right to self-rule, and so insure the continued independence of the entire region.
His mind was far from being prisoned within his own village. In his continuous efforts to institute new judicial and administrative reforms for the improvement of community life in his own district, he never forgot about the others. In his youth he often visited other communities, attended their municipal meetings and gatherings, doing his best to learn their needs and to understand their people, everywhere directing his energies in persuading them to form permanent, friendly associations among the people within their own communities as well as joining in cooperative alliances, trade agreements and defence pacts with other surrounding districts whom a common interest drew together.
Such fundamental confederations which realized this idea and the spirit of unity among their communities were still vital and vigorous in the earlier days. The insidious greed of kings and boyars had not yet served to completely dissolve the natural brotherhood of peoples, that is why it was not surprising that under Zakhar Berkut’s much beloved, enlightened, devoted and statesman-like leadership, this consolidation and this cooperative spirit was readily strengthened and revived.
Especially valuable were the trade agreements made with the Rus communities on the other side of the Carpathians, not only to the Tukholian community alone but to the entire Carpathian region which was rich in wool products but poor in grain of which the Rus communities on the Hungarian side of the Carpathians had a surplus. Therefore, one of Zakhar’s chief ambitions was to make as direct and safe a trade route as possible up to and over the crest of the Carpathians. For many years he carried the idea for such a route in his head, roaming the length and breadth of the Tukholian region, surveying and scheming how the shortest, safest and least costly route might be cut through, at the same time ceaselessly striving to induce
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