Was looking at this book in Waterstones yesterday. It's great stuff, about the thickness of a breezeblock, but temporarily out of my price range. Planning to follow up this story though- "March 15, 1939. The republic of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It was the day that Hitler marched into Prague. The Germans swallowed Bohemia and Moravia, formed a protectorate and Slovakia became a client statelet of the Reich. And the third part of Czechoslovakia, this Subcarpathian Ruthenia, was left with nobody to tell it what to do. So it declared its independence at around 10 o’clock in the morning. And by the evening the Hungarian army arrived and swallowed it up. Fortunately there was a British travel writer – or someone posing as such – there at the time who described all this." Norman Davies on Europe "Prior to the First World War, the northeast part of the Hungarian Empire was inhabited by a slavic people who some called "Uhro-Rusyns" (Rusyns inhabiting Hungary) They were predominantly members of the Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. During the First World War, the Uhro-Rusyns were under the domination of Hungary, and, therefore, they could not make known to the world that they desired to throw off alien domination and have a government of their own choosing. Knowing the above fact, the American Rusyns organized the American National Council of Uhro-Rusyns on July 23, 1918. The council appointed Gregory Zatkovich, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania lawyer, as its representative, and on October 21, 1918 he conferred with President Woodrow Wilson. Following this conference President Wilson publicly recognized the Uhro-Rusyns as a separate nation subject to alien domination and as such would be entitled to the right of "self-determination". http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/fame/pod.htm
The "British travel writer" was one Michael Winch, who was a jobbing journalist for a number of british newspapers....but just as Peter Fleming was a "travel writer" when he wrote his bestselling News From Tartary recording his travels through the Forbidden Kingdom, Winch was actually in the employment of MI6! He stayed in the area until the Hungarian invasion forced him and his Polish cameraman to leg it! He later wrote up his story in a short book entitled Republic For A Day, which also detailed the mistreatment of....the outright murder/mass execution of!... Carpathian Sich irregulars by both the invading Hungarians and Polish border troops.
Never knew anything about this and the more I read the more fascinating it is. Found this on youtube Carpath Ruthenia,Rusyn state/three days of independence. - YouTube Carpathian Ruthenia or a new neighbour on the horizon?
It's a great story and an idea for a film script! I had never heard of it either until I scanned that book the other week. It's amazing what you pick up accidentally.
Go to wiki and try "ruysn" or carpatho-ruysn. The articles are prett good. Look also at sub groups like 'Lemko'. They're very much a type of Westernized Ukrainian. Depending (mostly) on religion most will say Russian or Ukrainian and will harbor feelings about each other. Large numbers settled in the US. One grandfather about 1880, another about 1900. I don't think they cared for Austria-Hungary much. Oh, also check 'Galicia' (now Poland). As a group, I think, Stalin had them pretty much moved to the Ukraine.
