| Abstrakt: |
The life and work of the lawyer, politician and publicist Aleksey Yulianovich Gerovskiy was influenced by his family affiliation. Many members of his extended family were persecuted and punished by the Habsburg Monarchy regime due to their Russophile political orientation and activities. Gerovskiy himself was imprisoned in 1913 for allegedly preparing a coup to annexe Transcarpathia to the Russian Empire. He managed to escape from prison and emigrated to Russia, where he experienced both revolutions. During the Civil War, he joined the White Army fighting the Bolsheviks. After its defeat, he found a new home in Carpathian Ruthenia, which became an integral part of the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. He was an intellectually gifted, organisationally capable, and extremely active man who, since the early 1920s, devoted all his efforts to the idea of promoting the Carpathian Ruthenia autonomy within the Czechoslovak Republic. He believed that the Czech political elites deliberately refused to grant autonomous status to the territory, thereby violating the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He had a wide network of international contacts and constantly established new ones with the aim of creating political pressure on the Prague government and especially Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš, which would force them to change their policy towards Carpathian Ruthenia. He also subordinated his involvement towards this goal in the then rapidly developing Orthodox movement. He first tried to establish his connection with the Russian Orthodox Church, but when that failed, his efforts were aimed at supporting the goals of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia. He directed the activities of the Central Executive Committee of the Religious Communities of the Carpathian Ruthenia Church, which he headed, in its intentions. Gerovskiy's anti-Czechoslovak activities serving the interests of the enemies of the successor state and the irredenta in 1927 resulted in the loss of citizenship, forced departure to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and finally to the USA. However, even then, he did not give up on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
