Béla Makkai:

Caring for Hungarians in Bukovina[1]

Prelude

                Certain groups of the Székelys escaping to Moldva during the forceful organization of border-warden regions in the 18th century found a new home in the valley of the river Szucsava after one generation. By state colonization five Hungarian villages were created in Bukovina yielded by the cracking Osmanli Empire.

                The inhabitants of the Habsburgian Empire's new province depopulated during the wars were increasing both in numbers and in wealth. However, the agricultural production exposed to the treacherous weather did not always provide a living for those living here. The incalculable fluctuation of food-production and the explosion-like demographic growth set the capability of maintaining more and more back. The Székelys compelled to live almost only on agricultural production were of voiding of things during natural catastrophes, or sometimes they even starved - like during the catastrophe of 1866.

                A small comfort in calamity that news about famines heighten by cholera roused up the public of the mother-country. The almost forgotten Székelys who got far from their compatriots were saved by the patriotic donations, the subsidies from the mother-country from perdition.

                Their most reliable - and for a long time their only - institutional supporter was the Szent László Association[2] formed in 1861. The association created by the Catholic prelacy, but enjoying state support as well, set the psychological and cultural preservation of Hungarians east of the Carpathian Mountains. The Association primarily took part in the education of pastors and teachers, but besides founding scholarships they took an active part in aiding the injured in the droughty weather and in the "re-settling in Hungary" state-actions started in the 80s. The illuminating work of the Association greatly contributed to the fact that by the last quarter of the 19^th century, the "csángó"-case espoused by writers and politicians enjoyed a wide social support. As a result of the anomalies and moral failure of the mis-organized settlings the former enthusiasm waned rapidly. With the fall of the inclination for donating the material means also shrank, its supporting became scarce, and by the turn of the century the direct touch broke off as well.

                Because of the declining of ethnic proportions (Romanians and Ruthenians settled in Adjonisten and Józseffalva)[3], the Székelys of Bukovina suffering serious wounds parallel to the swarming of the 1880s became more vulnerable; the necessity of their state support was conceived.

 The start of "the Roman Catholic Hungarian action of Bukovina"

                At the turn of the century both the migration losses of the Hungarians in Hungary and the political livening up of national minorities threatening territorial integrity prompted the Hungarian government to consider every possible way of protecting and increasing the "racial power". The foreign Hungarian-caring program evolving during the turn of the century counted with the future repatriation of the American Hungarians[4], while it aimed a kind of "tête-de-pont"-role to the diaspores kept together and enforced by the southern borders - under the aegis of the "Balkan mission" of the Hungarians.

                After the United States, Romania, the program of "the national preservation of the Hungarians living abroad" was extended to Bukovina in 1905.[5] Since it was a strategically negligible periphery and population, the Bukovinian program had unequivocally defensive policies, contrarily to the actions in the Balkan (especially those started in 1909 in Bosnia-Herzegovina[6]).

                The argument for intervention was constituted by the 19. paragraph of the Austrian Constitution of 1867 that ensured every people the cultivation of their own vernacular and culture. The Hungarians of Bukovina are congruent with all the criteria of the law, (it lived in one block, in a residence and had an Austrian citizenship).[7] The leadership of the action had to keep clear even of the semblance of intervention into internal affairs, unless it wanted to confront the Austrian authorities (who were otherwise very compliant to the Hungarian diaspore by the Szucsava). The good intent of the press otherwise always responsive to playing up politics was at least that important,[8] especially in the ethnically-politically peculiarly complex Bukovina.

                Considering all these, the government - corresponding also to the international practice[9] - began to realize its goals in the guise of decent social associations.

                 According to the census of 1900, 9516 (mostly Catholic) Hungarians lived in the five concerned settlements of the province.[10] It is a characteristic of their cultural underdevelopment that 2/3 of them were illiterate.[11] However, the supportive program of the mother-country could evolve most freely in this area...

                For tightening the formerly loosened relationships and to make subsidizing regular and expedient, it became necessary to measure the concrete demands and possibilities. The collection of data, the mapping of the ethnic, religious and social relations of the Székelys of Bukovina was carried out by the councillor of the ministry of culture, Árpád Várady L. during the autumn of 1904.[12] It refers to the confidential nature of the ministry, that the high official of the state had to proceed as the representative of the Szent László Association;[13] (and the Calvinist bishop of Transdanubia was instructed similarly when it was decided that the Julián Association[14], the cover organization of the government's Croatian action, was to deal with the peculiar cases of the Calvinists of Andrásfalva).[15]

                Várady wrote a detailed account about his field-work.[16] After summing up the historical precedents, the record presents the economic situation of the Székelys. According to the author's view, living for many people cannot be ensured in the long run, because of the subdivision of the land. Várady compared the prolific Székely region to the beehive, that expectably emits new swarms; but according to his information the inhabitants of Bukovina regarded the mother-country to be the only target-country of emigration, despite the fact that the earlier repatriations had bad resonance among those who had stayed at home. But in the given situation the surveyor from the ministry did not present the plan of a - now more carefully prepared - settling, but emphasized the patriotic necessity of consolidating the  villages by the Szucsava.[17] An efficient and relatively not so expensive means of that was the advocacy of religious life and school matters. Yet it was a vital question in the action organized how the provincial authorities would approach the plans of the Hungarian government.

                On the other hand, the Székelys of Bukovina were in an explicitly friendly relationship with the Austrian authorities, which did not raise difficulties against the action. The more so, because they feared less the cultural growth of a handful of Székelys than the political separation of the Romanians and Ruthenians constituting the majority of the province. That is exemplified by the fact that the educational authority accommodatingly appointed the parish-priest of Hadikfalva (the local chief commissioner of the action!) to be the provincial school-inspector, but a special attention was paid to the class-room demands of Hungarians by the Szucsava in the underdeveloped public educational system's own development-projects; and finally many young people from the Székelys of Bukovina could become "educated men" owing to the help of the Austrian state and the Catholic Church.[18]

                So, the Hungarian government set the Bukovina action off in an explicitly advantageous political environment compared to the "recipient atmosphere" of the Romanian, and especially of the Croatian actions. Here primarily the supporting system of pastors and teachers were built out.

                Despite their more favourable income-situation, the finalized teachers, similarly to the assistant teachers[19], set up a claim for the "extra-pay" coming from the mother-country. Their representative, the director-teacher from Józseffalva spoke up in the Budapesti Hírlap for the supporting program neglecting the finalized teachers, and he asked for the early re-examination of the case.[20] The president of the Szent László Association (also the leader of the Catholic branch of the action) considered the aspects of the finalized teachers having greater educational experience and large families to be acknowledgeable. Finally, many of the complainers got into the circle of the beneficiary as one of their children or a relative received a scholarship from the mother-country.[21] The priest, János Kubassek also prompted this solution saying: "..if we lost these children, we would only wake the otherwise existing dissatisfaction spreading among the teachers."[22] And a devoted, patriotic work cannot be expected from disgruntled teachers suffering from bread-and-butter questions. The elimination of jealousies and personal conflicts was an inevitable task the more so because almost all the aims of the action depended on them, on their work. Facing with all these problems, the experts of the prime ministership soon developed the principles of the unified and consequent personal treatment, considering all the experiences of the other branches of the action. Even the 1904 account of Várady had contained such propositions. In the practice of enforcing the Székelys of Bukovina with people predestined to leading, they found a solution without much difficulty for the support of the Catholic priesthood[23], but in case of teachers they distinguished between three groups in order of importance:

- To the most preferred type belong those Bukovinans, who received their certificate in Hungary. Naturally, in the domestic institutes of education the appointee could be prepared on a high professional and moral level, as much as their national consciousness could also be shaped. (From this latter aspect, it becomes clear why Várady did not approve with the service of a foreign priest in Andrásfalva; and why he did not consider the person of the assistant teacher [in fact a Jewish] competent to mediate the Hungarian culture successfully in an Austrian province.[24]) According to the view of the age, the personal influence of the teacher and priest regarded to be the intellectual leader of the reader and their activities to this effect could not only result in the sprouting and inflaming of the national feeling in a certain community, but it is also liable to distort that, or even to wither that.[25] (This fear was fostered by the example of the Csángós of Moldova educated in alien schools and on alien preachings and who were Romanianizing at an alarming rate.)

It is strange though, that the "re-rooting" of the collegians educated in Hungary did not cause much trouble in the action. In Budapest they believed that the love of their native soil attracts those lucky chosen home, to utilize in their proper homeland all they had learnt "abroad".[26]

- Those who got their certificate in Bukovina could resettle into their original environment without any difficulty, although Budapest had some reservations towards these teachers hindered in the acquisition of the values of Hungarian culture.[27] They wished to make these graduates considered insufficiently armed for the patriotic mission "equivalent" through summer retrainings in the mother-country.[28] The course aimed at professional development and meaning a summer experience at the same time primarily aimed at tightening the bonds of the teachers raised in an alien environment to the motherland, as it was successful in the Romanian action.

-                      The leaders of the action attempted to evade the employment of non-Hungarian speaking applicants (with the acquiescence of the local authorities),[29] so the Hungarian "visiting" pedagogues constitute the third, and most problematic group of teachers. Despite the annual increase of the number of collegians of the Szent László Association, because of the significant lack of teachers, the work of pedagogues from the mother-country was needed for years, in spite of the fact that their employment was confronted with several administrative obstacles (such as the right of affiliation,[30] or the obtainment of the Austrian citizenship).

Budapest did count with the domestic only transiently, since the holders of scholarships studying in the mother-country were the expectants of the positions filled this way. In spite of that it is a fact that the applicants from the mother country representing a higher cultural level - who were otherwise "filtered" by the director of the training college of Baja - could improve the level of education a lot. As it is written in an account of the Szent László Association, the number of those registered in schools increased in 1909, because regarding the pedagogical results of teachers from Hungary the parents were more willing to send their children to school to learn - even in work-time.[31]

                But even the teachers were unwilling to settle down for a long time in the far distance. The unfamiliar environment, backwardness, the lack of professional perspectives and the modest wage and aspects of life discouraged many. However, the causes of the large-scale fluctuation of teachers from the mother-country were basically existential. The first group coming from the training-college of Baja raised the question of pensionability. The concerned teachers' leaving of Bukovina suggests that their plea remained unaccomplished. The provincial government filled in their emptied posts - against the wishes of Budapest.[32] After all, they could be quite satisfied with the teacher-situation of Bukovina in the prime minister's office. It is written in an address to the cultural portfolio: "It fills us with satisfaction that the Austrian authorities mostly consider the pleas of the applicants proposed by our mediation, and that there are always applicants fit for the posts occasionally falling vacant, because that ensures the patriotic, national-spirited education of the one and a half thousand Hungarian-speaking students."[33]

                But the frequent changes of the teachers from Hungary (eg. because of the military service) - that undoubtedly affected the quality of education - actuated the educational authorities to find a long-range solution to the problems of the Hungarian schools. In 1910 it was talked about that the Austrian government wished to employ teachers speaking Hungarian in the Hungarian schools of the Szucsava-region, and that they planned to found scholarships for that.[34] Naturally, the leaders of the action took steps to ensure that those young people proposed by them would receive the provincial support.[35] On the other hand, they attempted to face the Austrian authorities with accomplished facts that in favour of the staying (i.e. the finalizing) of the teachers from Hungary, they suggested the "guest-workers" the taking of Austrian citizenship meaning higher wages; although they took heed of a decision that would have meant the breaking with their native home, and not only in a legal sense...[36] Being afraid of the risk of "provisionality" they posited the condition that if they accepted it, the Home Office should have regarded their change of citizenship formal, and should have facilitated their returning home with a summary procedure.[37]

                The pedagogues were worrying mostly because of the risk of losing of their pensioner and tutelary membership, so the prime ministry turned to the portfolio of the ministry of culture reasoning that: "...otherwise all these teachers will all return home and without such guarantees competent new ones will not be found."[38]

                The uncertainties of receiving state boons were increased by the growing difficulties of daily living. In 1911 the assistant teachers petitioned for higher supports referring to the gradually increasing prices. Bishop Várady, the president of the Szent László Association explained this proposal of raising the support by 50% that otherwise the teachers could not stay any longer in Bukovina.[39]

                Because of the more frequently occurring returns (and the accompanying administrational plus) the educational leadership tighten the conditions of employing teachers from Hungary (they were employed only as assistant teachers).[40]

                Árpád Várady L. put forward his proposals of solving the problem in 1912.[41] In his program he cited those teachers from Hungary who, after having drawn the lesson from the financial losses of their returning fellow teachers, bitterly rebuked their "gracious patrons", saying: "Neither the country, nor the society and not even the Szent László Association could demand that sacrifice from us..."[42] that they would suffer financial and moral losses because of taking a distant mission. They could not hope for a better paying post at home[43], and those schoolmistresses who had already founded a family with a Bukovinan man decided to stay (and to nationalize). Nevertheless, this way it had to be feared that the graduates of the scholars of the Szent László association would be without a chair (so they were advised to change their profession).[44]

                As we have seen, in one or two years, a complete turn of situation occurred concerning the employment of the teachers from the mother-country. This shift is observable not only in the relationship of Buda and Csernovic, since, in the meantime, the attitude of the employed teachers have also changed significantly; that is best proven by the fact that by the summer of 1912 practically all the teachers from Hungary have taken the Austrian citizenship,[45] and as a matter of fact, having been informed about the hardships of the teachers on a "foreign mission", none of the previously so enthusiastic graduates of the training-college of Baja[46] applied for a service in Bukovina.[47]

                This way the teacher choosing the less bad who became Austrian citizens could not count on further Hungarian support in the formed practice of subsidizing. That is the experts of the prime minister's office found it reasonable - and a decision was made about it - to recompense them occasionally, in order to "... inspirit the teachers to work and operate ina patriotic Hungarian spirit".[48]

                The final settlement of the teachers from Hungary had positive effects as well. The significant decrease of fluctuation brought the betterment of the relationship with the Austrian educational authorities getting colder because of the fluctuation; not to mention the phenomenon that the pedagogues choosing permanent integration could become the accepted leaders of the village community by educating several generations (and that was an explicit aspiration of the leaders of the action).[49]

 The cases of the holders of the Bukovina-scholarship

                The most expensive branch of the action that required most of the organizing was the education of the scholarship-holders in Hungary. In the earlier practice of the Szent László Association, they paid much attention to the education of priests, but from the commencing of the government's program they brought the Székely youth according to the purposeful rates of "educating intellectuals", most of them aimed at the pedagogue profession. As we have seen, that was the most natural way of mitigating the depressing lack of pedagogues and that held out the most advantages. That is why the quota separated for this project in the annual budgets was increasing at a good pace. In 1906 only seven holders of the scholarship received education in the mother-country.[50] Two years later their number grew to five[51], and in 1916 to 16 scholarship-holders from Bukovina, and as a new aspiration a journeyman was also educated in the Hungarian institutes, and a Székely lad from the banks of the Szucsava entered the Academy of Law of Vienna.[52]

                The 200-500 crown-subsidies of the scholarship-holders included the costs of articles of teaching, lodging, food and modest clothing.[53] But the depressing financial situation of those studying in the mother-country resulted in the continuous outspending of the budget. (The Szent László Association granted them clothes- and book-aid[54] in 1909 and an emergency subsidy[55] in the following year.) But the president of the association was thoughtful of everyday living and even to make possible the home journey during the holidays, and in case of need he was thoughtful of the protection of health requiring exceptional interfering.[56] In the inflation years of the war Árpád Várady L. looked after those studying in the mother-country during the strictest regular economization.[57][58] However, he was compelled to report the total dispersion of the scholarship-holders patronized by the Association in the budgetary account of the school year 1916/17.[59]

 School situation, students

                As we have seen, the solution of the question of teachers caused a lot of trouble to the leaders of the action. From the aspect of the aims of the subsidizing program, that was a crucial problem; but in the preserving of the Romanian, and especially the Croatian diaspore, the most problematic question was not the setting about of the well-educated and ideologically prepared faculty, but the pure existence of Hungarian schools (the authorial permission of teaching in the mother-tongue, and the expensive setting up of schools). On the other hand, the Székelys of Bukovina had a modest, but working network of elementary schools - owing to the educational authorities of the province. In this case the question was rather how the existing educational infrastructure corresponded to the general pedagogical criteria and how it served the catering and passing on of the values of vernacular culture.

                The surveying made at the beginning of the action found the Hungarian schools in an explicitly bad situation. Not only the condition of school-buildings, but also the professional work carried out in them was catastrophic: the level of illiteracy was extremely high compared to the Hungarian situation (although it was satisfactory on a provincial level).[60] The lack of teachers, the deteriorated and overcrowded school-buildings, the lack of articles of teaching and text-books mentioned above are contributed to it, as well as the parental lapses disregarding the regulations of compulsory education either because of economic considerations or because of indifference.

                Undoubtedly, the schoolables of the mixed village Fogadjisten were in the most disadvantageous situation. Because of the small number of children, students were educated only in two undivided group of the smallest village, half of the inhabitants of which were Romanians.[61] (the leaders of the Szent László Association were hoping in the possible coming about of a Hungarian-kind of school including the Romanian children too, but led by a Hungarian teacher.[62] But the Romanian "division" became independent[63] and the expectations of assimilation based on "integrated education" vanished.)

                In the most populous Hungarian village, Hadikfalva, one of the schools, a shaky wooden building had to be emptied "because of the indifference of competent factors" and more than half a thousand students had to study in every other day-shifts.[64] In such circumstances, the reporting Várady judged the expectable result of education especially pessimistically: "... this way we educate the proletarians and the analphabets with the assistance of the school authorities and some drags."[65]

                Indeed the leaders of the village deferred the building of a new school for years, but because of their prevarication the provincial authority obliged the community of Hadikfalva to build - because of the spectacular increase of the schoolable generation - a common school of ten class-rooms. Otherwise they put into prospective to the village that the state would be the builder, but the costs would be charged on them. To accomplish the opening in 1913 designed by the authorities, almost thrice of the planned village-surcharge should have been cashed up.[66] In the embarrassing situation the magistracy played on the poverty of the village and blamed the German and Romanian banks of the province, saying, "They fleece the village". (However, they attempted to redeem the high credit interests of foreign moneyed corporations with institutional advances from Budapest through the mediation of the National Hungarian Association.)[67]

                In the other settlements extreme situations did not occur, unless we regard teaching carried out in groups of about a hundred students, undivided in some places as to be extreme, where the preconditions of quality educations were not ensured by far.

                The number of students - according to national and denominational affiliation - was the following in the school-year 1907/08

                                                                                                                                                                                Table 1.[68]

                 The number of students in the Hungarian schools of Bukovina - considering the students of the Calvinist school of Andrásfalva - was more than 1700 in total.[69] The number of non-Hungarian students always remained insignificant, (below 5%). So the Hungarian schools could hardly be blamed for "janissary-training" from the part of the ethnic communities (while in the Slavonian action the Hungarian schools were often attacked with the same accuses.)[70] But the presence of assimilationist intentions cannot be totally excluded. We have already mentioned the plan of shaping the mixed school of Fogadjisten to a Hungarian-kind of school (see note 61.), but we should not forget that in the Székely villages suffering the greatest emigrational losses unfavourable ethnic situations started to form with the Romanian and Ruthenian immigrations. The expectation about the contracted school could have been conceived as a self-defensive reflex in the situation engendering with the disruption of the island situation of the Hungarian settlements wedged in among alien peoples, and in hoping for the better outcome of the process. But if the expansive intentions weighed more, well, there was not any chance of investigating the homogenizing efficiency of the Hungarian school, because the Romanians of Fogadjisten (as well as those of Józseffalva and Andrásfalva) soon organized a school of their own.[71] After that, we can only count with the de-nationalization of a handful of German, and some Jewish (who otherwise declared themselves Hungarian) students. Without the comparable data of the nationality statistics of Hungarian schools, we have to put aside the treating of the multiple problematics of assimilation related to education, the more so, because we do not have sufficient data about the denominational division of students.[72]

                The number of students changed little in the following years, despite the fact that a significant emigration lessened the number of Székelys on the eve of the war, but the high birth-rate balanced these losses too.[73]

                We do not know much about the work of a peculiar form of education, the repeating schools, which closed the elementary school education. According to the data of our table, from this aspect, it is Fogadjisten that can be regarded as the negative point of correlation where it was not even organized. The situation was a bit better in Hadikfalva and Istensegíts. Only the low enrolment ratio indicates the neglected state of education. On the other hand, considering the fact that this form of elementary level education did not function properly in Hungary either, it is not surprising that there were deficiencies in this aspect in the most backward province of the Monarchy. The circumstance that the living conditions continuously deteriorating parallel to the demographic growth forced the teen-agers - especially those in the repeating-schools - to engage themselves for the season abroad in the greater part of the year. In their cases it is not only the handicaps of their regrettable losing ground in the educational system that are considerable, but the dangers meaning economic-legal and explicitly physical exposedness too. In 1910, the director-teacher of Józseffalva officially warned the divisional gendarme-captain about the moral consequences of "going to Moldova"; but they could not do much with administrative measures against the "trading with school-children" and especially against the causing social problems.[74]

                The responsible leaders of the Bukovina action had to find solutions for the problems of teacher-supply, the problems of school infrastructure and enrolling, but they also had to face with the general lack of articles of teaching, text-books, etc. From the demands of articles of education from the part of the school of Hadikfalva, it becomes evident that they used Hungarian ABC-books, reading-tables on the wall and demonstrative pictures for the teaching of reading and writing, but with the help of maps with Hungarian inscriptions they taught Hungarian studies, according to the schedule of Hungarian schools.[75]

                The ensuring of the supply of text-books and articles of education was an accentuated aspect in the budget plans of 1910 of the action.[76] The occasional supports[77] of the professional portfolio supervising the cases of education and the private sums of the action expendable on this purpose ensured the supply of Hungarian text-books in the Székely villages.

                The so-called communal libraries donated by the Agrarian portfolio[78] and Ministry of Culture[79] to the people of Bukovina served the development of popular culture besides the narrowly understood educational purposes. These small, but well selected (belles-lettres, informative and historical works together) book-packets offered high-standard and useful entertainment for the book-loving Székelys, who were not too willing to spend on books from the few money they had.[80]

                Under the aegis of the "literary branch" of the action the mother-country provided song-books, catechisms, Bibles necessary to deepen their religious life, and considering the general poverty, they did it cost-free.[81]

                Contrarily to the consociated actions a proper Hungarian organ was not founded in Bukovina, and that would have been unreal too. But in a certain sense the Bukovinai Magyarok Nagy Képes Naptára played the function of a newspaper. The material of the publication published between 1911 and 1915 mainly ranged with those of the other calendars spread in other actions:[82] the reviews of religious and profane feasts, places of fairs and processions and the expositions of the Hungarian historical past were completed with writings concerning the events of the province. Articles presenting the past, the illustrious leaders[83] and customs[84] of the Székelys enforced the internal cohesion of the Hungarian community, but naturally equal attention was paid to the presentation of the aspirations and results of the Szent László Association.[85] The free publication was made more useful by articles dealing with life-style, legal and economic questions.

 Economic questions

                Although the action attempted to help the Székelys of Bukovina encircled by alien ethnic groups by decisively cultural means, the fact does not mean that the experts of the prime minister's office did not consider economic concerns. It was evident from the beginning that the securing of living is of primary importance from the aspect of the perseverance of the Hungarian diaspore of Bukovina. That is why Árpád Várady L. was satisfied to see during his surveying that the Székelys living decisively on wheat and corn-production kept up credit unions indispensable for rational farming and technical development, and additionally they did some truck-farming.[86] The Székely onion, cabbage and potato were merchantable articles on the fairs of the nearby Radóc, Szeret and Csernovic.[87] Pomology, the naturalization of which was supported by the agricultural portfolio by sending of gratis grafts, was both important because of healthy nourishment and as a way of income-complementation.[88]

                The Hungarian villages had enough pastures and correspondingly kept a significant size of (extensively kept) cattle, and that made many them capable of undertaking trucking, even to distant lands.[89]

                But several circumstances impeded the life of the cunning Székelys willing to take more serious efforts for their everyday living, primarily the extreme weather conditions often causing grave damages in the crops[90], or the epidemics thinning the animals.[91]

                The natural disasters greatly contributed to the fact that the leaders of the action could not hinder the large-scale drift of labour, not having enough political influence or financial resources. The abilities of Budapest only covered the improvement of the economic maintaining and preserving capabilities of the region, through for example the embracement of educating craftsmen.

                The conceptional significance of this attempt can only be understood from the aspect of the histories of consociate-actions. The plan of creating a strong layer of craftsmen was an important aspect of the organization of the mainly agrarian-like Croatian Hungarians. According to the view of Budapest, the education of a qualified layer of leaders aimed at the welding of the diaspore-Hungarians to an organic whole from a political point of view as well[92], to reach a state capable of efficiently facing with the assimilationist influences.

                While the Hungarians of the two provinces represented powers different in scale, the intentions of the action could be similar despite the much different conditions. Probably they chose the much expensive way of vocational training in the mother-country for similar reason they chose the same way in teachers' training: attachment to the Hungarian people can be filled with the sense of indebtedness and tightened through the knowledge acquired in the homeland (or from the homeland). The first journeyman was registered in Szeged in 1911,[93] and in the following year the National Hungarian Association sent boys from Bukovina to craftsmen in Budapest.[94] From the last year of peace they were educated in Kolozsvár as well[95] (although we do not know about their number).

                The informative articles of the aforementioned Hungarian calendar of Bukovina served the popularisation and spreading of the development of a favourable economic environment, or at least new agricultural methods and technologies. Such writings tried to plainly and expertly come round the questions of subsidiary husbandry on the plot and the questions of monetary law.[96] But the undoubtedly diligent "truck-farmers"[97] of the province could not enjoy the advantages of intensive farming promising multiple profits purely because of the expertly advices. The compulsion of self-sufficiency forced them in masses to Moldva, to the lands of boyars where specialized agents transported the cheap labour in the springs of every year.[98]

                The increasing subdivision of estates and indebtedness in the over populating villages by the Szucsava[99] did question not the economic recovery of the Hungarians living here, but their survival here; and the seasonal work abroad full of hardships did not change much the situation, neither did the economically illuminating work of the action. Despite the swarmings of the last century, the possibility of emigration was still a case of issue. Already at the beginning of the action, Árpád Várady L. considered the situation of the Székely villages of big families so desperate where the artificial "bleeding" of the population could become necessary soon.

                Not much later, the press spread the news that the agricultural portfolio planned another (re)patriation.[100] The under-secretary of the portfolio affirmed the fact of petitioning, but he also made it clear that he was not enabled to employ the people of Hadikfalva looking for work: partly because of the primacy of domestic workers against those from abroad, and secondarily, because the settling connected to seasonal working did not belong under the effect of the meanwhile admitted law (1911: XV. Art.).[101] The plea of the Bukovinans found univocal support in the House of Representatives.[102] Contrarily to the agricultural portfolio,[103] the Ministry of Trading made the Prime Minister's office of their cooperation. But even that could not promise safe living for the unskilled people of Bukovina in that situation determined by significant unemployment and low wages in industry.[104] Seeing the uncertainty surrounding the expectable results of settling, the Prime Minister's office temporarily gave up the realization of the plan.[105]

                By that time the migration of the Székelys of Bukovina aimed at overseas instead of the mother-country that became unable to provide safe living.[106] (In 1912 the pastor of Andrásfalva warned about a Canadian migration taking dangerous dimensions.[107])

                Budapest had to face with the undesirable consequences, because Romanians settled in growing numbers in the places of the migrating Székelys...

 The Age of the World War

                The breaking out of the war brought a spectacular fall-off (not only in financing[108]) in the history of the action that originated in the peculiar, border-side position of the province. The valley of the Szucsava near to the front-line suffered Russian incursions three times. Seeing the predation and outrage following their appearance in 1914, it was spread among the inhabitants that the recruitable men would be deported. That made 300 young men from Bukovina to escape over the border to Hungary, who became voluntary soldiers in Beszterce.[109] As a result of the war, epidemic diseases ravaged the Hungarian villages.[110] The real hardships were caused by the Brusilov-offensive, though. By July 1916 the front settled in the region of the Hungarian villages and by Romania's entering the war in August the village became completely isolated. Because of the unsafe postal traffic, the archbishop of Kalocsa, Árpád Várady L. attempted to send through the special aids through Vienna or by messengers.[111] But in the war situation, it was not only the traffic of remittances that was stalling, but the reports aimed for the Prime Minister's office arrived with significant (even with a two-year) delays.[112] The closing statement of the year 1916/17 was written on brown, wartime paper, and stylistically noted the action's disjointing by the scattering of scholarships, the losses of those serving in the army, and the news about the Russian occupants' taking hostages in Bukovina. In the wry situation Várady's declared intention was to ease the relatives' suffering[113] and consequently (and naturally because of the increasing inflation) the expenses of the action grew in the second part of the war.[114]

                During the one year long alien occupation the Russians requisitioned food, and scourged the inhabitants with quartering, labour service and war-transport.[115] The school-buildings were used as military hospitals[116], store-houses or even as telephone-exchanges by the passing troops.[117] Teaching was hardly efficient among such circumstances and could not be done on a regular basis.[118] The churches were in serious trouble as well. Among the difficulties of survival the people did not pay the church-rate, and did not have wealth to donate from.[119] Because of stealing and robbery, people did not dare to leave their houses unguarded, and because of the two-year inhibition of tolling[120] many remained away from the masses. The uncertainties of the war did harm morals as well...[121]

                The Austrian-Hungarian offensive evolving after the onrush of the Monarchy's armed forces in the summer of 1917 in Bukovina, brought liberation only to Andrásfalva. Józseffalva and Fogadjisten remained in the hands of the Russian, while the two most populous settlements were caught between two fires - for almost half a year. The Russian building gunpits in Istensegíts violently deported and foraged the village. Only the walls of the parish hall and the school remained standing in the battles, and the church was also hit.[122] Hadikfalva was evacuated by the German leadership for safety reasons (most of them found lodging in Andrásfalva, Radóc and some hundreds in the Hungarian refuge-camps). The village suffered grave damages similarly to the neighbouring settlement; and was condemned to starvation as they could not harvest the crops or save that from the requisitioning enemy.[123]

                After the temporary Romanian occupation Hungarian troops arrived in the spring of 1918 that cooperated in the restoration of damages, but their presence lasted for two months.[124]

                As it is known, the soviet-government wished to abolish all forms of caring about Hungarians abroad[125], but since the Szent László Association worked without governmental support in the Bukovina action[126], it had good chances in sabotaging breaking-up, similarly to the other cover-organizations of the other actions. The delaying tactics proved to be successful, and the in the autumn of 1919, the Friedrich-government stated that they consider the continuation of the action desirable, the more so because that had not had financial consequences as regards the government.[127] The peace of Saint-Germain gave Bukovina to Romania, and Hungary surrounded by victorious successor states did not have the opportunity to care about its compatriots beyond the Carpathians for a long time. The Transylvanian Hungarians became the only support of the Hungarians in Bukovina[128], although the Szent László Association tried to aid the cultural self-defensive struggles of the Székelys of Bukovina further by book-donations and by offering some scholarships.[129] The teachers from Hungary who had become Austrian citizens were compelled to change their nationality again.[130] Those graduated in Bukovina held on for a time in schools, and the educational authorities provisionally permitted the caring about the vernacular, but soon even the Bible-classes were held in Romanian (against the wishes of the Vatican concordat of 1929).[131] Only the Calvinist denominational school of Andrásfalva could operate as a Hungarian-speaking educational institute.[132]

                The mixed Fogadjisten and Józseffalva developing isolated in the sea of half a million Romanians agonized without perspectives between the two wars, while the three other villages were populating and held out despite the settlements "called" land-reforms.[133]

                But in the new regime building a monolithic nation-state, the Székelys of Bukovina, after spending 150 years in abroad, had the only chance to survive through repatriation, which happened in the distracted situations of a new world-catastrophe - to the full.

 Epilogue

                The "nation-caring" program of Bukovina - differently from the Croatian action - is the story of encouraging such an ethnic community the development of which were not, or only to a small extent, threatened by assimilationist influences. The Székelys of the three ethnically almost pure and in the two ethnically mixed villages, constituting a linguistic isle of 10,000 could choose between the alternatives of integration and of repatriation in the long run. The mother country though, being threatened by the alien ethnic masses of the peripheries (and motivated by fears of mutilation) attempted to prevent assimilation with every available means, that is why the good-intentioned, but hasty attempts of "re-rooting" the Székelys of Bukovina in the native country occurred from the ‘80s of the last century. The partial failures of these steps, moreover the lagging of the reform measures requiring a complete social-political change of aspect, stopped the process of settling. The means already tried in the caring about the American and Romanian émigrés, which had not produced spectacular results came afore. The aiding politics branded by the slogans priest and teacher attempted to ensure the preservation of the national identity of the embraced diasporas by influencing prevailing decisively on cultural and religious lines, however in this case that result can be regarded as given, because since the tragic attempt of organizing an Austrian borderland regions the Székelys of Bukovina prove their capabilities of self-defence and even their assimilative force alone, in an alien environment. What made then the Budapest government to initiate a Hungarian-saving action in the "Austrian side"?

                As we have seen, the moral growth of the "state-forming" nation of St. Stephen's Empire could be expected from the impeding of the acutely not threatening, but in the future inevitable assimilation of the Bukovinans (and that we learn from the history of the conjugate actions). In the action both allies and rivals saw the proof of the fact that the Hungarian (great) power is capable of connecting the parts embedded in an ethnically alien environments into the blood-stream of the nation. And leaning on this pillar it can ensure the territorial integrity of the country, but its reserve enables it to acquire new positions - first of all in the Balkan.

                From the aspect of expansive endeavours Bukovina, as a marginally important region was not to be thought of, not at least because it was an organic part of the Monarchy. Partly because of that, understanding the lack of direct assimilating intentions, the Hungarian government settled for the pure tracing of sociological processes, and did simply with the education and subsidizing of a handful of intellectuals, and in the enforcement of vernacular education and religious life. Yet, without a social-political turn neither the church, nor school would have been efficient on their own. With the intention of educating an organic middle class - through the scholarship holders from Hungary (with craftsman-students as well) - a modest attempt was made to plant an intellectual-citizenship standing on national bases that is able to lead the impoverished agrarian inhabitants of the Hungarian villages of Bukovina on the way of economic-social recovery (the intensive husbandry mentioned by Elemér Jancsó).

                A more ambitious (presupposing industrialization or a fundamental agrarian reform) Hungarian national policy - Bukovina being an Austrian province - would have had serious political-legal obstacles. (The embarrassing pointing of the principle of reciprocity made it difficult enough the caring for the Hungarians living under Romanian and Croatian jurisdiction.) So in case of the Hungarians of Bukovina, the realization of the conceived limited aims have good chances. The dynamic demographic development of the villages was positively accepted by the leaders of the action (but not the appearingly unstoppable emigration aimed at the New World). By the end of the World War those lines of power that later shaped the political situation of the region were drawn. It became evident that the perseverance of the Székelys of Bukovina could only be guaranteed between the state-borders of the mother-country. That is why it could happen in a historic moment offering the chance of a final return that the Hungarian government grasped this respectable Hungarian diaspore wanting to live out of the invisible, but very much real grip of assimilation.

                The final result meaning survival was founded in a no small extent by the conditioning aid of the dualism.

Vissza