Ukrainian Lands in Interwar Romania and Czechoslovakia

Ukrainians in Romania

The Ukrainians in interwar Romania, who in 1930 numbered anywhere between 582,000 (official statistics) and one million (unofficial estimates), lived in three geographically separate regions: Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Maramurer.

Interwar Romania was a parliamentary kingdom ruled by the same Hohen- zollern dynasty that had come to power in 1866. During the 1920s, Romanian political life was dominated by the Liberal party, whose goal was to create a cen­tralized state. The result was that newly acquired regions which before World War I had enjoyed various degrees of autonomy (Bukovina, Transylvania) now found themselves in a state determined to do away with all vestiges of self-rule. During the 1930s, Romania’s new king, Carol II (reigned 1930-1940), succeeded in weak­ening the role of parliament until, in 1938, the country was transformed into a royal dictatorship.

Bessarabia’s Ukrainians were the first to come under Romanian rule. Tucked in between the Prut and Dniester Rivers and touching the shores of the Black Sea, Bessarabia was the eastern region of the Ottoman vassal state of Moldavia. In 1812, it was annexed and made a province of the Russian Empire. After the March 1917 revolution, the Central Rada in Kiev laid claim to Bessarabia, and local Ukrainians set up schools and cultural societies (notably Prosvita).

MAP 40

UKRAINIAN/RUSYN LANDS IN ROMANIA AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA, ca. 1930

Copyright © by Paul Robert Magocsi

raids from the east, and under their protection the region’s National Council pro­claimed on 24 January 1918 an independent Moldavian Democratic Republic of Bessarabia. Despite the skepticism of some Moldavian and non-Moldavian mem­bers, the National Council voted on 27 March 1918 for the unification of Bes­sarabia with the Kingdom of Romania. Caught unprepared by this fait accompli, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan - but not the Soviet Union - on 28 October 1920 signed the so-called Bessarabian Protocol, which recognized Romanian rule. During the interwar years, the Ukrainians in southern Bessarabia were permitted to have their own elementary schools (120), a few cooperatives, and representatives in the Romanian parliament.

Whereas Ukrainians in southern Bessarabia enjoyed minimal cultural and national rights, the situation in northern Bukovina was virtually the opposite. Old Austrian Bukovina had enjoyed more cultural and political autonomy than any other Ukrainian-inhabited land within the Habsburg Empire. This was in large part due to the representational balance between Ukrainians, Romanians, Jews, Austro-Germans, and Poles that was set up before the war by the Habsburg govern­ment. All this was to change after the beginning of Romanian rule in November 1918 (see chapter 41).

What had previously been the multinational administrative and cultural center of Chernivtsi was transformed, at least outwardly, into a Romanian city.

Not surprisingly, the fortunes of Bukovina’s Ukrainians were profoundly affect­ed by the new postwar order, so that during what Soviet Ukrainian authors used to call “the years of Romanian boyar occupation,” they quickly became worse off than their fellows in Czechoslovakia’s Transcarpathia or even Poland’s Gali­cia. Bukovina’s diet, provincial administration, school board, and district self­government from the Austrian era were all abolished. On paper, Bukovina survived for a while as an administrative unit, but in 1932 it was eliminated and divided into five Romanian counties.

One aspect of Bukovinian life that did not change much was the economic sta­tus of the Ukrainian population. As under Austrian rule, the vast majority contin­ued to work as small-scale subsistence farmers, some of whom supplemented their income by raising livestock, in particular sheep. Like Poland and other countries in central Europe, Romania introduced a land reform program during the 1920s whose goal was to reduce the size of large landholdings. Although 186,000 acres (75,500 hectares) of land from landed estates in northern Bukovina were offered for sale, most did not go to the indigenous population, but rather to Romanian in­migrants from other parts of the country. Moreover, while the newcomers received 10 acres (4 hectares) of land and 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of pasture on average, individual Ukrainian farmers increased their holdings by only half a hectare on average.

Land was paramount, because Ukrainians in Romania had no economic alter­natives. In both northern Bukovina and southern Bessarabia industry remained underdeveloped. By 1930, for instance, northern Bukovina had only 15,000 fac­tory workers. This meant that throughout the interwar years of Romanian rule the two regions remained economically backward, with their Ukrainian population engaged almost exclusively in small-scale subsistence agriculture or livestock rais­ing.

Although the economic status of Ukrainians did not change, Ukrainian political and cultural life, which had thrived in Bukovina under prewar Austrian Habsburg rule, came to an end. During the first decade of Romanian rule (1918-1928), Bukovina was under martial law. All Ukrainian cultural societies were closed, the use of Ukrainian was discontinued in the court system, and all Ukrainian news­papers were banned. The educational system was subjected to romanianization. The Romanian language began to be introduced as the language of instruction in schools at the very outset of Romanian rule. Nonetheless, by the 1922-1923 school year, there were still 255 Ukrainian schools.

The status of Ukrainians improved somewhat in 1928, when for a few years the National Peasant party dominated Romanian politics. Ukrainian candidates, who previously had been elected on Romanian tickets (Kost’ Krakaliia, Antin Luka- sevych, lurii Lysan), now represented the new Ukrainian National party, estab­lished in 1927 and headed by the national leader and art historian Volodymyr Zalozets’kyi-Sas. Ukrainian-language daily (Chas, 1928-40) and weekly (Ridnyi krai, 1926-30) newspapers were also permitted.

This brief revival of Ukrainian political and cultural activity soon waned, how­ever, with the return of the Liberal party in 1933. Moreover, by the end of the decade, Romania’s parliamentary democracy had become meaningless. The state was transformed into an authoritarian dictatorship under King Carol II (reigned 1930-1940), whose government had little sympathy with the country’s national minorities.

The Rusyns/Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia

Unlike in interwar Poland and Romania, where the political, cultural, and socio­economic situation of Ukrainians worsened in comparison with what it had been during the pre-1914 era of Austrian rule, in Czechoslovakia the situation of Rus-

yns/Ukrainians improved.

The new Czechoslovak state was formed as a republic. It had a bicameral cen­tral parliament in Prague, consisting of the elected House of Deputies (Poslaneckd Snemovna) and the Senate (Sendt), and a government headed by an elected presi­dent who held office for seven years. Only two presidents held office in Czechoslo­vakia throughout the interwar period: the founder of the republic, Masaryk, until 1935, and after that his longtime minister of foreign affairs, Edvard Benes. It is useful to note that throughout central Europe most of the small so-called suc­cessor states (that is, those new countries which had been carved out of the old prewar empires) began as parliamentary democracies. All with one exception, however, had by the 1930s become authoritarian dictatorships. The exception was Czechoslovakia, which until the very end of the interwar period maintained a lib­eral democratic system characterized by a representative government and the rule of law. This state of affairs was to have a very positive effect on Transcarpathian developments.

There were, nonetheless, certain political problems. Although a distinct prov­ince, known officially as Subcarpathian Rus’ (Czech: Podkarpatskd Rus), was estab­lished in 1920 with its own governor, it did not include all “Ruthenes (Rusyns) living south of the Carpathians,” as called for in the Treaty of St Germain. Of the 458,000 Rusyns recorded in eastern Czechoslovakia in 1921, nearly 86,000 were placed under a Slovak administration in an area popularly known as the Presov Region. Although autonomy was promised to Subcarpathian Rus’, its specific form was not spelled out.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the very first governor appointed by Presi­dent Masaryk to administer Subcarpathian Rus’, the Rusyn-American lawyer Greg­ory Zhatkovych, made the questions of autonomy and the unity of all Rusyns into one province his primary concerns. He hoped that autonomy would be imple­mented (with rights similar to those held by American states) and that the Rusyns under Slovak administration would be united with Subcarpathian Rus’. Failure to obtain these goals prompted Governor Zhatkovych’s resignation in protest as early as 1921.

The Czechoslovak approach was similar to the former Habsburg approach in politics - procrastination. Prague argued that autonomy could not be imple­mented in Subcarpathian Rus’ because the local inhabitants were not yet mature enough to participate in a modern democratic political process and because many of the local leaders, especially the traditionally influential Greek Catholic clergy, favored or anticipated a return to Hungarian rule. Until a transitional or educa­tive period was completed, Prague would have to rule the region directly. It was not clear, however, how long this transitional period was to last. In 1928, Czecho­slovakia was divided into four provinces, one of which was Subcarpathian Rus’ (formally renamed the Subcarpathian Rusyn Land - Zeme podkarpatoruska). Each of Czechoslovakia’s provinces was endowed with a provincial diet, and although there were governors appointed from among the local population to head the province of Subcarpathian Rus’ (Antonin Beskyd, 1923-1933, and Konstantyn Hrabar, 1935-1938), the administration was de facto in the hands of a Czech vice­governor. Thus, Subcarpathia’ political demands - autonomy and the unity of all Rusyns/Ukrainians - were never fulfilled during the era that came to be known as that of the first Czechoslovak republic.

One reason for the Czechoslovak government’s reluctance to grant autonomy to Subcarpathian Rus’ was the presence of a large Magyar (Hungarian) population, which was considered a potential threat to the political stability of the region. The Magyars were the second-largest nationality in Subcarpathian Rus’, with 192,000 inhabitants, or 17 percent of the population, in 1921. They lived in a compact ter­ritory running along the border with Hungary, and they made up a significant por­tion of the population in the area’s two largest cities, Uzhhorod (18 percent) and Mukachevo (23 percent). In fact, the Magyars lived on lands that were simply an extension of the Hungarian plain, now separated by an international border from what remained of postwar Hungary. In the new Slavic state of Czechoslovakia, the Magyars found themselves in a situation they had never encountered before: they were a minority in their own homeland.

As a national minority, the Magyars continued to have access to education in their native language at all levels through high school (gymnasium), and they enjoyed all the rights granted citizens of democratic Czechoslovakia, including a Magyar-language press free from government control and elected representa­tives to local legislative bodies as well as the national parliament in Prague, where their deputies and senators addressed the assembly in Hungarian. Neverthe­less, many Magyars in Subcarpathian Rus’, especially their spokespersons in the National Christian Socialist party and the Magyar National party, assumed that Czechoslovak rule was only temporary and that sooner or later the region would be returned to Hungary. The local Greek Catholic Church, in particular during the early 1920s, included many pro-Hungarian priests and hierarchs, and by the 1930s Magyar politicians in Czechoslovakia led by Count Janos Esterhazy were becoming increasingly susceptible to propaganda from neighboring Hungary that was agitating for the reacquisition of that country’s former Highlands (Felvidek) to the north - Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus’.

Although the political demands put forth by Rusyns/Ukrainians were not ful­filled, the inhabitants of Subcarpathian Rus’ acquired concrete experience with democracy. For the first time, the masses participated in fair elections held at the village, county, provincial, and national levels. Regardless of national background, Subcarpathians were elected to both houses of the Czechoslovak parliament (in 1924, 1928, and 1935), where they took an active part in the legislative proc­ess. Political parties also came into being, both local Rusyn/Ukrainian parties and branches of all-Czechoslovak parties. Finally, there were even the trappings of a provincial, state-like identity. According to Czechoslovak law, Rusyns were the “state nationality” in Subcarpathian Rus’. They even had their own national anthem (based on a poem attributed to the nineteenth-century national leader Aleksander Dukhnovych: “Subcarpathian Rusyns / Arise from Your Deep Slum­ber”), sung on all public occasions, as well as an official Subcarpathian Rusyn coat of arms, which appeared on publications and governmental documents.

Subcarpathian Rus’ had especially important geopolitical significance for Czech­oslovakia. The interwar period found Czechoslovakia surrounded on almost all sides by enemies - Poland, Hungary, and eventually, Germany. The earliest signifi­cant threat was that posed by Hungary, which felt that a profound injustice had been done to it by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. Border revisionism became the dom­inant slogan of interwar Hungarian foreign policy, and Subcarpathian Rus’ as well as Slovakia and Romania’s Transylvania were primary objects of Budapest’s territo­rial designs. To protect itself against the Hungarian threat, Czechoslovakia formed the so-called Little Entente with Romania and Yugoslavia. Its only geographic link with these allies was through Subcarpathian Rus’. Thus, the province, which Czech and Slovak leaders had never expected to obtain during the postwar repartitioning of Europe, now became an important geopolitical cornerstone of its foreign policy.

In its economic life, Subcarpathian Rus’ did not fare well. Agriculture remained the mainstay of the region’s economy, and local industrial development was effec­tively stifled. This was because it proved economically more beneficial to export products from the highly industrialized western provinces of Bohemia and Mora­via-Silesia to Subcarpathian Rus’ than to build new factories there. As for products derived from the region’s own natural resources, particularly lumber from the Carpathian forests, businesses in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia found it cheaper and easier to import forest products from neighboring Slovakia.

The result was that the vast majority of the Rusyn/Ukrainian population - 82 percent in 1930 - was engaged in agricultural or forest-related work. Whatever trade or small-scale industry existed was in the hands of the local Magyar and Jew­ish inhabitants (who made up respectively 15.4 percent and 12.8 percent of the Subcarpathian population in 1930), or of Czechs, who began to arrive in steadily increasing numbers (by 1930 they comprised 2.9 percent of the area’s population).

The Czechoslovak government did attempt to improve the economic status of Subcarpathian Rus’. In effect, Prague invested more than it extracted in order to construct a hydroelectric system and a network of modern roads and bridges. Gov­ernmental agencies also promoted new methods of cultivation, introduced better strains of existing crops, and provided educational assistance to farmers and live­stock breeders. Moreover, a land reform was introduced in the 1920s, which in part broke up the largest estates once owned by the Hungarian nobility. The practical results of the land reform were limited, however. Only 57,000 acres (23,000 hec­tares) were permanently redistributed, to 9,100 farmers; 20 percent of the land in Subcarpathian Rus’ (590,000 acres [239,000 hectares]) remained in the hands of large landowners. Also, the authorities were unsuccessful in their effort to move Rusyn/Ukrainian farmers from their mountain villages to the more fertile lowlands in the southern part of the province. Hence, by the late 1930s as many as 70 per­cent of the farmers in Subcarpathian Rus’ still had less than 5 acres (2 hectares) of land, and another 18 percent had between 5 and 12 acres (between 2 and 5 hec­tares). Such plots were well below the minimum required to support a single family.

This meant that the need to find supplementary work was as acute as ever. But now there was another problem, one brought about by the geopolitical realign­ment of postwar central and eastern Europe. The new international boundaries closed off Rusyn/Ukrainian agriculturalists from the nearby Hungarian plain, where they had traditionally added to their income with seasonal work. Czecho­slovakia’s wealthier provinces of Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia, however, were too far away to make it economically feasible to sell surplus agricultural products from Subcarpathian Rus’ there. These new realities were only made worse during the world economic depression of the 1930s, when mortgage foreclosures, strikes, grain shortages, and starvation became common phenomena. Economic discon­tent was translated into support for the Subcarpathian Communists, whose party was one of the strongest throughout the interwar period. Despite the well-mean­ing efforts of the Czechoslovak government, the province was simply too far away and too underdeveloped for Prague to have been able to make any substantial economic improvements.

It was in the cultural sphere that the Czechoslovak regime made the most marked progress in Subcarpathian Rus’. The contrast could not have been greater between, on the one hand, the prewar Hungarian government, which had ruled an underdeveloped agrarian society and had limited interest in the peripheral areas of the old kingdom other than concern to magyarize inhabitants of non­Magyar nationality, and, on the other, the democratic Czechoslovak government, which hoped to improve what it considered the backward cultural level of its fellow Slavs at the eastern end of the postwar republic.

Perhaps the longest-lasting changes occurred in the school system. During Czechoslovak rule, there was a dramatic increase in the number of schools (see table 47.1). The expansion of the physical plant was accompanied by an increase in the student body, whose number doubled between 1920 and 1938. This develop­ment, combined with programs in adult education, reduced the level of illiteracy from 78 percent in 1910 (near the end of Hungarian rule) to 40 percent in 1930.

The changes in the language of instruction were even more dramatic. During the last years of Hungarian rule before World War I, there were only 34 bilingual elementary schools, which provided a few hours of instruction in the local Rusyn vernacular. The Czechoslovak regime, however, made a concerted effort to offer instruction in some East Slavic medium, whether Ukrainian, Russian, or the local Rusyn vernacular, with the result that in 1920 there were over 300 such “Rusyn” schools in all categories, a number which had risen to over 500 by 1938 (see table 47.1). The actual language of instruction in “Rusyn” schools varied (sometimes from

TABLE 47.1

Schools in interwar Subcarpathian Rus’³

class to class) among Ukrainian, Russian, and Rusyn, with the choice dependent on the preference of the teacher. In large part, the linguistic variety in schools was a reflection of the unresolved problem of Subcarpathian Rusyn national identity. By 1938, there were also elementary and municipal schools which offered instruc­tion in Czech (206), Hungarian (127), German (25), Yiddish (7), and Romanian (4); a Czech-language teachers’ college; and gymnasia and vocational schools with divisions in Czech, Hungarian, and Yiddish. Finally, Subcarpathian Rus’ boasted the only school in the world with Romany (Gypsy) as the language of instruction.

The first long-lasting cultural organizations came into being under interwar Czechoslovak rule. The most important were the Prosvita Society, established in 1920 on the model of the same society in Galicia, and the Dukhnovych Society, established in 1923 and reflecting the models and national ideology of Russophile organizations in Galicia. Each of these societies constructed its own national home in Uzhhorod, the administrative capital, and set up branches and reading rooms throughout the province. By 1929, the Prosvita Society had 96 reading rooms and the Dukhnovych Society 192. Both societies also published numerous books and other works, the most scholarly being the Prosvita Society’s journal Naukovyi zbornyk (Uzhhorod, 1921-38). These two leading cultural societies were support­ed in part by the Czechoslovak government, which in 1931 also established the Subcarpathian Rusyn National Theater. The remarkable improvements in educa­tion and growth in cultural organizations were accompanied by a rise in literary activity (Vasyl’ Grendzha-Dons’kyi, Andrii Karabelesh, lulii Borshosh-Kum’iats’kyi, and Aleksander Markush being the leading writers), with the result that the inter­war era of Czechoslovak rule witnessed a true cultural and national renaissance for Subcarpathian Rus’.

The cultural sphere was not without its problems, however. One concerned religion and a struggle between competing churches. In the new democratic envi­ronment, the traditional predominance of the Greek Catholic Church was chal­lenged by the Orthodox, and the consequence was a religious war, notably during the 1920s, and a rise in the number of conversions to Orthodoxy, whose adherents increased from fewer than 1,000 at the outset of Czechoslovak rule to 90,000 in 1930. In part, the rivalry between the churches was related to the nationality ques­tion. Those who joined the Orthodox Church often turned to a Russian national identity in reaction to the Greek Catholic Church, which initially was dominated by pro-Hungarian (magyarone) elements, until the 1930s, when it became a bas­tion of the Rusyn national orientation.

It was, in essence, the issue of national identity and the closely related language question which were the most problematic aspects of Subcarpathia’s civic life. Although these problems had existed during the nineteenth century as well, they had been overshadowed by state-imposed magyarization and national assimilation. Now, under the Czechoslovak republic, the local Slavic population and its leaders had the freedom to determine themselves who they were. During the resulting debate, the Subcarpathians were influenced by emigres, both Ukrainophiles (Ivan Pan’kevych, Volodymyr Birchak, Vasyl’ Pachovs’kyi) and Russophiles (Ilarion Tsur- kanovich, Andrei Gagatko, and the Gerovskii brothers) from Galicia and Buko­vina. Thus, as in neighboring eastern Galicia and northern Bukovina during the late nineteenth century, now in Transcarpathia during the interwar period there arose a struggle between Ukrainophile and Russophile intellectuals for the alle­giance of the population. An important difference was the presence of a third orientation, the Rusynophiles, who argued that the East Slavic population of Tran­scarpathia was neither Russian nor Ukrainian, but rather a distinct Subcarpathian Rusyn nationality.

All aspects of interwar Transcarpathian life were affected by the presence of these three orientations - the political parties, the schools, the cultural organiza­tions, and, to some degree, the churches. Although the Czechoslovak administra­tion for the most part remained neutral in the linguistic and nationality controver­sies, by the 1930s it clearly favored the Rusynophile orientation, that is, the idea of a distinct and, it hoped, pro-Czechoslovak Subcarpathian Rusyn nationality. The first and last governors of the province, Gregory Zhatkovych and Konstantyn Hra- bar, also favored the Rusynophile view.

Although Russophilism and Rusynophilism had existed in Subcarpathia’s cul­tural life during the nineteenth century, the Ukrainian orientation did not really make its appearance until the 1920s. Led by capable political and cultural leaders (Avhustyn Voloshyn, Iuliian Revai, Vasyl’ Grendzha-Dons’kyi), the Ukrainian ori­entation before long came to be the most dynamic. Nevertheless, by the end of the interwar period, all three national orientations in Transcarpathia were exerting more or less equal political influence.

During the interwar years, the Transcarpathian Ukrainians, or Subcarpathian Rusyns as they were known, made remarkable achievements, especially in political and cultural life, under the administration of the democratic first Czechoslovak republic. As a result, of all Ukraine’s territories, Transcarpathia, while among the smallest, was the only one to have some control over its political and national destiny during the interwar years. And because it was at the westernmost edge of Ukrainian territory, it was the first to experience change with the coming of a new crisis in Europe in 1938.

This page intentionally left blank