Kovach, Ivan Ivanovich

Ivan Kovach ( June 2, 1912 , Zarechie village, Uchachan Comitat , Austria-Hungary (now Transcarpathian region , Ukraine ) - November 2, 2002 , Kosice ) - activist of the Russian movement in Carpathian Rus , teacher and journalist .

He graduated from the Mukachevo Russian gymnasium in 1930, received higher education at the law, philological and theological faculties of Charles University in Prague , Polish and Hungarian universities.

In his student years, Ivan Kovach participated in the Russian student movement in Czechoslovakia: he was the chairman of the “Central Union of Subcarpathian Students” and one of the leaders of the “Union of Russian Youth of Carpathian Rus”.

In the 1930s he edited the newspaper "Our Voice of Carpathians". In 1938 he was a member of the “Central Russian People’s Council” ( Uzhgorod ), in which he advocated the autonomy of Subcarpathian Russia and the preservation of the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia . In the first government of the autonomous Subcarpathian Russia, he was Secretary of the Minister Stefan Fentsik .

During the war, the Hungarian occupation authorities called him first to the workers' detachments, then sent him to the eastern front, where he was arrested and accused of complicity with deserters. After the collapse of the Hungarian army, he served as a translator at the headquarters of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. In 1945, Chief Ivan Kovacs became authorized by the Hungarian Red Cross for the affairs of former prisoners of the Nazi camps at the international mission of the Red Cross in Prague.

After the end of the mission, he stayed in Prague, where he organized the Karpatruski student movement. Thanks to his activities, the student newspaper Koster, the literary almanac Zvezda, began to appear in Prague, and participated in the preparation and publication of the encyclopedic almanac Pryashevshchina.

In the fall of 1948, he was arrested by the communist authorities of Czechoslovakia on trumped-up charges of organizing, together with S. Fenzik, the pro-fascist movement in Subcarpathian Russia. In 1949, the Czechoslovak authorities handed it over to the Soviet authorities. In the USSR he was sentenced by a “troika” to 10 years in the camps, in 1956 the case was closed. I. Kovac was allowed to return to Czechoslovakia, where he was again imprisoned in Prague for a year.

After his release, he worked as a teacher of Russian at the Šafarik University (Košice). For 25 years he was elected chairman of the Russian Club, was the organizer and leader of Pushkin festivals, and promoted Russian culture in Slovakia . Repeatedly acted with journalistic speeches in the press against Ukrainization in Eastern Slovakia and Transcarpathia.

He died in Košice ( Slovakia ) on November 2, 2002.