Rodion Markovits

Rodion Markovits (; or Markovitz, born Markovits Jakab ; 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. 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.

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.

Romanian literary historian Cornel Ungureanu refers to World War I as Markovits' "first great journalistic adventure". 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, and was captured by the Russian military during summer 1916. His account places this event at the peak of Russia's Brusilov Offensive. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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 was held in an isolated and improvised camp near Krasnoyarsk, where life conditions became brutal and the rank structure collapsed entirely. 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. 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 survived the outbreak and joined the newly created Red Army, where he became political commissar at a brigade level. 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).

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. 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.

Literary prominence Szibériai garnizon was originally serialized by Keleti Újság during 1927. 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. A French translation was published by Éditions Payot in 1930.

The books were translated into some 12 other languages before 1933, reaching as far as Asia and South America even though its subject and content were largely dissonant with the aims of Transylvania's existing literary clubs. 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." In a 1935 interview, he declared his "spontaneous, sincere and complete affiliation" to the proposals for greater cooperation between Hungarian and Romanian authors.

These years saw the publication of Markovits' two new books: the novels Aranyvonat and Sánta farsang ("Limp Carnival"), and the short prose collection Reb Ancsli és más avasi zsidókról szóló széphistóriák ("Stories About Reb Anschl and Other Jews from the Mountains"). Coast Artillery Journal described Markovits' "unforgettable" creation as "in a class of its own": equal parts novel, diary, historical account, and "war book". Reviewer Al. Simion writes that the book has as its fortes the "concreteness of images", a "gentle or not so gentle" irony, and, overall, "a limpidness reminding one about the clarity of deepest wells"; the book's universe, he argues, is "flat perhaps, but transparent".

Beyond commentary on the "burlesque bankruptcy of militarism", In a 1981 review of Hungarian Romanian literature, published by the Romanian Communist Party's Era Socialistă, Kuncz and Markovits were introduced as authors of "anti-militarist novels [...] unmasking the cruelty of World War I".

A Romanian edition of Szibériai garnizon was eventually re-translated by Dan Culcer, and published with Bucharest's Editura Kriterion. After being researched and collected by writer János Szekernyés,

Markovits' work continued to be revered even after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 toppled communism. Editura Dacia republished Garnizoana din Siberia, The writer's home in Gherța Mică is preserved as the Rodion Markovits Memorial House.