L. Zubanych. Private correspondence as a historical source of early modern times – on the example of letters of Janos (X) Drugeth and Anna Yakushich

In this study we are dealing with a personal correspondence that happened during the first half of the 17th century. We are analyzing the correspondence of the representatives of the Drugeth family (János Drugeth and his wife Anna Jakusith) by paying particular attention to the analysis of the people, events and background-information appearing in these letters. The detailed examination of the contents of the given letters shows that if we are familiar with the contemporary events and personal relations and have access to some necessary additional sources, we can make appropriate conclusions even from relatively sparse information. The archives of the Homonnai Drugeth family could not be saved as a complex document through different historical hardships. Its smaller parts can be found in the archives of the ducal branch of Esterházi family at the Presov Archives. Thanks to their personal relationship with Ádám Batthyány several letters of János Drugeth and Anna Jakusith survived in the Batthyány archives. The family archives of the different correspondences serve as particularly important sources and documents of the given ages since they contain social historical, economic and political information in addition to local/personal data. Without them no historian could write the history of a family or a landlord and of a county. In his doctoral thesis on the actual period, historian Zoltán Borbély writes the following words: „With families having better resources such as the Batthyány-, the Nádasdy- or the Esterházi families there are researches dealing with a deeper focus on court, estate, art and cultural history many times within the framework of an interdisciplinary research group. In addition to the processing of a certain family history a complex examination of the noble society of the Western Transdanubian region has also begun. Within this examination in parallel with the study of the stratification of the noble society, some inspiring results were obtained in connection with the regional role of a noble family, their role in the administrative system of the county and millitary affairs, their family relations and last but not least, about their lands. One of the aims of this study is to show the event and family history aspects related to their textual parts via two personal letters and to illustrate the style of the contemporary aristocratic correspondence. In our view the study has once again contributed to learn about a small piece of the Drugeth family’s history and to clarify some historical «rumors».

The practice of holding people’s readings by Orthodox fraternities of the Volyn and Kyiv province (second half of the XIX century)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the specifics of the organization and conduct of religious and moral readings and talks by Orthodox church fraternities in the Volyn and Kyiv provinces. It was found that all the work on the organization of readings was governed by the «Rules for holding public readings in provincial cities». This document clearly set out the requirements that had to be met by individuals or companies that organized the reading. The Ministry of education has established a list of certain periodicals that could be used during these events. Public readings were allowed after obtaining permission from the trustee of the school district and by prior arrangement with the local governor. Separately, the article reveals the main aspects of the work of orthodox fraternities in the organization and conduct of out-of-service public readings. The example of individual church fraternities shows the peculiarities of their approach to the planning, organization and organization of religious talks, the results of the work are clarified. It was found that representatives of church fraternities formed a list of identified and agreed topics of public lectures, used visual aids and illustrative material to better remember what they heard. It was noted that the reports mainly covered the principles of orthodox doctrine: religious and moral readings were held for educational purposes, to raise the education of the local population, as well as to promote and promote the ideas of orthodoxy. It was determined that the agitation aspect was followed in the practice of holding public readings, as members of the fraternities sought to warn the local orthodox population against catholic influence. It was also planned to carry out explanatory work against the spread of certain protestant movements .

Production and primary processing of grain in the Ung, Bereg, Ugocha and Maramoros counties in the Middle Ages

The present research deals with the medieval grain production and the primary processing of it in Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa and Maramures counties. In the Middle Ages, the primary foodstuff was bread, which could be made from a variety of grains. In today's Transcarpathia, bread was made primarily using wheat and rye, which were crucial parts of the everyday eating. After the founding of the Hungarian state, the branch of the food production underwent a transformation, namely the animal-husbandry was slowly replaced by tillage. With the continuous development of the village system, indoor and outdoor farming were also spreading. Grain was grown on arable land away from the house, which has been a high priority. In order to understand the system based on family farming, principally the number of family members must be calculated, and then the average number of settlements follows from the obtained data, which gives the amount of land required per families and settlements to produce grain for bread. The bread was baked in a two-week cycle, when the family gained 30 kg. The growing crops for bread is the first stage of the process, which is followed by milling, i.e. the second stage. Grinding took place in mills, of which several varieties are separated. In the case of our region, watermills were widespread, of which there are also several types. We separate a stream mill and a floating mill from water mills. In the case of our region, both varieties have been identified. The mills did not work all year round, they could only work at the proper water level. Therefore, neither in winter cold nor in summer the mill could not work, so the grinding of flour needed for bread took place mainly in spring and autumn. Mills were one of the most complex technological machines of the time, the operation and maintenance of which required a specialist with relevant knowledge. Mills can be used for grinding grain, as well as for sawing and grinding wood. By examining the available resources, tens of mills were localized in the four counties, which also sheds light on the technological development of the age.

Memorialization of the "liberators" in Transcarpathia during the period of preventive Sovietization (1944 – 1946)

In 1944 – 1946, during the preventive Sovietization of Transcarpathian Ukraine, the local communist authorities initiated radical changes in its symbolic landscape in order to influence the collective memory of the population. The result of this policy was the appearance in the region in 1945 of monuments in honor of the Heroes of the Carpathians (soldiers of the Red Army), who died as a result of active hostilities in October 1944. Officially, the perpetuation of the memory of the fallen Red Army soldiers took place as a manifestation of the people's initiative of the local population in gratitude for the liberation from fascism, including from the “centuries-old Hungarian slavery”. However, archival materials and oral historical research prove that this process was an element of the traditional Soviet policy of memory, initiated by the command of the 4th Ukrainian Front. As a result, a number of memorial resolutions of the People's Council of Transcarpathian Ukraine were adopted in a short time. As a result, the graves of the Red Army were enlarged, fundraising was organized among the population, and the construction of monuments to the fallen liberators was started and successfully completed in all regional centers of the region. The peculiarity was that the installation of monuments in honor of the Heroes of the Carpathians took place long before the end of the Great Patriotic War / World War II, which was not observed in other territories of the Ukrainian SSR. One of the other paradoxes was that, so, the representatives of the Hungarian minority of the region demonstrated their appreciation for their "liberation from Hungarian domination".

Neighbor connections and contemporary groups in a closed society, in the city of Hajdudoroz

Hajdúdorog is a local closed society, so the religious separation, the Hajdú military past and the agricultural nature of the settlement provide a specific approach to ethnographic researches. In my doctoral research, which includes this article, family and neighborhood relations are analyzed in this settlement. The temporal focus of the research is the 1940s which is the earliest decade that can be researched with informants through interviews. This article pays attention to the neighborhood of Hajdúdorog and contemporary groups, so locality is a key concept. The research question concerns the content of the relationships. How did the relationships in the environment of the neighborhood and contemporary groups, manifest themselves in Hajdúdorog in the 1940s? How did the above features affect this? The research was carried out within the framework of the ethnographic discipline. The article first presents the well-known works of the Hungarian ethnographic literature on the topic and then analyzes the empirical data. I applied the ethnographic method used in social disciplines to obtain empirical data. During the field work, I did in-depth interviews in Hajdúdorog with locals, all older than 75 years. I reached the inteview subjects using the snowball method and the interviews took place in the interviewees’ homes. The article examines the neighboring and contemporary groups separately. Based on the results it can be stated, that in Hajdúdorog the neighborly relations were daily. The tenths, the former special administrative units of the city, were still strong influencing factors in the development of relations in both groups, even during the researched period. The content of the neighborly relations was reflected in smaller household transactions, rental of tools, participation in pigslaughters (disznóvágás), assistance in fieldworks, special folk pastimes (tanyázás) which resulted in more intense relationships than with family relatives. The result of a closed society is that there was a closer relationship between those who lived within one part of the settlement than between relatives who lived in different parts of the settlement. In line with the above, the article seeks to contribute to the researches connected to locality. The subject of the article fits into the sociological neighborhood research category, such as Tönnies and Redfield's research and also fits into the neighborhood research of the Hungarian ethnography, which was also a base for this research. This work hopes to ultimately expand the row of Hajdúdorog’s literature. For further view, the article can encourage research that deals with a more detailed comparison of the role of the neighborhood and the role of neighbors and relatives in Hajdúdorog during the period that was examined in this article.

Life of the Mukachevo Bishop Stefan (Simeon) Olsavsky and Metropolitan’s Athanasius Szeptycki charter on his consecration in 1735 (publication of the act)

The paper is devoted to investigating the life and documental heritage of the Mukachevo bishop Stefan (Simeon) Olsavsky (c. 1695 – 1737), especially to publication a charter of his bishopric consecration by the Kyivan Metropolitan Athanasius Szeptycki (1686 – 1746) in Lviv St. Jorge Cathedral on 7 December 1735. The author analyses documental acts regarding the history of publishing separate documents and analyses a set of unpublished sources. On this basis, the historian reconstructs the bishop’s biography, his relations with contemporaries, and his position on eparchial development and administration questions. This research eliminates a lack of information about details of Stefan (Simeon) Olsavsky’s bishopric consecration. Moreover, the paper opposes a tendency to construe his period as some insignificant and undistinguished phase of the local eparchial history. Volodymyr Moroz explains terminological differences in interpreting the Mukachevo eparchy as the real autonomous “diocese” and a “district”, i. e., ritual vicariate of the Roman-Catholic Diocese of Eger in the time of Stefan (Simeon) Olsavsky. The researcher demonstrates that bishop Olsavsky’s decision to receive consecration from the Kyivan Metropolitan was not an accident but a result of his (and his predecessors) aspiring to avoid intrusive domination of the Eger bishops over the Eparchy of Mukachevo. This consecration was the following example of the Mukachevo eparchy’s gravity to union with the Kyivan Metropolitanate in a set of similar events. Significantly, the Metropolitan Athanasius Szeptycki fixed in the charter that Stefan (Simeon) Olsavsky promised his submission to the Holy See, the Pope personally, and the “Our humility” – the Metropolitan of Kyiv. Undoubtedly, the publication of this charter helps to reveal and explain new pages of the Church’s history. It could strengthen interest in studying relations between the Eparchy of Mukachevo and the Kyivan Metropolitanate.

Aggravation of interfaith relations in the Belarusian provinces of the Russian Empire (late 19th – early 20th century) in the light of archival documents

The article analyzes various aspects of the relationship between the largest confessional groups of the Belarusian provinces of the Russian Empire (Orthodox and Catholics) in the late 19th – early 20th centuries in the context of the implementation of the models of self-identification «our – other» and «our – alien». Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of the activities of Catholic clergy and fanatical parishioners to incite interfaith hostility (insults to representatives of another confession, unfounded calls for conversion to Catholicism, erroneous interpretation of the Decree «On strengthening the principles of religious tolerance» and the Manifesto of October 17, 1905, and etc.). The authority that Catholic priests had among the parishioners often caused the latter to be hostile to their neighbors of other faiths. The article provides many examples of the fact that the appearance of fanatical priests in a certain area often disrupted the peaceful, conflict-free course of religious life. At the same time, there were cases when the erroneous actions of Orthodox priests and ordinary parishioners became a catalyst for the exacerbation of interfaith relations. The article provides factual evidence of the propaganda activities of Catholic priests in the Polish national spirit, analyzes the reaction of the authorities to it. The most resonant conflict between Catholics and Orthodox at the beginning of the twentieth century is described in detail – an episode in the town of Zelva, Volkovysk district, Grodno province. The basis of the source base of the article was made up of documents of the National Historical Archives of Belarus and the National Historical Archives of Belarus in Grodno. This article can be useful for specialists in history, students, everyone interested in the problems of religious and national relations in European countries. We see prospects for further research in this area in a comparative analysis of the situation in Belarus and other regions of Central and Eastern Europe of the 20th – 21th centuries, mixed in confessional and ethnic terms.

Social activity of Carpatho-Ukrainian students in interwar Brno (renovation according to the found sources)

For today the social activity of Carpatho-Ukrainian students in Brno is known to be the least studied issue in the history of the Carpatho-Ukrainian student movement in the period of interwar Czechoslovakia. Based on all available archival and published sources, in this study the attempt is made to reconstruct and analyse the process of formation and development of public activity of Ukrainian students (natives of modern Transcarpathian region (Ukraine) and Presov self-governing region (the Slovak Republic)), who in the 1920 – 1930s studied at higher education institutions in Brno (the University named after Masaryk, High Technical School, High Vet School). The author of the article states that the social activity of Carpatho-Ukrainian students in Brno developed in several stages. The first stage is the second half of the 1920s, the period when Prague student associations such as the Ukrainophile Union of Subcarpathian Students; and the Russophile society Vozrozhdenie (Rebirth) extended their activities in Brno some local students not only became their members but also formed some of their non-formal centers in Brno (e.g. Union of Subcarpathian Ruthenian Students). However, due to the decrease in the number of Carpatho-Ukrainian students at local universities, this process soon slowed down. Next stage is the second half of 1930s. At that time, relatively large independent Carpatho-Ukrainian student organizations – Russophile Society Verkhovina (1936) and the Subcarpathian Academic Society (1937) formed and gradually intensified in their activity in Brno. However, due to the political situation in the Czechoslovak Republic in 1938 – 1939, their activities ended. More information about the issue discussed in the article can be found in the original documents kept at the archival institutions of Brno.

Everyday life of Ukrainians during the years of mass artificial famine of 1921–1923. According to narrative sources

This article examines the daily life of Ukrainians during the years of mass artificial famine. The aim of our article is to analyze the perception of Ukrainians of the new everyday life: the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine, their food policy, which caused a mass artificial famine and took the lives of 3.5 million Ukrainians. The author analyzes narratives (memories, diaries of contemporaries of events and interviews collected directly by the author and colleagues during ethnographic expeditions). According to the author, the narratives, despite a certain subjectivity, most fully reflect the essence of the era, convey the feelings and experiences of people who found themselves in the grip of a mass artificial famine caused by the policies of the communist regime. As a result of the study, the author concludes that the effects of mass artificial famine were long-lasting. We mean not only the economic, but, first of all, the humanitarian component. The psychology of the people has changed: many Ukrainians have been forced to humiliate themselves to get miserable food, some have been forced to lose their moral face and dare to steal, and anger and hatred for people have intensified. According to medical research, hunger causes anger, greed, cruelty, misanthropy, immorality. Hunger is able to activate atavistic human instincts. Children were the most affected by the mass artificial famine. They were suffered from food shortages, starved, some of them died forever. Those who survived had poor health and a broken psyche. After the mass artificial famine of 1921 – 1923, Ukrainian society transformed its identity. However, the final loss of national origins will occur during the Holodomor genocide of 1932 – 1933.

The state and Protestant Churches in Hungary in 1948 – 1989

The purpose of the article is to characterize the activities of the largest and most influential Protestant churches in Hungary: Reformed (Calvinist) and Lutheran (Evangelical). These religious denominations along with the Catholic denomination belong to the so-called historical churches of Hungary. The chronological framework is the following: 1948 – the year of the communist regime’s rapid attack on the political, economic, educational activities of the Reformed and Lutheran churches and the signing of a compromise cooperation agreement with them, which lasted until 1990. 1989 – the liquidation of the State Administration for Churches, socio-political transformation in Hungary, which resulted in gaining absolute freedom. Based on Hungarian historiography, the relations between the Protestant churches and the state during the reign of Janos Kadar (1956 – 1988), called by Hungarian researchers the Kadar era, and are analyzed. It was Janos Kadar, the leader of the “soft dictatorship”, who managed to turn the Hungarian People’s Republic into “the funniest barracks in the socialist camp”. The background for the successful policy of the Hungarian government after the revolutionary events of 1956 was the achievement of social harmony, including through great tolerance and flexibility in the religious sphere. The article notes that representatives of the Reformed and Lutheran churches did not take an active part in the preparations for the events of 1956, but pastors and congregations supported the revolution. It is stressed that the relations with the Protestant denominations were settled specifically during the 50s of the twentieth century; the authorities managed to turn part of the clergy into their allies. Based on the analysis of the scientific literature, it is identified that relations were compromise in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, as the leadership of the Reformed and Lutheran churches helped the government to pursue the policy of the Popular Front in the struggle for socialism. Owing to it, no one was persecuted for their religious beliefs. In the 1980s, the state’s influence on historical churches gradually weakened, and processes leading to socio-political transformation in the late 1980s started, and as a result, churches in Hungary gained absolute freedom.