State-Building and Democratisation on the Fringes of Interwar Poland and Yugoslavia. Prekmurje and Eastern Galicia from Empire to Nation-State (original) (raw)

The outbreak of the First World War deeply affected the life of József Benkő. József was the son of István, a prosperous farmer who in 1913 opened a slaughterhouse and inn in the rural town of Muraszombat, situated in the south of Vas County in the Kingdom of Hungary. József helped his father run the family business, which was focused on the livestock trade, from a very young age. But József Benkő aimed much higher than his father, a former farmer, could have imagined doing. He dreamed of opening a meat processing factory and of exporting livestock and meat products on a large scale. The war cut that dream short. In 1914, Benkő was drafted into the joint Austro-Hungarian army, yet he deftly managed to avoid the massacres on the front lines, serving in the hinterland as a bookkeeper in a military warehouse. He was demobilised in 1918 and safely returned to his hometown. However, in the region around Muraszombat, the collapse of state authority in autumn 1918 marked the beginning of uncertain political conditions and sporadic outbreaks of violence. A turbulent period ended only in August 1919 after the territory was occupied by the Yugoslav army. After five depressing years, a form of calm and normality finally returned to the region. Unsurprisingly, conditions for locals engaged in business activities had changed completely in the meantime. Before the war, István and József Benkő made a profit on the common market of the dual monarchy, selling livestock in Budapest, Graz and Vienna. However, with the Treaty of Trianon, the Benkő family became citizens of a socially unstable and economically impoverished Yugoslav polity. As they were officially registered as resident in the remote region of Prekmurje along the newly established Yugoslav-Hungarian border, József Benkő's entrepreneurial ambitions faced grim prospects once again. 2 1 The research for and writing of this article were funded by the ERC Consolidator Grant "Negotiating post-imperial transitions" (NEPOSTRANS) under contract no. 772264. Jernej Kosi would also like to acknowledge financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research project J6-1801). The authors gratefully thank Cody J. Inglis for his very important comments.