Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

In August, 1914, at the beginning of World War I, the army of tsarist Russia, millions strong, had occupied the Western Ukraine, then a part of Austria-Hungary. By September, their advance came to a halt before the almost impregnable barrier of the Carpathians. From September. 1914, to March, 1915, the Russian forces, attacking from the north, tried without success to break through the Carpathian rampart. Eventually, a million and a half Russian soldiers lay dead in the Carpathian forest and wastes, with the comparatively weak Austro-Hungarian forces succeeding in repelling the overwhelming manpower of the tsarist divisions. The Carpathians had guarded the Hungarian Plain and the neighboring lowlands of Central Europe from the Russian threat from the north. The world understood then the strategic importance of the Carpathians for the East European colossus; control of the Carpathians meant an open road not only to Budapest, but also to Vienna and Trieste...

One may presume the above words were written by a Hungarian - but they were not. These lines are taken from an editorial in the Ukrainian Quarterly (Summer, 1954), showing the keen appreciation of the Carpathians' strategic importance by outsiders who should know...

Invasions Against the Carpathian Basin

According to a widely accepted geopolitical doctrine, the value of an area is proportionate in part of its defensibility against invasion. In this respect, the Carpathian Basin scores high marks. It is protected by long mountain ranges with dense forests, rocky terrain and relatively few major passes. This facilitates the task of defending the Basin with

relatively small forces against large-scale ground attacks, even if those attacks are supported by aerial bombardments.

The western, and particularly the southern borders of the Basin, unprotected by the Carpathian Mountains, are its weak points. The southern border offers the best invasion routes, while the defensibility of the Basin is excellent against attacks from the north, east and southeast.

During Hungary's thousand year-long history, invasions from the west, east and south occurred several times between 1040 and 1945, namely:

The German invasion in the 11th century, launched by the German-Roman Empire to subjugate the Kingdom of Hungary, aimed at the colonization of the Ostmark and the creation of a buffer zone between Eastern Europe and the Empire. This German attack was completely repulsed and never resumed.

The Mongol (Tartar) invasion of 1241, which was the first great breakthrough of invaders from the East toward Central Europe since 896, the year of the Magyar Conquest. Ultimately the Tartars' homebase proved to be too distant to support the aggression, and though the invasion was successful, it was abandoned, and never successfully attempted again.

The Turkish invasion and occupation from the 16th to the 17th century which was the most successful penetration of Central Europe by a power based in the Balkans and Asia Minor. The strength of the Turks' power base made continuous attacks possible at a time when the oligarchic character of the Hungarian kingdom had weakened the people's resistance. The invasion primarily affected the Plains, produced relatively little effect on Transylvania, and only a temporary effect on Transdanubia. Despite the lengthy Turkish presence in the Hungarian Basin, there was no assimilation of Magyar and Turkish elements, no cultural absorption, and little economic influence beyond the Turks' financial exploitation of Hungary.

The occupation was finally ended with the help of the indirectly threatened Alpine Europe of the Habsburg Empire and the Papacy in the late 17th century.

The Habsburg "liberation" of the Basin which was not an invasion in the strict sense of the word, but provided for a political and military union of Alpine Europe with the Carpathian Basin. During the years of this union, feeble attempts were made to colonize Hungary in the last years of the 17th century, but these were soon abandoned. At no time did Hungary, including Transylvania, lose its identity as a separate geographic, political and economic region.

In the tsarist invasion of 1849, when 150,000 Russian troops crossed the Carpathians, not to conquer Hungarian territory, but to come to the aid of the hardpressed Austrians in their campaign to defeat the Hungarian army in the War of Independence. The Russians could cross the Carpathian barrier unhindered in this case, since the Hungarian army was engaged fighting the Austrian troops in the West at the time.

The Soviet-Russian invasion of 1944-45 was the second invasion by an Eastern power since the Tartars' onslaught in 1241, and the most dangerous penetration into the Carpathian Basin to date.

The Break-up of the Carpathian Frontier

During its turbulent history, Hungary was sometimes courted, sometimes suppressed, but never annihilated or assimilated, and the country had been able to hold on to its Carpathian frontiers. However, a disastrous change occurred in 1920, when the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy led to its political dismemberment.

The purpose of that dismemberment was to destroy the power of the Monarchy, which it effectively did, but in so doing it created illogical political units which might be partially justified from certain ethnic perspectives, had it not violated the underlying geographical, economic and military interests of the peoples involved. As a result, the defensive wall of the Carpathians has also been broken up. Actually, in the case of Rumania, the annexation by Rumania of Transylvania with its southern mountains was like putting a natural "Great Wall of China'' across the middle of the country. Rumania is now bisected by a barrier which limits access from the old kingdom (Regat) to its newly gained territory (Transylvania) in the north.

The Strange Case of Ruthenia

In 1945, the Czechs voluntarily ceded Carpatho-Ruthenia, a part of their restored country, to the Soviet Union. This act made the Soviet Union ''de jure'' possessor of a section of the Carpathian defensive wall, establishing a Russian presence in the heart of Europe.

Such a transfer had been long in the making. As early as 1920, Masaryk is said to have remarked to M. Gillerson, the head of the Russian Red Cross:

I regard Ruthenia as a pledge between our two countries. We Czechs will hand this territory over to you at the next possible opportunity. I, the President of the Republic, am telling you this,. and authorize you to repeat my statement to this effect to your government.

Eduard Benes, in his book, Oů vont les Slaves, wrote:

Since 1922 our effort has been oriented towards the Slav East (Russia)... We never changed our ideas or our plans... We worked methodically. Our endeavors to maintain this "Eastern" and "Slav'' line were conscious and premeditated; they were based on a new concept of Europe's future.

Wary of Benes' willingness to sacrifice Ruthenia to the Soviet Union, Sir Robert Donald, a British historian, raised his voice as early as 1928 in his work The Tragedy of Trianon:

The betrayal of Ruthenia by the (Czechs and the growth of communism in that country is not a matter concerning Ruthenia only. It affects the neighboring states and is a matter of European importance, for it threatens Western civilization. After Trianon and under Czech rule, Carpatho-Russia (Ruthenia) became a breed of ground of communism.

The 20-year non-aggression pact Benes concluded with the Soviet Union in 1935 was an important step in the "Russification" of Ruthenia. Among other things it allowed the Russians to build air bases at Aknaszlatina, Munkács and Ungvár, the major cities of Ruthenia.

The Munich Pact in 1938,. however, had crossed Czech-Russian designs for the time being, with Czechoslovakia's neighbors, including the Poles, realizing the incohesiveness of the state. At a conference held in Warsaw six weeks after Munich, Colonel Joseph Beck, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, informed his leading diplomats that:

The weakness of that state (Czechoslovakia surpassed everything that we originally may have expected. Before the war, there was much complaint about the Balkans, because the organization of the states there had been weak and they were used by others as instruments. After World War I, Europe became "Balkanized'' as far as the Carpathians... In principle,. Hungary may be considered to be more resistant than the other countries... We have to see to it that we obtain as quickly as possible a common frontier with Hungary.

The same desire prompted Hungary to establish

such a common frontier in the spring of 1939, using the dissolution of Czechoslovakia as a pretext for such a move. Although on March 14, 1939, the very day the independent Slovak Republic was founded. Volosin followed suit by declaring himself the head of a sovereign Ukrainian state in Ruthenia,. that "state" existed for but 24 hours. It collapsed when the Hungarian troops arrived.

As Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote in the New York Times on March 16, 1939:

Of all the incredible episodes in the break-up of Czechoslovakia, what has happened during the last three days in Carpatho-Ukraine (Ruthenia) is the most fantastic.

On Tuesday, this smallest sector of the tripartite Czech State was fighting the Czechs. On Tuesday night. it proclaimed itself an independent State. On Wednesday morning, Czech flags were down. Czech troops in full flight, and Ukrainian colors were flying from every window of the capital, Hust. By Wednesday afternoon,. the Hungarian tricolors had replaced the Ukrainian blue and yellow in a hundred villages as the Hungarian army advanced toward the capital.

Carpatho-Ukraine (Ruthenia) was actually under three flags in twenty-seven hours. In three days it had fought two wars - the first to drive out the Czechs, the second to keep Hungarians from coming in, Hust was a capital for a day...

The re-establishment of a common Polish-Hungarian frontier allowed the Magyars to resume their position as the historic defenders of a 200 kilometer stretch of the Carpathians. None to soon. Six months later this common frontier was to serve as a route of escape for hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers after Poland's defeat by Hitler's army. Hungary, braving the Germans' anger, offered safe refuge to the Polish refugees for years, and actually channeled many of them in secret ways to the West, where they could join General Anders' Polish legion of liberation.

Meanwhile, Eduard Benes in exile was busy securing the restoration of Czechoslovakia. As early as June, 1942, he concluded a secret pact with Stalin. One of the conditions of this pact was to cede Carpatho-Ruthenia to Russia. In return, Stalin guaranteed the 1918 boundaries of Czechoslovakia, and sanctioned Benes' plan to expel 3.5 million Sudeten Germans and 800.000 Hungarians from Czechoslovakia's territory.

A complete copy of the June 28, 1942 agreement is reported to have been handed to the American ambassador at that time. Although never published, copy of it has been recovered by Richard L. Stokes, the Washington correspondent of the Sr. Louis Post Dispatch.

Harold Nicholson, the British diplomat. in his book Peace Making wrote:

Stalin received the eastern part of Czechoslovakia, Podkarpatska Russ (Ruthenia), presumably in return for its sanction of the expatriation of four million Germans and Hungarians.

The transfer of Ruthenia was proclaimed on June 29, 1945, in a pact containing the phrase: 'Ruthenia at last" has joined her true mother, the Ukraine, and has become a member in the great Soviet family."

"A Fateful Milestone..."

Thus Ruthenia, from 1919 to 1945, in a period of about 25 years, had seen eight different political regimes. In succession these were: Hungarian, communist, Rumanian, Czechoslovak, Ukrainian, again Hungarian, again communist, again Rumanian, again Czechoslovak, again Ukrainian, again Hungarian, again Czech and finally Russian-communist.

So much for the "stability" the peace treaty of Trianon presumably created in that area.

Pointing to the last take-over, Hanson W. Baldwin, the military expert of the New York Times wrote in The Atlantic Monthly of July, 1954:

On July 1, 1945... Soviet Russia was established in the heart of Europe. This was a fateful milestone for mankind... Major General ].F.C. Fuller, in his The Second World War, has summed it up well. Politically the decisive area was Austria and Hungary,. for were the Russians to occupy those two countries - the strategic center of Europe - before the Americans and British could do so, then the two Western Allies would have fought the war in vain; for all that would happen would be the establishment of a Russian Lebensraum in Eastern Europe instead of a German one.

It will be hard, I think, for history to refute the contention that the loss of much of Eastern Europe was due in considerable measure to political astigmatism.

In light of the past decades which have been marked by Soviet expansion, it should be clear that the Western Allies only redoubled the catastrophic mistakes of Versailles in making "peace" after World War II. And what would be the remedy in the case of Ruthenia?

The Ukrainian Quarterly we have quoted in the beginning of this chapter answers this question thus:

What the tsarist government could not accomplish, the red regime of Russia brought about by the clever use of its own policy and through profiting by the unsolved national problems in that part of Europe. Although modern methods and modern arms have changed. the strength of the natural barriers of the Carpathians has not been altered...

The Soviet crossing of the Carpathians can only in the present situation be liquidated by the dissolution of the red Russian Empire. There is no other way.

Only the disintegration of the Soviet Empire into national states will immediately liquidate the pressure of the Eurasian colossus upon the entire world...

From Genocide to Revivalism

Carpatho-Ruthenia's incorporation into the Soviet Union began as an attempted, arbitrary landgrab and genocide in mid-November, 1944, with the war still going on. Russian troops simply annexed 27 villages of Trianon Hungary to the Soviet Ukraine. Simultaneously, 60,000 Hungarian men in Carpatho-Ruthenia between ages 18 and 50 were rounded up and subsequently deported to the Soviet Union. Two thirds of them never returned. This was a Stalinist method of getting rid of Hungarians in the region, which the Russians knew would be given to the Soviet Union after the war. Although the landgrab was later nullified, the genocide of 40,000 Hungarians could not be undone.

No wonder that the number of Magyars - cca 250,000 during the war - had decreased to 170,000 by 1979. In 1990 an estimated 200,000 Hungarians lived in the Soviet Union. For almost 45 years they had been relegated to catacombic political and cultural existence as an ethnic group amidst 1 million Slavs composed of Ukrainians, Russian settlers and Ruthenians, the latter being original inhabitants of the region, and considered pro-Hungarians.

Ruthenia, which had belonged to Hungary for a thousand years was the scene of important events in the country's history. It was there that in 896 A.D. Árpád's Hungarian tribes had crossed the Carpathians through the pass of Verecke; that Ferenc Rákóczi II started the longest freedom fight in Hungarian history, that Ilona Zrínyi defended the fortress of Munkács for three years against Habsburg siege, gaining international fame.

During the past 45 years the most remarkable achievement by Hungarians in Carpatho-Ruthenia (also known as Sub-Carpathia) has been their successful self-preservation as an ethnic group, without having any organization to represent and defend their interests. (The Ukrainian constitution lacks any provision to deal with minorities). Even worse was, psychologically, the indifference of communist governments in their mother country, Hungary, toward the fate of Magyar minorities in the Carpathian Basin. Feeling abandoned, the Magyars of Sub-Carpathia regarded themselves as "the forgotten Hungarian minority."

It was only in the late 1980's that they began to surface from their catacombic existence as an identity-conscious national group, skillfully exploiting the freer atmosphere of glasnost and perestroika. Since then, Magyar revivalism has been manifesting itself in various forms throughout the region. The once-silenced churches resumed the tolling of their bells, as if symbols of awakening spirit. Beregszász, a city of 37,000, has remained purely Hungarian, while in Ungvár (Uzhgorod), and in Munkács (Munkacevo), each having 70,000 inhabitants, the Magyars represent 20 percent of the population, which had been inflated by the "import" of Russian settlers.

The first sign of cultural revivalism was the forming of a Union of Hungarian Writers and Artists. This was followed in February, 1989 by a real breakthrough, the birth of the Cultural Alliance of Hungarians of Sub-Carpathia (Kárpátaljai Magyar Kulturális Szövetség) which intends to represent Magyar interests in the region. The Alliance's first act was to send a letter to Moscow demanding cultural autonomy for Hungarians.

No less an important factor in raising hopes for a better future was the revolutionary change in the leadership of Hungary. In contrast to decades of neglect by communist governments, the leaders of the new, democratic Hungary have shown a very active interest in the fate of Magyars living beyond Hungary's present borders in the Carpathian Basin.

This interest is a means of self-preservation for the Hungarian nation. No matter how borders are drawn, Magyars regard them as merely "lines on a map which in spirit cannot separate Hungarians from one another - as expressed a Magyar leader eloquently in Beregszász.

One striking manifestation of this attitude is that in regions inhabited by Magyars the clocks and watches show Budapest time as opposed to the officially valid Moscow time, with a time difference of two hours. Listening to Hungarian radio and watching Hungarian TV stations is a daily routine in Magyar households all over Carpatho-Ruthenia.

The Magyars' main cultural center is Ungvár, where the local university has a Hungarian faculty, and where the Institute of Hungarology will have its headquarters. A Kárpátaljai Igaz Szó (True Voice of Subcarpathia) is also based in Ungvár.

The teaching of Hungarian history is spreading in the region's elementary and high schools while Hungarian festivals and commemorative gatherings have become commonplace, including the singing of Hungarian hymns and recitation of Magyar poems.

One event in November, 1989, attended by tens of thousands in Beregszász, was a somber affair, commemorating the 40,000 deportees who had perished in Soviet labor camps after World War II. This was the first time that Soviet authorities allowed such a manifestation of sorrow over that terrible loss. Still, calls for revenge were absent. "We came to tell the truth, not to pass judgement" was the prevailing mood. After all, Carpatho-Ruthenia still belongs to the Soviet Union, and who knows for how long?

Yet Another Change of Masters...

As Carpatho-Ruthenians pondered over who their next master would be, the answer came sooner than expected. After the political earthquake that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine, now an independent state of 52 million, quickly annexed Carpatho-Ruthenia. Feeble protests by an ad-hoc Alliance of Carpathian Ruthenians to prevent this led nowhere, and in a quickly ordered plebiscite by Kiev in December, 1991 the Slav and Hungarian constituents of the region - having no hope for something better - voted with a 78% majority for a special status of their territory, a status less than complete autonomy.

The plebiscite itself gave the Ruthenians no chance to declare their nationality, because Moscow as well as Kiev, deny their separate identity and regard them as Ukrainians. However, the returns of a census taken in East Slovakia in March, 1991 refuted this view: 17,000 persons declared themselves as Ruthenians, and only 13,000 as Ukrainians. Understandably, the approximately 700,000 Ruthenes, who are tied to Hungary by religion and historical traditions, are unwilling to accept the negation of their existence. Their problem is similar to that of the Macedonians, who are considered Bulgars in Bulgaria, although they feel themselves to be Macedonians. In such cases the decisive proof is who the people involved hold themselves to be.

The current change of masters (the eight since 1920, the year of the treaty of Trianon) has improved the Hungarians' situation compared to Soviet rule. They find themselves in a friendly grip between Ruthene dreams and Ukrainian reality. While the former can offer them but promises of equal partnership in a dreamed about Ruthenian Republic, Ukrainian reality has resulted in tangible favors. Thanks to the plebiscite, the region with the overwhelmingly Magyar population, Beregszász (which the Soviets had renamed) has regained its Magyar name, and is now enjoying local autonomy. Communities with a Hungarian majority are allowed to use the Magyar language in official documents, and develop their own school system, letting them maintain and nurture their own national identity. In addition, the Hungarians may display their national colors, sing the national anthem on festive occasions, and rebuild monuments or erect new ones, such as a memorial for the 40,000 Magyar deported, who perished in Soviet labor camps after the war.

Hungary, the Ruthenians' mother country, supports this revival culturally through a stream of books, teachers, performers, videos and printing facilities. Traffic to and from Hungary has multiplied, including visiting relatives. Visitors include tourists from the United States and Canada, where both the Magyars and Ruthenes have many well-to-do communities, eager to send help to their former homeland.

Economically, however, all the inhabitants of former Carpatho-Ruthenia - Magyars, Ukrainians and Ruthenes alike - are victims of an economical catastrophe caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its demise brought high unemployment, the loss of former markets, a steep decline in production and rampant inflation which has led to a dramatic loss of value of the new Ukrainian currency. Lacking a workable system for the distribution of food and goods, life is a day-to-day struggle for physical survival. A thin lifeline from Hungary, maintained by various official and private organizations, tries to provide desperately needed help, but cannot stop the steady decline of the standard of living. This in turn, compels thousands of the younger generations, mostly intellectuals, every year to emigrate to Hungary or other countries seeking a better life. Unstopped, this will put the future of the Hungarian minority in jeopardy.

Apart from the economic misery, it is undeniable that the improvements on the politico-cultural level could not have occurred without the goodwill of the Ukrainian government. Since foreign policy is not based on fraternal love but on well-conceived interests, it may be assumed that courting local Hungarians and Hungary itself, is the Ukrainian way of building bridges toward the West. The new country's geographical isolation, with Russia to the north and Poland to the west, leaves but one country, Hungary, as a possible opening in the desired direction for Ukraine's foreign policy. It is understandable that Hungary, itself surrounded by not so friendly neighbors, welcomed the Ukraine's approach. In the spring of 1993 Budapest concluded with Kiev a "basic treaty" (alapszerzdés) declaring mutual friendship. However laudable this goal, the contract contained one sentence that created an uproar in Hungary and among Magyars living abroad:

The contracting parties will honor each other's territorial integrity, and declare that they do not now, and will not in the future, raise any territorial claim against the other.

No Hungarian government had ever dared renounce so categorically the idea of an eventual peaceful revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Therefore, the Antall government's signing away of such an eventuality was and is considered by many to be a political sacrilege. Critics accused those responsible of betraying their country's long term interests. They pointed out that the new treaty also violates the Helsinki Agreement, which stated that "the signatory states' borders may be changed by peaceful means and mutual concurrence in harmony with international law."

Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary