Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (111 page)

When the Serb will no more be a slave!
¹⁰²

As Lord Curzon apparently failed to recognize, it is the Montenegrin counterpart to ‘Rule, Britannia’.

*
A district of Bosnia. The Ottoman
sandjak
was a second-level administrative unit, less than a province.

*
Like other Orthodox countries, Montenegro adhered to the old Julian Calendar, which was thirteen days behind the Gregorian Calendar used by Western countries. Dates were usually expressed in both New Style and Old Style.

*
H. W. V. Temperley (1879–1939) was a historian, Fellow of Peterhouse and later Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. In 1919, having fought at Gallipoli and published his
History of Serbia
, he was working for the War Office in military intelligence.
⁶⁶

Rusyn

The Republic of One Day

(15 March 1939)

Rusyn

The Republic of One Day

(15 March 1939)

I

‘Ruthenia’ sounds vaguely similar to ‘Ruritania’: or rather, it sounds suspiciously like a whimsical cross between Ruritania and Slovenia. It is, of course, a real place, as opposed to the fictional kingdom invented by the Victorian novelist Anthony Hope for
The Prisoner of Zenda
.
¹
Ruritania never vanished, because it never existed. Ruthenia, in contrast, like Slovenia, belonged in Hope’s day to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in official Hungarian terminology was called
Kárpátalya
. After the First World War, it was joined to Czechoslovakia as
Podkarpatsko
or ‘Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia’; and after the Second, to the Soviet Union. It now forms the Zakarpattia region of the Ukrainian Republic. Nowadays, the preferred name for the region in English is ‘Carpatho-Ukraine’. Its largest town and the most westerly in Ukraine, Uzhgorod, lies very close to the frontier of Slovakia and hence of the European Union. One can get there from Western Europe by driving due east from the Czech Republic or by taking a cheap flight to Uzhgorod from Prague, Warsaw or Kiev.

The dominant ethnic group in Carpatho-Ukraine call themselves
Rusyns
or ‘Ruthenians’; under Hungarian rule before 1918, they were often referred to as
Ukro-Rusyns
or ‘Ruthenians of Hungary’. They are a small branch of a much larger East Slavic grouping that includes the Belarusians and Ukrainians, both of whom at one time called themselves by the same name (see
Chapters 5
and
9
), but from whom the Carpatho-Rusyns would think themselves distinct. Prior to 1945, their homeland on the sunny southern slopes of the central Carpathian Mountains was never incorporated into the same state as Belarus or Ukraine, and the different historical environment inevitably fostered different customs and characteristics. The landscape below the subalpine peaks is dominated by tree-clad hills, deep valleys and broad rivers, by flower-filled summer meadows, and by a climate that encourages fruit-growing and wine-production. Apart from Uzhgorod and Mukachevo, the towns are few and insignificant. The typical village is no more than a cluster of farm buildings watched over by a carved wooden church. Overpopulation and rural poverty, however, forced many to flee abroad. Robert Maxwell (1923–91), the British press magnate, was born Ján Ludvík Hoch at Solotvyno near Tyachiv on the Romanian frontier; popularly known as ‘the bouncing Czech’, he was a Czechoslovak citizen at birth but not ethnically Czech. Adolph Zukor (1873–1976), the founder of Paramount Pictures, was born in a Rusyn village just across the frontier with Slovakia, as were the parents of American artist Andrij Warhola (Andy Warhol, 1928–87).

Not everyone will see the point of visiting Zakarpattia. It does not top the bill of Ukraine’s tourist destinations, just as Ukraine does not top Europe’s. Yet the point is not trivial. It is not just about gazing on Uzhgorod’s ancient castle, or strolling carefree across the footbridge over the River Uzh, or sampling the local Pancake Festival, Zarkapattia’s answer to Mardi Gras. For some, it may involve seeking the traces of the venerable Jewish
yeshivah
, which once flourished at Khust. But for most, it is mainly concerned with proving that this little part of the world exists.

II

In the early twentieth century the Rusyns of Carpatho-Ukraine possessed a strong sense of national consciousness, reinforced by an active émigré community in the United States. Their identity was closely bound up with the Greek Catholic Church, which had been established in the Kingdom of Hungary since the Union of Uzhgorod of 1646. But the Church’s influence was fractured by the presence of Russophile and Orthodox elements, and later, in the 1920s, by that of Communists. Their political aspirations were constantly thwarted by the indifference of the Great Powers and by the presence among them of Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, German and Jewish minorities.
²

Carpatho-Ukraine’s two decades in the inter-war Republic of Czechoslovakia were not happy. The government in Prague constantly postponed action on its undertaking to give a wide measure of autonomy to
Podkarpatsko
, as demanded by the Treaty of St Germain (1919), which had formally abolished the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The population of 814,000 (1938), of whom about 15 per cent were Jews, suffered the lowest living standards in the country. Politics were stifled by the wrangles of pro-Hungarian, pro-German and pro-Soviet groupings. During the Munich Conference of September 1938, when substantial slices of Bohemia were repackaged as the ‘Sudetenland’ and ceded to Nazi Germany, the impotence of the central government caused dismay; and matters deteriorated further in November when German arbitrators at the so-called Vienna Awards forced both Slovak and Ruthenian delegates to cede territory to Hungary.
Podkarpatsko
lost a broad swathe of land that included both Uzhgorod and Mukachevo.

Nonetheless, on 22 November 1938 Prague granted the much-delayed autonomy to Slovakia and Ruthenia in a desperate attempt to hold the state together. An executive Regional Council was established at Khust (Huszt), headed by the Revd Avgustyn Voloshyn (1874–1945), a Greek Catholic clergyman and former professor of mathematics, who had chaired the committee that had recommended Ruthenia’s entry into Czechoslovakia twenty years before. A regional assembly was planned. A nationalistic paramilitary formation, the Sich Guard, received official recognition.

These arrangements, however, only created deeper tensions. The Slovaks, in particular, felt dangerously exposed to further Hungarian encroachments, and prepared to seek independent status under German protection. The Rusyns formed the helpless last link at the end of the chain. Slovak independence would cut them off from Prague completely. They had little enthusiasm to attach themselves to Poland; Polish–Ukrainian relations were not the best. And, though some sympathy existed for the theoretical concept of a Greater Ukraine, they had no wish in practice to join Stalin’s blood-soaked Soviet Union. To stand any chance of survival, Carpatho-Ruthenia’s only sensible course of action would be to declare independence itself.

The match was struck at 5.00 a.m. on 15 March 1939, when the German army marched into the rump of Czechoslovakia, occupied Prague and proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia to be a ‘Protectorate’ of the Reich. Hitler cited prevailing civil unrest (created by the Nazis) as a threat to German security. Father Tiso, the Slovak leader, was already declaring Slovakia’s secession, forewarned thanks to a recent meeting with the Führer. The Rusyn leaders, whom no one had consulted and who were totally isolated, decided they had no alternative but to follow the Slovaks’ lead.

The Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, therefore, was proclaimed that same day. Its government was to be led by the Revd Voloshyn as president, and by Julian Revay as prime minister. Its constitution stated that a democratically elected Diet was to enjoy supreme control; that the state language was to be Ukrainian; that the flag was to consist of two blue and yellow horizontal bands; and that the new measures were to be implemented immediately. The words of the national anthem, ‘
Shche ne vmerla Ukraina
’, ‘Ukraine has not perished yet’, borrowed from Poland’s, were aptly defiant. Since Uzhgorod was already occupied by Hungary, Khust was to be the state capital.

Ethnic violence instantly spilled over into Carpatho-Ukraine from Slovakia. The Sich Guard became embroiled both with stranded Czechoslovak army garrisons and with Slovak and Hungarian irregulars on the frontiers. Three-sided skirmishes were in progress when unexpected news arrived in the afternoon. The Hungarian army, having condemned the civil unrest, had crossed the border from the south.

Thanks to the close proximity of Hungary and Romania, Khust had been attracting an unusual crowd of foreigners. A substantial German delegation had arrived, and had persuaded German peasants from some of the nearby villages to come into town and wave their swastika flags. There was an elderly American missionary, Mrs McCormick and her husband, and a Polish photographer. There were at least two Britons. One of the Britons, Commander Wedgwood-Benn MP, spoke none of the local languages and left, but not before he was overheard (as reported by the other Englishman) telling someone in Latin, ‘
Adolfus Hitler bonus vir!
’
*

Michael Winch, a travel-writer, claimed to be there conducting research. He was expecting the Sich Guards to come to blows with the police and army. He was able to present an eyewitness account of events from his hotel window, which is worth quoting at length:

In twenty-four hours we lived in three different states. We woke up in the Czechoslovak Republic. By the evening Carpatho-Ukraine was a free land. Next day the Hungarians came in…