The thought in the title often comes to mind, am I at home in Transcarpathia, in my homeland?! Do my rights have the same value as those of citizens belonging to the majority nation - because until now, unfortunately, I have not felt this way.
About myself, I am an average young Hungarian from Transcarpathia. After I finished high school, life presented me with the same decision as any other young person - how and, above all, where to go? This is a difficult question for us. We have to decide whether to stay "at home" or continue our lives abroad. I want to establish myself at home, in Subcarpathia, I want to continue my education here and find a well-paying job, There, where I can make use of the knowledge I have acquired, where I can pass on my experience to those who come after me, encouraging them to choose this more difficult path, staying in their homeland
The "life with big letters" mentioned by our high school teachers is not as simple as we young people enthusiastically but irresponsibly think it is when we leave our alma mater. At the age of 17, we have to make responsible decisions about our fate, in matters that may turn out to be not really a good choice. I stayed at home and tried to assert myself as a student at the local higher education institute - but how long and for what is this enough?! In Ukraine, compulsory military service applies to all young people under the age of 27. Only those who have a proven health problem or are full-time students of a vocational qualification or higher education institution can be exempted from this. Most young people have a decade of anxiety. Not everyone can financially afford to study for 10 years in order to avoid military service in some way. I am one of them.
However, my parents did not raise me to give my life on some front in eastern Ukraine for the country that does not allow me to study in my mother tongue and imposes sanctions on me if I speak Hungarian. Is it even possible to understand how a young Transcarpathian Hungarian might feel when he goes home and a military conscription awaits him? Even if we buy time with a six-year master's degree - we still have to spend 3-4 years in anxiety and fear. This is mainly the reason why a significant number of Transcarpathian Hungarian youths emigrate abroad in the hope of a better future.
In the last 7 years, the changing leadership of Ukraine tries to make our mother tongue impossible with a language law, seals the national identity of our children with an education law, barbarians tear down our national symbols, and break our everyday peace with threatening messages. But in vain: these cruel acts strengthen us even more and urge us not to give up what has been ours for a thousand years, and which our ancestors preserved for us even at the cost of their lives, gave their blood to protect the greatest treasure - the mother tongue, the we can preserve our national culture and proudly pass it on to the next generation.
Dear reader! It is not easy to be a Hungarian now in the war-torn Ukraine, but difficulty has always been the force, the driving force, that has kept Hungarians going and moved them forward. Our great ancestors were not afraid, even though they tried to trample them too. As a Transcarpathian youth, I see and experience those difficulties and problems - which have plagued us for quite some time. But fear and suicide are not compatible with the Hungarian character. Our glorious past requires us to do everything we can and must do in this chaos: to take on our Hungarianness.
We were born here, this is our country, and no one will distract us from here, assimilate us, because we are at home here. At home, in Transcarpathia. To be Hungarian, to remain a minority, is not an everyday feeling, but a real miracle, we owe it to our predecessors and successors.
"Hungarianness is not a hat ornament, but the Hungarian carries the pearl deep in his heart, like a snail in the sea. The feeling of our Hungarianness burns deep within us, that we almost don't even know about it, like the mountains that spit fire, which are cold stone mountains, but one day they growl."
Géza Gárdonyi confirm that we should live anywhere in the world, we must not give up our mother tongue and our culture, because this makes us a strong nation in diaspora, diaspora and regions beyond the border.
What is it that keeps a Hungarian person a true Hungarian when they are trying to curtail his rights from all sides, take his ancient treasure, interfere in his everyday life?! "The legacy of the ancestors." The next generation after us will ask us, our generation, to account for what we have done in order to pass on the treasure that has been earned and preserved for centuries. We will be able to say with pride - we kept our schools, churches, mother tongue and faith.
Of course, this is only possible, and we can proudly admit it, if we do not turn a blind eye to the arbitrariness of a politician, because time changes and will justify us. We will have to look our children and grandchildren in the eyes, and we can only do this without shame if they too can study in their mother tongue at school, if they can acquire knowledge in their mother tongue, if they can listen to preaching in their mother tongue in their churches.
It is up to us - our endurance, our backbone - to make it so.
(The author is a Transcarpathian university student. His writing can also be read in German .)
(Cover image: Vereckei national conquest monument. Source: hatartalanul.net)
