20 September 2014. Video. A (Goofy but Nice) Rusin Easter…

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Let’s keep it light for the moment. A kid in Podkarpatskaya made this for a project… good healthy stuff. Note the liquor… “Hruška”, a vodka distilled from pears. Marvellous stuff and unavailable here (Rusin friends say so). “Hruškovitz” is BRANDY distilled from pears… you CAN get a German (nasty-ass) version of that here. However, Hruška is **VODKA** distilled from pears. Very different… very different, indeed.

We all need a smile after all the nasty war news. Yes, it’ll still be there tonight. Yes, we’ll go back to it. However, one does need a break from it…

BMD

Petition to the Government of Hungary for Transcarpathia

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We the undersigned are committed Magyar people who on this 28 March 2014, gathered in Budapest at the Plaza of Polish General Joseph Bem, in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand that the Hungarian territories occupied by the Ukraine would be returned to Hungary and in protest against the sanctions to the Russian people of the Crimea peninsula because they practised their right of self-determination. We demand that the Government of Hungary undertake the following steps unconditionally, especially on Section D of the Constitution, which proclaims that the fight for the rights for the collective rights of the separated Hungarian communities must be a national government policy. We can’t keep passive, just observing, and without taking action when history gives us a new chance to destroy the unjust framework that trampled on our self-determination rights with the Trianon dictate.

It’s more than clear that we must apply the self-determination rights guaranteed by international conventions to the 200,000 Magyars and almost 1 million Rusins of the Transcarpathia Region. This was so far the case in 1991 when a national vote tried to enforce self-determination measure, but the Ukrainian state sabotaged it. The current changes in the Ukraine that were influenced by outside powers, and the return of the Russian community of the Crimean peninsula to Russia by a legitimate national referendum, points up the unconditional duty of the Hungarian Government. As a regional power, it must demand an international military presence to ensure the regarding their return to Hungary, together with the Rusin nation, which lived in friendship with Magyars from times immemorial. We must see to it we guarantee a full territorial autonomy to them, as it is mandatory by the Resolution of the Parliamentary Convention of the European Council n. 1832/2011, which makes such measures compulsory on member states. We’re committed to send signals of enhancement and encouragement to our Magyar brothers and to the Rusins in Transcarpathia, and to other nationalities… Polish, Russians, Rumanians… living in the Ukraine about their right to self-determination and to the Government of Hungary to stand up straight for the above objectives, whilst we condemn any cowardly and subservient behaviour. Therefore:

1. We require that the government immediately ask for a session of the UN Security Council to secure for the Magyar and Rusin community, which lived for almost 1,000 years in Hungary, a referendum under international control to express their right of self-determination as embodied in the UN International Convention of Political and Human Rights The government should ask that the UN Security Council introduce international peace keeping forces and international observers in sufficient numbers to secure the legitimacy of a referendum in Transcarpathia.
2. We request that the government recognise immediately the Crimean referendum of 16 March 2014 as an act compatible with international law, as an expression of self-determination, and recognise the return of the Crimean peninsula to the Russian Federation as valid.
3. We request that the government immediately withdraw its support for all sanctions against Russia in connection to the Crimean referendum and the return of the area, and that the government wouldn’t support any such sanction in the future. In addition, the government should declare that such sanctions conflict with the international norms of guaranteed self-determination, norms disregarded at the 1920 Trianon peace dictates when referenda weren’t allowed and when Hungarian territories were separated from the country and 3.5 million Hungarians were simply and illegally separated from their motherland.
4. We request that the government immediately ready Hungarian military units to provide security to the 200,000 Magyars of Transcarpathia, of which more than one-third, more than 50,000, are Hungarian citizens, so, EU citizens. In order to do this, we request that we bring all Hungarian military personnel home from foreign lands where they serve foreign interests and that they should serve the motherland and their compatriots according to their oath.
5. We request that the government immediately announce its claim to the Transcarpathia region, where for many centuries Magyar and Rusin people lived peacefully together, that it return to Hungary, similar to the precedence proven on 15 March 1939 with a revision of the unjust Trianon Treaty. Until that time, these oppressed and second-class citizens of Transcarpathia should be able to voice their desires, to see if they wanted to return to Hungary. We request that Hungary enforce the results of the 1991 Transcarpathia referendum, which requested sweeping autonomy for Rusins, including a Hungarian autonomy for Magyars in the Bereg region (located directly at the present Hungarian/Ukrainian border).
6. We request that the government stand up for the self-determination rights of all national groups now oppressed on the territory of the Ukraine, especially for the Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Rusin, and Russian minorities, to support their cause, and that together with the countries responsible for those nationalities, we’d take all reasonable diplomatic, strategic, and tactical steps for the common success of their self-determination objectives.
7. We request the immediate removal of Janos Martonyi as Minister of Foreign Affairs, who for many long years showed, especially with his current expressions, that he’s unfit to represent the interests of the Hungarian state in foreign relations in the light of his treasonous and cowardly acts and in his handling of the situation regarding the Ukraine. His acts and releases are to be taken even more seriously in the light of the fact that whilst there’s a historical moment for Magyars to assert our national interests and to at least partly adjust the illegitimate and unjust peace diktat of 1920, an act in collision with international law that sentenced our nation to death, and in spite of which not only in Transcarpathia, but also in former Northern and Southern Hungary and in Transylvania, a sizeable Magyar community managed to survive when faced with persecutions and deprivations of their rights. With regard to this, it’s important that the government bring the issue of all separated Hungarian territories to international forums, as well as before the UN Security Council to highlight the unjust borderlines in the Carpathian basin, to ask for their readjustment, as so far all nations in the area have a measure of self-determination except for the Magyars.
8. We request that the Hungarian Government raise the issue at the EU Foreign Service and at the EU Council of protecting the rights of 200,000 Magyars, specifically in the light of the fact that more than 50,000 are Hungarian citizens, consequently EU citizens, so the EU has a responsibility to protect them.

The World should see that Magyars are a freedom-loving nation, and together with the Poles and the Russians on our side, we should be able to bring back freedom to Transcarpathia, which is under illegitimate Ukrainian occupation. Finally, we quote Count Istvan Szechenyi, “Everything has its moment in a certain time, which if lost, the virtues and honour are gone forever, and with it, life and all hope”. The above points were accepted unanimously by the members of the demonstration with one vote; we ask all people of good will in our country, in the Carpathian basin, and everywhere in the World to join us, to request together with us the steps described above, at the earliest time, to protect the Magyars of Transcarpathia and to reunite Transcarpathia to our homeland again. We await your effective actions and reply.

Budapest

28 March 2014

In the name of the participants of the demonstration and who voted for the Petition:

Dr Tamás Gaudi-Nagy

Deputy of the National Assembly and Executive of the National Legal Protection Service

György Budaházy

patriot

Dr János Drabik

lawyer

Lorant Hegedus Junior

Protestant pastor

Dr Balázs Lenhardt

Deputy of the National Assembly

Dr Krisztina Morvai

independent Member of European Parliament

György Gyula Zagyva

Deputy of the National Assembly, President of HVIM

http://www.gaudinagytamas.hu/petition_government_hungary_transcarpathia

Magyars and Rusins Unite to Support Autonomy in Podkarpatskaya Rus

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On 11 September at the Magyar House in Budapest, the Magyar World Council and Rusin World Council met in joint session. These groups draw their membership from the 15 million Magyars and Rusins living throughout the world, including Zakarpatskaya Oblast in the Ukraine. Deputies of the Hungarian National Assembly (Országgyűlés) and the European Parliament also attended the forum. Such meetings have become important links for the Rusins and Magyars living in Podkarpatskaya, having support from social and political movements in Hungary that favour giving Podkarpatskaya an autonomous federal status within the Ukraine. In this regard, the meeting appealed to the European Parliament, the Hungarian Government, and the Ukrainian junta to heed the results of and legitimise the referenda held in Podkarpatskaya in 1991, during which about 80 percent of those voting were in favour of Podkarpatskaya having an autonomous federal status within the Ukraine.

The address to the European Parliament highlighted the need to prevent allowing the Ukraine to join the EU as long as autonomy for Podkarpatskaya remains unsettled and asked the EU to help the local people to reach this goal. A similar appeal went to the Hungarian state leadership and National Assembly, asking them to support the idea of ​​giving a federal status to Podkarpatskaya. The Congress called on the Ukrainian junta, in particular President Poroshenko, to ensure civil peace in the country, to stop the fratricidal war, and to ban the activities of fascist and extremist groups. It also demanded that the Ukrainian leadership recognise the results of the 1991 referendum as legitimate and grant immediate autonomy to Podkarpatskaya. On 16 September, those who attended the joint session plan a public meeting in Budapest at the Hungarian Parliament building, and they plan to present a petition to the President of the National Assembly with these resolutions, calling on Deputies to support their demands for autonomy.

14 September 2014

Russkaya Vesna

http://rusvesna.su/news/1410701845

Editor:

I got this from a correspondent:

Podkarpatskaya Rus is very small, so, you couldn’t divide it between any two countries. The people democratically decided to return to Hungary:

• Hungary alone stepped up and told Kiev that it won’t allow Podkarpatskaya to become a second Novorossiya. It has the army to guarantee that… Slovakia doesn’t.
• Between all the countries that Rusin people live in, there’s no dispute that none treats them better than Hungary does.
• Magyar isn’t a Slavic language. If Podkarpatskaya Rus joined Slovakia, in maybe three generations the Rusin language would meld into Slovak. It’s already happened in the Pryaševčina. However, since Magyar is so very different from Rusin, the latter would be “protected”.

This confirms the above.

BMD

Suitcase to the Station… Podkarpatskaya Rus: Is Zakarpatskaya Saying Goodbye to the Ukraine?

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Editor:

This piece proves the dank racism of the Galician Uniate fascists… they don’t even abide people of the same faith who disagree with their fanciful imaginings. If you support “the Ukraine”, that is what you support, and I’ll call you evil to your face. Note well that stipulation applies to many in the OCA/ROCOR First Families and to SVS… is applause and money so important to them?

BMD

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Who are the Sub-Carpathian Rusins? Why aren’t they pleased with the Ukraine? Why did they, unlike the Little Russians, understand the core essence of the current fascist junta in Kiev (they blocked their mountain passes during the so-called “Euro-Revolution”)?

With the beginning of the “Russian Spring”, announcement of the establishment of People’s Republics began to come not only from Novorossiya, but also to the surprise of many, from the Far Western Ukraine, namely, from the Carpathians. We found out that those who live in the land south of the “Ukrainian” Carpathians, the Rusins, threatened to block the mountain passes, where it’d be easy to destroy  Galician Right Sector thugs or Natsgadi irregulars, no matter how many of them tried to push in. With the loss of hope for Russian armed intervention to help the anti-fascist resistance in Novorossiya and the Ukraine, the Rusin Republic activists went underground, but they didn’t “lay down and give in”.

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Podkarpatskaya Rus formed its first National Union opolchenie battalion” in the LNR… the Rusin Battalion “Ivan Kundry (Archimandrite St Iov Ugolsky)”… named for an Orthodox missionary in the Carpathians and a veteran of the VOV. The unit included Rusin volunteers from Podkarpatskaya Rus (the original name of Zakarpatskaya Oblast), Pryashevshchina (Slovakia), Lemkovshchina (Poland), and from northeastern Hungary. Unlike the so-called understrength Natsgadi “battalions” (usually, only about 100 troops, at company strength), the Rusin battalion is more up to TO&E, with 380 men.

I’ve been in Podkarpatskaya many times (but this was the first time in 6 years), I talked with both Lemkos and Boykos from the more remote villages (where buses can’t reach in the winter), and with the leading elements, such as the chairman of the Sojm of Podkarpatskaya Rus. Therefore, I know the Rusin question not only from books, but from life, too.

Rusins (those who use that ethno-social self-identification) say that there are four ethnic groups in Holy Rus… Byelorussians, Great Russians, Little Russians, and Rusins, and don’t agree with the formulation of “Three Related Peoples”. For those who don’t accept the theory of fraternal peoples, who posit a single Russian people with more than three subgroups, Rusins are southwestern Russians (including Lemkos, Boykos, Hutsuls, etc.), which unlike the Galicians don’t consider themselves as Ukrainians. That’s not because the best sons of the Russian people in Galicia less bravely defended their nationality, it’s because not only did distant Vienna issue negative decrees against them, but also the local Polish authorities were hostile to those favourable to the idea of the “Russian question”. However, the local authorities in Podkarpatskaya Rus (mostly Magyars and Slovaks) were much more indifferent as the self-identity of the highlanders.

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Repression tightened sharply at the beginning of the 20th century, when Rusins, through the efforts of ascetic priest Aleksei Kabalyuk (canonised in 2006 as St Aleksei of Podkarpatskaya Rus) began a mass return to Orthodoxy, rejecting the Unia. The Habsburg authorities labelled Orthodox converts as Russian spies. The apogee of persecution was the tragic Marmaroš-Sigetskie trials, where the Austrians imprisoned dozens of villagers from Iza, dooming their families to hunger and wandering. However, these persecutions were only the prelude to the physical destruction of Rusins in the first concentration camps in Europe, Terezín and Talerhof. In all, the Rusin genocide in 1914-17 by the Habsburgs liquidated or broke the health of more than 60,000 Russophile-minded Galicians, Bukovinians, and Rusins. More than 100,000 people passed through the concentration camps. Tens of thousands died during forced deportations deep into Austria-Hungary. When the Russian army retreated, up to half-a-million people fled from certain death at the hands of the Habsburgs, going to safety in Russia.

The Rusin victims proved to Europe that they had the right to their own state. In 1918, only newly independent Hungary proclaimed, “We create a Rusin territory to the south of the Carpathians, with broad autonomy, under the title Ruska Krajina”. By the end of the First World War, the Czechoslovak Republic annexed the area. The Treaty of Saint-Germain between the Allies and the Czechoslovak Republic in 1919 called for the formation of a Podkarpatskaya Rus “with full self-government compatible with the concept of the unity of Czechoslovakia”. This entailed their own Sojm (legislature) and autonomous government. However, Czechoslovakia not only wasn’t quick to carry out this provision, in many ways it violated it. Only in 1938, feeling the breath of war, the Czechoslovakian government made concessions to their people… in May 1938, they finally proclaimed the autonomy of Podkarpatskaya Rus. Moreover, it acquired the status of a federal subject, as did Slovakia (which is independent today).

In a referendum held in Podkarpatskaya Rus in the same year, 76 percent favoured making the Russian literary language the official language of instruction in schools… thus, throwing twenty years of violent Ukrainisation on the rubbish tip. Unfortunately, the Rusins didn’t have this happy state for long. Barely two weeks after announcing autonomy, on orders from Berlin, Prague installed a totalitarian puppet junta in Podkarpatskaya Rus headed by Uniate clergyman Avgustin Voloshin, backed by tanks of the Czechoslovak army. Ukrainisation returned in an even more brutal form. According to historian Aleksandr Karevin:

He closed down all opposition newspapers, dissolved all local governmental bodies, and forced the use of the Ukrainian language in all public venues, such as government agencies and teaching in schools. They hastily changed all street signs in the cities (they used to be in Rusin). ‘Nationally Conscious’ figures took all positions of responsibility… as there weren’t enough of these amongst Rusins, they were mostly OUN extremists ‘imported’ from Galicia.

The fanatics dealt with the disgruntled in a summary fashion, planning a wave of arrests. On 18 November 1938, Voloshin ordered the first concentration camp in Podkarpatskaya Rus at Gore Dumen (near Rakhova). Without court sentences, the junta imprisoned not only opposition politicians and journalists, it also placed peasants, intellectuals, and workers behind barbed wire for making unflattering comments about the newly-minted “leaders” and “father” of the nation. Voloshin spread Mein Kampf all over Podkarpatskaya by his personal order. As noted above, he banned the activities of all political parties, except his Ukrainian National Unity (UNO) (which had no support amongst normal Rusins). However, there was one exception… “All citizens of German nationality, regardless of their state allegiance, are allowed to organise themselves as the German Party on the on the basis of National-Socialist ideas, as well as wearing the proper insignia and bearing the swastika banner”. At the same time, Voloshin strictly prohibited any anti-Nazi propaganda. When Germany invaded the USSR, Voloshin wrote Hitler a letter offering himself as the President of the Ukraine occupied by the Germans. At the same time, he advised the Führer to liquidate the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine and replace it with Catholicism (the secret dream of many Ukrainian “patriots”). Nevertheless, as you know, Hitler had other plans.

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In 1944, keeping in mind all the “charms” proclaimed by Voloshin in the so-called “Carpatho-Ukraine”, Orthodox priests in Podkarpatskaya Rus made an appeal to Stalin to ask entry in the USSR as a separate SSR without being part of the Ukrainian SSR, “in the form of the Podkarpatskaya Rus SSR”. Alas, Stalin acted in the tradition of Lenin’s national policy (which he had implemented, presenting the Donetsk-Krivoi Rog People’s Republic to the Ukrainian SSR). For almost half a century, the Ukrainians denied Rusins their status of a separate nationality, so the referendum held on 1 December 1991 was a shocking surprise to the rest of the Ukraine. 80 percent of those voting in Zakarpatskaya Oblast were in favour of reinstating the status of a self-governing territory. The Ukraine showed its inherently totalitarian nature by ignoring the results of the referendum. Then, the Zakarpatskaya Oblast Soviet addressed the Verkhovnaya Rada to recognise the Rusin nationality as called for in the Constitution and as expressed in the 1 December 1991 referendum. In reply, the Rada simply said, “The request hasn’t gone unnoticed… the issue is now under special consideration”.

In 1996, the instructions of the Cabinet of Ministers State Committee on Nationalities finalised a secret government “Action Plan to address the problems of Ukrainians-Rusins”. Here are just a few points from it:

1. Clearly outline and declare the position of the Ukrainian state on the futility of the ideology of an autonomous Podkarpatskaya Rus on any cultural or ethnic basis. Distribute through the Ukrainian Embassies in Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, and Poland a series of publications in the local media regarding the Ukrainian position on “Rusinism”.
2. Implement a system of measures aimed at strengthening the position of Ukrainianism in Podkarpatskaya Rus through language, culture, and the recruitment of proper cadres.
3. Prevent the holding of local referenda to express “self-identification” in Ukrainian Zakarpatskaya.
4. To implement a system of measures for ideological, material, personnel, and cultural support of Ukrainian communities in Eastern Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland.
5. Expand the supply of materials in the Podkarpatskaya media focusing on the fact that this region is an ancient Ukrainian land.
6. Apply to members of unregistered regional “Company of Podkarpatskaya Rusins” and its “provisional government” the relevant rules of current administrative and criminal legislation.

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In March 2008, Ukrainian Minister of Justice Nikolai Onishchuk responded to the request of ombudsman Nina Karpachova to President Yushchenko “to recognise the Rusin nationality in Ukraine in accordance with UN recommendations” by saying, “Rusins have always been an integral part of the Ukrainian nation”. He said that despite the fact in a half-dozen countries where Rusins live together with Ukrainians, they have recognition as a separate ethnic group. In the EU, instead of the deadly stalling found in the Ukraine, Rusin magazines, newspapers, and book publishing receive government support and there are Rusin schools, including in higher education. In Hungary, there are 13 self-governing Rusin areas. Even the US State Department in its annual reports on human rights criticised the Ukraine for refusing to recognise the Rusins as a national minority. In 2006, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that the Ukraine to recognise them as a national minority “in view of the significant differences between Rusins and Ukrainians”.

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Mitred Archpriest Dmitri Sidor, the head of the Sojm of Podkarpatskaya Rusins (international organisation), told me, “The official definition given by the Ukrainian Minister of Justice was the impetus for the convening the First Congress of Podkarpatskaya Rusins in June 2008”. A memorandum of the First Congress stated, “With this letter, official Kiev actually passed a ‘death sentence’ on Rusin identity in Zakarpatskaya-Podkarpatskaya Rus”. Fr Dmitri noted, “On 7 June 2008, the Congress declared to the world that the Rusin people live, that they aren’t assimilated, and that they remain a subject of international law. The Rusins are a people who’ve exercised their right to self-determination. Thus, we are only demanding our due rights in demanding recognition for our new Rusin state”.

However, the Ukraine, instead of coöperation, instead of discussing the issues peacefully, decided to terrorise the Rusins with the “club” of the SBU… threatening Fr Dmitri with an official warning about his “doubts about the Ukrainian identity of Zakarpatskaya”. When it became clear that the Ukraine wasn’t going to satisfy the legitimate demands of the Rusins, the Second Congress convened. Fr Dmitri noted, “We wanted to prevent any disruption of our peaceful assembly. The SBU flooded the Mukačevo Russian Drama Theatre, where we held the Congress, with its agents, and it brought in busloads of nationalist extremists from Lvov. Nevertheless, all 109 delegates and more than 200 guests of the Congress passed an act re-establishing the Rusin autonomy of 1938 (with the formation of a state executive power), which corresponds to the will of our people in the 1991 referendum for a special self-governing territory within the Ukraine”.

After that, the head of the SBU opened a criminal case against Fr Dmitri. On 19 March 2012, the Court of Appeal in Zakarpatskaya Oblast, as the court of first instance, found him guilty of endangering the territorial integrity of the Ukraine (although autonomy doesn’t imply a change of state borders) and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment and a suspended sentence of two years and denied him the right to legal appeal. As we can see, it happened under Yanukovich. What can the 740,000 Rusins (70 percent of Zakarpatskaya Oblast) expect from the current junta in Kiev, well, it’s best not to guess. Anatoly Sava, a member of the World Council of Rusins, said, “The Ukraine’s refusal to honour the outcome of the 1991 referendum means that Podkarpatskaya Rus can automatically secede from the Ukraine without any further ado”.  On top of that, a representative of the Magyar minority said that Magyars won’t die in the Donbass to secure the riches of the Ukrainian oligarchs. I don’t think that Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Roma, and other minorities in Podkarpatskaya want to die in the Donbass for that either.

1 September 2014

Dmitri Skvortsov

Ukraina.ru

http://www.ukraina.ru/analytics/20140901/1010351495.html