Rodion Markovits (; or Markovitz, born Markovits Jakab ; "Markovits Rodion" , biographical article, MonitorPress.eu (Hungary-Romania Cross-Border Co-operation Programme 2007–2013); retrieved November 11, 2011 1888 – August 27, 1948) was an Austro-Hungarian-born writer, journalist and lawyer, one of the early modernist contributors to Magyar literary culture in Transylvania and Banat regions. He achieved international fame with the extended reportage Szibériai garnizon ("Siberian Garrison", 1927–8), which chronicles his own exotic experiences in World War I and the Russian Civil War. Locally, he is also known for his lifelong contribution to the political and cultural press of Transylvania. A Romanian national after 1920, Markovits divided himself between the Hungarian Romanian and Jewish communities, and was marginally affiliated with both the Ma art group and the Erdélyi Helikon writers.
Rodion Markovitz was seen by his contemporaries as an eccentric, and some of his colleagues believed him a minor and incidental writer. He was also noted for his leftist inclinations, cemented during his personal encounter with Bolshevism but toned down during the final decades of his life. Although he continued to publish short stories until the 1940s, and wrote the sequel novel Aranyvonat ("Gold Train"), his work never again matched the success of Szibériai garnizon. His final home was the Banat city of Timișoara, where he worked for the Romanian and Hungarian press, and eventually became a grassroots activist of the Hungarian People's Union.
Biography
Early life and World War I Culturally and ethnically, Markovits was of Hungarian-Jewish extraction, and socially belonged to the lower classes.Ivan Sanders, "Transylvanism and Jewish Consciousness", Erdélyi Magyar Adatbank reprint (originally published in the Babeș-Bolyai University Studia Judaica, 1996, p.61–67); retrieved November 11, 2011 His background may have been Jewish assimilationist, and he regarded himself as ethnically Hungarian, but his interest in maintaining links with secular Jewish culture put distance between him and the more committed assimilationists. Historian Attila Gidó nevertheless includes Markovits among the most prominent Jews who helped promote, from within, the Hungarian urban culture of Transylvania.Attila Gidó, Studii de Atelier 17. On Transylvanian Jews. An Outline of a Common History, Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Cluj-Napoca, 2009, p.21; Viața comunităţii evreiești din Cluj-Napoca. Comunitate în formare, comunitate formatoare, at the Cine îi recunoaște? Tudsz róluk? Missing 1944–2008 project, Erdélyi Magyar Adatbank, p.[3–4]
The writer's home village was Kisgérce (today Gherța Mică, Romania), in the ethnographic region of Avasság (Țara Oașului). He spent part of his childhood in Szatmárnémeti (today Satu Mare, Romania), the local urban center, where he attended Catholic school and then the Kölcsey Calvinist College. Young Markovits went on to study Law at the Faculty of Law of the Budapest (Eötvös Loránd) University, but mainly focused on his budding career as writer and cultural journalist, publishing with left-leaning or satirical periodicals such as Fidibusz, Népszava, Független, Ifjú Erők, Korbács, Szatmár és Vidéke and Márton Lovászy's Magyarország. Upon graduation, he also worked as a lawyer.Andreescu et al., p.910
Romanian literary historian Cornel Ungureanu refers to World War I as Markovits' "first great journalistic adventure".Cornel Ungureanu, biographical note to Rodion Markovits, "Garnizoana din Siberia", in Babeți & Ungureanu, p.312 Markovits was mobilized into the Austro-Hungarian Army a few months into the conflict. In early 1915, he was sent with the 12th Royal Hungarian Army infantry regiment to the Eastern Front,Markovits (1975), p.169–170 176–177 and was captured by the Russian military during summer 1916. His account places this event at the peak of Russia's Brusilov Offensive.Markovits (1975), p.101, 184 Also according to Markovits, the column of Hungarian captives (including much of the 12th) was ordered to the transit camp of Darnytsia (Kiev), then his contingent was carried by train to Kineshma and by boat to Makaryevo.Markovits (1975), p.103–145 Their rest was interrupted by news that they were to be moved into Siberia, and eventually they were relocated to the banks of the Ussuri River, on Russia's nominal border with the Republic of China.Markovits (1975), p.145–177
Revolutionary politics Markovits spent the next seven years of his life in Siberia and the Russian Far East—first as a prisoner of war, then as a drifter. He was notably held in Krasnaya Rechka prison camp, where he founded a newspaper for Hungarian captives, Szibériai Újság.Markovits (1975), p.198–321 Here, the Austro-Hungarian captives were reached by news of the February Revolution, and began organizing themselves into political or national factions even before the October Revolution sparked chaos in their captors' ranks.Markovits (1975), p.282–321 Nominally free, the prisoners were left to fend for themselves: after the Russian Civil War began, they purchased a train and, with it, made as far west as Samara, passing by Bolshevik units and Czechoslovak Legions, and being then pushed back into Siberia by the war tide; some Hungarians left the convoy to join the Bolsheviks' Red Guards.Markovits (1975), p.321–350
Markovits was held in an isolated and improvised camp near Krasnoyarsk, where life conditions became brutal and the rank structure collapsed entirely.Markovits (1975), p.350–393 From this location, the entire group of Austro-Hungarians witnessed first hand the mutiny of Russian soldiers from the 30th Regiment, its repression by the White Army, followed by the mass murder of all disarmed rebels and the selective killing of Hungarians who supposedly helped them.Markovits (1975), p.393–398. See also Babeți & Ungureanu, p.314–318 According to Markovits, the camp population took its revenge by firing on the retreating Whites of Aleksandr Kolchak, capturing some 8,000 men—an action which had the unwanted effect of bringing typhus into the camp.Markovits (1975), p.400–403. See also Babeți & Ungureanu, p.319–321
Markovits survived the outbreak and joined the newly created Red Army, where he became political commissar at a brigade level.Andreescu et al., p.910–911 According to his own fictionalized account, he volunteered to help with the coal transports organized by the Red squadrons, and was rewarded with repatriation (through the Baltic states, East Prussia and then Poland).Markovits (1975), p.403–407. See also Babeţi & Ungureanu, p.321–323
By the time Markovits returned to Transylvania, the entire region had been united with Romania. He decided to settle in Satu Mare, where he opened a law practice and continued work for the local Hungarian press—as editor of Szamos daily and correspondent for Cluj's Keleti Újság. He made his return to literature with short stories, grouped as Ismét találkoztam Balthazárral ("Once More, I Ran into Balthazar") and published in 1925.
The former prisoner had remained a committed follower of Leninism, as described by Ungureanu: "Taking his place on the left's barricades, living intensely the utopian illusions of communism, Markovits was to illustrate, in the early 1920s (like Malraux, Wells, Shaw, Panait Istrati, Gide etc.), the frenzy of enrollment." In the early to mid-1920s, Rodion Markovits came into contact with the socialist art magazine Ma, published in Vienna by Lajos Kassák and other leftist writers who opposed the regimes of Regency Hungary. Also left-leaning, the Romanian monthly Contimporanul paid homage to Ma as the regional ally of its own avant-garde program: "The reddish air of revolution has braided together the youth of Ma artists and the ideology of a revolution that might have realized their ideal. And the world awaited for the new Christ. But once the White reaction took over, Ma exiled itself to Vienna [...] A new period, a new foundation, a new language emerge with the adoption of collective Constructivism."Cernat, p.247 Between the Constructivist cells of Ma and Contimporanul, and ensuring that the Hungarian and Romanian avant-gardes remained in contact, there was a cosmopolitan group of Transylvanian leftists: Markovits, Aurel Buteanu, Károly Endre, Robert Reiter, and Julius Podlipny.Cernat, p.246
Literary prominence Szibériai garnizon was originally serialized by Keleti Újság during 1927.Simion, in Markovits (1975), p.7 The next year, it was reissued as two volumes. These caught the eye of fellow writer Lajos Hatvany, who undertook their translation into German, for Vossischen Zeitung and later for Ullstein-Verlag. The 1929 English version by George Halasz was published in the United States by Horace Liveright, and the first print was exhausted over a few months.E. L. B., "Book Reviews. Siberian Garrison", in Coast Artillery Journal, Nr. 2/1930, p.193 (digitized by the Defense Technical Information Center) A French translation was published by Éditions Payot in 1930.Pierre, passim
The books were translated into some 12 other languages before 1933, Roxana Onică, János Szekernyés, Memoria, un patrimoniu, at the Memoria Digital Library; retrieved November 11, 1011 reaching as far as Asia and South America and making Markovits an international celebrity of the interwar period. According to cultural historian Ivan Sanders, Markovits was, "for a time, the best-known Transylvanian writer in the world." As commentators have since noted, Szibériai garnizon also announced to the world that Hungarian literature in Transylvania was coming of age, Ion Chinezu, "Aspecte din literatura maghiară din Ardeal (1918–1928)", in Societatea de Mâine, Nr. 10/1930, p.201 (digitized by the Babeș-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library) even though its subject and content were largely dissonant with the aims of Transylvania's existing literary clubs.
In the larger context of Hungarian literature as divided by the interwar borders, Markovits has drawn parallels with the war-themed literature of Géza Gyóni, Aladár Kuncz, Máté Zalka, and Lajos Zilahy.Arnold D. Harvey, A Muse of Fire: Literature, Art and War, The Hambledon Press, London, 1998, p.250. According to Ungureanu, solid links exist between Markovits and an entire category of Austro-Hungarian intellectuals who turned into revolutionaries. Ungureanu concludes: "Settled in the 'once upon a time' provinces of the Empire or wandering the world in search of a 'juster' cause, [these authors] give name to a finality — a shipwreck."
Following the international confirmation, Markovits attracted interest among Transylvanian and Romanian writers of all cultures. The Bucharest daily Dimineața featured the serialized Romanian-language version shortly after its German edition saw print. Meanwhile, the Transylvanian Hungarian editors of Erdélyi Helikon review asked Markovits to join their literary club and, in 1929, he visited them at Marosvécs-Brâncovenești. Helikon contributor Ernő Ligeti left a memoir of the meeting, in which Markovits comes across as the uncommunicative eccentric. The puzzled and (according to Sanders) envious Ligeti noted that Markovits did not live up to the respect of his "penniless" fans, did not show any interest in Helikons educational agenda, and only "opened his mouth" to impart "droll anecdotes".
In Timișoara