In the very heart of Budapest, where Alkotmány (Constitution) Street exits to the grand edifice of the House of Parliament, a new monument appeared two years ago, in 2020. It is a 100-meter-long and four-meter-wide walkway sloping down below the street level and framed with two side walls consisting of granite bricks with inscribed names of all 12,485 settlements that were registered in the Kingdom of Hungary (then part of the Dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy) by the 1913 census. It means that a visitor will see there the names of all cities, towns, and villages located now in Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, and Austria that used to be part of Hungary over a century ago. The monument is called The Togetherness Memorial, and it was erected to commemorate the centenary of what Hungarians consider the greatest tragedy in the history of their country – the Trianon Peace Treaty according to which Hungary had been bereft of 72% of its territory and 64% of the population.
The name of each settlement is inscribed on a separate brick, while the bricks themselves are of three sizes, depending on the amount of population of the respective settlement during the 1913 census. The names appear randomly – not in alphabetic or any other order, so it would take you a while to find your town – unless you have ascertained its whereabouts beforehand from the Memorial’s website here: https://www.oeh.hu/telepulesnev-kereso. As far as all historical Rusyn settlements were located in the Kingdom of Hungary, they all are on the list. The only thing to remember is that all names are written in their old Hungarian form, which is why in order to find, say, Stará Ľubovňa one should type in Ólubló; Ruski Krstur would be Bácskeresztúr; and Yasinia – Kőrösmező. Then two pictures would be seen: in the upper one, the entire wall with the segment where the brick with the searched settlement shown in a red frame would appear; the lower picture would feature the enlarged part of the wall with the settlement’s name framed in red. Still, a little bit lower, there would be the link leading to the map of historical Hungary with the geographical whereabouts of the searched settlement.
The pathway leads a visitor to the Monument’s Heart located five meters below the street level. It consists of seven separate segments, with the eternal flame burning behind them in the middle of the structure. The seven segments symbolize seven countries that received territories of the Kingdom of Hungary in consequence of the Trianon Treaty, and the boulder holding the eternal flame symbolizes Csonkamagyarország, “the truncated Hungary,” which was a widely used name for the country between the two world wars. What is more, if visitors would stand by the back wall of the ‘heart’ facing toward the building of the Parliament, they would not be able to see at once both the Parliament and the flame (or, according to the architect’s idea, ‘the Parliament burning in fire’).
The nostalgic feeling about the lost territories is also reflected in the names of many streets in Budapest. For instance, a bunch of streets in Buda bear names united under the common frame “Trianon Living with Us.” In this picturesque hilly part of the city, a stroller can bump into many streets named after the towns, mountains, or rivers that quit being part of Hungary after the Trianon Treaty. The nameplates for these streets are accompanied by the following inscription: “In 1920, the Hungary we knew of for a thousand years ceased to exist. The loss of two-thirds of the country has been affecting the life of our fatherland until now. The effect of the Trianon Treaty has been felt until nowadays. During the last century, lots of public places throughout the country, including Buda, have been named after settlements and geographic places that used to be part of historical Hungary, thereby expressing the feeling of unity of the Carpathian Basin.” Beneath this text, the name of the street is put accompanied with a brief explanation of the place, and a statement saying that “the injuries caused by the national traumas can be dwelt with and treated only by common effort, which is why on the 100th anniversary of the Trianon Peace Treaty the Mayor’s Office commemorates the seized territories with these plaques.”
Here is the list of the streets named after places connected with Rusyns:
- Vihorlát Street – “named in 1932 after the Vihorlát Mountain Range. This volcanic mountain range belongs to the inner line of the Carpathians; the Ung/Uh/Uzh, Latorca/Latorytsia and Ciróka/Cirocha river valleys belonging to Alföld/ Hungarian Plain divide apart over-a-thousand-meter-high summits. Now the Vihorlát area is divided between Slovakia and Ukraine.”
- Verecke Way/ Bystreet / Stairway – the three place names are named after the Veretsky Overpass “through which the Magyar tribes entered the Carpathian basin in 895, and later, during the Tatar invasion, here the Tatar hosts entered Hungary.”
- Uzsoki Street – named after Uzsok / Uzhok, “the settlement that in its turn is named after the 0verpass located along the eastern frontier of historical Hungary. A vast majority of the village’s population in the time of Trianon were Rusyns, with a significant share of ethnic Hungarians and Jews. Then [the village] became part of Czechoslovakia; later [in 1939–1944] it again belonged to Hungary; thereupon it was part of the Soviet Union; now it belongs to Ukraine.”
- Orló Street – named in 1931 after the Rusyn village of Orlov in Stará Ľubovňa district in Slovakia, “a village located in the Tatras, by the Poprád River, directly near the Polish border. The first written record dates back to 1349. Local population was engaged primarily with flax growing and sheep husbandry. During the time of the Trianon Peace Treaty, nearly all dwellers of the village that became part of Czechoslovakia were Rusyns.”
- Ruthén Street – “the street got this archaic name of the Rusyn people in 1932. The very existence of Rusyns as an independent ethnic group has been questioned many times, with attempts made to include them either to Russians or Ukrainians. Mostly, they live in the Carpathians; nearly all are Greek Catholics; in Ukraine, they have not been recognized as a separate ethnos so far. The most famous Rusyn is the artist Andy Warhol.”
To finish our brief stroll along the Rusyn-related names of streets in Budapest, let us cross the Danube and go to a city block where there is a string of streets coming one after another named after Subcarpathian cities: Ungvár, Munkács, Beregszász, and Nagyszőlős Streets (the Hungarian names for Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, Berehovo, and Sevliush/Vynohradovo, respectively), with a bunch of streets named after Slovak cities lying one way from them (Kassa, Késmárk, Rozsnyó, Rimaszombat, etc. Streets – in Slovak: Košice, Kežmarok, Rožňava, and Rimavská Sobota) and a couple of streets named after the neighboring Romanian cities stretched the other way (Máramorossziget, Szatmárnémeti, Nagybánya Streets – in Romanian: Sighetu Marmaţiei, Satu Mare and Baia Mare).