Abandoned and forgotten: the fate of the graves of Russian soldiers in Transylvania is unenviable

Gayane Moor

In Transylvania, in the town of Sighisoara, near Albesti, there is a little-known grave of the Russian general, Grigory Yakovlevich Skaryatin (1808-1849), who died during the Hungarian campaign of 1848-49.

At that time, Europe was engulfed in revolutionary movements, Hungary as an independent state did not exist. Transylvania, inhabited by Hungarians, as well as the territory of modern Hungary, were part of the multinational Austrian Empire, which was in deep crisis. The revolution began in Vienna, but then national uprisings began in different parts of the empire.

In 1848-1849, the Austrian army tried to suppress the Hungarian revolution with the help of Russian troops, which were called to the territory of Hungary by Emperor Franz Joseph. Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich's corps attacked the Hungarians from the north, and the corps of General Alexander Leaders from the southeast.

General Puchner, who commanded the Austrian troops in Transylvania, at the end of 1848 turned to the commander of the Russian corps, General Leaders, for help. As a result, with the permission of Emperor Nicholas I in January 1849, two small detachments of Major General Engelhardt and Colonel Skaryatin entered Transylvania and occupied Brasov and Sibiu. Skaryatin defeated the Hungarians, led by the Polish general Boehm, and he retreated to the Maros River, then he was attacked by Puchner near the city of Medias. However, Boehm bypassed the Austrians and in February, not far from Sibiu, attacked the Skaryatin detachment, which was forced to retreat. After the infantry corps of General Leaders entered Transylvania, Skaryatin came under his command, but soon died in the battle of Sighisoara in July 1849.

Later, Dr. József Lengel of Kristuru-Sekuesk collected information about the colonel from various sources and in 1871 published an article dedicated to him. According to him, Skaryatin died on July 31 as a result of being hit by a Hungarian cannonball, which ricocheted off the ground and hit him in the chest. He was taken to the city hospital, where he soon died. According to his friend, Colonel Nepokoichitsky, that day Skaryatin really did not want to go to battle.

The death of the colonel aroused such rage among the Cossacks, who also participated in the campaign of the Russian army, that they no longer spared the Hungarians, so that in the battle of Sighisoara, from 1000 to 1300 people died. Among them was the national poet of Hungary, the leader of the uprising Sandor Petofi, however, his body was never found, and therefore his fate is still not known for certain.

The Russians won this battle largely due to their numerical superiority: if Bem's detachment had 5,000 men and 11 cannons, then the Russians had 12,000 people and 32 cannons.

After this victory, on the initiative of the Austrian authorities, a monument was erected over the grave of Skaryatin, laid by Franz Joseph himself during his trip to Transylvania on July 30, 1852. A year later, on September 27, 1853, the grand opening of the tombstone by the sculptor Johan Meixner took place, and the Romanian bishop Andrei Shaguna consecrated it. The monument is located in the east of Sighisoara - it is a majestic stone lion on a pedestal with pronounced neo-Gothic decorations. True, today his condition raises serious concerns: the inscriptions and bas-reliefs on it are no longer distinguishable. And this is despite the fact that, according to local residents, the monument is under the protection of UNESCO. There are rumors that they are going to move it to some other place ... Be that as it may, and the monuments should not disappear without a trace, and even more so, acts of vandalism in relation to them are inadmissible, because this is already a fact of our common history.

By the way, not far from Skaryatin's grave is the grave of Domokos Zeik (1816-1849), a Hungarian hussar who fought in the same battle. General Leaders, seeing the courage with which Zeyk fights, ordered the Cossacks to take him alive, but when they surrounded Zeyk, he took out a pistol and shot himself in the head ...

Domokos Zeik came from an old Transylvanian family, studied at the Economic Institute in Mosonmagyarovar, and then at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Berlin. In 1844, he married and took up farming, but during the events of 1848, he enlisted in the army with Behm, first receiving the rank of lieutenant and then captain.

The Zeike Memorial was created by the Budapest architect Karoli Kertes, and the bronze relief was cast by the sculptor Miklos Kölö. The monument was inaugurated on October 20, 1901 in the presence of the widow and son of the hero of the uprising, and a memorial plaque was installed by his descendants in 2016 in honor of the 200th anniversary of Zeyk.