Haraida, Ivan/Harajda, Janos

Haraida, Ivan/Harajda, Janos (b. January 29, 1905, Zarichovo [Hungarian Kingdom], Ukraine; d. December 13, 1944, Uzhhorod [Transcarpathian Ukraine], Ukraine) — professor, linguist, translator, publisher, and cultural activist of Rusyn orientation in Subcarpathian Rus’. With the establishment of the new Czechoslovak regime in Subcarpathian Rus’ Haraida’s father moved with his family to post-Trianon Hungary, where Ivan Haraida was educated at the gymnasium in Szekesfehervar (1919-1924) and at the Law Faculty of the University of Budapest (JUDr., 1928). He never practiced law but instead enrolled in the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Pecs (1930); soon after he received a Polish government fellowship to study Polish-Hungarian relations at Jagiellonian University in Cracow. He remained in Cracow, teaching at Jagiellonian University (1934-1939), becoming a Polish citizen (1935), translating works into Hungarian and Polish, and actively participating in the Polish-Hungarian Society. With the outbreak of World War II and Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, Haraida together with numerous other Polish university professors was arrested in November 1939 by the Gestapo and incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His relatives managed, through the intervention of the Hungarian government, to have him released in the spring of 1940. He arrived in Budapest to recuperate but was advised to move to the provinces to avoid attracting the attention of Gestapo agents in Hungary’s capital.

Haraida chose to return to *Subcarpathian Rus’, where he taught history at the Uzhhorod gymnasium. In November 1940 he was appointed director of the newly founded *Subcarpathian Scholarly Society/Podkarpatskoe Obshchestvo Nauk, a post he held until the last days of October 1944. In this new position, and with the help of only a small staff, Haraida functioned as the publisher, editor, and proofreader of the literary, scholarly, and public affairs bimonthly journal, *Lyteraturna nedilia (1941-44); the bilingual Rusyn-Hungarian scholarly journal *Zoria/Hajnal (1941-44); the monthly children’s magazine *Rus’ka molodezh’ (1941-44); three volumes (1942, 1943, 1944) of the society’s annual almanac Velykyi sil’s’ko-hospodars’kyi kalendar’; and of three series of books—“Narodna biblioteka” (13 volumes), “Literaturno-naukova biblioteka” (40 volumes), and “Dytiacha biblioteka” (11 volumes). Together with Mykola *Lelekach, Haraida prepared several Rusyn bibliographical guides, including one for Rusyn literary history (1942), another for Rusyn literary works (1943), and the multidisciplinary Zahal’na bybliohrafiia Podkarpatia (1944; repr. 2000).

Haraida’s historical research focused on medieval Hungary, in particular its relations with its northern neighbor, the Galician Rus’ principality/kingdom. As a lexicographer he compiled in the 1930s (but did not publish) a Polish-Hungarian dictionary, began to publish a Rusyn dictionary of foreign words (1944), and left an unfinished Rusyn-Hungarian dictionary. As director of the Subcarpathian Scholarly Society Haraida’s primary task was to create a new grammar of the Rusyn language, Hramatyka rus’koho iazyka (1941). This text set the literary standard for official use by the government administration, schools, and other publications of the Subcarpathian Scholarly Society. His productive career was cut short prematurely following the arrival of the Soviet Army in Subcarpathian Rus’ and his arrest on November 11, 1944, by the SMERSH counterespionage unit of the Soviet military. Despite the fact that he was a Polish and Hungarian citizen living on non-Soviet territory, the notorious paragraph 58-4 of the penal code of the Russian Soviet Federated Republic was used to accuse him, without any proof, of “pro-fascist agitation against the Communist movement, the Soviet Union, and other democratic states.” Before the show-trial that was planned for him, Haraida died in the SMERSH-operated prison in Uzhhorod, just one month after his arrest.

Bibliography: I.O. Dzendzelivs’kyi, “I.A. Haraida iak filoloh i hromads’kyi diiach,” in B.K. Halas, ed., Ukrains’ka mova na Zakarpatti u mynulomu i s’ohodni (Uzhhorod, 1993), pp. 142-155; Iosyp Dzendzelivs’kyi, “PON i zabutyi Haraida,” and Omelian Dovhanych, “Viazen’ ‘SMERSH-u i gestapo,” Tysa, II, 1-2 (Uzhhorod, 1994), pp. 39-47; I.O. Dzendzelivs’kyi, “I.A. Haraida iak filoloh,” Acta Hungarica 1996-1997, VII-VIII (Uzhhorod and Debrecen, 1998), pp. 144-167.

Ivan Pop

Entry courtesy of Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture.
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