Mihajlo Hornjak

Mihajlo Hornjak (Михайло Горняк; Serbian Михајло Хорњак; Ђурђево, 20. јули 1929 — Београд 14. мај 2011) was Yugoslav diplomat and ambassador.
==Biography==
Mihajlo Hornjak was born in 1929 as the fourth child in the Hornjak family. He completed four grades of elementary school in 1940 in Đurđevo. He completed the next three classes, during the occupation of 1941-1944, in Hungarian. He finished high school in Ruski Krstur, Vrbas and Bečej.  73290761
He graduated from the Journalism and Diplomacy College and the Faculty of Philosophy (History). In the meantime, he became a contributor to the newspaper "Rusko slovo" and to the newspaper "Dnevnik" in Novi Sad.
==Career==
He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1957, and in 1958 he went to the Embassy of the SFRY in Bucharest as an attaché. In 1968, he was appointed as the head of the department for relations with China, and in 1969, he was appointed as an advisor for relations with the countries of Indochina and was transferred to the SFRY embassy in Beijing.
In December 1972, he was transferred from Beijing to Hanoi (Vietnam), where he opened an embassy. From 1974 to 1990, he attended OSCE, OUN, ministerial summits in New Delhi, Luanda, Harare. Mihajlo Hornjak worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the head of the Department for China and participated in the normalization of relations with China. As a minister-counselor, he worked in the embassy in Tokyo, then, when he returned to Belgrade, he worked in the Committee for Policy Analysis and Planning, then he was the head of the Committee for Asia and was appointed as the last ambassador to Vietnam. After retirement, he lived in Belgrade.
==Contribution to his nation==
Mihailo Hornjak spoke English, French and Romanian, used Hungarian and Spanish and understood all Slavic languages.
Since his youth, he has been active on the topic of preserving the national identity of Rusyns. His graduation thesis at the end of his history studies was History of the Settlement of Ruthenians from the Carpathian Mountains to the Balkan Peninsula. After his retirement in 1991, he began intensive publicist and journalistic work. He also appeared in texts in the Belgrade newspapers Politika and Danas, Novi Sad's Dnevnik, in Rusko Slovo, news and magazines in other languages, and he also participated in large forums on the Internet. He translated and published texts important for Rusyns from and into English.
He supported the work of the Ruthenian Matka, entered into open discussions with opponents of Ruthenism, and pointed out the processes that threaten the social and cultural-educational development of Ruthenians.
He was a member of the Society for Ruthenian language, literature and culture, at the same time a member of the Friendship Section in Belgrade and actively participated in large actions and demonstrations, attended the promotion of books and magazines, collaborated with scientists and experts, wrote reviews.
He was married to Emilia, nee Kostelnik, from Ruski Krstur (the first master's degree in mathematical logic in Yugoslavia). They had a son, Boris, who graduated from high school in Beijing in Chinese, studied architecture in Tokyo in Japanese, and graduated from the Graduate School of Management at Stanford University in San Francisco.
Mihajlo Hornjak died on May 14, 2011 in Belgrade, where he was buried on May 17, 2011.
The Society for Ruthenian Language, Literature and Culture published Mihajl Hornjak's book posthumously under the title Sećanje i zaborav, Novi Sad, 2019.
==See also==
* Rusyns in Serbia
Category:1929 births
Category:2011 deaths
Category:Russian people