Vanished Kingdoms
Page 73
The question arises, therefore, why Montenegro could not have benefited from similar arbitration. Both the Peace Conference and the League of Nations were aware of the problem, yet failed to act. The League’s excuse may well have been a technical one: once incorporated into Serbia, the Montenegrins became a minority, and the League had a rule that claims by minorities had to be sponsored by the claimants’ ‘mother country’. Sweden sponsored the Ålanders, but Serbia was obviously not going to sponsor a Montenegrin complaint against Serbia.
One can only think that the Supreme Council at the Peace Conference was gripped by the fatal ‘friendly ally syndrome’. Montenegro was shunned for the same reason that the Irish Republic or Corsica was shunned. Allied leaders were quick to champion the victims of the defeated enemy, but they had neither the will nor the courage to investigate injustices caused by their own major partners. At one point, for example, President Wilson agreed to meet a Corsican delegation, not realizing that Corsica formed part of metropolitan France. When reprimanded by Clemenceau, he cancelled the appointment, telling his secretary: ‘I cannot interfere with the internal affairs of a friendly ally.’ Lloyd George pounced. ‘I hope your Excellency will apply the same rule to Ireland,’ he said, ‘which I need not remind you is still a part of Great Britain… After all, are we not your ally?’ ‘Associate,’ the President responded sourly, ‘not ally.’95
Assessments of Montenegro’s unification with Serbia have varied greatly over the decades. Inter-war Serbian scholars regarded it as an entirely natural event. Yugoslav scholars of the Tito era, strongly influenced by Communist ideology, showed no sympathy for a dead monarchy. Now that an independent Montenegro has re-emerged, however, a new historical consensus appears to be emerging with it. A textbook published in Podgorica in 2006 and a scholarly monograph both present interpretations that coincide in large measure with the once lonely voice of the author of Martyred Nation.96
One is tempted to enquire whether any other European states have been treated as shabbily as Montenegro was, especially by an ally or by self-styled benefactors. Austria’s Anschluss with Germany in 1938, as engineered by Adolf Hitler, is an obvious candidate,97 and Stalin’s takeover of the three Baltic states in 1940 is another.98 Yet the fate of Poland in 1944–5 must surely top the list. Poland was a comparatively large country, a combatant Allied state, and a formal ally of the Western Powers. Nonetheless, the formula which could be dubbed the ‘Montenegrin Gambit’ worked like a dream for Poland’s post-war oppressors. In stage one, the Soviet Union’s Red Army overruns Poland in the closing campaign of the war against Germany; one Allied country is said to be liberating another. In stage two, in the shadow of Red Army bayonets, a bogus committee is formed to undermine the reputation of the exiled government in London, and to demand a common political front with the USSR. Their programme is presented as the product of honest differences within Polish democratic opinion. In stage three, a pre-printed manifesto is suddenly produced, and in the name of the people a self-appointed gang of Soviet stooges usurp the prerogatives of the legal but absent government. In stage four, the Communist security forces classify all political opponents as ‘bandits’, and calmly pulverize the independence movement. The Western leaders thereon submit to the ‘friendly ally syndrome’ in the manner of the Foreign Office panels, as ‘Russia clasped Poland in her arms’.99
Surprising parallels can be observed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The militaristic, centralizing Serbia that swallowed Montenegro in 1918 seems to have been reborn in the militaristic, centralizing Serbia of Slobodan Milošević. Once again, shameless intrigues in neighbours’ affairs, the deployment of military force, and murderous reprisals against ‘rebels’ became the order of the day. Once again, most Western leaders stood aloof in impotent embarrassment. Yugoslavia fell apart amid a worse wave of thuggery and chicanery than that attending her birth.100 Fortunately, after years of bloodshed and hand-wringing, the Western Powers eventually overcame their inhibitions. Peace-keeping forces were sent to Bosnia and to Kosovo and the warring parties were brought to the negotiating table at Dayton, Ohio. The Serb-led Yugoslav army was restrained, Yugoslavia was selectively bombed by NATO, and Milošević eventually faced charges of war crimes before an international tribunal.101
One wonders what King Nikola might have made of it all, had he or his successors had ever returned to pot the ivories in the Biljarda House or to bask on the sun-baked battlements of Bar. Nikola had belonged to a generation for whom ‘Serb’ and ‘Montenegrin’ were almost inter-changeable terms, and for whom the enemy was almost invariably an outsider – usually a Turk or an Austrian. Familiar with tribal feuds, he could hardly have imagined the scale of the fratricidal slaughter that was perpetrated by Yugoslavs against Yugoslavs in 1918–21, in 1941–5 and again in 1991–5. Moreover, Nikola was overthrown not by republicans but by fellow monarchists, and his memory was reinstated by an ex-Communist. So he might have concluded that neither monarchy nor republicanism, which gained an incontestable lead in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, were necessarily virtuous. The only true guide to human behaviour, perhaps, is the ancient Montenegrin code of ‘Humanity and Bravery’. In this spirit, Montenegrins of all persuasions can still enjoy the rousing song, which King Nikola himself composed:
Onamo, ‘namo… za brda ona
Milošev, kažu, prebiva grob!
Onamo pokoj dobiću duši
Kad Srbin više ne bude rob!
There, over there… beyond the hills,
Miloš, they say, is laid in his grave!
There longs my soul for eternal peace
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
13
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 s
ame 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…
At quarter-past six [in the] morning, Tuesday, [15 March] I was woken up by banging in the courtyard. At first, I had thought they were beating carpets… Jumping up, I looked out of the window… and dived straight under my bed. In the archway to the back street a boy was standing with a smoking revolver in his hand. Rifles were banging off, and from the other side came the rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun.
Then I realized that the Czech gendarmes and military were at last making the long-planned attack on the Sitch… Two tanks arrived and it seemed likely that gendarmes would soon come bursting up the stairs…
Suddenly there was an appalling noise of splintering glass, and a shower of bullets came whizzing through the windows… We were all lying flat on our stomachs on the cold cement floor, but the porter crept along and gingerly opened the door. All eyes were transfixed as the opening gradually widened. Across the threshold two legs were lying immobile. I thought their owner was dead. Then… a man came crawling out of the room, followed by two others. They were Slovak lorry drivers…
About half an hour later a messenger arrived from [Father-President] Voloshyn and ordered the Sitch to surrender. He said that the Hungarians had taken advantage of internal dissension to renew their claims… and all were to combine together to keep them out…
Life at once returned to normal. In a few minutes I saw a peasant from Apeza, with a bundle of carpets over his shoulder, hawking along the street, and a Jew setting off with a chicken under his arm to be killed by the ritual slaughterer. The outside of the hotel [was] all pitted and blackened… The Sitch barracks had had every single window blown out…
Czech rule was shortlived. At one o’clock it was announced over the wireless that Slovakia had proclaimed its independence. This inevitably meant the end of the Czechoslovak State, and the future of Carpatho-Ukraine was in the balance… In the afternoon, a Council of Ministers decided that it would follow Slovakia’s example. So the slaughter of forty people in the morning had been to no purpose…
At about six-thirty, in falling snow, we all collected outside the Government building to hear the Proclamation of Independence. There were [some] seven hundred persons present… Father Voloshyn, the Prime Minister, Gren-Zedonsky, a patriotic writer, and other representative persons spoke from the balcony. A new Ministry was announced… No one demonstrated, no one sang, no one even raised a patriotic shout for the new Republic. Even after the speeches there was little enthusiasm. Gendarmes… guarded the doors, and Czech soldiers… preparing for evacuation, continually ploughed their way through the crowd… The people seemed drugged by bewilderment.