While preparing my previous article about the Rusyn linguist Alexander Bonkáló who had been buried in the Farkasréti Cemetery in Budapest (by the way, quite an interesting name of the place, meaning ‘Wolf’s Meadow’), I looked for some other Rusyn figures that may have been buried there. One of them was Oreszt Szabó (1867–1939?), a native of Kövesliget (now Drahovo in Subcarpathia, Ukraine) and Government Plenipotent and Minister of Ruszka Krajna (1918–1919), an unsuccessful attempt of the first Hungarian Republican Government appointed after the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy to establish autonomy for the Magyar Orosz (Hungarian Russian, i.e. Carpatho-Rusyn) people. Regretfully, neither Bonkáló’s nor Szabó’s graves have survived; they are mentioned on the Cemetery’s list of selected lost graves.
Before proceeding to Ruszka Krajna, it is worth touching upon the very word krajna, or krajina. It has been widely used in the Slavonic world: say, Krajna (Krajina; in Latin – Carniola) was the historic name of a greater part of today’s Slovenia; Srpska Krajina was the name of the self-proclaimed Serbian state that functioned within the newly independent Croatia in 1991–1995; and as a generic term, it means ‘state,’ ‘country,’ ‘land’ in many Slavonic languages.
But let us go back to the end of 1918, when a bunch of ethnic states were appearing in the ruins of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. As for Hungary itself, after the Aster Revolution, it was proclaimed a democratic republic, with Count Mihály Károlyi serving as its first Prime Minister (November 1918 – January 1919) and Provisional President (November 1918 – March 1919). Károlyi supported the doctrine based on ideas of the social-democrat Oszkár Jászi that provided for Hungary’s reconciliation with all non-Magyar ethnic groups populating it and granting them concessions in the cultural sphere. According to the literary sources, it was partly owing to Oreszt Szabó who worked as the Ministry of Interior’s Secretary that the new Hungarian government came to an agreement with the Ruthenian minority and decided to grant them “territorial autonomy in exchange for their loyalty [to the Hungarian State] on the Swiss model.” But the time had been lost for Hungary – all the non-Magyar nations had approved of joining Czechoslovakia (including the Rusyn-inhabited lands owing to the efforts of the American Rusyns), Romania, and Yugoslavia.
Oreszt Szabó received a lawyer’s diploma at Budapest University; then he worked as a secretary for the Bereg Provincial Administration. In 1902, Oreszt Szabó became the head of the Association of Hungarian Greek Catholics. On December 1, 1918 he was nominated Government Plenipotent for the ‘to-be-proclaimed’ autonomous Ruszka Krajna, and on December 29 he was promoted to the post of Minister.
On December 10, 1918, a meeting of Ruthenian representatives of various political views was scheduled in Budapest. The delegates came to the country’s capital by a special train. The chroniclers wrote that the majority of the delegates favored secession of the Rusyn lands from Hungary. Still, the autonomous region of Ruszka Krajna was proclaimed de jure some ten days after that tumultuous meeting.
Ruszka Krajna was being formed in Hungary’s north-eastern provinces of Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa and Máramaros. It was in December 1919 that the native Slavonic people of these lands were for the first time called ruszin (Rusyns), not rutén (Ruthenians). The Rusyn Ministry was located in Budapest, and the Regency was established in Munkács (Mukachevo), where Ágoston Stefán, a Rahó (Rakhiv) born lawyer started settling issues regarding the future governor’s post.
Meanwhile, the Czechoslovakian troops invaded Ungvár (Uzhhorod) in January 1919; the Romanian army was advancing into the eastern areas inhabited by Rusyns.
Then, in March 1919, the Hungarian Soviet (Council) Republic was proclaimed. Oreszt Szabó was offered the post of the Head of the Rusyn People’s Committee, but he declined it and resigned from the ministerial position. Instead, he returned to Ruthenia (Subcarpathia) to found the Ruthenian People’s Commissariat, but the communists dissolved this institution. Since then, Oreszt Szabó did not take active part in the political life. Instead, Ágoston Stefán became the Ruthenian People’s Commissar and obtained a post on the Revolutionary Board of Governors. Two armed formations were established: the Ruthenian Red Guard and the Ruthenian Red Watch. But because of the Czechoslovakian and Romanian military presence, the Soviet Republic in Ruthenia lasted for only forty days (its central bodies in Budapest worked for 133 days) – so lasted the autonomous Ruszka Krajna.
The Rusyn-inhabited lands beneath the Carpathian Mountains became part of the Czechoslovakian Republic for the following two decades. In one of his 1938 letters Jászi reported that the Ruthenian autonomy had rather a moral significance than a practical one. From a century’s perspective, it seems the laws on the Ruthenian autonomy were most significant from the point of view of the foreign policy of the Hungarian Democratic Republic. They tried to prove to the Entente their good intentions towards nations, however, there was little chance of their practical realization.
The contemporary Subcarpathian historian Imre Szakál writes: “A less known fact is that Ágoston Stefán headed a small group in Warsaw, Poland and established Ruszka Krajna’s emigrant Board of Governors. Apart from the fact that they cooperated with Hungary-friendly Slovak emigration, reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, and tried to form a Ruthenian legion, they had few results to boast of. Their bravest action was in 1920 when their military group tried to take back from Czechoslovakia Hungary’s administrative unit called Podkarpatská Rus. It is well-known to have been unsuccessful.”
Reverting back to Oreszt Szabó, it is worth mentioning his book entitled “About the Hungarian Russians ([aka] Ruthenians)” published in Budapest in 1913. It was one of the first revelations of the Rusyn ethnos for the Hungarian public. In his book, the author described the sub-ethnic division and the habitation of the Rusyn people and provided information about their education, literature, and art (he even writes about the place of Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the 1848–1849 Hungarian Revolution, in Rusyn folk poetry in a separate chapter), religious and household life (dwelling, clothing, public health, etc.), birth, wedding and funeral customs, economic conditions in the Rusyn lands, and such ‘contemporary problems’ as that of the difference between Julian and Gregorian calendars, Orthodox movement among the predominantly Greek Catholic Rusyn population, and the impact of the Rusyn emigration to America. As one can see it, some of the problems raised by Oreszt Szabó over a century ago have not lost their relevance until now.
The terminology used by Szabó helps us understand his views on the Rusyn people and their affiliation. Here is a quotation from the first chapter of the book:
“Hungarian Russians belong to the large family of Northern Slavs whose branch known as Little Russians reside in South Russia, Galicia, Bukovyna, and Moldova totaling in number to about 33 million persons. Since ancient time until nowadays, both domestic and foreign historians have been calling this people as Little Russians, or Ruthenians, though starting from the Turkish conquest the name of Hungarian Russians have also survived.”
“The fact is that people call themselves Rusyns or Little Russians.
“The Little Russians hold themselves as people of the most ancient Slav origin and the cleanest Slav blood; they derive their name from the Rus tribe, which is why a Little Russian would call a Big Russian whose people have from olden time been mixed with Tatar and Chude blood, a Maskal or Muszka (= Muscovite), and the former always wants to differentiate himself from the latter.
“The Hungarian language and history also feels this differentiation. In general, Big Russians have always been referred to only as Muszkák in the Hungarian language use and the Hungarian literature of the 16th – 19th centuries.”