hungarian and Ruthenian people; two, if this is not possible, permit the Ruthenian people to merge with either the Galician or Bukovina Ruthenians; and three, at a minimum, to attain autonomy within a state, perhaps Hungary.5 In the meantime, a third Ruthenian political organization was established on June 26, in Mokesport, Pennsylvania, under the name of Ruthenian American National Council /RANC/. Its president was Gregory Zhatkovych (1886-1967, Жаткович Григорий Игнатий, Žatkovič in Czech)6 an American lawyer of Ruthenian descent, born in the village of Galambos in Bereg County. At the time, he was legal counsel to the General Motors Corporation in Detroit, later to become the first governor of Podkarpatská Rus. The RANC also saw three valid possibilities: one, the complete independence of the Ruthenian people; two, union with the Galician and Bukovina Ukrainians; and three, if the previous two were unattainable, complete territorial autonomy. It must be noted that the three American Ruthenian organizations, spinning plans in those weeks and months for the fate of their brethren living in the Monarch, when those were fighting against Russia on the various fronts as part of their countries’ forces and suspected nothing of the American plans or Czech intrigues behind their backs. The Mokesport and Homestead competing memoranda’s first two points are essentially identical but differ sharply on the third. The Homestead memorandum’s third point did not exclude the retention of the status quo, after the demands were met, i.e., the Ruthenian populated areas remaining within the framework of Hungary. The following months passed in inactivity until, at its November 1 meeting in Scranton, the Narodna Rada also accepted the Zhatkovych memorandum. Here, however, not a word was said about union with Czechoslovakia,

Load more